Sub Pop Records: Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman

Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman were two rock-and-roll fans who met at exactly the right time and place: Seattle in the early 1980s, where a raw hybrid of metal and punk was finding its voice in dingy clubs. With borrowed money and bounced checks, the two friends started Sub Pop Records, the iconic label that launched Nirvana, defined the grunge movement, and helped transform Seattle into a mecca for music. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 1:30Guy Raz?

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• 5:06Guy Raz?

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• 5:27Speaker 01

  One evening, Kristina Veseljich went over to Bruce's house and started banging on the windows, demanding a recording contract.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was really taken aback because in indie culture, contracts really weren't used very much.

• 5:43Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  So I was intimidated. I did call John, and John's true genius was to go to the library and photocopy a generic contract, use a little whiteout, and for 20 cents worth of copies, we were able to get a contract with Nirvana that is essentially the reason why we're talking to you today.

• 6:11Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 6:22Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how two rock and roll fans harnessed the raw energy of grunge in Seattle and then sent it out to the world through the iconic record label Sub Pop.

• 6:40Guy Raz?

  In 2006, the influential startup investor, Paul Graham, wrote an essay called "The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups." And mistake number one: single founder. Graham argued that startups with two or more founders have a better chance at succeeding, and you could add to that, have a better chance at having an impact, as Sub Pop Records did. Because the raw energy and creative tension between the two co-founders is what made that label legendary. Now, if you remember, or even if you don't, in the first few years, the 1990s, Seattle was the epicenter of American youth culture. Seattle bands like Pearl Jam, Mud Honey, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden,

• 7:24Guy Raz?

  and of course Nirvana seemed to own the rock and roll airwaves between 1990 and 1995. And a big part of how the city and its sound exploded out into the world has to do with Sub Pop. Just like Berry Gordy and his Motown label brought the sound of Detroit to radios around the world, Sub Pop and its co-founders Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavitt helped turn Seattle into a global brand of music and culture. The band Sub Pop signed would come to define the do-it-yourself rock and roll of the late '80s and early '90s. And Bruce and Jonathan managed to do this despite being shunned, at least in the early days, by the big, influential, American rock magazines.

• 8:08Guy Raz?

  Now, like all the stories we tell on this show, Sub Pop was and is a business. And, as you will hear, for a big part of its first 30 years, a pretty badly run business. But that's not really the point. This is rock and roll. And even though Sub Pop never became a major financial powerhouse, especially compared to the big record labels, its impact on American culture is hard to overstate. I was supposed to interview Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman live onstage in Seattle, but those plans got shelved for obvious reasons. So we decided to go ahead and do it in the safest possible way, me in my garage studio and both Jonathan and Bruce at their homes.

• 8:53Guy Raz?

  And for Bruce, it's a pretty isolated home. He lives in the San Juan Islands, about a three-hour car and ferry ride from Seattle.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  I'm on Orcas Island. I've been here for over 20 years. So right now, I am at the base of a mountain in the middle of the woods. And I had a dream 20 years ago that all this was going to go down. So I've been prepping for decades.

• 9:16Guy Raz?

  You're doing, like, you're at a place where social distancing was cool before it was cool.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 9:23Guy Raz?

  I am looking at a map of where you live, Orcas Island. You actually are closer to Canada than you are to the United States. Or maybe you're like right in between.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, you could literally get in a kayak and get to Canada in about 20 minutes.

• 9:38Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  If you're in good shape, but yeah.

• 9:40Guy Raz?

  And Jonathan, where are you right now?

• 9:43Speaker 01

  I'm a dreary city dweller in Seattle, Washington.

• 9:48Guy Raz?

  How are you holding up? I know that, you know, you were diagnosed with Parkinson's several years ago. You're doing great. Does that sort of physical therapy or anything that you do get affected by the situation now?

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Actually, I'm all for more lockdown.

• 10:04Guy Raz?

  Wow, why is that the case?

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Well, with the Parkinson's, from time to time, I have more challenged mobility. But it is what it is, you know? As we get older, we start falling apart. And if this is the way that I'm going to fall apart, I feel blessed because it's nothing much to deal with, just a little shaking and loss of coordination here and there. But I've always been a bit of a yurt, so it's nothing new.

• 10:37Guy Raz?

  Anyway, back to the story, starting with Bruce Pavitt. He was born into a large family in the Chicago suburbs. His dad was an insurance executive and his mom was a school social worker.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  I was born in 1959 and I remember seeing The Beatles on Ed Sullivan and so forth. AM radio was my best friend and I listened to music constantly growing up throughout the 60s. And there's an infamous anecdote that I've been sharing with people. When I was nine years old, I sold Christmas cards door to door one summer, earning a dollar per sale. And after a month or so of doing that, I had enough money to buy a record player. And after I bought the record player, I spent all my money on records for probably a couple of decades.

• 11:23Guy Raz?

  Wow. What was your first record?

• 11:26Speaker 02

  I bought two singles. One was "Sugar, Sugar" by The Archies. And the other was "Revolution" by The Beatles. And those were my first two singles.

• 11:36Guy Raz?

  Oh, wow.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  And my first album was "Sergeant Pepper."

• 11:40Guy Raz?

  That's your first album? Man, I'm embarrassed. Mine was "Rio" by Duran Duran.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:45Guy Raz?

  That's "Sergeant Pepper's." Well done.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Well done. But, you know, don't forget, I did also purchase that Archie's 45.

• 11:52Guy Raz?

  All right. So you kind of clearly like into music as a kid and growing up in these suburbs outside of Chicago. And did you ever like hang out in Chicago or go to Chicago like as a teenager?

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And I used to visit a record store called Wax Trax, which was just one of the greatest record stores in America. And that's where I got my schooling as far as indie music and punk rock went.

• 12:17Guy Raz?

  So I guess when you were around 20, you moved to Olympia, Washington to go to Evergreen State College.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. Olympia was just a huge, huge influence on me and I thrived at Evergreen and some of my all time best friends are from that school.

• 12:34Guy Raz?

  All right. So let's pause there and I might turn to Jonathan. Jonathan, you grew up in Toledo, Ohio.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:41Guy Raz?

  And I guess as a kid, you were in bands. You were like playing in garage bands from, you know, your early teens. Is that right?

• 12:48Speaker 01

  I played in a couple of garage bands, but I was like Bruce, a record collector primarily.

• 12:56Guy Raz?

  Were you a good musician?

• 12:58Speaker 01

  No.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  I hate to leave you with a single syllable answer like that, but it kind of emphasizes just how bad a musician I was.

• 13:11Guy Raz?

  And I, it's so crazy, I just read that you were like, kind of, it sounds like you're kind of a troublemaker. Like, you were like, kicked out of schools and then you were like, in and out of high schools and different schools. Like, what were you doing that was so bad?

• 13:24Speaker 01

  I was learning how to become an adult.

• 13:27Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  I was having a lot of fun.

• 13:30Guy Raz?

  Like, doing what?

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Well, one of the schools that I went to was a school called Cranbrook, which is located in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. And it was a boarding school. There was a town next door called Birmingham, Michigan, which is where Cream magazine was located.

• 13:52Guy Raz?

  Oh, wow, Lester Bangs magazine.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 13:55Guy Raz?

  And did you go seek him out?

• 13:57Speaker 01

  We did go seek him out unsuccessfully.

• 14:00Guy Raz?

  Okay, yeah.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  But we would always get free swag.

• 14:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  That was nice. And then Detroit itself, while I was a young teenager and couldn't get into clubs, there were still so many great rock shows and radio stations in Detroit at that time.

• 14:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, obviously Motown, that label, and then like, the rock scene, right? Like, MC5 and like, I'm thinking about-

• 14:26Speaker 01

  The Stooges, most notably.

• 14:28Guy Raz?

  The Stooges, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  A lot of great music.

• 14:33Guy Raz?

  All right, so you do eventually graduate high school. And then I guess you head out to the Seattle area because that's where your girlfriend at the time wanted to go.

• 14:45Guy Raz?

  And when you got there, what, what was your plan? Like, were you thinking of going to college?

