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 t… - Susan Silver

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.

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.

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.