How I Built This with Guy Raz - Sub Pop Records: Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman

Episode Date: June 1, 2020

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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It had tall windows, beautiful old details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna, walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.ca. One evening, Chris Nova Selech went over to Bruce's house and started banging on the windows demanding a recording contract. Yeah. I was really taken aback because in indie culture,

Contracts really weren't used very much. Yeah. 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. From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how two rock and roll fans harness the raw energy

of grunge in Seattle and then sent it out to the world through the iconic record label, Subpop. 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 of the 1990s, Seattle was the epicenter of American youth culture. Seattle bands like Pearl Jam, Mudhoney,

Alice and Chains, Soundgarden, 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 subpop. Just like Barry Gordy and his Motown label

brought the sound of Detroit to radios around the world, Subpop and its co-founders Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavett helped turn Seattle into a global brand of music and culture. The band Subpop signed would come to different. find 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. Now, like all the stories we tell on this show, Subpop 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 Subpop 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 Pabbitt and Jonathan Poneman live on stage 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 and my garage studio, and both Jonathan and Bruce at their homes. 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. I'm on Orcas Island. I've been here for over 20 years. So right now, I'm 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.

You're at a place where social distancing was cool before it was cool. Yeah, absolutely. I am looking at a map of where you live. Orca's Island, you actually are closer to Canada than you, I think, than you are to the United States. Or maybe you're right in between. You could literally get in a kayak and get to Canada about 20 minutes. Wow. If you're in good shape.

But, yeah. And Jonathan, where are you right now? I'm a dreary city dweller in Seattle, Washington. How are you holding up? I know that 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? Actually, I'm all for more lockdown. Wow. Why is that the case? 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 yacht, so it's nothing new. Anyway, back to the story, starting with Bruce Pavett. 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. 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 decades. Wow, what was it what was your first record? I bought two singles. One was sugar sugar by the archies and the other was a revolution by the Beatles and those are my first two singles and my first album was sergeant pepper. That's your first album man. I'm embarrassed mine was Rio by durand durand.

That's it. Sergeant peppers. Well done. Well done. But You know, don't forget, I did also purchase that Archie's 45. All right. So you kind of clearly like into music as a kid and growing up in the suburbs outside of Chicago. And did you ever like hang out in Chicago or go to Chicago like as a teenager? Absolutely. And I used to visit a record store called Wax Tracks, which as 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.

So I guess when you were around 20, you moved to Olympia, Washington to go to Evergreen State College. 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. All right, so let's pause there. And I'm going to turn to Jonathan. Jonathan, you grew up in Toledo, Ohio. Yes. And I guess as a kid, you were in bands.

You were, like, playing in garage bands from your early teens. Is that right? I played in a couple of garage bands, but I was like Bruce, a record collector, primarily. Were you a good musician? No. I hate to leave you with a single syllable answer like that, but it kind of emphasizes just how bad a musician I was. And I, it's so great. I just spread 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 i was learning how to become an adult okay i was having a lot of fun like doing what 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. Oh, wow. Lester Bang's magazine. Exactly. And did you go seek him out? We did go seek him out unsuccessfully. Okay, yeah.

But we would always get free swag. Yeah. That was nice. And then Detroit itself, while I was a young teenager and couldn't get into clubs, who were still so many great rock shows and radio stations in Detroit at that time. Yeah, I mean, obviously Motown, that label, and then like the rock scene, right? Like MC5 and like, like, the Stooges most notable. The Stooges, yeah, yeah, of course.

About a great music. All right, so you do eventually graduate high school. And then I guess you head out to the Seattle area because that's where you're, at the time wanted to go. And when you got there, what was your plan? Like, were you thinking of going to college? 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. and Seattle, Washington in the late 70s. And why is that? That's, I'm being sarcastic. 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 L.A., 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? Well, one of the places where I worked was a company called Yesco, where they made four, background music as opposed to background music that was made popular by the company Musak. And it's the first place where I had heard of a gentleman named Bruce Pavett. 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. So I'll shift back to Bruce for a sec to ask you about that. Bruce, when you started a school at Evergreen State College,

I guess, like, you also got into the college radio station and DJing there. And you started like printing a fanzine called Subterranean Pop. And this was a what, like a magazine that talked about what? I started a show called Subterranean Pop at Chaos Radio. Now, Chaos Radio was... That was a college radio station. There was a community radio station based on the Evergreen Campus, 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. Then when I moved to Seattle in 83, I started a column called Subpop USA in the Rocket magazine. I spent a lot of time nerding out on Norton. obscure indie

records and I was providing addresses for those records so that people could actually order them. 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? 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-collared 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 them. my fanzines. 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. But you, I guess you were also like making mixtapes and selling them to people, right? 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. 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 to a place like Seattle would be hard. 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?

