Into the History of Grunge? Then Check Out This New Book from Mudhoney

Ten days after returning from Australia, Mudhoney played a gig in Seattle, an all-ages event at the Oddfellows Hall on Capitol Hill. (It was shut down early by the police, citing the ever-preposterous Teen Dance Ordinance; the point at which City Hall would sense the benefits of a thriving local music industry was still some way off.)Three weeks later they were in Hawaii supporting Sonic Youth, and a month after that a U.S. tour began. Indeed, there would only be one month in the whole of 1993 when the band weren’t on the road somewhere in the world.

Amid this busy schedule, the band members were slowly recalibrating their lives. All four began the process of investing their grunge windfall by putting down payments on houses. Steve was first, purchasing a $189,000 property on Capitol Hill with an incredible view of the Olympic mountains. They were buying at just the right time: in a couple of years Seattle real estate prices would be among the highest in the U.S., as the city surfed the high-tech industry boom. Dan and his wife bought a place in Ballard, while the newly married Matt Lukin settled down in West Seattle. As for Mark, in August he and Emily Rieman started going out once more. It was a crossroads moment in his life.

“She goes, ‘So, are you ever gonna do heroin again?’ And I gave this wishy-washy answer: ‘Weeeell… you never know what the future holds.’ I wasn’t totally prepared, I guess, to say: I will never do this again. Because up until that point I had still been doing it, actually, on occasion. Emily just looked at me and goes: ‘If you ever do it again, I am out of here.’ That was enough of a push that I needed to go, ‘OK.’ That made up my mind.”

There was no recourse to a rehab facility, or Narcotics Anonymous, or a 12-step program. Mark knew what he had to do and he did it privately, without fuss.