• 14:50Speaker 01

  I had thought about going to college. I had confessed to you that I wasn't much of a musician. But that didn't stop me from harboring illusions of eventually becoming a professional musician. And what better place to become a professional musician than Seattle, Washington in the late 70s?

• 15:16Guy Raz?

  And, and why is that?

• 15:18Speaker 01

  That I'm being sarcastic.

• 15:20Guy Raz?

  Okay, I thought so. Okay, I was like, wait a minute. Yeah, that's not the place to be, right? I mean, you'd go to LA, maybe, maybe San Francisco, maybe Chicago, Detroit. So what did you do? I mean, how did you like make a living and pay your rent?

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Well, one of the places where I worked was a company called Yesco, where they made foreground music as opposed to background music that was made popular by the company Muzak. And it's the first place where I had heard of a gentleman named Bruce Pavitt. He would later go to work at the same company. And I actually knew about Bruce from his column in one of the local magazines.

• 16:10Guy Raz?

  So I'll shift back to Bruce for a sec to ask you about that. Bruce, you, when you started at school at Evergreen State College, I guess, like, you also got into the college radio station, were DJing there, and you started like printing, like a fanzine called Subterranean Pop. And this was a what? Like a magazine that talked about what?

• 16:37Speaker 02

  I started a show called Subterranean Pop at Chaos Radio. Now Chaos Radio was-

• 16:44Guy Raz?

  That was a, that was a college radio station.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  There was a community radio station based on the Evergreen campus.

• 16:50Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  But it was a very unusual station in that it uniquely prioritized independently-produced records. So 80% of your show had to be from small, regional, independent labels. So spending time at Chaos, I got schooled in a lot of music that was happening in small cities around the country. So the zine kind of came out of the Chaos Independent Music Library. And that zine then morphed into a mixtape.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  Then when I moved to Seattle in 83, I started a column called Sub Pop USA in The Rocket Magazine. I spent a lot of time nerding out on obscure indie indie records, and I was providing addresses for those records so that people could actually order them.

• 17:43Guy Raz?

  I'm trying to imagine. So the zine that you printed, was it like on black and white paper? Was it like photocopied? How did you get it printed?

• 17:52Speaker 02

  I went to an offset printer. My first issue was 500 copies, and I wanted color, and the only way I figured I could do that was to buy a box of crayons and invite all my friends over, and they went in and hand colored the cover and several of the pages. But I had them distributed by a distributor called Systematic that was based in San Francisco. But I will tell you, I took a huge risk in that after I printed 500 zines up, I put them all in a box, I wrapped the box up very artfully, it was almost like an art piece, and I shipped them to Systematic, and I said, "Please distribute my fanzines."

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Now, they could have just dumped them in the trash, or distributed them and never paid me, but they did get them out there, and I sold all the copies, and they sent me a check, and then I reinvested in my next issue.

• 18:49Guy Raz?

  But I guess you were also like making mixtapes and selling them to people, right?

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So I called it a cassette magazine, but it was basically a cassette with a tiny booklet in there with some brief descriptions of the bands and contact information. And the first one I did, Sub Pop 5, was kind of a hit. It sold like 2,000 copies, which at that time was kind of amazing.

• 19:15Guy Raz?

  And Bruce, I'm curious, because you were, I mean, you were doing the zine, but you were also doing a bunch of things, from what I read, in Seattle. Like, at one point, you started a record store called Fallout Records. And by the way, did you, I mean, again, like, this is the cool thing about the early 80s. It seemed like that was possible. Like, today, opening a record store at a place like Seattle would be hard, right? I mean, you'd need a lot of money, and you'd have to sign a multi-year lease, and there'd be all this. I mean, it would be almost insurmountable for most people, but I guess starting a record store in Seattle in like 1984 wasn't that challenging?

• 19:49Speaker 02

  The key was finding a small space with cheap rent.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  And it never would have survived as a record store, but we had the idea of selling skateboards. And kids would come in to buy their skateboards. They'd hear this punk rock soundtrack in the back, and we wound up selling a lot of records. But the skateboards kept us alive. I ultimately wasn't a skateboard person, and the store was not generating that much income. So I did wind up going to work at this company, Yesco, that John had worked at as well, which ironically ultimately got bought out by Muzak. So I do have business

• 20:33Speaker 02

  cards that say Bruce Pavitt, Muzak. And it's currently on eBay for $10,000, and I'm hoping somebody buys it.

• 20:42Guy Raz?

  Oh, my god.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  That's a joke.

• 20:44Guy Raz?

  Okay, I was joking. See, this is very hard. This is the challenge of the quarantine interviews. I can't see your face. I don't, I can't tell the jokes without seeing you. But we'll navigate that. All right. So you're in Seattle. It's early 80s. Jonathan Poneman, you're in Seattle. It's the early 80s. Do you remember when the two of you first met? And what were the circumstances?

• 21:07Speaker 01

  The first time that I, for one thing, I need to say that I went to Time Traveler's Record Store, which was in downtown Seattle, and I got a copy of Bruce's magazine. But I didn't know anything about Bruce. And I, the first time that I met Bruce Pavitt, that I recall, was when I had interviewed him on the local music radio show.

• 21:36Guy Raz?

  That you were working, the station that you were working at?

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Yes, at KCMU.

• 21:40Guy Raz?

  Because he was the guy who was writing Sub Pop, and so he was an interesting person to bring on the show.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  No, actually, he had just released Sub Pop 100. And I had him on the show, and, you know, we hit it off.

• 21:54Guy Raz?

  So Bruce, I'm looking at a photograph of you as a young man. And I think, I think this is accurate around that time, the early, sort of early to mid 80s. You kind of had a shaved head. Is that right? A kind of short shaved crop?

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Yes, that would be like 87.

• 22:11Guy Raz?

  Okay. And Jonathan, you were like, I mean, kind of shaggy haired a little bit, right? Is, am I capturing the right?

• 22:19Speaker 01

  Let's call it for what it is. It was a mullet.

• 22:25Guy Raz?

  All right, a mullet. Yeah, okay, you had a little bit of a mullet going. And you're hosting this show. You bring Bruce on because he's released the Sub Pop 100, which includes a bunch of artists, including Sonic Youth was on it, I think.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 22:38Guy Raz?

  And by the way, Bruce, before I forget, at this point, were you thinking, you know what, Sub Pop, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna make a music label. This is actually what I'm gonna do. Because it sounds like, up until this point, it was kind of amorphous. It was a magazine, but it was a cassette. It wasn't a music label. Were you still thinking of it as a kind of a magazine on cassette?

• 22:59Speaker 02

  When I did the cassettes, it was a magazine on cassette. When I started doing the records, I thought, okay, this is the direction I want to go in. However, at that time, it was really a step-by-step situation where it was essentially a hobby. Okay. And when I met John and we started talking, the vision of kind of running a real label, where you would actually have an office, as opposed to a hobby that was run out of an apartment, that's when that happened. And that's when kind of like Phase 2 of the Sub Pop project really kicked in, is when John and I joined forces and actually opened the office doors there.

• 23:41Guy Raz?

  I want to get back to that. I want to rewind a little bit. Okay. So you released this record, this album, the Sub Pop 100. And this is just, you're just taking existing recordings and just compiling them onto one record? Is that right?

• 23:53Speaker 02

  Essentially, yes.

• 23:55Guy Raz?

  Okay. How did, by the way, how did you finance pressing these records?

• 24:00Speaker 02

  I remembered that at Fallout, there was one customer who came in who bought a lot of records. So I called him up and said, can I borrow some money? And he said, yes. And I borrowed 5,000 bucks to put it out. It did wind up selling 5,000 copies. And those were really good numbers at that time.

• 24:22Guy Raz?

  So you made tons of money off that, or he made his money back and more?

• 24:26Speaker 02

  Everybody made a little money. The artists, the investor, and myself. So it was a little mini-business success.

• 24:35Guy Raz?

