Forget that “godfathers of grunge” label, the Melvins
outduel the metal
bands at Lollapalooza
By Gina Arnold
The first year of Lollapalooza, tour organizer Ted
Gardner speculated
that the traveling musical circus would be a success
when it could bear
the presence of a band "as radical as the Melvins."
It's taken six
years, but the Melvins are finally on the road with
Lollapalooza. The
three-piece band plays on the second stage around 5pm,
between Satchel
and Sponge.
Why the delay? "We don't party with Perry Farrell,"
says the Melvins'
Buzz Osborne, referring to Lollapalooza's high-profile
co-owner and
co-founder. "And guess who's not in the picture this
year?" he adds
knowingly. Osborne is referring to the fact that
Farrell, though still
financially involved in Lollapalooza, had no input in
booking this
year's tour.
Lollapalooza - which also features Metallica,
Soundgarden, Rancid, the
Ramones, the Screaming Trees, Devo, Psychotica and a
number of other
smaller bands - will play at San Jose State University
Spartan Stadium
Friday (Aug. 2); see story on page 41.
It is, Osborne thinks, a great tour this time around.
"If I was 16 or
17, I would have been stoked to see it. We didn't have
anything like it
when I was in high school. I was too late for those
hippiefests and too
early for Lollapalooza. I'm really happy to be
involved with this
circus, but I would have rather been on the main
stage."
The question is, would the main-stage audience have
been glad to see
him? After all, although this year's bill has been
dubbed "metalpalooza"
because of its preponderance of hard-rock acts, few
bands are harder or
heavier then the Melvins, whose seriously sludgy music
makes that of
headliner Metallica look downright popsy.
"Heavy metal is in bad shape right now," Osborne
comments. "There's only
Aerosmith - and Sepultura is a great band. Heavy metal
is aggressive;
it's not dumb college rock, like the
revenge-of-the-nerds thing that's
going on right now. Whenever I see Weezer on TV, I
think Slayer should
pop up and cut their throats. I think rock needs to be
more aggressive
right now. Where's Black Flag when we need them?"
Formed in Aberdeen, Wash., in the early '80s, the
Melvins were one of
the first bands to blend the unrelenting punch of
hardcore punk with the
slow grind of bands like Black Sabbath and Deep
Purple. The resulting
sound - dubbed "grunge" - was later made more
palatable by a fellow native
of Aberdeen who became the Melvins' roadie.
The Melvins are often referred to as "the godfathers
of grunge," an
epithet that causes Osborne to yelp, "Hey, don't blame
me! The bands the
press talks about as grunge - like Pearl Jam and Alice
in Chains - are
squeaky-clean rock. I mean, if that's grunge, what are
we? Antisocial
garbage is what. I have never felt like a part of that
situation."
Although Nirvana never ceased to say it modelled
itself on the Melvins,
Osborne now likes to disassociate himself from the
movement his band
inspired, in part because the Melvins left Washington
state in 1987,
settling in San Francisco even before Nirvana had
recorded.
"I'm not foolish enough to say it [grunge] hasn't
helped us out," he
adds, "but it happened years after we left. It's all
been fame by
association for us; which is fine, but it's also just
dumb luck."
As Osborne says, the Melvins benefited greatly by
Nirvana's success,
thanks to the constant references made by Kurt Cobain
in the press.
Despite rampant uncommerciality, they were hotly
pursued and signed to a
major label (Atlantic) as early as 1992.
"No one was more surprised than me that major labels
were interested in
us," Osborne says now. "I took it with a pound of
salt. I still do.
We're just not commercial enough... I'd love to sell
as many records
as possible, but at the end of the day, I have to
please myself. People
always ask me if it bugs me - the amount of money and
fame other bands
have gotten - when it's like we started it, and the
answer is, 'Well,
yes, but...' I don't do things like that. I can
totally understand why
Nirvana and Soundgarden are popular and we're not."
Osborne knows that "it's a long road to independent
wealth the way we're
doing it, but it's a challenge I'm willing to meet."
Right now, the Melvins have a new album out, titled
“Stag,” and though
it's actually somewhat lighter than their earlier
beefy fare, it's still
a far cry from anything normally heard on the radio.
In fact, when heard blaring out of the second-stage
area, not that far
from sets by the Ramones and Devo, the Melvins manage
better than any
other band on the bill to fill the sky with thunder.
Their set, which
sounds like a skyscraper falling on the compound,
tends to stop the
crowd dead.
It's not your average radio fare, but Osborne thinks
it should be: "Who
says they play it on the radio? Kids accept what they
accept, because
that's what they are given. But I'm not doing a
Melvins '96 cover of
[the Thin Lizzy tune] 'Jailbreak' to get popular."
Warming to his rant, Osborne continues, "There's
nothing worse than a
band that tries to sell out, and it doesn't work, and
then you're left
with nothing. I need to push the limits of this stuff.
We've been lucky
in that we haven't alienated our fan base or killed
the horse we rode in
on. I plan on making a lot more records, and if
Atlantic won't put them
out, that's okay, because there will always be someone
else out there
who will."