1991 - The Emergence of Alternative Rock, Part Two The arrival of Pearl Jam into the newly formed alternative mainstream of the early 90s was a major signal that a new, fresh rock movement was emerging and that it was moving beyond its underground Seattle epicenter. One must also remember that terms such as "grunge" and "the Seattle sound" were simply that: blanket terms. Like all blanket terms, they tend to overgeneralize the depth of the subject matter being dealt with. Even in the Puget Sound underground, there was far more variety than just bands with raw, Stooges-like guitar riffs and freshened-up takes on Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Andrew Wood's avant-garde influences weren't, in many ways, not all that different from the similar tendencies shared by 80s indie rock band Sonic Youth. And nobody to this day has ever accused Sonic Youth of being "grunge". By around 1990, the loose musical ends of "traditional" 80s indie rock and Puget Sound independent music were beginning to be tied together and become rightfully indistinguishable from one another. At the same time, fragments within this emerging musical universe were looking for fame and fortune not unlike 70s arena rockers without the pretensions of the 80s pop and hair metal stars that still dominated the current rock culture.
In fact, one Seattle band that emerged during this major musical paradigm shift easily could have fit into the MTV hair band culture...if they had wanted to. In 1987, vocalist Layne Staley met guitarist Jerry Cantrell at Seattle's Music Bank. Along with Staley and Cantrell, a new unit formed with the addition of two of Cantrell's friends, bassist Mike Starr and drummer Sean Kinney. The new band, dubbed Alice In Chains, began playing clubs in the Seattle area and, in 1989, caught the eye of Columbia Records, who perhaps were looking for a legitimate heavy metal band to sign even as hair metal was beginning to rapidly decline. In 1990, Alice In Chains released the We Die Young EP to strong reviews and the song received good rotation on rock radio.
In many ways, Alice In Chains was the first "grunge" band to find mainstream success, as their 1990 debut album Facelift became a big hit. But remember, in 1990, Alice In Chains was marketed as (and therefore perceived) as a metal band; they had signed to a major label and thus had no immediate ties to 80s indie rock. However, they were from Seattle. But Seattle hadn't quite yet become the next rock buzzword. But it was very close to its big, explosive breakout.
1991 - The Emergence of Alternative Rock, Part Three (Nirvana and Kurt Cobain) At the end of 1986, a Olympia indie rock trio named Skid Row (no relation to Sebastian Bach's hair metal band) featuring Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and Chad Channing began to make further inroads into Olympia's underground music scene. In 1987, the band changed its name to Nirvana, after a term derived from Hinduism. Nirvana began to gain a dedicated cult following in Olympia playing live at underground parties. Nirvana then recorded several demos which found their way to Jonathan Poneman, one of Sub Pop Records's co-founders, and Nirvana was subsequently signed by Sub Pop that year. Interestingly, Sub Pop was also the record label that housed notable Seattle indie band Green River.
Late in 1988, Nirvana released their first single on Sub Pop, a cover of Shocking Blue's "Love Buzz" (Shocking Blue is better known for their 1970 hit song "Venus"). "Love Buzz", ironically, did indeed generate a positive buzz for Nirvana, but it was their debut album, 1989's Bleach, that really got Nirvana a lot of attention.
Bleach gradually became a college radio hit, largely a result of the group's consistent touring. The album, which was produced for the astonishingly low figure of $600, sold 35,000 copies and Nirvana became favorites of the college radio scene, the British weekly music press and fellow indie rock bands Sonic Youth, Mudhoney and Dinosaur Jr., which in turn attracted attention from major record labels. At a total of $600, the return on initial financial investment was less than 2 cents per album copy; this figure represents the most return on production investment in the history of the recording industry, so it was no surprise that the major labels wanted a piece of Nirvana.
With the unprecedented success of Bleach, which, after all, was still an indie label album released on Sub Pop, the large recording companies stumbled upon a potential musical phenomenon that could potentially be nothing short of a gold mine. The alternative music steam train began rolling, and like all steam trains, it was going to be difficult to stop it. In August 1990, Nirvana opened for Sonic Youth on a West Coast tour with the Melvins' Dale Crover sitting in on drums, giving Nirvana more exposure. At the end of summer 1990, Chad Channing had been replaced on drums by Dave Grohl, who was from a Washington, D.C.-based hardcore punk band called Scream. In August 1991, Nirvana opened for Sonic Youth again on a European festival tour, which included a landmark performance at the Reading Festival in England. The British music press couldn't get enough of Nirvana and this new Seattle-based music scene. When Mudhoney's Mark Arm was asked by the British press how he described their music, "grunge" was the word he came up with and the term stuck.
With all the right pieces in place, Nirvana was brought to DGC on the recommendation of Sonic Youth and recorded their major-label debut, Nevermind, in the summer of 1991. Produced for only $287,000 , Nevermind raised the bar infinitely higher for the commercial potential of what was now being called alternative rock. Instead of modestly high demand, Nevermind immediately sold 50,000 copies of the album and due to the unexpectedly high demand, a shortage occurred. On the strength of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", for which a music video was produced and shot immediately into very heavy MTV rotation, Nevermind was like an atomic explosion going off. Kids all over the U.S. and around the world found out that there was more music where Nirvana came from -- literally. On the strength of relatively recent major record label deals, a Seattle scene had indeed been born on the strength of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, and Soundgarden. Across the releases of Nevermind, Pearl Jam's debut album Ten, Alice In Chains' 1990 release Facelift, and Badmotorfinger, which was Soundgarden's 1991 debut on A&M, Seattle became an international sensation.