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JACK ENDINO
If any one person could be said to have developed the sound of Seattle underground rock in the late 1980s, Jack Endino is the most logical choice. The man that Sub Pop co-proprietor Bruce Pavitt refers to as their early "house producer" oversaw early, seminal records by Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Screaming Trees, and a bunch of other Seattle bands who never quite carved their niche in the history books. In the Seattle rock documentary Hype!, he’s identified as the godfather of grunge.

What do you think were the distinguishing marks of the Seattle scene, as opposed to other regional rock scenes around the country?

Nobody took themselves too seriously. You didn’t have any navel-gazing sort of going on. There was a feeling that you could basically pillage any part of the past. Any of the rock and roll past was fair game for ironic commentary, tributes. It seemed that everything from punk rock to early ’70s heavy metal to ’60s garage was fair game, as far as the melting pot of influences went. And nobody seemed to be terribly snobbish about any of it. There’s a certain thing that comes along in popular music every ten years or so where it becomes sort of hip not to be rock, where people sort of look down on rock,and sort of sniff and go, that heavy rock stuff, oh guitars, we can’t have that. We like dance music and so forth. That sort of happened in the early ’80s, and it’s happening again now. But the pendulum basically swung the other way in the late ’80s, and it became okay to have a guitar again. A lot of people started pounding at their guitars and screaming and bashing in their drums.

The thing that characterized late ’80s Seattle music was basically an extension of ’70s rock idiom with early ’80s punk rock energy. It was all about volume and energy and enthusiasm and general craziness, and not so much about technique, flash, or professionalism, really (laughs). In other words, it was a bunch of kids having a good time.

What characterized grunge in particular?

Really bad guitar sounds. Not due to me! (laughs) Cheap amps, cheap guitars, multiple distortion boxes, and a general sort of rowdy approach. Screaming thrashing guitars, loud bashing drums, wailing screaming singers, a general loud intent, and nobody was too concerned with being terribly pop, if you will. At least, not at first. The intent was to be loud and aggressive, and still have a sense of humor about it, not to be all pompous and ponderous. ’Cause nobody wanted to be like heavy metal studs in leather and be all scary and stuff. Rock and roll has been around so long that it’s hard for anyone to...at least here, it was hard for anyone to take it seriously the way it was taken seriously in the previous decade. So there was always a certain sort of good-natured sense of self-parody to it. At the same time, there was sincerity as well. Beneath the jocular, sort of ironic posturing, there was still a lot of sincere rock music being made.

And what characterized the records you were involved with producing?

It’s ludicrous to call yourself a producer when you’re making an album in four days or something like that. There’s times when it’s appropriate, when you know that your role is more involved, than other times when perhaps you’re really just functioning as a...in a sense, I didn’t really know if I was a producer until people starting calling me one, and I realized that...once people expected me to be a producer, I realized that what they were looking for was exactly what I’d been doing all along. So partly it’s that I just didn’t have the nerve to call myself a producer, because that was a very...because that would have been considered sort of conceited in those days. We were all very do-it-yourself, very indie rock underground punk rock sort of people. Like I said, the idea of there being a producer when you’re doing a record in a week--it seemed kind of pretentious, really.

On the other hand, the records have a sound which was due to my work. So make of what you will really. It does seem kind of pretentious to call yourself a producer when you’re making a record, when some of them...[Nirvana’s] Bleach was made in three days. Three days...actually, it was divided up into various little bits here and there, but I mean, the total was 30 hours. It could have been three days. Most of it was in three days. It just seems more reasonable, really. I didn’t particularly insist on being called a producer at any point, not until now. Now I’m sort of expected to do a certain job, and have certain responsibilities. I get a more reasonable amount of time to do records, and it’s sort of accepted okay, you’re going to produce our record.

But in those days, it was sort of more of a lark. You can only afford three days? Okay, let’s see if we can make a record in three days. And we would do it. And it’s easier to say "recorded by" than to say "produced, engineered and mixed by." Sort of sums it up--I made the record, the band played it, I recorded it. What else do you need to know?

At that time you were in Skin Yard. How did producing end up as your focus?

At the time I considered the band my main priority, and then as that slowly fell by the wayside, it became clear that there was more demand for me as a producer than there was as a guitarist in a rock band. A lot of guitar players there. Guitar players are a dime a dozen. But if you’re halfway decent in the studio, the world will beat a path to your door.

Do you know what the story was with the early version of the Nevermind album with Nirvana?

They did it with Butch Vig. Butch was sort of at the same stage I was. I’m not sure if he was entirely comfortable calling himself a producer, but he did record it and mix it. It was a lot of the same songs, there was a couple that actually didn’t end up on Nevermindand got released later as B-sides. But for the most part, it was the songs on Nevermindminus a couple that got written a little later and added to Nevermindlater on. I think they did seven or eight songs. I don’t know if it was a complete album or not. I never heard more than, I think, seven songs.

They did the record, and they didn’t finish the entire album. I don’t think they finished enough songs for an album, but it was a good solid tape, it was a good half an hour’s worth. Then they decided to get rid of their drummer, Chad, and they wanted to re-record it with a new drummer and...I don’t think they told Sub Pop this at the time, but with a new record label as well. And one thing led to another, and basically that recording wound up being their demo tape, which they used to shop around to get the deal with Geffen. A lot of us heard it, actually, they passed out copies. I had a copy of it, I don’t know where it is anymore. It’s basically, the drum parts are similar, it’s not quite as produced-sounding, it’s a little rougher, the lyrics are different, a couple of the song titles are different. But the music is the same.

Was there a sense by this point that Nirvana had a chance to become bigger than other indie bands?

As I’ve said in the movie, Jonathan sensed it early on. He figured they were going to be huge. But it’s always a matter of luck when a band gets signed to a major label, if their record is going to be the one that sticks to the wall or not, or if it’s just going to be another one of those didn’t make it. It didn’t really become apparent to everybody until you first heard that song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on the radio. It sort of became pretty obvious at that point. I think probably anybody who heard the rough versions, the early version of Nevermind, the one that they did with the old drummer, probably had a pretty good idea in their heads that maybe this could amount to something big. I didn’t think that at the time, though. I remember thinking, oh, this is okay. It wasn’t until I heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit" really that it became obvious that something was going to happen. I think it took a lot of people by surprise, frankly. It wasn’t until we heard that stuff on the radio that it sort of clicked. Jonathan knew it, he had a hunch, but I don’t know, the rest of us...we knew they were a good band, but how good? That good? Wow!