A conversation with Steve Turner of Mudhoney from 1998
The "Eric Clapton of grunge" talks about surviving the Seattle hype, working with Memphis legend Jim Dickinson, and derailing Sir Mix-a-Lot's career
Welcome to stübermania, where I dig into my box of dust-covered interview cassettes from the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s to present bygone conversations with your favourite alterna/indie semi-stars (and the occasional classic-rock icon). This is a newsletter in three parts: The Openers (links to recent writings, playlist updates, and/or other musical musings), The Headliner (your featured interview of the week), and Encores (random yet related links).
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THE OPENERS
Crowdfunders of the world, unite.
This is obviously very low on the list of problems with Google right now, but this week I discovered that its AI wants you to think all famous British gingers look alike:
Pour one out for East Hamilton noise emporium Vertagogo, which announced its sudden closure this past Monday on social media without explanation. In operation for just over two years, Vertagogo’s low-ceilinged stage welcomed everyone from punk legends to open-mic aspirants to drag shows to amateur-wrestling leagues, and just last fall, it played host to one of my favourite shows in recent memory: an in-the-round performance from local post-rock powerhouse cute that was fortunately captured in high-definition splendour/squalour by TV series The New Vibes.
If you’re scrolling through this newsletter while checking a text message on your phone that prompts you to click a link to a YouTube video featuring a song in the background that you want to Shazam and add to your Apple Music library and share with your Instagram group chat, before you get dinged with an email notificiation for another newsletter that you start to read instead of this one, then this episode of Commotion I produced is for you. It features Vulture writer Rebecca Jennings, University of Virginia media-studies professor Siva Vaidhyanathan, and Canadian SHIELD Institute public-policy advisor Vass Bednar talking about how smartphone dependency and shortened attention spans are affecting the ways in which arts and entertainment are both presented and consumed, and how even the traditionally unhurried act of reading a book is now being gamified by TikTokers who want to mow through 1,500 novels in a year.
Notes on this week’s additions to the stübermania 2025 jukebox:
Jehnny Beth, “I Still Believe”: When I interviewed the former Savages frontwoman back in 2013, she talked about the influence of metal, and while it’s appeared in her music in fits and starts, Beth’s new solo album, You Heartbreaker, You, leans into the heaviness with renewed vigor. This PVC-clad alterna-rager sounds like it could’ve swooped in from The Crow soundtrack, and, at the very least, it’s helped momentarily alleviate my FOMO over not being able to see Nine Inch Nails last week.
Big Thief, “Double Infinity”: The title track (and my personal fave) from the new Big Thief album is a cosmic country-rock reverie built upon a descending verse melody that Adrianne Lenker cycles through no fewer than 10 times, but it feels so instantly familiar and enchanting, you don’t even notice the lack of a proper chorus.
Nourished by Time, “Crazy People”: Baltimore’s foremost electro-pop (or is it cloud-rock?) alchemist administers a dose of cowbell-clanging, synth-shocked funk that will have even the sanest among us joining the titular target demographic.
Jasmyn, “In the Wild (Reimagined)”: Following a one-and-done deal with Anti, the ex-Weaves/RatTail singer dips her toes back into the DIY waters by transforming her most radiant art-pop anthem into a spacy folk lullaby.
Blood Orange, “Westerberg”: On which the indie-R&B dream-weaver pays tribute to a tribute, by summoning the chorus of The Replacements’ 1987 Big Star salute “Alex Chilton” to conjure his own misty-eyed memories of Paul Westerberg. (Hopefully, it won’t take 38 years for someone to write a song called “Dev Hynes.”)
Anna Von Hauswolff (feat. Iggy Pop), “The Whole Woman”: The unlikely duet at the centre of Anna’s upcoming sixth album, Iconoclasts (out Oct. 31), is essentially a “My Heart Will Go On” for Swedish goths and septuagenarian punks alike.
