Sub Pop Oral History: "Going Out of Business Since 1988!"

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“A TOTAL FEEDING FRENZY”
By summer 1991, Pavitt and Poneman had laid off nearly all their staff. Their fortunes changed dramatically after Nirvana released their blockbuster major-label debut, Nevermind, in September.

Poneman Without that contract with Nirvana, we wouldn’t have gotten the [buyout] deal from Geffen. Nevermind’s success did a lot for Bleach sales; plus we had a participation in the Nevermind sales and then eventually In Utero sales. 

Pavitt By Christmas ’91, Nevermind had sold 2 million. We went from not being able to pay our phone bill to getting a check for half a million bucks.

Endino In the early ’80s, ambitious musicians would move to L.A. But 10 years later, people were moving to Seattle because they thought, Everyone and their mom is getting a major-label deal here.

Arm Cameron Crowe put Mudhoney on the Singles soundtrack, and in typical wiseass fashion, we wrote [the scene-eviscerating] “Overblown.” Were the lyrics [“And you’re up there, shirtless and flexin’/Display of a macho freak”] really inspired by a Soundgarden video? Well, Chris Cornell was taking his shirt off from day one. It just seemed kinda gross, like, I’m a good-looking model rock guy. But if I had it to show, I’d probably do it, too.

Cornell We toured together after Mudhoney wrote that song. It was nothing I paid much attention to.

Kim Thayil (ex-Soundgarden guitarist) The Vogue spread about grunge fashion was pretty damn crazy. There were models walking the runways in Milan wearing flannel.

Jasper A New York Times Styles reporter called up Jonathan about a “grunge lexicon” sidebar, and Jonathan redirected him to me. I was working for Caroline Records from home and was flying on three pots of coffee. I told the reporter, “Give me words, and I’ll give you the grunge translation.” I kept escalating the craziness, because anyone in their right mind would go, “This is bullshit,” but he never did, and it was printed. My favorite was “Swingin’ on the flippety-flop,” which meant hanging out. [Seattle’s] C/Z Records printed up a T-shirt with my word LAMESTAIN, which meant an uncool person. When the Times caught wind of the joke, the Styles editor called to yell at me. And then she asked me where she could buy the LAMESTAIN shirt.

Nils Bernstein (publicist, mid­–1992 to 1997) Reporters would call us wanting an entertaining quote from Sub Pop about heroin use. A small number of very high-profile people, like Kurt Cobain, used it, but 99 percent didn’t.

Arm The “grunge era” got insanely absurd. The absurdist thing was that one of the main players decided to blow his head off.

Bernstein The day Kurt’s body was found [April 8, 1994] was horrible. It was total media insanity. There were news crews who somehow got up to the roof deck around the penthouse and then tried to get up to the next level—literally scaling the walls of this building—so they could film inside the office. The next day there was a TV reporter hiding in the bushes at my home.

Pavitt After the suicide, we sold half a million copies of Bleach. How do you comment on that? It’s like a trick question. It was a weird feeling that because of the suicide you’re able to pay your bills.

Buoyed by Nirvana cash, Sub Pop expanded quickly. But with alternative rock now a hot commodity, the label found itself competing with the majors. In January 1995, Sub Pop entered into a joint-venture agreement with one of those majors, Warner Bros. Under the terms of the deal, reportedly worth $20 million, Warner received a 49 percent stake in Sub Pop.

Pavitt There was a total feeding frenzy; major labels were approaching all of our bands. I remember our A&R head at the time said, “There’s this group the Grifters who have typically sold 5,000 records and would like a $5,000 advance,” and I’m thinking, That sounds about right. By the time we were done negotiating, we had given them a $150,000 advance. And they wound up selling 5,000 records.

Lou Barlow (Sebadoh frontman) With Sebadoh’s third Sub Pop record [1996’s Harmacy], things just went wrong. They’d hired people from big labels to do radio promotion and get placement for us on shows like Friends. They were trying to get our ­wannabe-hit single “Willing to Wait” to play when Ross and Rachel were splitting up or something. They lost a lot of money on us.

Pavitt I couldn’t relate to the corporate culture, so I officially resigned in April 1996. In December, some employees came to me and said, “Bruce we really miss you, and the company is becoming unbearable.” This was the beginning of  [an attempted] mutiny, which is known as “the coup.”

Poneman Sub Pop was not a very nice place to work then. The company was exceedingly bloated.

Pavitt Jon had set up a meeting with Warner to get a bunch of money. My point was, before we borrow more, let’s think about restructuring and reconsidering how money is spent. I still owned 25 percent of the company and told him I was going to go to Warner and tell them to stop funding the label. Jon was extremely pissed off. He then fired the four people I wanted put in positions of more responsibility.

Bernstein I was one of the four fired [in early 1997]. Around that time, we had written, but not yet sent, a letter to Warner about changes we wanted. I understand why Jonathan did it—we were undermining him.

Poneman I may have overreacted, but these people were meddling in my affairs.

Pavitt After that, I didn’t really communicate with Jon, except through attorneys, for seven years.