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It was October 18, 1986. I was 16 years old. My older brother Willy and I went to see a band called Love and Rockets at the Moore Theater in Seattle.

The Moore is a smallish theater and the seating was general admission. We got there early to get in line and try to get good seats. We weren’t first in line, though.

Back in the 80s all the cool kids, the ones who dressed all punk or new wave or goth and went to teen dance clubs a lot, smoked clove cigarettes. I don’t really know what exactly clove cigarettes are, but I know they smell different than regular tobacco cigarettes.

A girl next to me in line was chain smoking them. By the time we finally got into the venue I was feeling sick from it. Really, really nauseous. For years after that I couldn’t smell cigarette smoke without getting nauseous.

We got to our seats and had pretty good ones. Not spectacular. We were in the center section off to the left, maybe 20th row. I was feeling pretty sick.

Until Soundgarden came on.

I’d never heard Soundgarden before. I’d heard of them—a friend of mine at school had heard a song called “Incessant Mace” on KCMU, the UW’s radio station. He recorded it off the radio and said it was really fantastic. But he never lent me the tape. So I’d been curious to see what they were like.

They blew me away.

I was totally held spellbound by their performance. Chris Cornell was wearing raggedy jeans, cut off at the knee, and no shirt. They had only red lights on the stage. Their dark, slow, heavy sound, combined with his amazing vocals—it was incredible. I forgot about everything except how terrific they were.

When they were done, Willy spotted his friend Dan across the theater. When Dan saw us, he jumped up on the backs of people’s seats and walked across the entire row to get over to where we were. We hadn’t saved him a seat but he sat with us anyway. Three people, two seats. When Love and Rockets came on, everyone stood up on their seats. Dan stood on mine, but I remained sitting—was feeling too sick.

I remembered my grandma telling me if she ever felt like she was going to throw up, she’d stick her finger down her throat and get it over with, so she could feel better. I decided to try that. I mean, here I was, not only missing Love and Rockets, but missing my chance to share a seat with Dan Malmrose!

Yes, the guy standing on my seat is the guy I married.

So I went downstairs to the bathrooms. I wasn’t sure where exactly they were, and I saw a man and a woman standing in the hallway and asked if they knew. Turns out the women’s room was right next to where they were standing.

I was wearing a Tones on Tail tshirt, and the guy pointed at it and said, “They’re a pretty good band.”

A couple reasons this was funny:

• A couple of the guys in Tones on Tail were also in Love and Rockets, who were playing on stage above us at the time.
• The guy who told me they were a pretty good band was Kim Thayil of Soundgarden, and he’d just finished opening for Love and Rockets.

I went into the bathroom and tried to make myself puke, but just couldn’t do it. It’s harder than you’d think. Finger down my throat, gagging, etc—but no puking.

So I went back out into the hall and asked Kim Thayil if Soundgarden would do an interview for my friend’s ‘zine. He asked the woman he was with to give me Chris Cornell’s phone number. The woman I later figured out was Chris’s wife and the band’s manager.

I gave his phone number to my friend Colin so he could do the interview. I’m not good at that kind of thing. But Colin never did call him.

After that, Soundgarden were always my favorite local band. I don’t have any pictures of them from the Love and Rockets show, but I do have a picture of Love and Rockets:

That’s Daniel Ash playing sax.

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