Universe: “Super Fuzz or Big Muff?”
Mudhoney: “Both!”
What else would you expect from a band that titled their mischievously visceral ’88 debut EP after both pedals (Superfuzz Bigmuff)?
Formed in the late ’80s by guitarists Mark Arm and Steve Turner after the dissolution of their band Green River (which included future Mother Love Bone and Pearl Jam cofounders Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard), Mudhoney long ago solidified themselves as the Seattle scene’s big brothers and tightest pack. Through their 11 LPs, five EPs, and six live albums, Mudhoney has routinely diversified and further defined their eccentric brand of raucous, aggressive, unfiltered rock ’n’ roll. Possibly more impressive than the band’s wide influence and devoted authenticity is the foursome’s bond. Drummer Dan Peters and bassist Matt Lukin (also a founding member of the Melvins) were the rhythmic bedrock for Arm and Turner’s exploding-M-80 tones since the beginning. (Arm and Turner have been friends since high school and have been playing off each other since then.) But Lukin left the band in 2001 because tour life became too much, and Guy Maddison has been thundering ever since. To see a group’s career that’s pushing past 35 years and only have one member swap is as inspirational as it is baffling. How?!
“We like each other a lot. We get along. We love what we’re doing,” remarks Arm. “Why stop, even if no one gives a shit?”
Friendship matters to Arm and Turner, but gear isn’t a concern unless it points them in one direction—east. More specifically, toward Detroit, Michigan. And even more specifically, to the Stooges. Both namecheck the livewire band and their raw power several times in our Rig Rundown. However, in a 2018 interview with Premier Guitar, they acknowledged regenerating sounds that echo influences from Neil Young and the Byrds to Devo and the Dead Kennedys. But after chasing “I-Wanna-Be-Your-Dog” sizzle, what else leads them to the gear they use? Has that mentality changed since the late ’80s?
“If you think about the aesthetics of where we come from—garage punk, and punk rock in general—a lot of it was made with cheap gear, and a lot of it was reclaiming gear that guitarists had kind of dismissed as garbage. Like the Mustang. That was my ultimate guitar back when I was a kid, but it was poo-pooed when I finally got one. I could get them for $150. The Danelectro and Silvertone amps were kind of high-rated garbage when we were getting into them. We based a lot of our sound on cheap gear, so it makes sense to me that I still buy the cheap gear,” concluded Turner.
They’re still pragmatic about their setups, preferring equipment that’s familiar and reliable. Where they chase the dragon is in stompboxes. Turner trusts the Big Muff (his favorite iteration is from the mid-’80s), while Arm’s torrid tone burns with a Super Fuzz clone. However, both have additional hot-sauce stompboxes and other effects on their pedalboards that are being auditioned trial by fire.
Hours before Mudhoney’s headlining set at Nashville’s Basement East, Arm and Turner brought PG’s Chris Kies onstage to catalog their setups. Turner started the party by talking about a pair of guitars—his battle-tested late-’60s Guild Starfire IV and a recently-acquired Fender Gold Foil Jazzmaster before kicking on his Big Muff and other pedals that unlocked Dante’s inferno. Then, Arm joined the fun by showing off his Gretsch Vintage Select ’59 Duo Jet that eventually gets pulverized by three different fuzzes.
Beggar’s Banquet
Turner has always gravitated towards the Island of Misfit Toys, and says he was intrigued when he saw Fender’s Gold Foil Jazzmaster. “When we recorded Plastic Eternity, I used a Bigsby, but I don’t own a guitar with one. So, when Fender released this model I demanded one. I actually begged for one,” he jokes. “It’s essentially a knockoff of an old Silvertone, and I think it’s hilarious for Fender to do.” He’s enjoyed getting to know the instrument, whose bigger neck and brighter pickups offer an alternative flavor to his Guild. In recent years, Turner has dialed back his string gauges and currently goes with Dunlop Heavy Core strings (.010–.048). Both his guitars are always in standard tuning.
