Mudhoney Hits Twenty Years

Mark Arm chats about their new record, the woes of the record industry and…dancing with Charo

by Andrew Lau

“I’ve been driving all day, so I may be a little dazed.” Mudhoney front man/guitarist Mark Arm is somewhere within the Mountain Time zone. The band is driving back from a recent East Coast tour in support of their latest album, The Lucky Ones .

Here’s a band written off in some circles years ago, maybe as long ago as 1992 when they signed to a major label. Here’s a band that’s continued to make good music not in the face of adversity (because there really hasn’t been any) but because they can . Sure, they’ve hit a few snags and even lost original bassist Matt Lukin when he decided to retire from touring in 2000. His replacement however, former Monroe’s Fur/ Lubricated Goat bassist Guy Maddison, gave the group a new wind.

This is their third release with Maddison and third since returning to Sup Pop, the band’s original label. Anyone expecting a grand departure form the usual formula will have to keep waiting…but then, why fix what isn’t broken? The Lucky Ones is another glorious mess of Rock. (The LP version comes with a bonus 7” –containing Troggs and Pere Ubu covers– as well as a code for free MP3 downloads.) Despite this being the first Mudhoney record Arm hasn’t played guitar on (leaving it all to Steve Turner) the same elements found on all of their previous records are present: Blue Cheer-inspired chunks of fuzzy guitar riffs, Arm’s unmistakable vocal delivery, and a solid, relentless rhythm section.

The best part of the record, however, is a newly tapped groove and every track seems to swing just a little bit more than anything they’ve ever done. Maddison and drummer Dan Peters exemplify this at the 2:45 mark during the title track where it all dissolves to only the rolling drums, bass, and a hint of percussion. It’s almost danceable.

Anyway, intensity wise, this record picks up where their previous release, Under A Billion Suns , had left off. From the humming little bass line of “Inside Out Over You” to the slow Bo Diddley beat on “Next Time”. From the smirking lyrics in “The Open Mind” (“the open mind / is an empty mind / so I keep mine cloooooooosssed ”) to the stinging riff of “What Is This Thing?” (a riff that’s almost Howlin’ Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightning”). Either way, it’s all textbook Mudhoney.

As you may’ve already heard, the band is also celebrating twenty years; a notch which is being honored in a few ways. One is this new LP, of course, another is the re-issue of their first release, the legendary Superfuzz Bigmuff EP which has been beefed up into a double CD collection with the correct running order, singles, compilations tracks, demos and two live sets. Their label is also turning twenty and the band will play one of the two Sub Pop’s twentieth year anniversary shows in July. On top of all that, Arms’ pre-Mudhoney band, Green River, will reunite for the same show. The man is busy.

Andrew Lau: Was it odd not playing guitar for this record or is that something you’ve pulled off before in the studio?

Mark Arm : Ah, yeah, in Green River [laughs]. It wasn’t super hard, no. I learned more when it came to actually writing the songs. Usually things start with a nugget of an idea and usually I’m –for a lack of a better term—jamming away with everyone else looking for a guitar part that works with what other people are doing. And I wasn’t doing that this time, instead I was grunting into a microphone, trying to come up with vocal melodies and words off the top of my head.

AL: You’re not someone who’s constantly writing lyrics?

MA : No. The days of me carrying around a notebook with me everywhere I go and writing down every stupid little idea that comes to mind are long gone.

AL: When did those days end?

MA : Oh I don’t know…ten, fifteen years ago.

AL: There’s a certain groove on this record that’s really effective, especially on the title track, and you guys aren’t really known as a groove oriented band. Any idea where this came from?

MA: Before we really started writing anything we talked about stuff and one of the ideas was write with the rhythm in mind and so I’d say two thirds of the record was started off with either a drum beat or a bass line. Usually it’s like: ‘Here’s a guitar riff, see if you can drum to it.’ [laughs] That’s happened periodically; we made a concerted effort to start off things like that.

AL: The last two records had horn arrangements on them and this new one doesn’t. Did you just not hear horn arrangements on them or…did the budget run out?

MA : No, no the budget didn’t run out. It was actually well under budget this time around because we didn’t dick around in the studio adding horns and stuff [laughs] or I wasn’t doing guitar overdubs. Those two records [2002’s Since We’ve Become Translucent and 2006’s Under A Billion Suns ] seemed like a pair and so we thought we should change it up a little bit. This is maybe the first time before starting to write a record where we sat around and threw out ideas of how we wanted to approach it. And all the songs came up simple and spare and they didn’t seem like they needed much else.

AL: The two songs that really stick out for me at least are “The Tales of Terror” and “We Are Rising”; there’s such a different range of emotions between them especially set back–to-back. Did you want to put those to together or…

MA : You know, that’s when we were organizing songs and started thinking about the flow of the record and that’s how they fell into place. I wanted to put “Tales Of Terror” earlier in the record but then we would’ve blown our wad a little early. To follow it up with “We Are Rising” seemed like a nice contrast.

AL: But then the ending of ‘New Meaning” reminds me of The Beatles “A Day In The Life”.