  When you started to think about, hey, this is really a thing. Maybe I can turn this into a label. Seattle, you know, obviously you have Jimi Hendrix, right? The most significant Seattle artist, him and Cobain, right? But Seattle was not Motown. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't LA. Did you think of maybe, hey, maybe we could make Seattle like Motown? Maybe Seattle could be like that. Were you already thinking that or not really?

• 25:03Speaker 02

  I was actually thinking that later on as things started to develop. But right around 86 is when the Seattle scene, in my opinion, started to coalesce. There was a compilation called Deep Six that came out that featured a number of these groups, including Soundgarden, Green River, and so forth. And I was going out to clubs and seeing Green River in particular, and I was really inspired by what they were doing.

• 25:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  I did feel that Seattle had a unique vibe and that the label's focus should be on Seattle. And I think John and I were on the same page there.

• 25:40Guy Raz?

  And Bruce, Green River was a local band in Seattle, and they would eventually figure really prominently in the whole grunge scene. But at the time, did you just like go up to them and say, hey, I want to record your first album? Or were they, were they kind of looking for a way to record it? And you said, yeah, I can do it. Like, I can put it on my, on my label.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  Well, you have to realize the scene in Seattle was very insular. A lot of the bands went to each other's shows and so forth. So it was a small scene. I was friends with Mark Arm. He used to come in to Fallout and buy records. So we, we went way back.

• 26:14Guy Raz?

  And Mark Arm's the lead singer, was a lead singer of Green, of Green River.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Green River. And then he wound up-

• 26:20Guy Raz?

  And then Mud Honey.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  And then Mud Honey, correct.

• 26:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  So he was, he was a real scenester, as they say. He was very actively involved in the local music scene. I enjoyed hanging out with Mark. And I called up my dad and borrowed $3,000 and got Dry as a Bone, the first Green River record, out.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  And one thing led to another. Soundgarden started doing shows. I actually grew up with Kim Thiel in Park Forest, Illinois, so I'd known him since he was a kid.

• 27:06Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  It was basically a group of friends excited about what was going on and trying to make things happen.

• 27:13Guy Raz?

  And so this is like, I guess, like 87-ish and like, Soundgarden is a, which is totally amazing. Soundgarden is a small, little band in Seattle at this time. Kim Thiel is the lead guitarist. And you guys released, I think, their first single in like, July of 87, under the Subpop label. And by the way, did it, I mean, did it feel like a new sound to you guys? Like, Bruce, I mean, did that music in 1987 feel like it was different than the other music that existed in America at the time?

• 27:45Speaker 02

  Yes. And I thought the interesting dichotomy was, you had a lead singer who had an amazing range and, in many ways, was like, a total rock star. But, that was juxtaposed with Kim Thiel's guitar playing, which, at times, was atonal and had kind of a, more of an alternative edge to it. So, it was a unique marriage. And then, once they brought in Matt Cameron on drums, I think John and I both knew that they were gonna blow up.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 28:40Guy Raz?

  So, okay, so I guess, like, a couple of things are starting to converge. This is like, like, 86 to 87, I guess. There's Green River, and there's Soundgarden. And Bruce, you're starting to release their music. And meanwhile, as I, as I understand it, Jonathan, you've kind of been, like, circling around Soundgarden, like, wanting to, to be involved with them somehow, like, maybe as their manager, or like, on a recording project. But then you end up teaming up with Bruce to, to build Subpop. How, how did that happen?

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Well, there was this tavern in downtown Seattle, right next to the building where Bruce and I would later have our first offices. It was called The Oxford. But I went into The Oxford and I saw the members of Soundgarden sitting there talking with Bruce. And so I went, oh, my God. He's going to sign the band and my dreams of being involved in a music project that was actually gonna do something would have been shunted aside. So at that point, Kim Thiel,

• 29:55Speaker 01

  he basically said, Jonathan, you don't have a label. Bruce has a label. Bruce, you don't have any money. Jonathan's got some money. Why don't you two work together? And so at that point, Bruce invited me on as a partner in the Soundgarden project.

• 30:16Guy Raz?

  By the way, how did you have money?

• 30:20Speaker 01

  A little bit left over from my bar mitzvah, which wasn't actually, it wasn't even from my bar mitzvah. It was from when I was born. There were savings bonds. And there was around nine or $10,000. Being the ne'er-do-well that I was, my mother stashed it away. And my older brother Fred, who was the successful sibling, he was able to charm my mother into forking over the dough. Because whenever I would ask her for it, she thought that it was gonna go to records or drugs or whatever she thought it was gonna go for.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  But I convinced my brother that this guy that I was going to start this label with knew what he was doing and that this was going to be a real great thing. I made up a prospectus and everything.

• 31:20Guy Raz?

  For a business plan?

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:22Guy Raz?

  And Bruce, what do you remember about this? Jonathan was like, hey, I've got some cash and you've got a label and what do you think? And how do you remember the story?

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Well, it made sense because I did not have the funding. And also, John was a music guy. And this decision was made in spring of 87. And when the Green River record release party happened in June of 87, by that time, we had the Soundgarden single pressed. So when we mailed out the Green River EP to radio stations and press and so forth, we included the Soundgarden single, which was kind of a teaser for their upcoming EP that had to have made an impact because what we were essentially saying is, this is a scene.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  This is Seattle. And Green River and Soundgarden both got really good college airplay. So that was really when things took off, was kind of like, in a way, June of 87, we did the record release party and we mailed both of those records out.

• 32:28Guy Raz?

  And I'm curious about the business side of this, right? Because if today, we're starting a business, like a lot of founders I have on the show, I'll say, okay, well, how did you do an LLC? Did you go to the business licensing office in your city? How did you split up the equity? Bruce, did you guys do all this stuff? Did you sit down and go through the nuts and bolts of the business? Because this is rock and roll. Rock and roll doesn't do business, but this is also a business.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  Well, we did all that basic stuff. But we did not have a business plan. We did not seek investors and try to hype them on how much money we were going to make.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Let me just say, earlier in the conversation, I made a prospectus. It would be hard for your listeners to recognize what I drew up as a prospectus. It just was for the privileged eyes of my brother. But Bruce and I basically hit up everybody we knew for money at one point or the other. And it was a business proposition that was driven by hype. You wanted to be involved with Sub Pop because of the artists that we were involved with. And of course, we were the music industry. But people didn't calculate

• 33:45Speaker 01

  on spreadsheets. They calculated with their hearts and with

• 33:51Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  their, you know, senses.

• 33:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  They knew that we were on to something.

• 34:00Guy Raz?

  Who was doing the business side of Sub Pop in the early days? Because most cofounders I interview, you know, one kind of does operations and one does strategy or more of the creative side. Like, how did you guys divide things up? Bruce, what do you remember about what you did and what Jonathan did in the early days?

• 34:17Speaker 02

  Well, I'll frame it this way. I remember one day Jonathan and I walked into a marketing meeting and somebody said, oh, here comes the left brain and the right brain. And I think that kind of summed it up. My passion was really doing the art direction. I also dealt with the day to day production, just getting the records made. And John, I think, really had the vision of building the company. And so a lot of the strategy of the build out, I think, came from John.

• 34:53Guy Raz?

  Got it. Okay. So you've got this label going. And I think that you then you released an album called Rehab Doll by Green River, which I think was going to be your first really big record, if I'm not mistaken.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 35:07Guy Raz?

  And then it's about to come out, right? And then the band splits up. Is that right?

• 35:15Speaker 02

  That's correct. They broke up pretty much before, right before we opened our offices. So when we opened our office on April 1, 1988, our big record was by a band that just broke up.

• 35:34Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how Bruce and Jonathan recover after Green River breaks up, and how they use a generic contract and a bit of whiteout to sign one of the biggest bands in rock and roll history. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 36:01Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the spring of 1988, and Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Ponnamon have officially launched their record label Sub Pop in Seattle. But they've also lost their most important band, Green River.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  I remember Bruce telling me, I've got some good news and some bad news. What do you want first? And I said, I'm a bad news first kind of guy. Green River has broken up. What? And he says, but the good news is Mud Honey has come in their stead, and they're awesome. And you've got, you know, Mark said that they went into the studio and recorded this great record. So again, the scene was very incestual, very regional.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Mud Honey ended up becoming, and still is to this day, the ultimate or the flagship or they're the subpop house band. I think that's the best way of putting it.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  And then we have to add, coincidentally, a group named Nirvana came up and played a showcase for John and I a little bit after we opened the offices as well.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, those guys.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  So very magically, we opened the doors, and two new bands, Mud Honey and Nirvana, basically come in out of nowhere, which we were not really fully expecting.

