mudhoney.jpg[Ed. note: This interview originally ran in the May issue of Sound. We are reproducing it here in honor of National Mudhoney Day] While other bands that thrived during Seattle’s early-90s rock boon faded into obscurity or imploded due to drugs, death or both, one band never strayed from their noisy, edge-of-underground path—and continues to thrive 20 years later. Unlike their more commercially successful cousins, Mudhoney never broke album sales records or became the public face of their city’s musical identity. What they’ve done, though, is created a canon of loose, loud punk-and-blues-influenced rock that riles the inner adolescent while soothing the Generation X adult. Mudhoney is as relevant today as they were in 1988—and, finally, as well-known a band as they always wanted to be. Which is to say that many people—Seattleites included—absolutely adore Mudhoney, while many others haven’t ever heard of them.

Today’s “deluxe edition” reissue of Mudhoney’s debut EP, Superfuzz Bigmuff, may change that. (A new album, The Lucky Ones, also hits the streets today.) Recorded and released just prior to the Seattle grunge explosion, Superfuzz embodies everything the genre came to represent: youthful anger, energy and volume. All this under a fuzzy, thumping veneer of barely-there restraint. The album’s cover, which remains intact for the souped-up, remastered edition, captures this near-chaos perfectly: Frontman Mark Arm and guitarist Steve Turner appear as human instruments, their guitars and hair flying, their balance precarious. Listening to the album almost hurts—in a good way. Superfuzz’s re-release provided the perfect opportunity to talk to Arm about his band’s Sound Classic.

Seattle Sound: What’s it like having an album reissued? Is it a thrill? Or just a reminder that your band’s been around for 20 years?
Mark Arm: [Laughs] It’s just a reminder that we’ve been around for 20 years. The thing that started this whole ball of wax rolling is once I started working here [Sub Pop Records], I took a look at the CD version of Superfuzz Bigmuff and realized that they’d put side A after side B. And I said, “This needs to be rectified.” I guess the 20th anniversary is as good a reason as any.

SS: Did it take you guys that long to realize the order was screwed up?
MA: When it was put on CD, I don’t think we had any involvement at all. I had a copy but I didn’t look at it. [Laughs]

SS: So was the correct order meant to be a specific progression?
MA: Oh yeah—the beginning through the end. We always like to sequence our records, with a specific order in mind. We were like, “Hey wait, this isn’t supposed to end like this.” So when we did the deluxe edition, we did things more in chronological order except for the three demo tracks at the end of the first disc.

SS: It’s said that you coined the term “grunge” back in 1981. Would you call Superfuzz a “grunge” album? Would you have called Mudhoney that when it was released?
MA: We wouldn’t have called it that at the time. We thought of ourselves as a punk band, in a broader, post-hardcore sense. We were in the same ballpark as bands doing hardcore when we were growing up, but we were kind of doing something else. Like the Butthole Surfers. Definitely not like punk in its narrowest sense, the definition that came to be in the ’90s, following Green Day, the Offspring and Rancid. And not like the height of hardcore. We’re an underground rock band. And we’re not an indie band, if that makes any sense.

SS: You’ve said that lyrics “should be heard in the context of the music, if they’re heard at all.” But on Superfuzz—and most Mudhoney albums—your lyrics are surprisingly clear. You do want to be heard, right?
MA: Sure. But I don’t put in a lyric sheet. I did that with Green River, and after a while looked at that and said, “That doesn’t really read that well.” Especially if things get repeated, like the chorus. It’s just stupid, do you really read the same line four times in a row?

SS: Between those lyrics, punishing drums and heavy guitar, Superfuzz seems a pretty pissed-off record. Did that come from just being a bunch of young guys?
MA: That’s kind of funny—when “Touch Me I’m Sick” first came out, the review in The Rocket was basically like, “I can understand why Public Enemy is all pissed off, but what do these white kids from the suburbs have to be pissed off about?”

SS: Everybody has something to be pissed off about, right?
MA: Sure. You know, some people might hear it as being an angry sound, but to me there’s a lot of humor. Black humor—the best kind. [Laughs] It’s not directed at an oppressor or anything, you know what I mean?