We, the key was finding a small space with cheap rent and it never would have survived as a record store. But we had the idea of selling skateboards. And kids would come. into 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 Musac. So I do have business cards that say Bruce Pavett, Musac. And it's currently on eBay for $10,000, and I'm hoping somebody buys it. Oh, my God.

That's a joke. Okay, I was a jerk. See, this is very hard. This is the challenge of the quarantine interview is I can't see your face. I can't tell the jokes without seeing you. But we'll navigate that. All right. So you're in Seattle.

It's the 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? The first time that I, for one thing I need to say that I, 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 the first time that I met Bruce Pavitt that I recall was when I had interviewed him on the local music radio show. That you were working, the station that you were working at? Yes, at KCMU. Because he was the guy who was writing sub-pop, and so he was an interesting person to bring on the show. Now, actually, he had just released Sub-Pop 100. And I had him on the show, and, you know, we hit it off.

So, Bruce, I'm looking at a photograph of you as a young man, and 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? Kind of short shaved crop. Yes. That would be like 87.

Okay. And Jonathan, you were like, I mean, kind of shaggy hair a little bit, right? Am I capturing the right? Let's call it for what it is. It was a mullet. 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 subpop 100, which includes a bunch of artists, including Sonic Youth was on it, I think. Correct. And by the way, Bruce, before I forget, at this point, were you thinking, you know what, subpop, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to make a music label. This is actually what I'm going to, 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? When I did the cassettes, it was a magazine on cassette. that 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. 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 one kind of like phase two of the subpop project really kicked in is when John and I joined forces and actually opened the office doors there. I want to get back to that.

I want to rewind a little bit. Okay. So you released this record, this album, the Subpop 100. And this is just, you're just taking existing recordings and just compiling them onto one record. Is that, is that right? Essentially, yes. Okay. How did you, by the way, how did you finance pressing these records?

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 to put it out. It did wind up selling 5,000 copies. And those were really good numbers at that time. So you made tons of money off that, or he made his money back and more. Everybody made a little money.

the artists, the investor, and myself. So it was a little mini business success. When you started to think about, hey, this is really a thing. Maybe I can turn this into a label. Seattle, like, you know, obviously you have Jimmy Hendrix, right? The most significant Seattle artist, him and Cobain, right? But Seattle was not Motown. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't L.A.

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? 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. I did feel that Seattle had a unique vibe and that the labels focus should be on Seattle, and I think John and I were on the same page there. 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 go up to them and say, hey, I want to record your first album?

Or 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 label. 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 into fallout and buy a record.

So we went way back. And Mark Arm's the lead singer, was a lead singer of Green River. Green River. And then he wound up. Mudhoney. And then mud honey, correct. So 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. And one thing led to another. Soundgarden started doing shows. I actually grew up with Kim Thiel in Park Forest, Illinois. so I had known him since he was a kid. Wow. It was basically a group of friends excited about what was going on and trying to make things happen.

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. Kin 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 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? 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 a tonal and had.

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 going to blow up. Definitely. So, okay, so I guess, like, a couple of things are starting to converge. This is 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 understand it, Jonathan, and you've kind of been like circling around Soundgarden, like wanting 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 build subpop. How did that happen? 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 going to do something would have been shunt aside. So at that point, Kim Thiel, 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 had invited me on as a partner in the Soundgarden project. By the way, how did you have money?

A little bit left over from my bar mitzvah. which was actually, it wasn't even from my bar mitzvah. It was from when I was born. There were savings bonds. And there was around $9,000 or $10,000. Being the near-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 going to go to records or drugs or whatever she thought it was going to go for. 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. For a business plan. Yeah. 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? How do you remember the story?

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're essentially saying is, this is a scene, 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. And were you, I mean, I'm curious about the business side of this, right? Because today we're starting a business, like a lot of founders I have on a show. I'll say, okay, well, how did you do an LLC?

Did you go to the business licensing office in your city? Did you, 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. 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 would make. Let me just say earlier in the conversation that 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 on spreadsheets. They calculated with their hearts. and with their, you know, senses. Yeah. They knew that we were on to something. Who was doing the business side of Sub Pop in the early days? Because most co-founders I interview, you know, one kind of does operations and one does

strategy or more of the creative side or 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? 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 buildout, I think, came from John. 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. Yes.

