Susan Silver Quotes

One show at the Ditto, (Cornell), had written all over himself, and was just all over the club. I remember there was a fish involved and a lot writhing around (laughs). He'd get into a trance practically, in those early days. He covered every square inch of some of those places on some nights.

I met Chris [Cornell] at the end of '85 at a Halloween party, at an artist studio in Belltown, and I was out on the town that night with my dear frien Chuck, a.k.a. Upchuck from the Fags. And Chuck dresses me up as him in drag – he was in drag most of the time – so I had a long blond fright wig and a kimono and pancake makeup. Soundgarden was playing the party, as a three-piece, with Chris on drums and vocals. They were amazing. I'd worked with Ben McMillan in a vintage clothing store in town called Tootsie's. And Chris came in to talk to him, and the story that Chris told me is that I caught his eye. So he kept coming in and trying to get my attention, but I paid him no mind. Partly because I had just broken up with Gordon earlier that year, so I was in a pretty dark space. After the band played, Chris came up to me and recognized me, which he got huge points for because I was in full drag-queen regalia. He said the band were trying to get a show in Vancouver, so I told him that I was going up there to a show in the next week, and if he wanted to meet, I would take a tape for them. So we met, and he gave me that tape, and we saw each other a week later at the Vogue. After that, we went to a 24-hour dinner. We tried to go back to my house, but I'd lost my keys. We made out for a while, and then he took me to my mom's in West Seattle, and it was just on from there. At the time, it was healing for me.

I loved him and will always love him. He was like a brother to me. He was this little broken but gentle spirit. We did everything we could think of to help him choose life, but sadly the disease won instead.

Chris [Cornell, Soundgarden's vocalist] and I got married in '90 and we've been together since '85. We learned, luckily, sort of early on, that we needed to make time for business and that I couldn't bring business home every day, as was my inclination. It was such an exciting time time for me in the late-eighties and early-nineties; they were pretty unbelievable. Just to feel things brewing in the late-eighties without having the goal of ' we're gonna make this into an international superstardom'. But just that it was growing and we were all gathering experience and momentum. And those were really exciting times that I wanted to talk about twenty-four hours a day. I needed to learn not to bring business home so I wouldn't strictly represent business every time I walked in the door. [Chris and I] just created boundaries. Our relationship is a little-known secret because it's nobody's fuckin' business [laughing]!

The shirtlessness? I never even thought about it. Honest to God, it's just what he does. Love is blind, I suppose. The female attention never fuffled me. I felt we had such security in our relationship then that it never occured to me. I remember a show in Philadelphia in the early '90s, some girl got on her boyfriend's shoulder and was screaming, "Chris, I wanna fuck you!" or some other equally poetic phrase. Come on. You're embarrassing out entire sisterhood here.

When the bands and the Seattle scene started taking off, I had been at it for so long that it felt very natural - it was just 'this is another day in the life'. Not having been through it before, there wasn't the perspective to say,' Oh my God, we're in the eye of the hurricane.' It was just, 'This is what we do today. Okay, just one more thing. One more thing to accomplish today'. I guess the part that felt...the only thing that started to feel strange, this could be strange or this could be detrimental to people, was when the press started taking pot shots at people personally. Digging for dirt in the artists' private lives, being exploitative of the artist. That was the hardest part. Suddenly this private world that we had was public. Which was okay, that was exciting, except when the press got...when they looked for sensational avenues to report on. Which there wasn't for a long time. There really wasn't [any]. They had to keep coming back and saying, 'I guess all they know how to do up there is make amazing music'. Which is what continues to happen. The Seattle backlash and highly circulated reports that there was nothing new in Seattle after '93 just keep getting proved wrong again and again. I love that.