• 37:37Guy Raz?

  I'm wondering, because I want to get to Nirvana in a bit, obviously. We're going to ask a lot about that. But I'm wondering, how was your financial situation at the beginning? I mean, you had some money, but you had to then sell records and make a go of it. And then your main band is like, breaks up. So how close were you guys to collapsing at the beginning?

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Well, Bruce and I did two things early on that kept our doors open. One is we were beholden to record distributors.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  These distributors would do what distributors do. And if we had hit records, they would give us enough so we could get the next record out or repress the successful record. But we were basically living by their schedule. And my big brother, who was a business person, my big brother Fred, gave us advice that we thought was outrageous at the time, which was skip the middle person, start selling records directly to the retailers. And at the time, independent record labels weren't doing this in the United States.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  We all figured that we needed to have a relationship with a distributor to get our records into the stores. But Bruce and I picked up the phone and we decided to start selling record COD a little bit cheaper than they were being offered by the distributors.

• 39:17Guy Raz?

  Who would you sell them to? Record shops?

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Record shops all over the country, all over the world, actually. The second thing that we did that kept us in business, and this was Bruce's savvy observation of the record market. Most of the things that we put out, we would make as limited edition. And so there ended up being a mania over our records. And now, you know, you have eBay and there's all sorts of vehicles for finding collectible records. But at the time, all of the traffic and inquiry would come back to the label.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  So this helped create and sustain cash flow.

• 40:07Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Now, what you have to realize, if this was a movie, this would definitely be a comedy. Because when we called these stores, it was not easy to convince them to give us cash on delivery. That was very unusual. And we made a lot of phone calls and we weren't necessarily that successful. However, We had some unique items. We had our Sub Pop Loser t-shirt. We had the limited edition singles, which were very hard to get a hold of. So bit by bit, especially with those limited edition singles, we were able to lure some key stores into supporting us. But it was a very tough grind. That summer was excruciating. We were always out of cash.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Almost all of our money went into just getting records manufactured, studio costs, and then selling those records and trying to get the cash back in. Now, you have to realize, we also were working with distributors, so it was kind of a two-tier system. And we're also doing mail order as well. So frankly, there was a three-tier system there.

• 41:14Guy Raz?

  Well, Bruce, when do you first remember hearing the word grunge?

• 41:19Speaker 02

  When it popped into my brain.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  I wrote some ad copy for the first Green River record, and I wrote, "ultra loose grunge that destroyed the morals of a generation." And I put "grunge" in all caps. In my mind, it just meant music that had a grittiness to it, as opposed to the polish of a lot of music on major labels.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  Certainly the vibe. And I think the reason the word stuck is because the whole vibe of what was going on in Seattle was super resourceful and lo-fi. Guys walking around in jeans with holes in it, t-shirts with holes in it, pawn shop guitars, distorted amplifiers. It just worked in my mind.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  That's exactly it.

• 42:10Guy Raz?

  You, Bruce, you were the originator of this term. You came up with this word grunge to describe the sound.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  I would say I was the first person to use it in ad copy. Certainly, it was probably bandied about by music critics here and there, but it was not popularized.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Own it.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, I'm the grunge guy. I apologize.

• 42:28Guy Raz?

  But you joke, I know, but you say you apologize, but... Would that word come back to haunt you? I mean, did you come to kind of feel like that word came to mean something that you didn't necessarily intend it to mean? Because now, when you say the word grunge, like, if I went up to, you know, the former members of Nirvana and I said, "I love the grunge sound," like, they would kind of cringe a little bit, don't you think?

• 42:51Speaker 01

  I don't think so.

• 42:52Guy Raz?

  No, they wouldn't?

• 42:53Speaker 01

  No, I think it's like, there are few things that I think are going to stand the test of time than the word grunge. I think a lot of these bands will long be forgotten, but that word grunge and the style and time and the gestalt, you know, everything that it summons will stay. And that's Bruce Pavitt.

• 43:27Guy Raz?

  Bruce, who were your customers in 1988? I mean, this music was not yet mainstream or big, so I can't imagine you had a huge number of potential customers at that point, right?

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Well, just to give you a feel for the record sales, 5,000 or 10,000 copies of a record was considered very successful at that time.

• 43:52Guy Raz?

  All right, so at some point, you get this demo from a band named Nirvana. I guess, this is in maybe 1988. How did you, what's the story? How did you come across that demo? How did it come across your desk?

• 44:07Speaker 01

  So Bruce and I would speak to studios, usually about paying down our bills. But occasionally, we would ask the studios, usually Jack at Reciprocal, because they were the studio of choice by far.

• 44:25Guy Raz?

  There's a Jack Andino at Reciprocal.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Jack Andino at Reciprocal. In this particular case, I asked if he'd heard anything that was blowing his mind. And he mentioned this guy who looked like he could be working at a service station, and Dale Crowver, who was the drummer for the already notorious and uniformly worshipped Melvins.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  They'd been playing drums on this tape and he, Jack, said, "I don't really know what to make of this, except that it's amazing and you should hear it."

• 45:20Speaker 01

  When we first got the tape, this kind of throws off the chronology a little bit because I know Bruce was still at, you were still at Muzak at the time, weren't you?

• 45:30Speaker 02

  Yes, I was.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  When I came down with that tape.

• 45:32Guy Raz?

  Oh, so this is before, this is even before you started the record label?

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, but when we first got this tape, there weren't so many people enthusiastic about them.

• 45:45Guy Raz?

  Bruce, do you remember, do you remember the first time you heard the demo from Nirvana?

• 45:49Speaker 02

  I do. Picture if you will, I was still working at Muzak and I do want to say that a lot of the musicians in the Seattle scene were also working for the Elevator Music Company, Muzak. So imagine, the first time I heard Nirvana was at Muzak and I listened to it with Mark Arm, who also worked there. And our response was a little ho-hum. The vocals sounded good, but we thought that some of the songwriting was a little busy. It was kind of a slow build with Nirvana and they just kept getting better and better and better.

• 46:28Guy Raz?

  Do you remember the first time you met these guys, Jonathan? Do you remember? What was your impression of them?

• 46:36Speaker 01

  It was at a coffee shop, long, long closed, Cafe Roba. And Kurt and his girlfriend Tracy came up there and I was starstruck, you know, and...

• 46:55Guy Raz?

  You were starstruck? This guy was unknown?

• 46:57Speaker 01

  He was unknown, but my reaction to that tape was different than...

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Bruce's, for whatever reason. And I listened to that tape and listened to that tape. And I got myself all in a lather.

• 47:13Guy Raz?

  All right, so you're blown away. You meet him at this cafe. And what's he like? Is he quiet? Was he shy? Was he introverted?

• 47:19Speaker 01

  He's very quiet. Very much flattered us or flattered the label for its release of Screaming Life, which was a record that he really loved.

• 47:32Guy Raz?

  The Soundgarden, the Soundgarden record.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:34Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  He, at the time, was living in Olympia. And Bruce's reputation in Olympia, Bruce's work and history, gave some bona fides to the Sub Pop name.

• 47:49Guy Raz?

  Bruce was the guy who started the zine in Olympia. And he was at the, he had a show on the college radio station. So like, he was a known, people were like, Bruce Pavitt, that guy's a legend.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, if I had gone in there and just said, hi, I'm John Poneman and I've got it.

• 48:02Guy Raz?

  They'd have been like, nah.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Exactly. He's a loser. But I had the Sub Pop name.

• 48:08Guy Raz?

  And was this you and Kurt and his girlfriend? No one else? Or was?