THE HEADLINER:
A conversation with Steve Turner
The date: October 14, 1998
Publication: Eye Weekly
Location: I was at home in Toronto; Steve was calling from Birmingham, Alabama
Album being promoted: Tomorrow Hit Today
The context: This interview happened 10 years after Mudhoney dropped their grunge-spawning debut single, “Touch Me I’m Sick,” and the title of the band’s fifth album, Tomorrow Hit Today, seemed to be a nostalgic nod to their 1989 fuzzpocalypse, “When Tomorrow Hits.” But Mudhoney aren’t really ones for sentimental 10th-anniversary celebrations, and after 1995’s Courtney-baiting My Brother the Cow, the band effectively removed itself from the Seattle-sound conversation and headed down to Memphis to record with local legend Jim Dickinson, who had worked with everyone from Big Star and The Replacements to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Toots & the Maytalls.
By 1998, grunge had entered late-stage Creedification, but Mudhoney were well-positioned to hop onto a resurgent garage-rock wave spurred by the release of the Nuggets box set, Matador’s reissues of the Lyres catalogue, and the growing popularity of niche labels like Sympathy for the Record Industry and In the Red Records. (This was also the era of Rob Zombie funnelling his White Zombie profits into his Zombie-A-Go-Go Records imprint to make Bomboras records more readily available at Walmart.) So for this phoner, I talked to Mudhoney guitarist Steve Turner about being in the rare band who have a Pearl Jam song named after their bassist and yet who can also credibly cover the Cheater Slicks.
Where are you at?
I’m in Birmingham, Alabama.
Are the locals taking a liking to you there?
Oh, yeah!
How long has this tour been going for?
It's been just two weeks right now.
Is this like a special 10th-anniversary excursion?
Well, we're closer to the 11th-anniversary now. It’ll be 11 years on January 1st.
So do you do a big New Year's bash?
Yeah. [laughs] Actually, I think we'll be in Australia on our 11th anniversary.
So do you consider a decade-long career a significant achievement?
Yeah, I guess so. It's kind of boggling to us when we actually think of it, because it doesn't really seem that long, and we certainly never thought we'd be around that long.
Do you remember your first gig?
Yeah, we opened for Das Damen, at the Vogue.
Did you have much of a set back then?
We probably had all the songs that were on Super Fuzz, and “Touch Me I’m Sick” and “Sweet Thing,” and maybe one or two other songs ended up on the first album.
Well, no one would ever confuse Mudhoney for nostalgic, sentimental types, but there seems to be more of a reflective tone to Tomorrow Hit Today—like, the album is an obvious reference to “When Tomorrow Hits.” Are you feeling particularly nostalgic at this point in your life?
Um, no. I was just trying to find a title for the album that sounds good. It sounded like we were a self-fulfilling prophecy, somehow.
What did you think of Spacemen 3's version of “When Tomorrow Hits”?
Oh, I thought it was great.
Is Sonic Boom still pissed at you [about Mudhoney’s cover of Spacemen 3’s “Revolution” where you completely changed the lyrics]?
I don't think so. I've never met him, but Mark [Arm]'s met him a few times when Spectrum’s come through town, and he seems fine. All of his interviews back then were really ridiculous—you know, doing that English pop-star thing where you attack everybody and everything and claiming that you're great, like Oasis or something. And he doesn't seem to do that anymore. He's a little older now.
The last time he played Toronto there were, like, 100 people there, so so maybe he's feeling a little more humble these days.
Yeah, he's been humbled a little bit, maybe. Plus, it would be really difficult for him because Spiritualized is so much better.
But getting back to the new album—it feels like you’ve come full circle with “Beneath the Valley of the Underdog,” which sounds like it could be Russ Meyer's documentary on Mudhoney…
Yeah, that was almost going to be the title for the record, too. But we thought it was too long.
How do you feel about always being pegged as the underdogs of Seattle? You’ve been tagged with this sort of class-clown reputation. Do you feel like you're taken seriously enough?
