Raise your hand if you’ve heard of Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder, and Chris Cornell. Raise your other hand if you can close your eyes and imagine a song from Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, or the Screaming Trees. All of you should look like a referee signaling a successful touchdown right now.
Yes, those frontmen and their bands are still household names today, even though their heydays were several decades ago. And it was largely thanks to Cobain and the others that the genre of grunge became a global phenomenon in the mid-90s. However, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and the other big players did have some help.
Here, we wanted to explore three people who were behind the scenes in the ’80s and ’90s but who nevertheless helped get the sound off the Pacific Northwest’s rain-soaked ground. These are three behind-the-scenes people who helped make grunge music into a global movement.
Susan Silver
Those who have seen a thing or two about the music industry know there are two things to remember—there’s talent, and there’s management. Yes, you may be able to sing, play guitar, and write songs that will be remembered forever. But you may have no idea how to book a tour, get press, or shepherd a career. That’s why Susan Silver was so crucial in Seattle in the ’80s and ’90s.
She began her career in the early ’80s managing bands like the U-Men, but that blossomed into guiding groups like Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and the Screaming Trees. She also helped advise Nirvana as their career was in the early stages. Without Silver, who co-owns the popular music venue the Crocodile in Seattle today, there may have never been a grunge scene.
Bruce Pavitt
Grunge fans can point to one music label in particular that helped turn grunge music and grunge bands from local club performers into international icons. And that, of course, is Sub Pop. But did you know the label was once called Subterranean Pop and at first wasn’t even in a label? It was a music ‘zine started by a college student in Olympia, Washington, after a bad breakup.
Yes, Bruce Pavitt started the endeavor from his dorm room, and it grew from ‘zine to compilation tape to record label in a matter of years. And it was Sub Pop that was early on in releasing songs from grunge artists like Nirvana and Soundgarden.
Jack Endino
Grunge fans who really know their stuff know Jack Endino was the guitarist in the early rock group Skin Yard. But behind the scenes, Endino was Sub Pop’s secret weapon. He was an engineer who could record the early grunge rockers quickly, cheaply, and all the while with that thick, gloopy sound that helped make the genre popular.
While managers, label owners, and bands created the bones, sinews, and organs of the music, it was Endino who was breathing life into it in his recording studio track after track, turning the right knobs and pushing the right buttons as the artists strummed their electric guitars and shrieked like banshees into the mics.
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