After Metropolis was forced to close, I was putting shows on wherever I could find a venue, not working in a particular club. And then on bigger shows I was doing production work, whether it was running or catering, working in the production office - different aspects of working for the biggest promoters in town. The shows that I was putting on were, at the time, very underground. Shows like Soul Asylum, Faith No More, Meat Puppets, Sonic Youth. I never worked for any record companies though. The only contact that I had with record companies was in the'70s, being an impressionable teenager and all the promotion people from the different record companies happened to live in this neighbourhood that I lived in. It was an easy call for me to say, "I wouldn't want to do that!" [laughing]. You have to remember the '70s were a strange time in history, let alone in music history.

Early in my life I was inspired by the creative process. Music was definitely an important part of that. I did lots of volunteer work with large organizations and theater groups and things that involved music. I just basically started as a professional volunteer, and then in '80 a couple of friends started a club and I helped out at that. It was an all-ages club in '80,'81 and part of '82 called Metropolis. I learned a lot about all manner of things about putting on a show, the crowds and different people - we had all kinds of music in there, from reggae to punk to jazz to good ol' rock 'n' roll. I didn't have goals of being in the music business - in fact, I was studying Chinese [language] at the time. That was my goal at the time. In the back of my mind,I thought this would be a great thing to know and maybe someday I would be able to bring music to China. But at one point during the summer, one of the partners [in the club] was on vacation and the other ended up in the hospital. I was doing a full-time summer course in Chinese, but someone needed to run the club. That's pretty much the point where rock'n'roll stole my soul.

I'm sure I've been the butt of a lot of sexist jokes, especially since I got involved with major labels, being a woman with no experience, living in Seattle, managing her boyfriend's band. It was prime material for jokes, but I didn't get in the middle of those sort of cocktail conversations or listen to that whispering. I was up here with my dream that people would care about what Seattle has to offer musically.

One thing about management is it doesn't matter whether you're someone's girlfriend, wife, sister, or siamese twin. Simply put, you are as succesful as your acts are. If my clients never had gold records, nobody would care. But if things go well then there's a perception that someone must have done a good job, that the artist is good, and that the manager must not be too much of an idiot. When you get a gold record, suddenly you get more respect. Likewise, if you get double platinum, suddenly people become very respectful.

Alice in Chains filmed the show at Moore theatre in 1990 and that was the show this new band Mookie Blaylock opened for them. Everyone was still reeling from Andy [Andrew Wood]'s death... and they hadn't really played out yet. The band came on and Chris [Cornell] carried Eddie [Vedder] onto the stage – he was on his shoulders. It was one of those super powerful moments, where it was all a big healing for everybody. He came out as this guy who had all the credibility in the world - in terms of people in Seattle - and Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone were loved bands. Andy was such an endearing personality. It was a hard thing to do - to show up after people die. And Chris bringing Eddie out, and pointing at him, as much to say, 'This is your guy now.'

I started managing in '83. The U-Men were the first, and then a group called The First Thought. A real pivotal moment for me was when a friend was working with one of the early and very influential bands in Seattle in the early '80s, called The Blackouts. They had moved away and had wanted to come back and put on a couple of shows in the area, and asked me to help them. Putting on these shows and working with the Blackouts, who happened to have a deal with Wax Trax!, was really a big moment for me, personally. I know that experience made a big difference in my wanting to pursue a career in the music business: putting on their shows definitely gave me this kind of confidence that I didn't have before - even though one of the shows was riddled with challenges that should probably have dissuaded me from taking one more step towards the music business.

I'm really respectful of creativity. My whole waking day is based on the idea that we are here to create something. What happens with the majority of people is that their legacy is procreation as opposed to creation. It so often becomes a substitute and people are unfulfilled. Since I never had any confidence in my own creative process, I turned my energy into the process of supporting creative people.

I remember this guy came up to me and said 'Gee, you sure don't look like a hard rock manager,' and I said, 'I am. And you don't look like an idiot, but you are'.

Layne's death was such a deep, deep loss. And there's that question of, what do you do with a tragedy in life? Do we stop living? Or do we go on? Looking at the story that that record [Black Gives Way to Blue] tells, and then the beautiful love letter that Jerry [Cantrell] wrote to Layne to close the record [the title track], tells a very complete story. And it has been a really cathartic experience, and extremely healing. Extremely healing.