MA : [laughs] Yeah .

AL: Am I going too far on that one?

MA : [laughs] I think that’s pretty much what we…when we played that song we had a wind-up ending in practice and then waiting a couple seconds for that big cymbal crash and that’s how we ended up recording it. When we do it live we end it with the wind-up. Of course we had to add piano onto it [in the studio].

AL: Every member of the band on four pianos?

MA : It was actually just me on one piano four times. [laughs]

AL: The photo in the gatefold and on the CD is pretty stunning, the one you took of the headstones. Is there a comment there?

MA : Ahhhh, no. When we were thinking about art work for the record we thought it’d be a punk rock kind of thing, like Discharge album covers. That photo was originally color and we made it black and white and added contrast and made it gritty…you know, not quite Xeroxed.

AL: There’s always been nostalgia thrown around whenever articles are written about the band. Now with the Superfuzz re-issue that’s intensified, are you guys comfortable with that?

MA : Sure…it’s not like we have any choice in the matter, there’s no fighting it. It was our decision to reissue Superfuzz so we’re aware we’ve been around for awhile, that we’ve been around the block [laughs].

AL: What did you hear when you were putting together the re-issue? Were there any wincing moments…

MA : I think the record holds up; there are some lyrics that are kind of retarded to me. Like I think ‘Need’ is a graceless and humorless song, where as ‘If I Think’ takes a similar subject and it’s funny , know what I mean? ‘Need’ is what I was like in my twenties [laughs].

AL: How’d the Green River reunion come about?

MA : Ahh, Jonathan [Poneman, Sub Pop co-founder] asked me if Green River might want to do this thing. And I said: ‘Ah, I don’t know, I’ll ask.’ [laughs] That’s kind of how it came about and everyone was like: ‘Sure!’. That was a year ago when it was all in theory and we actually got together for two practices in April that went well enough for us to continue [chuckles] and now we won’t have a chance to practice until four days before the actual festival. We’re going to be cramming.

AL: Damn. That’s a lot of pressure.

MA: Yeah, you’re telling me; a lot of lyrics to relearn.

AL: You going to have a music stand with sheets of lyrics in front of you?

MA: [slightly insulted] No, no, no, no.

AL: No teleprompters?

MA: [long pause] I don’t think I could afford one.

AL: There’s been a lot of talk about the record industry going down the tubes, CD sales are down while LP sales have increased, tours are getting cut short, jobs are getting cut…do you see any of this? Has this affected you guys at all?

MA: Well, I work in the warehouse at Sub Pop so I do see that and it doesn’t work across the board. Some bands CD’s and LP’s don’t move for shit; other bands, their LP’s sell more than their CD’s. I can’t tell you exactly why, but I do see it.

AL: Has touring become difficult because of the —

MA : –because all we sell is vinyl? [laughs]

AL: [laughs] Has the price of gas making things difficult?

MA: It isn’t difficult for us, luckily we make enough money per show that it doesn’t really…it’s a drag but it doesn’t cripple us. Some of the bands we’re playing with, I don’t know how they do it on $250 a night. We’re spending, what, like $90 a day on gas for five, six hour drives. If you’re making $250 a night, that leaves you with around $150. I don’t know how a young band can afford it.

AL: Alright. My final two questions are self serving I’m afraid, but I didn’t ask them last time we talked so I’m going to get them out now.

MA: [hesitantly] …okay.

AL: I was wondering if you could tell me the inspiration behind the song “Flat Out Fucked” [from 1989’s Mudhoney ]. Or anything about that song that might make me giggle.

MA : Oooooh, you know …[long pause]…that was a long time ago and any recollection pertaining to that particular event is, umm, very hazy.

AL: [laughs] That explanation right there is good enough.

MA : [silence]

AL: Okay. Secondly, about ten years ago your photo popped up in the “Random Notes” section of Rolling Stone, which was kind of shocking in itself, and—

MA: Oh…was it with Charo?

AL: Yes! In Hawaii.

MA: That was more than ten years ago; it’s got to be fifteen.

AL: Well, you obviously remember it–

MA: That had to’ve been right before Kurt [Cobain] killed himself when Grunge was still a big deal, big enough for someone who was just on the outskirts of that explosion could make his way into Random Notes. [laughs]

AL: I guess my question is: how did you cross paths with Charo?

MA: We were playing in Hawaii with Sonic Youth and we were staying at the Hilton Compound in Honolulu and Eddie Vedder and his wife at the time, Beth, were there hanging out. Actually the full picture is of Beth and I dancing with Charo; she had a daily show at the compound and part of the show she’d go around through the audience followed by a photographer who’d take pictures of you dancing with Charo and you could buy the picture for $15 which is the way she could increase her revenue. By the end of the show your picture was on display and of course I couldn’t pass that up. And then someone, probably at Reprise [Mudhoney’s then label], had the brilliant idea of sending it into Rolling Stone.

AL: There was some cropping done…

MA: [laughing] Yeah, yeah, Beth was totally cut out.

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