Oh, sure. I mean, I don't know if I'd take us very seriously if I wasn't in the band, I don't know if I take too many bands very seriously, as seriously as the press does, so that's alright. You know, we certainly don't feel underappreciated or anything.
So what do they think of you in Seattle now?
Oh, they take us for granted. [laughs] People still come to see us there. Okay, so we have the biggest guest list in the world there, but they still come see us!
How have the crowds changed over the years?
I'd say they're younger, just because we're older, and people who go to shows, generally, are still in their 20s.
It seems like you’ve gone through a certain cycle, where, at first, you had the serious indie-rock people coming out and then, around ’92, all the kids came out, and now they’ve stopped going to shows…
There's definitely a downsizing everywhere, and that's all right, I guess. It still seems like we get some of the old timers coming out, but still lots of people that are definitely younger. I'm always amazed when someone my age is at the show!
Do you still get mosh pits?
Yeah. Doesn't everybody?
I don’t know, it feels like they’re dying down, because the crowds are getting older.
That's good. I'm always embarrassed when I see people moshing. I’m like, “oh man, we were doing that 20 years ago!”
So what's your single most ridiculous grunge-hype-related memory?
Oh, man, I've tried to forget most of it. I think just the whole thing. You know, it was compounding ridiculousness. So there's not one thing, there's hundreds, and it just kept going and it kept getting worse… culminating in, you know, Bush.
How did you feel about being called “the Eric Clapton of grunge” in Rolling Stone?
My parents loved that. They didn't know who Eric Clapton was, but they went out after that and bought me an Eric Clapton book. Like, “thanks, mom! I don't really like Eric Clapton that much!”
They were giving you the guidebook for emulating his career.
Yeah. “Hmm… okay, alcoholic… stealing people’s wives—okay, I can do this!”
So you did this new record in Memphis, which most people associate with going rootsy, but you already did that with the Mock Cooter Stew EP and the Jimmie Dale Gilmore EP…
That was our rootsy period.
But there's still a certain school rhythm ‘n’ blues vibe to this record compared to My Brother the Cow, which was more of a straight-up rock record. So were you consciously trying to soak up the Memphis vibe?
I think it was just what was coming out of us at the time. We took a year off after touring for My Brother the Cow, and kind of slowly started writing the songs and not really caring what kind of song it was that we were working on. I think there’s a little bit more of a groove to the record because Jim Dickinson really concentrated on the rhythm section a little bit more than we had before—the bass and drums sound great on the record and they're really together.
How did you hook up with Dickinson?
He had done the last Clawhammer record, and Clawhammer's managed by our guy, Bob, and we toured with Clawhammer, so we were aware of what they were doing and we knew that we wanted to work with somebody that wasn't Jack Endino or Conrad Uno for the first time in a long time.
Were you a big fan of his past work?
We weren't really that familiar with it all when we started working with him. I knew the name and then I realized, “oh, he did the third Big Star record—okay, that's my favourite Big Star record.” And I love all the Panther Burns stuff that he was involved in. I knew that he was into noisy stuff, and that he had kept himself up to date a little bit, doing the Clahammer and The Replacements…
How old is he?
Probably in his mid-50s. He would have to be—he was a teenager in the 1950s. Figure that out!
So, how would you say he affected the album?
He’s a really good listener. I mean, he didn't change any of the songs—he’s not that kind of producer. He just sat there and listened and told us if it was a good take, or if there were some problem spots, he would tell us what to concentrate on and try to work things out at different places. And somehow he got the bass to sound way better than we've ever had.
Was Matt [Lukin] pleased?
Yeah. He was so pleased that Matt didn't even bother going to the mixing. He was like, “there's so much bass on there already, it’s gonna sound fine!”
I want to talk about the Cheater Slicks cover on the record [“Ghost”], but first—what's with that folk song at the very end [“Talkin’ Randy Tate’s Specter Blues”]?
That’s just a little ditty that me and Mark wrote.
