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 … - Susan Silver

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.

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'.

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.