• 48:12Speaker 01

  No one else until about 45 minutes into the meeting.

• 48:16Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  And in stumbles in this guy who looks like Jethro Bodeen.

• 48:22Guy Raz?

  I don't know, who's that? Who's Jethro Bodeen? I don't know that.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  He was the brother in a TV show called The Beverly Hillbillies.

• 48:28Guy Raz?

  Oh, The Beverly Hillbillies. Yeah, yeah, okay, I got you. Yeah, so this guy looks like Jethro. Who is this guy?

• 48:33Speaker 01

  This guy is a guy named Chris Novoselic.

• 48:37Guy Raz?

  Oh, yeah, I think, I think we've heard of him.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so he kind of came in and he was none too friendly.

• 48:44Guy Raz?

  Oh, really?

• 48:45Speaker 01

  I can't say for sure, but I think he was suspicious of me and my motives.

• 48:51Guy Raz?

  Because you were like the record label man. You were the man.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, something like that. I think Chris just didn't like the idea of my meeting with Kurt and Tracy without him. That would be my guess.

• 49:04Guy Raz?

  All right, so you meet Kurt and Chris Novoselic. He comes in and, and how does the conversation go with you guys? Are you like, hey, so, you know, what do you think? Do you want to work with us? Was it that simple?

• 49:17Speaker 01

  Well, no. Well, I said, which was true, that all the decisions that we made, Bruce and I had to, you know, we had to both agree to it. And at the time, no, I wasn't gonna say Bruce thinks you guys suck, which wasn't the truth, but I was prone to making statements like that because it was the easiest way to deal with it. But what I said is, let us know when you're playing and we will come down. And we want, you know, what was true is that we didn't sign any bands unless we had seen them.

• 49:58Guy Raz?

  Live?

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:00Guy Raz?

  So I'm assuming they let you know when they were coming back to play live? And, and the two of you went and Bruce, what was your impression of them when you finally see Nirvana play live?

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Well, just a little context here, they did play eight o'clock on a Sunday night. And it was, uh, there was the doorman, a bartender, some girlfriends. There might've been 10 people in the room.

• 50:23Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  And I wasn't too impressed with the show. Kurt seemed very shy, very modest on stage. To me, the material didn't seem very developed, but I did feel that Kurt had a really good voice. And that there were a couple of songs there and I looked at John and I said, we should do a single with these guys. And we felt the strongest track in their set was Love Buzz, which was a cover by The Shocking Blue.

• 50:53Guy Raz?

  A cover song?

• 50:54Speaker 02

  It was a cover song. So I will tell you, when we released the single, it got a tremendous response.

• 51:22Guy Raz?

  How did you convince Nirvana to work with you? Cause Chris Novoselic was, sounds like he was suspicious and skeptical at the beginning. Uh, but, but what they just went along and Kurt was like, yeah, I want to work with Sub Pop. Do you know how that happened?

• 51:37Speaker 01

  So

• 51:37Guy Raz?

  Jonathan?

• 51:38Speaker 01

  One evening, Chris Novoselic went over to Bruce's house and started banging on the windows.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Demanding a recording contract. Chris has always been, but was particularly at that point, a intimidating individual. Not the sort of person that you want showing up your door.

• 51:57Guy Raz?

  I want to get some clarity on that, on this for a sec. Bruce, so what do you remember about, so why was he, Krista Novoselic was banging on your window, demanding a record contract? Why? Can you explain what was going on?

• 52:08Speaker 02

  So, I was really taken aback because you have to realize at that time, in indie culture, contracts really weren't used very much. It was typically a handshake deal where you split the profits. That, that was the culture. And it's one of the reasons why we weren't making contracts, because it was just understood.

• 52:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  I will say that I, I was intimidated. I did call John, and John's true genius was to go to the library and photocopy a generic contract, use a little whiteout, and for, you know, 20 cents worth of copies, we were able to get a contract with Nirvana that is essentially the reason why we're talking to you today.

• 52:52Guy Raz?

  And is that, was that like a five-record deal? Was there, were there terms? I mean, it, it sounds like it was just really informal.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  One record, one record and two options.

• 53:01Guy Raz?

  That was it? Okay, one record and two options.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  And they wanted, I think, a firm commitment to getting a big advance for their next record. I think that was what was driving the interest in the contract. John, does that sound about right to you?

• 53:13Speaker 01

  I don't remember that, but that could be.

• 53:15Speaker 02

  That was my memory, very specifically. But I remember the band was in John's little office, and there was this ritual of this signing, and I just remember thinking, hmm, this could be significant, you know? Maybe this is actually a big deal, because we'd never actually, literally, signed a band before.

• 53:37Guy Raz?

  Okay, so, so you sign them, but then they're saying they want an advance on the next record, and the, and presumably they're asking for a significant amount of money on the, on the advance?

• 53:47Speaker 01

  By our terms, it was significant, yes. It's still, by today's terms, it would be significant, too.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  If I may, I remember looking at the contract and feeling very nervous. I, I remember the amount for the second option being like 12,000, and then the following one being 24,000 or something like that, which I was thinking...

• 54:11Speaker 02

  How can we possibly promise these guys are going to give them $12,000? Because that's way too much money. Okay, that was my thinking at the time. And I think John's thinking was, we'll figure it out, which we did.

• 54:29Guy Raz?

  So a couple of months before you released Nirvana's debut album, which is Bleach, which we'll talk about in a minute, I read that it was kind of hard, I guess, at the time to get mainstream attention from the US music press, like Rolling Stone and Spin, and that you actually decided to go to the British magazines, like Melody Maker and NME, and basically kind of pitch them stories and just bypass the US music press entirely. Is that true?

• 54:58Speaker 02

  Well, the British music press is the most influential music press in the world. Now, in December of 1988, we released a box set compilation called Sub Pop 200. And that compilation really helped put us on the map. We sent a copy to John Peel over at BBC.

• 55:18Guy Raz?

  Yes, the legendary, yes.

• 55:21Speaker 02

  He started playing that. And then he wrote a review in the London Observer where he basically compared Sub Pop with Motown. He literally said, "Sub Pop has the most distinctive regional sound since Tamla Motown."

• 55:35Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  Unquote. That was in late January of 89. So, right there, you can kind of feel-

• 55:43Guy Raz?

  And by the way, just, we should just point out, some people may not remember John Peel, but like, probably the most influential DJ of the 20th century. Like, there's never been anybody like him since.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  Absolutely. For emerging artists, he was the most prominent global tastemaker. So for him to play the music, but then pitch it and review it in the London Observer, which had like a readership of 2 million people, that was a big deal.

• 56:11Guy Raz?

  All right. So I think in the summer of 89, you released Nirvana's debut album, Bleach.

• 56:33Guy Raz?

  And what did it, did it like blow up? Because I, I don't remember it. Did it like all of a sudden, was it just this huge thing? Or not, not really, not much?

• 56:45Speaker 02

  Well, I'm gonna have to preface this with a very important anecdote. And that was the record release party for Bleach was actually our lame fest showcase at the Moore Theater with, you know, seating 1,500 people. It sold out. It was the first show in the history of the Moore Theater that had sold out a local show. Nirvana opened. We had their record for sale at that show and that was kind of the official launch. So we actually sold quite a few records at that show. The band went on tour and got really good response and it was just, it was more of a slow build.

• 57:25Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  But it eventually sold up to around 40,000 copies and there was just a lot of word of mouth.

• 57:31Guy Raz?

  So this gets some attention, a little bit of attention, but Nirvana are still far from being a household name and Kurt Cobain is far, far from being a household name. But it's clear that, that, that this, there's some legs to this band. And by the way, I'm just curious, did either of you guys think early on in 1988 or 89 that Nirvana was going to be one of the most influential bands in American rock history? Like was that, did that ever cross your mind? I can't imagine it would, otherwise you'd be a seer. But did any of you have an inclination that maybe they might be?

• 58:04Speaker 01

  And why, why do you think that we're not seers guys?

• 58:07Guy Raz?

  Maybe you are. What, what, did, did either of you think, I don't know, this band is going to change rock and roll history?