And then it's about to come out, right? And then the band splits up. Is that right? That's correct. They broke up pretty much 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. 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 Beavis. built this from NPR. 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 Poneman have officially launched their record label subpop in Seattle. But they've also lost their most important band, Green River.

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, is mud honey has come in their stead and they're awesome and we'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. Mudhoney ended up becoming, and still is to this day, the ultimate or the flagship, or they're the sub-pop house band.

I think that's the best way of putting it. 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. Oh, yeah, those guys. Very magically, we opened the doors in two new bands, Mudhoney and Nirvana basically, come in out of nowhere, which we were not really fully expecting. I'm wondering, because I want to get to Nirvana 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? Well, Bruce and I did two things early on that kept our doors open. One is we were beholden to record distributors. 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 this 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. 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.

Who would you sell them to, record shops? 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 addition. And so there ended up being a mania over our records. And now 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. So this helped create and sustain cash flow.

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 subpop 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're 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. Almost all of our money went into just getting records manufacturing. 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. Well, Bruce, when do you first remember hearing the word grunge? When it popped into my brain. 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. 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, it just worked in my mind. That's exactly it. You, Bruce, you were the originator of this term.

You came up with this word grunge to describe this out. I would say it 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. Own it. I'm sorry, I'm the grunge guy. I apologize. But, but you joke, I know, but you say you're probably. 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? I don't think so. No, they wouldn't. 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 Pavett. Bruce, who were your customers in 1988? I mean, this music was not yet in mainstream or big, So I can't imagine you had a huge number of potential customers at that point, right? Well, just to give me a feel for the record sales, five or 10,000 copies of a record was considered very successful at that time. All right. So at some point, you get this demo from a band named Nirvana.

I guess this is in maybe 1988. What's the story? How did you come across that demo? How did it come across your desk? 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. Is it Jack and Dino at reciprocal? Jack and Dino at reciprocal.

In this particular case, I asked if he'd heard anything that was bled. his mind. And he mentioned this guy who looked like he could be working at a service station. And Dale Krover, who was the drummer for the already notorious and uniformly worshipped Melvins. They'd been playing drums on this tape. And Jack said, I don't really know what to make of this, except that it's amazing, and you should hear it. 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 music at the time, right? When I came down with that tape.

Oh, so this is even before you started the record label. Yeah, but when we first got this tape, there weren't so many people enthusiastic about them. Bruce, do you remember the first time you heard the demo from Nirvana? I do. Picture, if you will. I was still working at Musak. And I do want to say that a lot of the musicians in the Seattle scene were also working for the elevator music company, Musak.

So imagine the first time I heard Nirvana was at Musak, 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. Do you remember the first time you met these guys, Jonathan? Do you remember? What was your impression of them? It was at a coffee shop, long, long closed, cafe robot, and...

Kurt and his girlfriend, Tracy, came up there, and I was starstruck, you know. You were starstruck? This guy was unknown. He was unknown. But my reaction to that tape was different than Bruce's for whatever reason. And I listened to that tape and listened to that tape. And I got myself all in a lather. 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? 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. The Sound Garden, the Sound Garden record. Yes.

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 subpop name. Bruce was the guy who started the zine in Olympia, and he had a show on the college radio station. So, like, he was a known. People were like, Bruce Pavett, that guy's a legend. Yeah, if I had gone in there and just said,

hi, I'm John Poneman, and I've got it. They've been like, eh. Exactly. He said, it's a loser. But I had the subpop name. And it was just you and Kurt and his girlfriend, no one else? No one else until about 45 minutes into the meeting.

Yep. And it stumbles in this guy who looks like Jethro Bodine. I don't know. Who's that? Who's Jethro Bodine? I don't know. He was the brother in a TV show called the Beverly Hillbillies. Oh, the Beverly Hillbillies.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, I got you. Yeah. So this guy looks like Jethro. Who is this guy? This guy is a guy named Chris Nof the Selich. Oh, yeah. I think we've heard of him.

Yeah. And so he kind of came in. and he was none too friendly. Oh, really? I can't say for sure, but I think he was suspicious of me and my motives. Because you were like the record label man. You were the man. 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. All right. So you meet Kurt and Chris Nova Sellich. He comes in 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? 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 going to 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 to, you know, what was true is that we didn't sign any bands unless we had seen them live. Yes. So I'm assuming they let you know when they were coming back to play live and the two of you went. And Bruce, what was your impression of them when you finally see Nirvana play live? Well, just a little context here. They did play 8 o'clock on a Sunday night.

