A History of Grunge in Pictures

Publish date: 2024-06-09

MTV Unplugged’
The band agreed to play MTV's acoustic Unplugged show at the end of 1993 to promote their third album In Utero. They wrapped their tour on Jan. 8, 1994 and by April 5, Cobain was dead in his bathroom having shot himself in the head. The group, who had planned to release a double-disc live album at the end of the year ended up using the Unplugged session in its place. It debuted at the top of both the British and American charts.
Pearl Jam (1991)
Cameron Crowe released a music documentary, Pearl Jam Twenty, on September 23, which follows the now 20-year-old band from their Mother Love Bone origins and Nirvana rivalry to their much-documented struggles with fame. Pictured here: Pearl Jam’s first publicity shoot in Seattle 1991, where Vedder still looks worried about stepping into the late Mother Love Bone singer Andy Wood’s shoes. © Lance Mercer
Nirvana at the UK Reading Festival in 1993
Nirvana (pictured here in 1991) headlined the closing night of the UK Reading Festival in 1992 and has been widely dubbed the most memorable performance of the short-lived group's career — and not just because Kurt Cobain appeared onstage in a wheelchair. It would mark their last European concert. In 2009, a DVD of the show, Live At Reading Festival, was released. © Ed Sirrs
Everybody Loves Our Town by Mark Yarm
Mark Yarm's superb book, Everybody Loves Our Town: A History of Grunge details the dramatic rise of the grunge movement and all of its players, including Cobain, Love and Vedder, told through the voices of the people that lived through it.
Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam)
Vedder and Pearl Jam didn't deal well with their rising success, and after their second studio album, Vs., was released in 1993 (which, at the time, set the record at the time for most albums sold in a week), the band began refusing to release music videos and in 1994, boycotted Ticketmaster, claiming the service was gouging fans by charging too-high service fees.
Kurt Cobain (Nirvana)
Nirvana, formed by Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in 1987, gained drummer-singer Dave Grohl in 1990. The band's single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," off of their seminal second album Nevermind, became a radio hit and introduced grunge to the masses.
Danny Goldberg
Goldberg managed both Nirvana and Hole in the '90s. Now the president and owner of management company Gold Village Entertainment, in his 2008 memoir Bumping Into Geniuses, he called Cobain "the greatest rock artist I would ever work with."
Courtney Love performing with Hole on MTV Unplugged in 1995
Hole (with Courtney Love, Eric Erlandson, Caroline Rue and Jill Emery) formed in L.A. in 1989. Their second album, Live Through This, released in 1994, merged their punk sounds with grunge and became a critical and commercial success. Love married Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain in 1992.
Layne Staley (Alice in Chains)
Alice in Chains, formed in 1987 by Jerry Cantrell and Layne Staley, rose to fame during the early '90s grunge movement alongside fellow Seattle bands Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Nirvana. Their second album Dirt, released in 1992, sold more than four million copies, but the band was plagued with addiction-issues and both Staley and bassist Mike Starr both died of drug overdoses.
Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam)
Eddie Vedder became Pearl Jam's frontman in 1990 after Mother Love Bone (featuring guitarists Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard and Mike McCready) fell apart when lead singer Andy Wood died of a heroin overdose. Their first album, Ten, got off to a slow start, but by 1992, had taken off and has since been certified 13-times platinum. They were big players in Seattle's alt-music scene though their grunge-cred was constantly being questioned by fellow rockers like Kurt Cobain who accused them of being posers.
Soundgarden
Photographed in Seattle in January 1994, Soundgarden (from Left: Matt Cameron, Kim Thayil, Ben Shepherd, and Chris Cornell) released their fourth studio album, Superunknown, in March of that year. Debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, its singles "Black Hole Sun" and "Spoonman" both won Grammy Awards. © Ed Sirrs