Death, Theft, and Four-Eyed Freaks: 25 Years of Mudhoney

Buzz: Have you ever envisioned your own death?
Mark: If I’m lucky enough to live as long as my parents, I will most likely die alone in a nursing home, stricken by dementia, surrounded by people I don’t know, with no one to advocate for me because I was too selfish to bother procreating. My hope is that I continue to have a great life ’til then. We’re off to a good start here.

Buzz: Have you ever envisioned someone else's death?
Mark: Probably some bully in Junior High or High School, but 35 years later, I can’t even remember who it might have been. Time licks all wounds.

Buzz: Have any of you ever thought about kicking yourself out of Mudhoney for the greater good?
Mark: I haven’t, but Matt Lukin has and he followed through.

Buzz: Has anyone in the band ever been too hungover to perform?
Mark: We’ve never played that early in the day. If one of us has wrecked himself the night before, it’s up to him to right and repair his own ship in time for the evening’s performance.

Buzz: Now that you guys have put out what I would consider a shit-load of records, has it ever occurred to you to switch instruments and start over? Mark on drums and Danny as stand up singer might be good! You could at least try it for a couple of years and see how it goes…
Mark: I love playing drums, but I don’t think I could do it for more than 30 minutes, which is probably the longest The Thrown Ups have ever played. Dan has spent the last several years teaching himself guitar and he knows more odd chords than I do. We could switch, but Melvins have at least double the output as Mudhoney so, if you don’t mind, we’ll follow your lead on this one.

Buzz: We all know that booze makes us smarter and better dancers, but is anything made better with weed? I only ask because they just legalised weed in your home state of Washington and I'd imagine you guys are hitting the bong pretty hard. Thoughts?
Mark: No, it’s no fun now that it’s legal. I’ve seen frat boys on the ferry sucking on a vaporizer and mothers at the playground passing around a one-hitter. I can’t relate to anything that’s embraced by the mainstream. Not even food. Just like musical movements are at their best before they become fully formed rule-laden genres (I’m looking at you, punk) drugs are at their purest and best when they’re so underground they’re not yet illegal, like LSD before 1966, MDA before 1985 and Bath Salts before that guy in Florida ate that homeless man’s face.

Buzz: Rumour has it that yours and our ex-bass player is a born again Christian and we’ve even heard that all of you are now Bible thumpers. Is any of that true? Have all of the members of Mudhoney now turned into ‘Churchy LaFemmes?’ 
Mark: The only thing Matt has in common with Jesus is that they’re both carpenters. Jesus turned water into wine. Matt turns wine into piss. Who would you rather follow? You’ve seen those bumper stickers that say ‘My Boss Is A Jewish Carpenter’ right? Well, our boss is a Jewish record label executive.

"I don’t trust anyone who claims to merely having influences instead of admitting they, like every other artist in any field, steal." – Mark Arm

Buzz: People always ask about our band's influences, like you can even start to answer that question. I say fuck influences; I want to know which bands you guys have just been ripping off. What bands have you simply ripped off over the years?
Mark: The list of bands we have ripped off is huge. We have songs with riffs, melodies and more nebulous concepts that we grabbed directly from The Stooges, MC5, Blue Cheer, Alice Cooper, The Wipers, Wire, Black Sabbath, The Sonics, feedtime, Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Captain Beefheart, The Flesh Eaters, The Saints, Phil Ochs, Neil Young, Tales of Terror, Honor Role, Townes Van Zandt, Spacemen 3, DEVO, Hawkwind, Butthole Surfers, Motörhead, Roxy Music, Lee Hazlewood, 13th Floor Elevators, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, Black Flag, The Seeds, The Scientists, Honor Role, Dr John, The Who, The Cramps, Pere Ubu, Jimi Hendrix, The Specials, The Yardbirds, The Stranglers, PIL. I could probably find more if I actually thought about this. I don’t trust anyone who claims to merely having influences instead of admitting they, like every other artist in any field, steal. Nothing comes from nothing. It all comes down to taste and how good of a thief you are.

Buzz: Times have changed; now every little four-eyed freak with a computer can tell it like they think it is for all the world to see on the internet. I think it’s change for the better! What do you think? Have these ‘critics’ ever influenced what you do?
Mark: I have a fragile ego and need validation just to walk out the front door and deal with the world. The web is a great tool for this. I’ve found that for every six or so posts that say Mudhoney is bullshit and should’ve hung it up 26 years ago, I can almost always find one that says it’s a pretty good thing that we’re still together. That really lifts my ego and gives me the fortitude to hold my head up high while I look down my nose at everyone else. I pity and disdain all those poor average Joes who no one will ever bother to tweet, blog about, or comment upon.

