Everybody Loves Our Town
An Oral History of Grunge
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- $139.00
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- $139.00
Descripción editorial
A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • The definitive chronicle of Seattle’s grunge era, drawn from over 250 exclusive interviews with members of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and many more, and featuring previously untold stories and never-before-seen photographs
“A classic of monumental scale.”—Paste
“Riveting, gossipy, and impossible to put down.”—Vulture
“A drug and ego-fueled soap opera.”—The Guardian
“Superb.”—The Hollywood Reporter
In 1986, a fledgling Seattle record label released Deep Six, a compilation of local bands, including Soundgarden, the Melvins, and Green River. It sold terribly but made music history by documenting a burgeoning regional sound: the raw fusion of heavy metal and punk we now know as grunge. Five years later, tipped by Nirvana’s mega-hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” grunge became a household word and Seattle ground zero for the nineties alternative-rock explosion.
Everybody Loves Our Town captures the era in the words of the musicians, producers, managers, record executives, video directors, photographers, journalists, publicists, club owners, roadies, and hangers-on who lived through it. The book tells the whole story: from the founding of the Deep Six bands to the global success of grunge’s big four (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains); from the rise of Seattle’s indie label Sub Pop to the major-label feeding frenzy that followed; from the joy of making noise in basements and tiny rock clubs to the tragic deaths of superstars Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley.
By turns moving, funny, lurid, and insightful, Everybody Loves Our Town is the authoritative portrait of an extraordinary musical era.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Music writer and former Blender editor Yarm has compiled a sprawling oral history of the Seattle music scene and the grunge phenomenon of the early 1990s. Yarm conducted over 250 interviews with celebrities from Courtney Love to Eddie Vedder, as well as with the lesser-known musicians, producers, roadies, photographers, and fans who took part in the rise of Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Melvins, and many, many others. He chronicles the way in which the 1970s punk sensibility filtered through the gloom of the Pacific Northwest to create a unique sound and put flannel shirts in the closets of millions of teenagers. Yarm is careful not to focus only on the bands that came to define grunge in the mainstream world. The stories of small clubs, teenage desperation, and bad behavior will resonate with anyone who came of age in a rock and roll milieu. Yarm has cleverly edited the interviews so that at times it feels like we're listening to a conversation or an argument. While the enormous cast of characters can be hard to follow and after a few hundred pages the stories of jealousy, drunken brawls, and overdoses start to blur together, hardcore fans of grunge will treasure this.