• 58:14Speaker 01

  No, I don't, I mean, speaking for myself, I didn't think that way. I thought that they were going to be really successful, but our metric for success was much more modest than even the bands. And that's what actually got us into trouble is that Kurt would tell me regularly, we should be selling a million of these. And I'd be going, you, you don't understand, you know? And boy, did I not know what I was talking about.

• 58:48Guy Raz?

  All right, Bleach does pretty well. But from what I understand, they went off after that and signed a deal with Geffen. They went and they left you guys and went with Geffen. What, why? What happened?

• 59:03Speaker 02

  We had a relationship with a producer named Butch Vig. And we had sent some artists over to Madison, Wisconsin. He was an upcoming, regionally known producer at the time.

• 59:14Guy Raz?

  Sure.

• 59:14Speaker 02

  So we sent Nirvana there in 1990, I believe it was May. They were supposed to record their next album. And that tape wound up being a demo that got shopped to majors, unbeknownst to myself and John.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember Bruce and I being in Europe. And I remember having a conversation, somebody telling me that, you know Nirvana is out shopping for a deal. And I was like, I just remember being far from home and going, you know, our big band's leaving us.

• 59:58Guy Raz?

  I want to, this is sensitive, a sensitive topic, because of course Nirvana is a legendary band, and they changed rock history. And I'm sure this is painful even to recall and recount this story. But I do want to ask you about this. When you found out, Bruce, that Nirvana was shopping around, looking for a label to sign them, did you feel hurt? Did you feel betrayed? Did you feel like they were selling out? What, how do you remember feeling?

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  Well, that summer, the summer of 1990, John had recommended that I go visit Kurt down in Olympia, and that he had heard rumors that there may be some major label activity. So I went down there and I gifted him two of my favorite records, Daniel Johnston, Hi, How Are You? And a record by a group called The Shags called Philosophy of the World. And both of these artists were Just, they were outsider artists. And my point was, we're subpop. We believe in the quirky outsider. That's where our values are. And if you go to a

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  major, the culture is going to be totally different. So I really want you to take that into consideration. But I don't think I really made an influence. It was a couple months after that, I had heard that they had signed with Geffen. And I was experiencing some cognitive dissonance, because I, I literally couldn't believe that was happening.

• 1:01:32Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  And you have to realize, at that time, it was very rare for a band to go to a major from the indie system. As a culture,

• 1:01:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  Bands in that system really felt aligned with the indie culture. So there was a big dividing line there. And to be perfectly honest, I was in a state of shock. I remember walking around, I went to bumper shoot. And I'll be perfectly honest with you, I was walking around and I started to cry. And you have to realize, John and I put so much of our heart into the label. And we had, you know, we were legendary for bouncing checks and barely having enough cash. But we created a miracle with that first, those first few years of keeping that business alive and developing the buzz and the hype

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  and the excitement of Seattle. And then our star band left us for a major. I was crushed.

• 1:02:36Guy Raz?

  When we come back, in just a moment, life after Nirvana, and how Bruce and Jonathan's relationship started to fall apart. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 1:03:03Guy Raz?

  This from NPR. So it's the end of 1990 and for Sub Pop, history is basically repeating itself. Just like in 1988 with Green River, the label's biggest band has just walked out on them. Nirvana has signed with another label. And to make matters worse, Jonathan and Bruce can already sense that the band is about to blow up.

• 1:03:29Guy Raz?

  Did you feel, Bruce, like, it sounds like, like, in a, in some ways, I think justifiably, you felt a little betrayed because you put all this energy behind this band and a lot of hope into this band. And then, you know, and it's complicated because they probably got an amazing deal. I mean, these were, these guys were not rich guys. They grew up working class kids and very few people would turn that down.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  100%. And in retrospect, I totally get it. And certainly post Nevermind, when every indie band in the world was like, hey, I could be a millionaire too, just completely shifted the culture. But at that time, in 1990, the departure was, had a lot more impact because of the taboo of going to the major.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  I have a little bit of a different take on it than Bruce does. And that is, there actually were bands that had been already headed towards the majors. But I also remember Kurt, as I had mentioned earlier in this conversation, I remember Kurt saying, you should be selling a million of these, talking about Bleach.

• 1:04:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  And, you know, he was very confident in his abilities. You know, he was many things. He was a complicated individual, but he had a bedrock confidence and desire to, you know, be successful. And I don't think monetarily, you know, he liked that, of course, but I think it was more just having the full impact as an artist.

• 1:05:25Guy Raz?

  Nirvana, of course, in 1991 releases Nevermind. And that just changes everything. I remember that record came out my senior year of high school. It was unlike anything that had come out before it. And subsequently, like, all of these things begin to happen. You've got, in the fall of 92, the movie Singles. You've got Pearl Jam's Ten, Soundgarden's Bad Motor Finger, Alice in Chains. I mean, all of these bands that came to be associated with this term, with this genre grunge. And none of those bands were, I believe, were on the Sub Pop label, even though Sub

• 1:06:10Guy Raz?

  Pop was so associated with that word and with that sound. And did you guys feel, Bruce, first to you, did a part of you feel kind of like left behind as all of a sudden this became huge, like so fast? Did you kind of feel like, wait a minute, we were this little label that actually was here from the beginning and now we're left behind?

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  Not really. I think my feeling was that Sub Pop had done a great job of hyping the scene, hyping Seattle. And we were just all along on a similar ride, you know, when Pearl Jam played their drop in the park show and 20, 30,000 people showed up. I was there on the side of the stage enjoying the show. And I just felt a collective energy that was coming out of the city. And at the time, it was very exciting. So.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. People came from all over the country.

• 1:07:11Speaker 02

  Because of what they saw in Singles, what they heard in the records that Sub Pop put out. And we were instrumental in creating a mythical Seattle, which exists to this day.

• 1:07:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I've been to the Sub Pop shop in the airport. It's awesome. But I wonder, like, these major labels were making a lot of money off of these bands. And at this point, you know, 90, 91, 92, I can't imagine Sub Pop was making a whole lot of money.

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  So the way things played out, we had points because of the contract on Nirvana's records. So we went from having no money to actually having millions of dollars.

• 1:07:57Guy Raz?

  Because, ah, because when Nirvana signed with Geffen, they had to pay you some of that.

• 1:08:04Speaker 02

  Yes, and then our Bleach album, I think at this point it sold like 2 million copies. But I will also say, and this historical fact is sometimes obscured, at the same time that Smells Like Teen Spirit was rolling out and theoretically the money was starting to come in, we were releasing a record by Mud Honey called Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge that sold 100,000 copies. And that came out at the same time. In a parallel universe, that would have been our big hit. So there's more strands to that story.

• 1:08:43Guy Raz?

  I wonder, like, even in that movie Singles, there's a character played by Matt Dillon. And he's in a band, I think they're called Citizen Dick. I think that's what the name of the band is. And Matt Dillon is like a caricature of a guy in a band in Seattle who's like denigrating all the other bands that become successful, calling them sellouts and stuff like that. Was that real? Was that a real feeling? Like, were you guys, you know, were there people in your scene who were like, oh, yeah, Soundgarden and Nirvana and Pearl Jam, they're sellouts?

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  Maybe, but we were friends with these people. And I think that we were always psyched when our friends had success.

• 1:09:25Speaker 02

  I will also say, the cash situation during that period in the early 90s was, was pretty healthy. So, we were in this awesome situation of going, hey, let's work with Sebado or Combustible Edison or Sunny Day Real Estate. And I think as music nerds, John and I were just more excited about discovering cool new stuff. The last thing I wanted to do was go to big arenas and see any of those bands. Because I do not relate to arena culture at all.

• 1:09:56Guy Raz?

  Did you, did you, I mean, as Seattle, as like the national media kind of descended on Seattle, you know, in the early to mid 90s, I don't know, what would you think about that? I mean, this is like a sleepy town in the 70s and 80s. And John Peel had talked about this like authentic regional sound. And all of a sudden, like, Seattle is the music capital of the world.

