In a new Straight.com interview, Mudhoney guitarist Steve Turner discussed Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard being ‘horrified’ by the Grunge label in the 90’s. He also discussed Green River, the Grunge supergroup also featuring Mark Arm, Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, and Alex Vincent.
Turner praised his replacement Bruce Fairweather, saying that the band actually got better when he left, and that he enjoyed the material with Fairweather, and the reunion performances from a decade ago where they had a ‘three guitar attack.’
At a certain point in the Straight.com interview, the reporter and Turner have thrown around the word “grunge” a few dozen times. The article states:
It becomes relevant to try to pin down the meaning of the genre: the range between the shimmering, Stooges-worshipping, fuzzed-out garage grittiness of Mudhoney and the much slicker, more mainstream sounds of Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, or Pearl Jam seems pretty huge. Does Turner even acknowledge “grunge” as a genre? “At a certain point, I think just jokingly, in 1995, Mudhoney decided to own the fucking term: okay, we’re fucking grunge. If anybody is, we are!”
He laughs. “I think that was just funny, and a backlash to the backlash. The problem was, [the term grunge] was used more just to describe bands from Seattle [than a style of music]. It was just an easy label. I remember friends like Stone [Gossard] from Green River and Pearl Jam was kind of horrified with all of it being lumped in together. I don’t think any of the more successful bands really cared to be lumped in as ‘grunge.’ I would say that Nirvana was the only band that got really successful who was coming from that point of view. They were grungy!”