And it was the doorman, a bartender, some girlfriends. There might have been 10 people in the room. Wow. 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. A cover song. It was a cover song. So I will tell you when we released the single, it got a tremendous response.

How did you convince Nirvana to work with you? Because Chris Novoselich sounds like he was, suspicious and skeptical at the beginning. But what? They just went along. Kurt was like, yeah, I won't work with Sub Pop. Do you know how that happened? Jonathan?

One evening, Chris Nova Selech went over to Bruce's house and started banging on the windows, demanding a recording contract. Chris has always been, but was particularly at that point, an intimidating individual, not the sort of person that you want showing up your door. I want to get some clarity on that. on this first sec, Bruce. So what do you remember about? So why was he, Chris Nova Sellech was banging on your window demanding a record contract? Why? Can you explain what was going on? 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 was the culture. And it's one of the reasons why we weren't making contracts, because it was just understood. Yeah. I will say that 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. And is that, was that like a five record deal? Was there, was, were there terms? I mean, it sounds. It sounds. It sounds. Sounds like it was just really informal. One record and two options. That was it.

Okay, one record and two options. 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? I don't remember that, but that could be. 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 ban before. Okay, so you sign them. But then they're saying they want an advance on the next record and presumably they're asking for a significant amount of money on the advance? By our terms, it was significant, yes. It's still by today's terms it would be significant. If I may, I remember looking at the contract and feeling, very nervous. 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, 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 so a couple of months before you release 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 an M.E and and basically kind of pitch them stories. and just bypassed the U.S. Music Press entirely. Is that true?

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. He started... Yes, the legendary, yes. He started playing that, and then he wrote... a review in the London Observer where he basically compared subpop with Motown. He literally

said subpop has the most distinctive regional sound since Tamla Motown, unquote. That was in late January of 89. So right there you can kind of feel. 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. 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 two million people, that was a big deal. All right. So I think of the summer of 89, you released Nirvana's debut album, Bleach. And did it, like, blow up? because I don't remember did it like all of a sudden

was it just this huge thing or not really, not much? Well, I'm going to 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 more of a slow build. Yeah. But it eventually sold up to around 40,000 copies, and there was just a lot of word of mouth. 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 there's some legs to this band. But 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? 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? And why do you think that we're Nazis guys? Maybe you are. Did either of you think, I don't know, this band is going to change rock and roll history? No. 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 us. tell me regularly, we should be selling a million of these. And I'd be going, you don't understand, you know. And boy, did I not know what I was talking about. 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. Why? What happened?

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. Sure. 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. 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.

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 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 do you what what what wow you remember feeling 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 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 literally couldn't believe. that was happening. Wow. 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,

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. 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 and the excitement of Seattle. And then our star band left us for a major. I was crushed. When we come back, 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. Hey, welcome back to How I Built 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 is just. 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. Did you feel Bruce like, it sounds like, like 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 guys were not rich guys. They grew up working class kids, and very few people would turn that down.

100%. And in retrospect, I totally get it. And certainly post, never mind 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. 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. Yeah. 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.

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 Jambs, 10 Sound Gardens, Bad Motorfinger, Allison 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 subpop label, even though subpop 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? Not really. I think my feeling was that subpop 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 in 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, yeah, people came from all over the country 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. 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, 901, 92, I can't imagine sub-pop was making a whole lot of money.

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. Because when Nirvana signed with Geffen, they had to pay you some of that. Yes. And then our bleach album, I think at this point it's 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 Mudhoney 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. 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 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 Jen, their sellouts? Maybe, but we were friends with these people. and I think that we were always psyched when our friends had success. I will also say the cash situation during that period in the early 90s was pretty healthy. So we were in this awesome situation of going, hey, let's work with Cebedo 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. 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. 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. And so bring it. You know, we, Subpop 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. I mean, you became like Starbucks or Microsoft an iconic Seattle brand.

Already by 93, 94, you know, hipster parents were putting subpop shirts on their kids, right? like subpop, that black and white logo, that was iconic. I mean, you were a big international brand. May I share an anecdote? Please. John, this one's for you. So last month I bumped into somebody. We were having a conversation.

And I said, yeah, it was involved in the sale music scene. The founder is subpop. And the guy goes, subpop? 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.