Red Rider
The past two decades, Turner has mainly been playing a pair of Guild Starfire IVs. One is from 1967 and the other is a ’68. He doesn’t know which one is which, but believes this one to be the “newer” one. He likes it more because “it’s a little heavier, it sounds woodier, it’s got better tuning pegs, and it’s got a slightly bigger neck.” He never thought the semi-hollow would work with Mudhoney because of the massive layers of fuzz he puts on his guitars, but after taking it to band practice as a “joke” and dealing with the “quick learning curve” to EQ his gear and change where he stands in relation to his amp, he’s been on cruise control with the Starfire IV.
Couple DeVille
When Mudhoney started, Turner had a 1965 Super Reverb. He still owns that amp, but says he keeps it at home. The closest amp to that benchmark he’s encountered and plugged into is this stock Fender Hot Rod DeVille III 4x10 combo.
Steve Turner’s Pedalboard
This is the fanciest pedalboard Steve Turner has ever brought on tour. His pal and owner of Hank’s Music Exchange in Portland wired this up for him. The one thing Turner requested of Hank was that he put the MXR Micro Amp, VOX V847A Wah, and Electro-Harmonix Little Big Muff Pi at the front of the chain. Turner likes pushing the amp with the MXR and then juicing the Muff with it, too. He prefers the wah earlier in the chain, so it has as much bite as possible. “I want it to sound like a Stooges record where the wah is twice as loud as everything else!”
Turner told PG in 2018 that his favorite modern Muff is the EHX Nano edition, which he says best approximates his pinnacle pedal (a mid-’80s Big Muff). “My favorite is the Nano, the cheapest ones they make. They’re like 60 dollars or something. They’re almost disposable—because they do break. But oh, well. Buy another one! Going off memory and feel, to me the Nano sounds the most like that. In the studio, I bring in a whole bunch [of other fuzzes], but then sometimes I just get lost trying to fix something that doesn’t really need to be fixed, you know what I mean?”
Speaking of fuzz, Turner was experimenting with the Before finding a friend in Gretsches, Arm had been playing SGs, Jaguars, Hagstroms, and others. He acquired his 1991 Gretsch G6129T-59 Vintage Select ’59 Silver Jet reissue because he wanted to look like Billy Zoom. This black stallion G6128T-59 Vintage Select ’59 Duo Jet is a more recent reissue he prefers for its chambered body, which is lighter and more resonant. After reading the Black Sabbath: Symptom of the Universe biography by Mick Wall where he learned that Iommi played light strings, he made the move from Ernie Ball Skinny Top Heavy Bottom Slinkys (.010–.052) down to Ernie Ball Super Slinkys (.009–.042). while pursuing the ’60s Fuzzrite nastiness felt on the Stooges’ early rippers. Signal swayers include a Strymon Flint and a vintage script-logo MXR Phase 90. And an Ibanez TS9DX Turbo Tube Screamer joined the bunch when gifted from former Green River bandmate Stone Gossard. A Peterson Stomp Classic Strobotuner keeps his guitars in check and a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Plus ignites his stomps.
A Goodie!
Before finding a friend in Gretsches, Arm had been playing SGs, Jaguars, Hagstroms, and others. He acquired his 1991 Gretsch G6129T-59 Vintage Select ’59 Silver Jet reissue because he wanted to look like Billy Zoom. This black stallion G6128T-59 Vintage Select ’59 Duo Jet is a more recent reissue he prefers for its chambered body, which is lighter and more resonant. After reading the Black Sabbath: Symptom of the Universe biography by Mick Wall where he learned that Iommi played light strings, he made the move from Ernie Ball Skinny Top Heavy Bottom Slinkys (.010–.052) down to Ernie Ball Super Slinkys (.009–.042).
“Slide in Standard Tuning Sounds Like Shit”
Turner admits that the band’s earliest work features some earache moments where he played slide on his Hagstrom in standard. He now puts the ’60s Hagstrom III (with a Filter’Tron neck pickup) in a custom open-A tuning for slide playing.