Oh, you wrote that? It says “traditional” in the credits.
Yeah, I know [laughs]. The Cheater Slicks thing—you know, we were fans of them and friends of them. We played shows with them several times through the years. And our friends at In the Red Records put out their records, and our guy at Warner Brothers actually helped produce the last one, and so we had a tape of the record before it came out. And they were just kind of like, “yeah, why don't you guys try that song?” Because there was a little bit of a thought that it was a really great song, but they did it for, like, nine minutes or something like that, and thought it was too long, so they were like, “you guys could do that song really well.” And we liked the idea of covering a song that wasn't even out yet. It’s real old-school—you know, bands used to cover songs that were the hits of the day back in the ’60s and we kind of liked the idea. Plus, it was the Cheater Slicks!
So the songs on Tomorrow Hit Today feel a lot less topical than My Brother the Cow. Have you given up your generation spokesmodel duties?
I don't know. I think Mark got tired of answering questions about “Generation Spokesmodel” and “Into Yer Shtik” from the last record. [laughs]
I’m actually referring more to songs like “Fearless Doctor Killers”... was that sort of an experiment in more political songwriting?
Not really. That was just what Mark was writing at the time. I think he really doesn't like answering questions about lyrics much. That’s my theory. So I think he didn't write any songs that were topical this time, so that he wouldn't have to answer the questions about them, and he can just deflect all questions by saying, “I don't know what the lyrics are about—you decide!”
He seems to be doing more storytelling on this record…
That's probably the influence of the Kent 3 on him.
Aren’t you touring with them now?
Yeah, everywhere except Canada. It's really hard for bands to go to Canada now—they raised the price [of tour visas]. It would cost the Kent 3 so much money to go up there, so from what I understand, they’re just going to stay down and do a few shows in the States on their own.
So when people look at music history, they always put Mudhoney at the beginning of a certain movement that starts with the letter G. But would you feel more comfortable being considered part of the broader garage-rock continuum?
I mean, no matter what, we’re where we are in the historical footnote section—we're going to be there. I don't think we mind that. You know, to us it doesn't quite ring true, because we were there and we know that we weren’t the beginning of anything. I think of us as a post-hardcore band. I think we're fine with our place.
It feels like there’s a big resurgence of ‘60s-garage-style bands now, and to me, you seem to fit much more within that….
Yeah, but we're not purists of that stuff either. I mean, the garage stuff now seems like it's also pretty heavily ‘77-punk influenced. I like some of that stuff. I actually like the mid-’80s style of ’60s garage stuff better, I think.
Like the Chesterfield Kings?
Like the Gravedigger 5, The Morlocks, even Poison 13—like, a lot of the Midnight Records singles from there, The Outta Place…
Do you think people have enough sense of music history to appreciate something that's older than five minutes?
Most people don't, really. I mean, even people that should, don't. Like, I'm always amazed when I meet young kids that actually know some history that goes back beyond, like, “Hüsker Dü invented punk rock!” or “The Mummies invented garage!” Or “Matchbox 20 is a good band!”
So there's still that element to your crowd—people who know your name, but not your history…
I mean, there's less of that now than there was five years ago. We had a lot of people that probably had no business coming to our shows five years ago. We should have capitalized on it more, maybe.
Well, I interviewed The Flaming Lips, who have opened for several bands that are much bigger than them, because they were sick of playing to the same 100 people, so they liked the idea of playing to 5,000 people who had no idea who they were and freak them out…
I mean, we do that too, you know, opening for Pearl Jam a lot. It's all right. I mean, you don't really feel like you're getting through to very many people, that's for sure.
It gives you a chance to be that 18-year-old confrontational punk-rocker again. That's what Sonic Youth said it felt like to open for Neil Young—did you see any of those shows?
Yeah, I saw one of those.
I’ve never heard 15,000 people go so silent.
Yeah, it was like, “Our parents are unhappy right now!”
