The Strangest Tribe: How a Group of Seattle Rock Bands Invented Grunge

The Strangest Tribe
By Stephen Tow
$19, Sasquatch Books

When you look at really where the Seattle thing started, and how it got off the ground … I mean once there was [Nirvana’s] Nevermind, it’s not hard to figure out why there was a Pearl Jam and a Soundgarden and everything else—because the phenomenon fed on itself quite easily. But how do you get to a Nevermind?

—Leighton Beezer, The Thrown Ups

IF ONE BAND SYMBOLIZED musical evolution in Seattle, it would have to be the U-Men. The U-Men created a bridge between late ’70s/early ’80s punk/new wave and late ’80s grunge. The fact is, though, they were neither. The band was too arty for the hardcore punks and too punky for the art rockers. The U-Men were their own thing.

The band formed in 1980 in the basement of Rob Morgan’s U-District house with Tom Price on guitar, Charlie Ryan on drums, and Robin Buchan on bass. Practices were primitive at first. Nobody had any money. Price and Buchan plugged their cheap Japanese, hollow-bodied electric guitars into one cheap thirty-watt amplifier. They channeled their vocals through a cassette-era microphone, plugging into the same amp. Ryan owned about half a drum kit with no cymbal stands. He attached his cymbals to the ceiling using rope. If he broke a drumstick, he had to raid Morgan’s kitchen for a wooden spoon or similar substitute. The tiny amplifier would typically begin to crackle after just a few songs. “And they would practice in my basement,” Morgan recalls, “and…drive me crazy ’cause they’d play the same song for hours.”

The band began to write some offbeat songs, and their rudimentary practices soon evolved into rudimentary shows. The U-Men’s growing audience rewarded the band by dropping off beer at performances.

The U-Men’s inception may seem fairly unremarkable, somewhat typical for a young impoverished punk rock band, yet there was something a little off about them from the start. Their name, for one. The members were big fans of Ohio’s arty postpunk Pere Ubu and named themselves after an Ubu bootleg. Furthermore, like Pere Ubu, the U-Men became fascinated with French surrealism, thus displaying a sophistication beyond the range of typical teenage punks.

Price, who had played bass in the Showbox-era Psychopop, switched to guitar for his new band. He drew from early Northwest garage rock—especially the Sonics. He also added offbeat jazz chord progressions to the mix. He had taken guitar lessons for a few months, and his teacher forced him to learn complex jazz fingering. “And then when I started playing with the U-Men,” Price explains, “I was just kinda like, ‘Well, I know all this shit. I might as well use it.’”

Up to this point, the band had no full-time vocalist. That changed when Price met John Bigley, who turned out to be an important piece of the puzzle. Bigley became the band’s shamanic leader. His growling vocals and intense stage presence often left audiences in a trancelike state.

Bassist Jim Tillman completed the picture. Replacing Buchan, Tillman contributed a high level of musical professionalism. The U-Men intrigued him, but Tillman immediately began upgrading the band, like a new coach rebuilding a team. “He [looked] at Charlie’s drum kit and [said], ‘Dude, you can’t have cymbals with big chunks missing from ’em,’” Price recalls. “‘Tom, you can’t have a guitar that’s completely impossible to tune.’” In exchange for his band-parenting skills, the rest of the U-Men forced Tillman to cut his long locks and exchange his glasses for contacts. (Note: Tillman disputes this.)

With the lineup set, the U-Men began to develop their personality. Most great rock bands have one, perhaps two members at their artistic center. The U-Men had four, yet somehow they coalesced. Bigley became the consummate front man, typically roaming the stage in black, leading the audience with his growling/shrieking, barely intelligible mantras, creating a feeling of danger at shows. Like all great punk rock singers, Bigley’s onstage charisma left the audience wondering down which path he was leading them: to destruction or salvation? “John Bigley…[had the] ability to get himself into a trance…he [was] having fits up there,” remembers Stone Gossard, later with Green River and Pearl Jam.

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Published: October 2011