All right. 1994, I guess you have an opportunity to do a joint venture with Warner Brothers. It's a $20 million deal. Yeah. 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 that you'd worked really hard? Was there a chance to take some money off the table at that point? 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, who 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. Why was it getting intense? Because of all of the grunge hype. Right. 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. 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. Yes. I worked really hard.

Yes. And it's a chance to cash out and to get some financial security. Was that what you were thinking? 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. And yes, the Nirvana money helped out quite a bit. But we had built up our staff and we were competing with majors.

And we, I thought it would be a good idea to have more cash. 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 subpop. So the money went directly to Bruce and myself. 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 one of the, presumably, one of the deals with Warner Brothers. They want you guys to bring in more talent under the subpop label. And in 96, 1996, Bruce, you leave subpop. 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 subpop kind of small and just focused on Seattle bands. And Jonathan, you really wanted to go big. 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? 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. games 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. 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

shifting culture. And essentially, I was not very happy. And I think that was kind of the roots of what happened. All right. Now, I wanted to get into some details here. It's 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. I was never mad at Bruce. Bruce? 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, 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 got to bury, you know, you've got to pull out the hatchet. But. 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. 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.

You know, subhop, 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. 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. 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. I don't think enough business leaders spend the time to reflect on the bad decisions they make. made. Because that's what makes you a better leader, right? That's what enabled you, Jonathan,

to go on and lead subpop to greater heights. But what was a decision, a few decisions that you made that in hindsight were bad decisions? 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 look. I can't look. I can't 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. 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. I want to ask you by 1997 because you almost went under. I think Sub Pop almost like 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. going on that almost caused subpop to collapse? We were spending too much money.

We were like a major label only less personable, less effective, and less well-run. What were you spending money on? Well, there were bands who, before Nirvana, had their explosive success, we would have signed for $2,000. Right. In one particular case, I signed one of those bands for $150,000. I see. So you were basically overpaying because you thought who's going to be, they could be the next Nirvana. It was the, what I had mistakenly thought getting caught up in the mania. Yeah. 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 Cup to Sub Pop for the Sub Pop experience? Yeah. There are labels where they can get more money, get more flattery, but if they want the Sub Pop experience, which is, you know, community is a loving, familial, you know, we are in the music industry, so there are limits to that, too. But if they want this subpop experience, they come to subpop. And that's something, it's intangible. It's not something that you can lay out in dollars and cents. Bruce, 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 subpop from a distance? Because

this was a rough period. I mean, I think really in the late 90s, subpop was hanging by a thread, if I'm not mistaken. Like, it was close to collapsing. 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 just in a different space. I will tell you, I was kind of traumatized. John, 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. Wow. 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 grow up, we change, we process, and that's just, that's life. Jonathan, really, I think the turning point really starts in early 2001 with the Shins. You release their record, O Inverted World, and you do two Shins records, and then you do give up by the Postal Service. I think to this day, either your best-selling or one of your best-selling records ever. Second best-selling. 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 come to you? We're always lucky to have the bands come to us. 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 more of a major role in the company, Megan Jasper. 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. And Megan is today, we should mention, CEO of Sub Pop, so... She is indeed. And by the way, do either of you still own parts of Sub Pop? I do. 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? Well, it kind of unfolded over a period of time. But I think what really shifted things for me were attending these phenomenal anniversary parties, which I don't know if you've heard about these.

but every five years subpop will throw a big free show and I remember in 2008 is that the correct year I think that was the 20th 20 year anniversary 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 Subpop just keeps getting better. It just seems like time and just getting older kind of healed that a little bit for you or maybe a lot for you. Oh, for sure.

But just also recognizing and appreciating the work that John and Megan have done with Subpop. 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. It's amazing. Bruce, when you think about all of your success, starting this iconic label and it gave you financial security

and also kind of 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? 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. Jonathan? 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. 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. Bruce, when you think about subpop today, it's a Seattle brand, iconic. Starbucks and Microsoft, Subpop, 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? 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 subpop is a corporate logo

that tends to make people actually feel really good when they see it. Yeah. Because they associate it with creative. 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.

And what about you, Jonathan? I mean, what do you think when you think about this thing that you co-created? O'Vey. I have a lot of love for subpop, and it's been a part of me for so long that, you know, the idea of not being part of subpop, 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 have been a lot of lessons learned, and they haven't always been

the 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. That's Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavan, co-founders of his 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. 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

HIVT at npr.org. If you want to tweet at us, it's at How I Built This or at Guy Raz. This episode was produced by Phil Harrell and Rachel Faulkner with music composed by Remteen Arablui. 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.