Set It and Forget It
Arm bought this ’70s Fender Super Six Reverb years ago and hasn’t worried about touring amps ever since. The 100-watt combo has a sextet of 10" speakers, a quad of 6L6 power tubes, and a quintet of 12AX7 preamp tubes.
Mark Arm’s Pedalboard
Arm isn’t a gearhead, but he definitely loves fuzz. His current pedal playground includes three variants—an EarthQuaker Devices Life Pedal V3 octave/distortion/booster, an Ibanez Soundtank FZ5 60’s Fuzz (housed in the gray box), and a Stromer Mutroniks Superfuzz.
Arm on the Ibanez: “In the ’90s, one of the boxes that I landed on that I liked most was this Ibanez Soundtank-series 60’s Fuzz. I think they only made it for a year or two, because they’re made of this cheap plastic—they look like a little black Volkswagen Beetle—and they just break. Anytime I’d find one in a music shop, I’d just buy it and have a buddy put the guts into a metal box.”
Then, Arm recounts when, after a few shows during an early Mudhoney tour with Sonic Youth, Lee Ranaldo asked him, “What are you going for?” Mark responded: “Ideally, it’d be like ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ where Ron Asheton plays the opening chords, and it just hangs there and breaks up. I want that sound, all the time.” That sound Arm was approximating was coming from a Super Fuzz. His current copy for the vintage eviscerator is the Stromer Mutroniks edition. The remaining pedals are all from Portland’s Catalinbread: Epoch Boost preamp/buffer, Belle Epoch tape echo, Valcoder tremolo, and Sabbra Cadabra overdrive. A Peterson Stomp Classic Strobotuner puts Arm’s guitars in the sweet spot.
Mudhoney circa 2018 (left to right): Vocalist/guitarist Mark Arm, drummer Dan Peters,
guitarist Steve Turner, and bassist Guy Maddison.
“We're not exactly, like, GIT kind of guitar players."
The man is Mark Arm. The question he's answering: How is it that, over the course of his and co-guitarist Steve Turner's 30 years in legendary Seattle garage-rock revivalist outfit Mudhoney, they've been interviewed by a guitar publication exactly once … 27 years ago?
Think about that. This is a band that didn't just help lay the groundwork for the Pacific Northwest's “grunge" scene as it shared bills both stateside and abroad with movement heavyweights like Soundgarden, Nirvana, and Tad. No, this is a quartet that the founder of the now-iconic Sub Pop label, Bruce Pavitt—who signed Mudhoney in 1988, as well as all of the aforementioned bands—touted as the label's “flagship" band. In a 2012 interview with Paper, Pavitt even admitted that, before Nirvana became a household name, Cobain and company were like Mudhoney's “little brother." Asked what he thought the first time he saw frontman Arm, Turner, drummer Dan Peters, and original bassist Matt Lukin play one of their notoriously ferocious live shows, Pavitt replied, “I thought they were one of the greatest bands in the history of rock 'n' roll!"
And yet, when PG dials up Arm and Turner to talk about Digital Garbage, Mudhoney's 10th LP since their explosive '88 debut EP, Superfuzz Bigmuff—an album that literally wears its gear proclivities on its sleeve—neither seems to hold a grudge about the three-decade snub. While the former briefly quips about the contrast between the Mudhoney 6-string way and those at the '80s shred temple formerly known as Guitar Institute of Technology (today's Musicians Institute), the latter hardly seems to have noticed.
But anyone who knows Mudhoney knows that's simply their way. They've weathered 30 years in a messy business without any breakups or artistically dubious reunions precisely because they don't give a shit, much less two, what anyone thinks. And that's not because they're dicks—although Arm in particular is known for silly antics (in the between-song banter on live tracks from the deluxe edition of Superfuzz, for example, he bids Berliners “howdy," mimics JFK's “Ich bin ein Berliner" line, and tells the crowd to “pull down your pants if you like us"). The simple fact is they're just a bunch of low-key, practical friends having a good time doing what they love. They know what they like, and that's what they do. Hell, even when they're being complimented for the huge influence their raging Mustangs and Hagstroms have had for the last 30 years, they'll demure with some anecdote about how, when people toss around the L word—“legends"—it's merely code for “not dead yet."
