BCR: You do all seem to have very strange day jobs, apart from Mark who works with Sub Pop and that's sort of fitting.
Steve Turner: I sell records on EBay. I've been a record collector all my life and now I sell them. I sell plenty of opera records. There's an opera bootleg thing, they're worth a lot of money... White Label, with like, Maria Callas on Italian radio or something. I do think I know where bootlegging started; I think it was trading Opera and classical music.
BCR: Ok, so Guy's a nurse, you're an opera bootlegger and what does Dan do?
Steve Turner: He's a stay at home daddy, he's got kids so…
BCR: The first time I saw you was at Reading in '95...
Steve Turner: The pamphlet or guidebook or whatever for that show, actually gave us a bad review, in the guide that they handed to all the punters. They'd just given us $30,000 to play their fucking show. It actually said something like "well they're actually past their prime and the new record isn't really all that good..." It was unbelievable.
BCR: I'm sure that was more the British press being precious about the fact that you weren't on an Indie anymore.
Steve Turner: Well, it was the post Cobain suicide thing. Everyone wanted grunge to die with him.
Mark Arm: It was also the year of Prodigy and whatnot. It was very much, like, grunge is dead, electronica is taking over. And we all know how that turned out.
Steve Turner: Another review of ours was "Mudhoney insist on using these antiquated instruments like drums and guitars." it was like, why is this guy reviewing our record except to make his point that bands like us should be gone!
BCR: It seems like it's been quite steady, like a manic depression cycle, you're really quiet and then suddenly you're releasing loads of stuff every two or three years.
Steve Turner: We've been getting more organised in a weird way, this one came out quite quickly, wrote the songs quite quickly and it worked. The other two records before this were more production jobs and I know from my stand point I didn't want to do another record like that.
BCR: Like Translucent, with lots of horns and all sorts?
Steve Turner: Yeah, I didn't want to do another one like that I wanted to do something more... direct.
Mark Arm: Musically, I think it worked out much better than I ever imagined. I think the record's really good.
BCR: What's the response been like from the audiences so far.
Mark Arm: All in all people seem to enjoy it. People were singing along and it hasn't been out for long.
Steve Turner: We were touring two weeks after it came out which is pretty quick.
BCR: Didn't you finish it off quite a while ago though?
Mark Arm: It was finished in late September last year.
Steve Turner: It was going to come out earlier in the year but the Sub Pop release schedule - we got bounced around a bit. We're not a high priority around there. They treat us well but they're concentrating on records that actually sell!
BCR: So is this the ideal? Being able to be a normal person with a normal job and an abnormal hobby?
Mark Arm: I think it really helps, for lack of a better term, the art that we do. I don't normally think of what we do as art because it's.. punk rock!... but if we're not concerned about the economics of it then we're free to do whatever we want.
Steve Turner: I would love to be not concerned about the economics of it because we've already made gazillions but that's not going to happen. My perfect world vision is not going to happen but this is second best.
BCR: So it must have been strange to come over here on that first tour with Sonic Youth in ‘89 and then go to your own home turf and find yourself a mainstream band...
Steve Turner: It was funny. It was a small vindication and a small fuck you to the mainstream. It was like, ha ha, you have to write about us now, you can't ignore us anymore. We were pretty happy to be ignored, it didn't matter to us, but still…
BCR: Did they even notice that there was a punk scene going on?
Steve Turner: They [music critics] were from the sixties and they hated it. That's why it had to develop on it's own. They were so offended.
Mark Arm: Unlike here where the punk rock scene was so catalogued in the weekly papers, where there were journalists that were actually interested in what was going on, in the states punk rock and hard core was virtually ignored. It was never co-opted at all.
BCR: So they were basically strong armed into covering it.
Steve Turner: Yeah, but they didn't cover it, it was years later.
BCR: How do you see it now? The press is kinda of weird, there are so many accolades now.
Steve Turner: That's the Sub Pop 20 years thing. But it doesn't matter. It's not false modesty or whatever, it just doesn't interfere with our world. What we do, we do despite what people think.
BCR: Despite a good write up?
Mark Arm: Yeah, it's nice to see a good review, no matter how misguided it is,but it still doesn't affect what we do and how we approach what we do.
BCR: So do you think you're any good?
ma/Steve Turner: Well, yeah!
Steve Turner: I also think that's it's a limited thing that we do. We got used to taking a giant grain of salt when the English press were going gaga over us. It was just so over the top some of the things people were saying. No one could ever possibly think that about us.
BCR: But you've got to realise that there's a lot of talk that you were the bedrock for what Grunge would become and without you there wouldn't have been this scene.
Mark Arm: That's not necessarily true, there were other bands who we were playing with who would have existed had we not... been there.
Steve Turner: The story wouldn't have been written differently. That would be a good movie "Mudhoney, What The World Would Have Been Like Without Them: Exactly The Same"!
Mark Arm: Except for these nine records.
Steve Turner: And these 400 pages of record reviews.
And this is where we had to hobble back down all those stairs, beers in our pockets and quite a glow from meeting some of our treasured musicians and finding them not to be total dicks.
