How Sub Pop – the label that brought you Nirvana and the Shins – survived constant money woes (rubber checks!), drunken rock stars (microbrews!) and grunge-era insanity (flannel!)
The birthplace of the record label that will forever be linked with the Seattle Sound—better known as “grunge”—isn’t in Seattle at all. It’s actually an hour to the southwest, in the liberal enclave of Olympia. It was there, in early 1980, that an impoverished Evergreen State junior named Bruce Pavitt, armed only with “an X-acto knife, a glue stick and a box of crayons,” put together a fanzine dedicated to the ultra-obscure regional punk scenes of the day:
Subterranean Pop. With issue No. 5,
Sub Pop (as the zine came to be called) morphed into a label of sorts, taking the form of a cassette compilation of underground bands from far-flung American cities.
Pavitt relocated to Seattle in 1983, in the pre-dot-com dark ages, when no one outside Washington had so much as heard of Starbucks. Four years later, he hooked up with an investor, local concert promoter and radio-show host Jonathan Poneman, to release
Screaming Life, the debut EP from future alt-metal heroes Soundgarden, on Sub Pop Records. The two cemented their partnership in early 1988, when Poneman bought a 50 percent stake in the label from Pavitt with $19,000 he got from cashing in his savings bonds.
The ensuing years brought bankruptcy scares (too many to count), madcap schemes, the shocking death of a beloved rock icon, an uprising that tore the label founders apart—oh, and nearly 800 singles, EPs and full-lengths from Mudhoney, Nirvana, the Shins and the Postal Service, to name just a few.
In mid-July, Sub Pop will mark its 20th anniversary by throwing itself a two-day rock festival that spans its history and sound, from reunited grunge pioneers Green River to sensitive folkie Iron & Wine. And exactly why is a label that dates back to 1980 celebrating its 20th anniversary this summer? We’ll let them explain …
“SEATTLE’S GONNA TAKE OVER THE WORLD!”
Bruce Pavitt (cofounder) April 1, 1988, is when we quit our day jobs and moved into our tiny, original office, in the Terminal Sales Building downtown. It’s the first day of Sub Pop, with a big asterisk next to it:
Except for the previous eight years.
Jonathan Poneman (cofounder) By May 1, 1988, we almost had to close down. We were building a company with practically no capital. One of our mottos was “Going Out of Business Since 1988.”
Charles Peterson (early office manager and unofficial house photographer) When we got paid, everyone would literally run down to the bank. If you were last in line, your check might bounce.
Mark Arm (founding Green River member; current Mudhoney frontman and Sub Pop warehouse manager) The elevator stopped at the 10th floor, and they were on the 11th, so you had to take an extra set of steps. It was a pauper’s penthouse.
Peterson The bathroom was the warehouse. You had to slide sideways through boxes of Green River’s record to take a leak.
Pavitt On our compilation
Sub Pop 200, there was a picture of the building, and it said
SUB POP WORLD HEADQUARTERS. People were like, “Wow, they’ve got this 11-floor office building!” Part of our shtick was that we were this huge player on the West Coast. We came out with T-shirts that said world domination. We were ironically undermining corporate culture.
Chris Cornell (Soundgarden frontman) I remember running into Bruce around 1988, and I mentioned how there just suddenly seemed to be so much talent in Seattle. He put his arm around me and had this funny, confident look in his eyes. He said, “Seattle’s gonna take over the world!” He was being tongue-in-cheek, but not really—he seemed serious about it.
Sub Pop became known for its arch sense of humor (early T-shirts advertised the wearer as a LOSER) and its Barnumesque marketing savvy. Pavitt (the creative guy who favored edgier bands) and Poneman (the business guy with more commercial taste) modeled Sub Pop after iconic labels like Motown, whose product had a distinct look and feel. Charles Peterson took the dynamic live cover shots; Jack Endino produced the bands.Jack Endino (early, unofficial house producer) Nobody was paying attention to Seattle—it was like a little, isolated germ culture. There were a bunch of punk fans who had gone back and discovered ’70s psych and ’60s garage and combined it with that punk energy and do-it-yourself spirit.
Arm A lot of touring bands would skip Seattle, so we had to entertain ourselves. No one was dreaming of the brass ring. I just wanted to keep our music loose and simple and fucked up and fun—that was helped along by beer and MDA [a variant of Ecstasy].
Megan Jasper (receptionist, 1989–1991; now vice president) Seattle was the exact opposite of where I came from, Boston, which was really uptight. The Mudhoney guys were a blast to be at shows with: They were fun, they were friendly, and they were drunk.
Poneman I knew if bands like Mudhoney and Nirvana could get heard, they’d be huge. They were just really good and charismatic.
Arm One of the label’s biggest tricks was selling itself so that people would want to get
anything on Sub Pop, whether it was good or not, because of the packaging and the label identity. They came up with the Singles Club, getting people to pay [$35 a year] upfront without knowing what they were getting. That helped them stay afloat.