Even so, a closer look at both Mudhoney's music and the things they say and do reveals a lot more nuance and, yes, growth. The passing years and fads have, thankfully, never inspired embarrassing stylistic jumps like the ones that cause Arm to wince on behalf of former heroes Aerosmith. “Fuck—'Janie's Got a Gun' … Armageddon [“I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," recorded for the 1998 Michael Bay movie]?! I'm glad they're all still alive, but if they'd just kind of broken up when they originally fell apart, it would've been much better," Arm says. But Turner, who now resides in Portland, and Arm, also aren't interested in putting out the same album over and over again. As their catalog of 10 LPs, five EPs, and six live albums attests, Mudhoney has evolved the way a stable, well-adjusted friend might grow over time: New experiences, knowledge, and circumstances leave their inevitable marks, yet they never succumb to insecurity and lose what made you love them in the first place.
And, frankly, that's because, well, the guys are great friends. Their time together doesn't just go back to '88. Turner and Arm have been pals since the end of high school, when they played together in a band called Mr. Epp and the Calculations. Two years after that, in 1984, they formed Green River with guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament, both of whom would go on to worldwide fame in Pearl Jam. And even though Lukin (who, prior to joining Mudhoney, co-founded Melvins with Buzz Osborne in 1983) eventually left in 2001, replacement bassist Guy Maddison has been aboard going on 18 years now.
2018's Digital Garbage showcases Mark Arm's wickedly sharp tongue that has been wielded not just for laughs but also to draw blood on some pretty heavy social and political issues.
Arm, Turner, Peters, and Maddison, also take time out for other friends and projects without letting it bug each other. And as they've matured in years, the subject matter of Mudhoney songs has gotten more thoughtful, too. Arm's penchant for a good time remains, but as the 21st century has progressed, his wickedly sharp tongue has been wielded not just for laughs but also to draw blood on some pretty heavy social and political issues—as evidenced by the 11 unflinching tracks on Digital Garbage.
Here, Arm and Turner discuss a host of subjects, from how their latest effort was scrapped and overhauled after the events of November 8, 2016, to how Arm, 56, keeps his voice sounding like it did 30 years ago, and whether, in the age of boutique fuzzes, Super-Fuzzes and Big Muffs still rate No. 1.
Let's start off talking about the new album: Between the title, Digital Garbage, and song names like “Next Mass Extinction," “Prosperity Gospel," “21st Century Pharisees," and “Kill Yourself Live," is it fair to say it was more motivated by the state of the world than some past efforts?
Mark Arm: You know, what's going on in the world has always been in the background, but I think the situation became so acute that I just couldn't write about girls and cars or whatever [laughs]. I grew up in punk rock, and hardcore in particular, and some of my favorite bands at the time were super political—like Crass, Discharge, the Dead Kennedys, and Really Red. For a while there I thought, oh, we don't need to play “F.D.K. (Fearless Doctor Killers)" [from the 1995 album, My Brother the Cow] anymore, because you don't really hear about abortion clinic bombings. It kind of comes and goes in waves.
Politically, things are obviously quite different from when your last album, Vanishing Point, came out in 2013. Did that end up being more of a motivator to make these lyrical statements than it had been in the past?
Arm: Well, we had been working on stuff earlier, but we went back and listened to what we'd done and decided it didn't really live up to the standards, musically. We had three or four songs we'd written around 2015, 2016. We were going to start working on a record in 2016, but Steve and I got sidetracked doing a bunch of stuff with Monkeywrench [a bluesy project with Poison 13 guitarist Tim Kerr]. In a way, I was going, man, I can't wait for all this [2016 U.S. general election] campaigning crap to be over so I can concentrate on writing a normal record.
Assuming things would turn out different from how they did….
Arm: Yeah! It would just be the usual kind of inter-party bickering. Hillary Clinton would win and the Republicans would do “Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!" or whatever … same old shit. But things obviously took a step—in my mind anyways—in an insane direction.