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  Well, I think one of the things that made Sub Pop unique was that we were shameless in seeking any kind of media. And we had this kind of gentleman's agreement that we would never turn down any interview of any kind by any publication.

• 1:10:37Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  And so, bring it. You know, we, Sub Pop is, is a known brand in part due to the fact that we were relentless and shameless in seeking media attention. That was just what we did. Other indie slash punk labels would shy away from that, but we didn't.

• 1:10:57Guy Raz?

  I mean, you became like Starbucks or Microsoft, an iconic Seattle brand. And already by 93, 94, you know, hipster parents were putting Sub Pop shirts on their kids, right? Like, Sub Pop, that black and white logo, that was iconic. I mean, you were a big international brand.

• 1:11:20Speaker 02

  May I share an anecdote?

• 1:11:21Guy Raz?

  Please.

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  John, this one's for you. So, last month, I bumped into somebody, we were having a conversation, and I said, yeah... I was involved in the sale of Music Scene, the founder of Sub Pop, and the guy goes, "Sub Pop? You mean like the hat?" And I said, "Yeah, like the hat." So, he had no idea it was a record label or anything, but he'd seen those hats everywhere. So, the brand is very powerful.

• 1:11:48Guy Raz?

  All right, 1994, I guess you have an opportunity to do a joint venture with Warner Brothers. It's a $20 million deal.

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:57Guy Raz?

  You enter into an agreement with Warner Brothers. Can you explain, first, Jonathan, can you explain the thinking behind it? Was this a chance for you guys, you'd worked really hard? Was it a chance to take some money off the table at that point?

• 1:12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the easiest way to put it is Bruce and I, at that point in time, were going on slightly different tracks. Bruce was more interested in, correct me if I'm wrong here, Bruce, was more interested in building a family and not stepping back from the label so much, but from being in the actual workplace, which was getting more and more intense.

• 1:12:36Guy Raz?

  Why was it getting intense?

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  Because of all of the grunge hype.

• 1:12:41Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  And also, we just had continued putting out records. And in some ways, it was much easier to run the label with no money than it became when we had some money. And that was a lesson that I had to learn many times.

• 1:12:58Guy Raz?

  So, why the deal with Warner? They acquired almost 50%, 49% of your business for $20 million. Was it an opportunity? Because if I'm you, I would take that deal.

• 1:13:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:13:10Guy Raz?

  I worked really hard.

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:13:11Guy Raz?

  And it's a chance to cash out and to get some financial security? Was that what you were thinking?

• 1:13:17Speaker 02

  I was. I mean, I thought it was an amazing deal, the fact that we could get that much cash. And again, you have to realize, we were both suffering a certain amount of PTSD from constantly being broke for a while.

• 1:13:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  And yes, the Nirvana money helped out quite a bit, but we had built up our staff, and we were competing with majors, and I thought it would be a good idea to have more cash in the bank. Additionally, the fact that we sold 49% was unprecedented, as far as I know. And we were able to maintain control, so it was an amazing deal. As well stated, 49% was definitely unheard of at the time. Similarly, the deal was done with Bruce and myself singularly. It was not done with Sub Pop.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  So the money went directly to Bruce and myself.

• 1:14:16Guy Raz?

  Here's where the story takes another turn, which is you do this deal with Warner Brothers. Seattle, the Seattle scene is just blowing up. There's all this national attention. You guys are now kind of under pressure to sign more acts because that's presumably one of the deals with Warner Brothers. They want you guys to bring in more talent under the Sub Pop label. And in 96, 1996, Bruce, you leave Sub Pop. Now, here is the story that I have heard, and I want to hear it from both of you individually. More or less, Bruce, you wanted to keep Sub Pop kind of small and just focused on Seattle bands. And Jonathan, you really wanted to go big.

• 1:14:59Guy Raz?

  And the two of you guys started, there was a lot of tension between the two of you. And you basically became estranged for seven years, which is nuts because you're here talking to me now. Bruce, can you first kind of address that story?

• 1:15:15Speaker 02

  I'll jump in there and try and speak philosophically here. You know, what I've realized about myself as a personality type is that I really am in my best form when I'm working with another person or a small group of people. And that's kind of how I operate. And I loved working with John in those early days because we were always riffing. There was a creative process. It was very rewarding. We had a small staff, and that's kind of my comfort zone. I am not a corporate type by nature. It's kind of why I got into punk rock in the first place. And I realized as the company was building out, that could have theoretically been the best move for the company.

• 1:15:59Speaker 02

  You know, that's debatable, but I felt myself, it just felt less and less comfortable for me. And a personality such myself that is somewhat intuitive and improvisational does very well in the birthing of a company, but when it comes to administrative and when things become more departmentalized, it's a little bit soul crushing. So there was a shift in culture and essentially I was not very happy. And I think that was kind of the roots of what happened.

• 1:16:29Guy Raz?

  All right. Now, I wanted to get into some details here. This is important because obviously the two of you have reconciled and you're talking now, but you were mad. You stopped talking to each other for seven years. So tell me why.

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  I was never mad at Bruce.

• 1:16:45Guy Raz?

  Bruce?

• 1:16:46Speaker 02

  Okay. I was very upset for one reason, due to potentially some misunderstanding, what have you. But there was the firing of four employees that I thought were very valuable to the company. And I was very traumatized by that. I was very, I can't even put into words, but I couldn't process that. And I was very upset. And I think that was really what led to our estrangement. And, you know, in the corporate world, sometimes you gotta bury, you know, you gotta pull out the hatchet, but...

• 1:17:27Guy Raz?

  And Jonathan, do you think that narrative sounds right? That Bruce wanted to kind of keep it small, but you had bigger ambitions and that's what led to tension?

• 1:17:37Speaker 01

  Well, no, I think it would be a little bit, what's a little bit different is that Bruce keyed into an insight about himself that I share about myself. It's just that he understood and accepted that about himself about 10 years earlier than I had a similar recognition.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  You know, Sub Pop, during that time when we had the break, I was already burned out. But I felt we had done this deal with Warner. And I felt personally that I had made a commitment to see the deal through.

• 1:18:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  With the benefit of hindsight, that a lot of decisions that I made along the way, I've realized that not only for the company were they probably not the best, but they weren't even good for, I wasn't representing my own core feelings.

• 1:18:41Guy Raz?

  Hmm. This is an important point because this is really where we learn about ourselves and we figure out how to do it better next time, which is super important. Like, I don't think enough business leaders spend the time to reflect on the bad decisions they made. And because that's what makes you a better leader, right? And that's, that's what enabled you, Jonathan, to go on and lead Sub Pop to greater heights. But what was a decision, a few decisions that you made that in hindsight were bad decisions?

• 1:19:13Speaker 01

  For one thing, there was a lot of personalities, ego, and a lack of a clarity of mission in the late 90s. I can't lay that at anybody's feet but my own. I ended up contributing a lot of the money, reinvesting a lot of the money that I had made from the deal with Warner and reinvesting in a system that in my heart of heart didn't even really believe in. But it definitely took a situation like what happened in 1997 to blow things wide open.

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  And where I feel terrible to this day is that a lot of the people who got hurt and who I hurt, making some of the decisions that I made at that time, didn't deserve it.

• 1:20:08Guy Raz?

  I want to ask you about 1997 because you almost went under. I think Sub Pop almost collapsed just a few years after the deal with Warner. Because by this point, Bruce had left and you're running it now. And I think there was just a horrible period. Your dad passed away and all this crazy stuff's going on. What was going on that almost caused Sub Pop to collapse?

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  We were, we were spending too much money. We were like a major label, only less personable, less effective, and less well-run.

• 1:20:46Guy Raz?

  What were you spending money on?

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  Well, there were bands who, before Nirvana had their explosive success, we would have signed for $2,000.

• 1:20:58Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  In one particular case, I signed one of those bands for $150,000.

• 1:21:05Guy Raz?

  I see. So you were basically overpaying because you thought, who's gonna be, they could be the next Nirvana?

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  It was the, what I had mistakenly thought, getting caught up in the mania.