Buzz: Aside from looking at porn, is there anything the internet is good for? If you say ‘social networking’ I’m going to move all you guys up the ladder to number one on the death list.
Mark: How do you feel about porn networking? Grinder comes in pretty handy when you’re near an airport toilet and you have a few minutes to kill. There’s also that Skype thing which allows you to talk and show your junk to someone in another country for free. I’ve gone down several YouTube wormholes, this was the last one I found myself in: 

Buzz: Mark, have you ever considered putting out a new issue of Attack!? A lot’s happened since the last time you put one out in 1985 and it could be a big issue! I think you should do it!
Mark: I just wish we completed the last issue. We interviewed Black Flag and Meat Puppets when they played The Eagle’s Nest in the Summer of ’83. This was between Damaged and My War and Black Flag played a bunch of new songs that would appear on My War and Slip It In. I remember asking Black Flag what they were listening to and Bill Stevenson said something that sounded like “Deeyo.” So I asked, “What’s Deeyo?” and Greg Ginn says, “It’s Italian for God.” With my punk rock blinders on I didn’t even conceive that they were talking about Dio. We also interviewed the Butthole Surfers in December of ’83. I remember laughing our asses off during that interview and them laughing their asses off when Alex asked them if they were Straight Edge. Unfortunately, we never got around to transcribing the cassettes. I wish I had those cassettes.

Buzz: Who do you think has logged more time "in the bathroom" Nick Cave or Sonic Boom? Were you surprised that Rowland S. Howard was denied a liver transplant by the Australian government?
Mark: I doubt the Australian Government actually denied Rowland S. Howard a liver transplant. That’s just a little too conspiratorial for me. The simple fact is there are more people on organ waiting lists than there are available organs. Why did Paul Stewart of Painters & Dockers get a new liver and not Rowland S. Howard? It’s just the luck of the draw, unless you’re Steve Jobs or David Crosby and you can simply buy your way to the top of the list. As far as bathroom time goes, I think you’re missing some key players like Scott Weiland, Al Jourgensen and Mr Boom’s former partner Jason Spaceman who still writes songs about drugs and Jesus.

Have you read Tom Hanson’s memoir, American Junkie? You might remember him as Tommy Fart from when he played guitar in The Fartz. He became the go-to dope dealer for white hipsters on Capitol Hill in the late 80s and early 90s. He really wrecked himself in the process. It turns out that if you stick with it long enough, your whole apartment becomes a bathroom.

Buzz: If Jerry Lee Lewis led to Jim Morrison and Jim Morrison led to Iggy Pop and Iggy Pop led to Johnny Rotten then what did Johnny Rotten lead to? I'm hoping you say Sir Mix-A-Lot…Thoughts?
Mark: That would have been better than the sad fact that John Lydon led to the singer for information Society, who was unable to pass the baton on to anyone else.

Buzz: I trust Mudhoney have almost no interest in stopping at this point. What's your work ethic band-wise these days?
Mark: I think our work ethic is pretty strong, we just have to balance a bunch of competing interests like family and jobs. We generally tour without days off. We have yet to play 51 shows in 51 days, but we’re playing 21 shows in 21 days in May and June. Steve drives a six hour round trip just so we can practice. As far as I can tell, every member has a deep commitment to the band. I’d rather play with my friends in Mudhoney than play with a group of random people who have nothing more in common other than their availability to play more shows.

Buzz: Steve, what's the most valuable record money-wise you ever found for nothing, or next to nothing, at a thrift store?
Steve Turner: Hmmm. Recently it would be Winterhawk’s Electric Warriors LP, which sold for around $380, but there was some Hawaiian Folk Psych thing I sold for $600 a few years back but I can’t remember the name. I used to really score in the Dollar Bins at record stores before eBay. Obscure punk singles like Jackie Shark and The Beach Butchers or Opus would sell for $1000. Which is nuts, right?

Buzz: I once saw a hilarious shirt that said “I went to Seattle to score and I ended up with a record deal.” For a long time that seemed about right, do you guys disagree?
Mark: There’s this myth that a bunch of bands moved to Seattle in the early 90s and capitalised on the music scene. It may be true that people moved here, but I can’t think of a single band that moved here and became huge in the wake of Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam and Sir Mix-a-Lot in the early 90s. The next big thing out of here was The Presidents of the United States of America and those are all local boys. Does getting signed to CZ count as getting a record deal?

Buzz: What does the 'future' hold for you guys?
Mark: Let me refer you back to question number one.

Read the first part of this feature, where the tables are turned and Mark interrogates Buzz on the virtues of golf, withccraft and the true origin of grunge here.