SS: There wasn’t a specific audience or reason for it?
MA: It’s more of an explosion of negative emotion.

SS: Is “If I Think” about someone in particular? Or maybe a substance; the substance possibly referred to in “Need”?
MA: You know, that was so long ago. [Laughs. A lot.]

SS: Okay, I’ll take that answer. How’d the recording sessions for Superfuzz go?
MA: Again, that was a long time ago. I did contact [producer] Jack Endino recently, and he still has all the recording logs. I think “Touch Me I’m Sick” and “Sweet Young Thing (Ain’t Sweet No More)” and the three demo-y songs at the end of disc one were recorded over two weekends. There was probably a mixing weekend or another day, but it wasn’t that many hours. We had five hours on one day and another five hours on another day—we were going in after work or on weekends, spread over a couple of weeks. There wasn’t a lot of deliberation that went into it. Some bands go into the studio and get paralyzed by all the options, because once you get in there, the possibilities are almost endless. We were more interested in doing sort of a live document with added feedback.

SS: Does the band usually go for more of a live sound when you record?
MA: Generally, yeah. Tomorrow Hit Today, the one we did with Jim Dickinson, was really the only big-major-label-production kind of record. A lot more went into that. But the new record is totally stripped down. It was done in three and a half days.

SS: Is that quick pace a product of you guys taking a new approach to making records?
MA: Yeah, there was definitely a new approach. I didn’t play guitar for any of the songs. And after the two previous records where we brought in horns and other stuff, we said, “Let’s see what happens if we write a whole record this way!” It’s bound to change things up a little bit.

SS: So you didn’t say, “Let’s do this like we did 20 years ago”?
MA: We totally expected the tracking would take place over a couple of weekends. We didn’t go in there wanting to knock it out as quick as we could. I think after the first day and a half, we were saying, “Holy shit—I can’t believe we’re going at this pace.” But we didn’t sweat it. Sometimes you go into the studio and you’re second-guessing, belaboring things a little bit. For some reason there was absolutely none of that. It was a super-good feeling. It’s the best way to record, at least for me. A lot of times you can start crawling up your own asshole. Or, as [producer] Tucker Martine says, “You can start in one place and walk around the block back to where you started. You try this and this and this, and then after four or five days you say, ‘You know that initial idea? That was a really good one.’”

SS: Mudhoney played Berlin in late 1988, before the wall came down. It’s a funny, kick-ass set, captured on the new Superfuzz edition.
MA: It was a crazy thing. Up until that point, we’d played Portland. [Laughs] We’d played a couple of shows in Seattle and maybe two in Portland. We came back [from Berlin] and played our first U.S. tour in just a couple of days. It was so weird to play there.

SS: Charles Peterson and Michael Lavine’s Superfuzz photos perfectly capture Mudhoney’s enduring energy and irony. Who’s idea was it to strip off your shirts and goof off?
MA: I think that was the beer’s idea.

SS: You’re wearing Converse in all those photos—what do you think of the company making a line of Kurt Cobain shoes?
MA: [Laughs] I haven’t heard about that. Well, obviously someone is giving them permission to do that. Gee, I wonder who that could be? Someone must need money. Which is pretty astounding considering how much money was generated…

SS: So I take it you wouldn’t want your own line after you’re gone?
MA: Not after I’m gone. I’d like to enjoy them. [Laughs] I’d like to wear those sneakers. Hey look, my face is on them!

SS: Superfuzz could have been the Seattle album that snapped the country’s youth to attention. And it came a year or two earlier than Nirvana’s Nevermind.
MA: Before the whole thing exploded with Nevermind, probably around 1990 or 1989, we thought that was kind of the peak. Things got so insane. Not in a Time Magazine way, but on more of a fanzine and British tabloid level. There was a couple-month lull, and then all of a sudden Nevermind came out and it was like, “Holy shit, there’s more!” [Laughs]

SS: So are you happy with the way things have worked out for Mudhoney? You’re still around, for one thing…
MA: Yeah, yeah. I’m amazed and grateful that we’re still able to do what we want to do. And completely on our own terms.