• 1:21:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  It's something that you need to continually, in our business, keep an eye on. You know, there's just the cost of staying competitive. It's what I knew originally, but I had to learn it again. And I've had to learn it again a couple of times since. Is it bands come to Sub Pop for the Sub Pop experience?

• 1:21:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  There are labels where they can get more money, get more flattery. But if they want the Sub Pop experience, which is community, is a loving, familial, you know? We are in the music industry, so there are limits to that, too. But if they want the Sub Pop experience, they come to Sub Pop. And that's something.

• 1:22:12Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  It's intangible. It's not something that you can lay out in dollars and cents.

• 1:22:20Guy Raz?

  Bruce, you were, you were kind of on the sidelines and you were out of the picture. And were you completely disengaged or were you kind of following the tumult at Sub Pop from a distance? Because this was a rough period. I mean, I think really in the late 90s, Sub Pop was hanging by a thread, if I'm not mistaken. Like, it was close to collapsing.

• 1:22:41Speaker 02

  I was not following it super closely because I was kind of emotionally shut down and just, you know, I took an exit, so that was...

• 1:22:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:53Speaker 02

  I was just in a different space. I will tell you, I was kind of traumatized. John, I, this is embarrassing to say, but I will say this. I would come to Seattle and I would be nervous because I thought I might bump into you.

• 1:23:07Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:23:08Speaker 02

  And then I would be really angry. And so I had some processing to do and it took me a while to do it. And that's just the way life is sometimes, you know? It's just our own psychological process. But what kind of brought me back in was like, hey, this label's putting out some good music, you know? And, you know, we, we grow up, we change, we process, and that's just, that's life.

• 1:23:38Guy Raz?

  Jonathan, really, I think the turning point really starts in early 2000s, 2001, with the Shins.

• 1:23:57Guy Raz?

  You release their record, Oh, Inverted World, and you do two Shins records and then you do Give Up by The Postal Service. So I think to this day, either your best selling or one of your best selling records ever.

• 1:24:11Speaker 02

  Second best selling.

• 1:24:21Guy Raz?

  Those two bands, if I'm not mistaken, that kind of started to turn things around for Sub Pop. Was that period sort of the turnaround when you started to? I mean, how did that happen? Was it just luck? Were you just lucky to get those bands to come to you?

• 1:24:33Speaker 01

  We're always lucky to have the bands come to us.

• 1:24:36Guy Raz?

  But also, I guess, like, right around this time, something happened that would turn out to be fortuitous. A woman who had once been an intern, I guess, at Sub Pop actually came back to take on, like, more of a major role in the company, Megan Jasper.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  Megan Jasper. At the end of the 90s, I invited her to come back to Sub Pop as a marketing lead. But she quickly ended up becoming the conscience and the soul of the company.

• 1:25:10Guy Raz?

  And Megan is, today, we should mention, the CEO of Sub Pop, so...

• 1:25:14Speaker 01

  She is, indeed.

• 1:25:15Guy Raz?

  And by the way, do either of you still own parts of Sub Pop?

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:25:19Guy Raz?

  You still own part, okay. So here's a question for you, Bruce. How were you able to reconcile with Jonathan? I mean, here you are, the two of you, talking about this remarkable partnership and this traumatic breakup and split and the tension, and you're talking about it so openly and candidly, and it's so important, I think, that for people listening to hear this, right? Because partnerships are complicated. But, man, to get to this point, there must have been some intense reconciliation, or maybe therapy, or what happened? Did you reach out to him and say, "Hey, you want to have lunch"? Like, what happened?

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  Well, it kind of unfolded over a period of time. But I think what really shifted things for me were attending these phenomenal...

• 1:26:08Speaker 02

  Anniversary parties, which I don't know if you've heard about these, but every five years, Sub Pop will

• 1:26:14Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:15Speaker 02

  Throw a big free show. And I remember in 2008, is that the correct year? I think that was the 20th.

• 1:26:23Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 1:26:23Speaker 02

  20 year anniversary.

• 1:26:24Guy Raz?

  That was it.

• 1:26:26Speaker 02

  And I just reconnected with musicians and staff members. And a few years ago, there was the 30th anniversary in West Seattle. And I have to say, it was just one of the most wonderful days of my life. And John and I spent a bit of time just hanging out and chatting. And it was, you know, it just, life evolves. And in the case of Sub Pop, just keeps getting better.

• 1:26:53Guy Raz?

  It just seems like time and just getting older, kind of healed that a little bit for you, or maybe a lot for you?

• 1:27:01Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure. But just also recognizing and appreciating the work that John and Megan have done with Sub Pop. And John is a very tenacious person and his willpower, just his will to keep this party going is pretty phenomenal. It's a tumultuous business. It's a very challenging business to be in. And the fact that Sub Pop is still around 30 plus years later as an independent label is quite amazing.

• 1:27:33Guy Raz?

  It's amazing.

• 1:27:40Guy Raz?

  Bruce, when you think about all of your success, starting this iconic label, and it gave you financial security and also kind of, you know, iconic status, how much do you attribute your success to how hard you worked and your intelligence? And how much do you attribute to luck?

• 1:27:58Speaker 02

  Oh, let's say 50/50. The thing about, I think John and I were both brilliant opportunists, you know, and a lot of our success was based on seeing opportunity when other people didn't see it. So you could say that that's luck, but you could also say it's the ability to seize an opportunity when it comes forth. And that's the difference between making it and not making it.

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  You know, I think any business success is going to have luck involved. But the reason we were driven to it in the first place was because of our both being dedicated fans of music.

• 1:28:42Speaker 02

  But I just want to throw something out there, that those first three years that we were open were brutal. And there was a point in time in August of 1991 where we literally did not have $100 in the bank. Okay? And that's the week that Smells Like Teen Spirit got shipped out to radio. So on the one hand, we were very lucky that Nirvana blew up, but I also have to hand it to John and I for sticking it through at that point and keeping the lights on.

• 1:29:21Guy Raz?

  Bruce, when you think about Sub Pop today, it's a Seattle brand, iconic. Starbucks and Microsoft, Sub Pop, that's Seattle, right? I know I'm talking cliches here, but like, it is pretty crazy that you wanted this label to be like Motown was to Detroit. And it did, like, you actually achieved that. Do you ever kind of reflect on that and just think, it's crazy?

• 1:29:49Speaker 02

  Yes, I do. I mean, just walking down Capitol Hill in Seattle and seeing the hats and the T-shirts and seeing the store in the airport, it's very surreal. And the beautiful thing about it is Sub Pop is a corporate logo that tends to make people actually feel really good when they see it.

• 1:30:10Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:11Speaker 02

  Because they associate it with creativity and community and outsiders who played the game, stayed in the game, but have maintained their integrity. So it's a very subversive corporation. And that's the pride that I get when I see the logo, is just that it represents such positive feelings.

• 1:30:31Guy Raz?

  And what about you, Jonathan? I mean, what do you think when you think about this thing that you co-created?

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  Oy vey.

• 1:30:42Speaker 01

  I have a lot of love for Sub Pop. And it's been a part of me for so long that, you know, the idea of not being part of Sub Pop, not that that's what I'm considering now, but if I were to hypothetically consider it, it would be like considering proceeding with my life without my heart or without my head. It's just a part of who I am. And it's been a long haul. There've been a lot of

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  lessons learned, and they haven't always been easy ones. In fact, more often than not, they're painful. But it's been my life, and it's been a great one. And ultimately, I'd have it no other way.

• 1:31:41Guy Raz?

  That's Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavitt, co-founders of Sub Pop Records. By the way, two years ago, the label marked its 30th anniversary with a massive concert in Seattle. The mayor even dubbed it "Sub Pop Day." And even Alaska Airlines got into the act. They took one of their planes and covered it with giant Sub Pop sticker art from the past 30 years.

• 1:32:08Guy Raz?

  And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can also write to us at [email protected]. If you want to tweet at us, it's @HowIBuiltThis or @GuyRaz. This episode was produced by Phil Harrell and Rachel Faulkner, with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Thanks also to Candice Lim, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.