So do you feel like it's your job to educate the young people of today on their music history?
No, not at all. I don't even care about what young people like or know anymore. [laughs]
But did you ever think back in ‘91 that having all these people paying attention to you or Nirvana would open the door for more underground music to rise to the top?
Well, yeah, there was a sense back then… especially when Nirvana was hitting, it was a really big, cool thing. But I never really expected anything to really change.
So what do you think of the Nuggets box set?
I want to get that, actually.
Doesn't it sort of defeat the purpose to take all this disposable garage rock and sell it for, like, $70?
Well, at least it does get some people to actually hear some of that stuff. I mean, Crypt is repackaging all that stuff, too, on their Teenage Shutdowns! label—there's, like, 10 volumes of it so far, repackaging all the stuff that came out in the ’80s on bootleg comps.
Matador just put out all the Lyres stuff..
Yeah, I'm all for that. It works for me. I'll get it.
What do you think of Rob Zombie's new boutique garage label?
I think it's an excuse for him to make his kind of record covers. All these bands look more kitschy than they did on their last records. But I'm fine with that. More power to him. He puts out better records than his own on it, so that's a good thing.
So, how have you managed to stay signed to Reprise when so many other bands have been dropped by major labels?
Reprise, historically, is a little bit more artist friendly than other labels. I mean, we could have left them for this record, I'm, but I think we just decided to make one more with them, so we actually spent some money because we figured it was our last chance to actually record a big-budgeted record, and why they've let us, I'm not really sure. You know, our A&R guy is still there, which is rare—he's been working at the same company for seven years, which I think is a record for the music industry! But we’ve never lost them money before—that’s probably why we’re still there. We did our first couple of records so cheap that we never actually lost money.
Do you foresee Mudhoney leaving Reprise?
Well, who knows what's gonna happen after this record. It's definitely in the air. I mean, everybody is surprised that we're still there.
So for the most part, you're pleased with your major-label experience?
Yeah, it hasn't been any kind of horror story at all. It's been fine. It's worked.
How was your experience playing Terrastock?
I don't know, I didn't actually enjoy it very much.
Your name sort of jumped out on the bill…
You know, I really like that magazine a lot. I really like Phil [McMullen], the editor of it, but that festival was really irritatingly run by people that had nothing to do with the magazine—just some people from Frisco who were very uppity and very righteous about everything, and it was irritating, actually. So I didn't really spend much time there.
Was it a little too hippie for you?
Not too hippie, it was just too insular. It was very much like a little club, and everyone was so proud that they were part of the club. And I didn't want to be a part of the club. But there was some cool stuff I wished I had seen on a couple of the other days I wasn't there. I missed all the good stuff I wanted to see there.
Who did you play with?
Bardo Pond played right before us, and I like them. But the rest is a blur now, actually.
So lastly: do you have any information on the current whereabouts of Sir Mix-a-Lot?
No!
Is it a coincidence that after your Judgment Night collaboration, he pretty much disappeared?
Maybe! He might be cursing us under his breath somewhere right now.
This was supposed to be his big rock crossover moment, and you fucked it up.
I hope not. He's pretty great.
ENCORES
Update: Sir Mix-a-Lot is still alive, and the most recent entry on his Wikipedia page is one for the ages: “In 2019, he became the spokesperson for Cards Against Humanity's ‘Ass Pack.’”
As Steve anticipated, Tomorrow Hit Today was indeed Mudhoney’s final release for Reprise, before the band returned to their original home of Sub Pop Records for a second tour of duty that’s still going. Back in 2018, I wrote Pitchfork reviews for two albums they put out that year—the 30th(!) anniversary live set, LiE, and the Trump Mk 1-era address, Digital Garbage, whose hellacious highlight “Prosperity Gospel” can be easily applied to the current American nightmare:
This is a free newsletter, but if you really like what you see, please consider a donation via paid subscription, or visit my PWYC tip jar!
Thanks for this, Stuart. Memories!!!!!!