This is part one of a three-part series on the influence of early punk on alternative rock music.
Steve Jones, the guitarist for the U.K.-based punk rock group The Sex Pistols, proved himself a derisive mechanism in rock 'n' roll history when, in early 1977, he called London's "Today Show" host Bill Grundy a "dirty fucker."
Jones made his message to the mainstream clear: Punk rock would divide the baby boomers against their children - it would set the old rock against the new. Every authority figure from the British Parliament to the mainstream press hated him, while youth across the nation loved him.
It seems strange, then, that a little more than a decade later, punk rock would unify one of the next great rock 'n' roll upheavals: the alternative - rock explosion of the early 1990s. Seemingly disparate alt-rock genres, like grunge rock and alternative country, found a connection in the dissonance of punk. The two bands that gave faces to grunge and alt-country, Nirvana and Uncle Tupelo respectively, exemplified this overarching influence of punk rock across the alternative rock spectrum best.
The founding members of Nirvana - Kurt Cobain on guitar and vocals and Krist Novoselic on bass - and the founding members of Uncle Tupelo - Jay Farrar on guitar and vocals, Jeff Tweedy on bass and vocals and Mike Heidorn on drums - first played together under their respective band names in 1987. All five musicians had played in plenty of groups before, but none of them stuck together for too long.
"I don't think [Cobain] had a hell of a lot of friends," Matt Lukin told Rolling Stone in 1992. Lukin is one of the founding members of grunge pioneers Mudhoney, as well as the former bass player for grunge harbingers The Melvins. "He was always trying to start bands, but it was hard to find people who wouldn't flake out on him."
Buzz Osborne, The Melvins' frontman, introduced Cobain to Novoselic and finally cemented the troubled singer/songwriter's first solid musical collaborator. Farrar had played in many bands before, most of which included his older brothers Wade and Dade. Together, they were the Plebes. With the addition of Tweedy and Heidorn, they became the Primitives (sometimes misspelled as the Primatives). When Farrar's older brothers left to pursue other goals, the band morphed into Uncle Tupelo.
The members of Nirvana and Uncle Tupelo grew up in towns where the music scene, most specifically the punk rock scene and its fan base, was in the worst sort of condition. Cobain and Novoselic hailed from Aberdeen, Wash., a small town about 100 miles southwest of Seattle, the soon-to-be nationally recognized epicenter of the grunge rock phenomenon. Aside from the very active efforts of The Melvins, the little logging town offered nothing in the way of record stores that carried punk rock albums. Farrar, Tweedy and Heidorn grew up in the blue-collar town of Bellville, Ill., which had a population of about 40,000 and only one record store hip to the sounds of punk rock music.
The members of Nirvana and Uncle Tupelo knew that much of their immediate surroundings could never provide the right amount of stimulation and encouragement for their musical explorations. Their fascination with punk rock, as well as rock music of other genres, would be fostered by their own curiosities and a handful of very important friendships.
Cobain spent a portion of his youth intensely following the Sex Pistols' tour of the United States. At 16, Cobain befriended The Melvins, the band that came closest (in proximity and sonic quality) to approximating the sound he pined for: "I was looking for something a lot heavier, yet melodic at the same time," Cobain told Rolling Stone. "Something different from heavy metal, a different attitude."
The Melvins were one of several Washington bands laying the groundwork for the future grunge rock eruption. Juxtaposed with the 1970s hard rock tastes of other Washington-based grunge bands, such as Green River and Soundgarden, The Melvins represented the genre's darker, denser side. According to music historian Piero Scaruffi, they "rediscovered stoner rock by exaggerating Blue Cheer's and Black Sabbath's slow, heavy, dark grooves."
The Melvins adopted Cobain as a roadie of sorts. He drove the band's van; he towed their equipment to shows; he sat in on their rehearsals. Osborne eventually took Cobain to see his very first rock concert, the Los Angeles-based hardcore punk band Black Flag.
This relationship would shape the way Cobain approached his own music with Nirvana, the first punk rock band ever to have a triple-platinum selling record.
In the second part of this three-part series examining punk's influence on '90s alt-rock, Uncle Tupelo's peculiar combination of punk rock, folk and country music, which came to be known as alt-country, will be examined.
