Having interviewed Mark Arm for Mudhoney cover stories in Backlash (1989) and Hype (1991) magazines, a book project (The Encyclopedia of Northwest Music), and perhaps the quintessential profile of the almighty Thrown-Ups (published in Eastside Week, no less), there was nothing left to ask him about his bands.

Which turned out to be a good thing, actually. As a singer, guitarist, and sometimes drummer and keyboard player, he's been at the center of a ton of significant Seattle-based bands: Mr. Epp and the Calculations, Green River, Mudhoney, Bloodloss, the Monkeywrench and the aforementioned Thrown-Ups. But I knew Mark was also a guy from a good Christian home on the Eastside who must have lost his way somehow. And I was determined to get the real untold story...

What was the show you went to that made you think: "I want to do this, I want to be in a band"?

I think that kind of happened before I ever even went to a show. I grew up in this fundamentalist household and my mom liked strictly classical music, so rock 'n' roll wasn't even allowed. As a kid, I remember going into the garage - my parents had a Volkswagon bug - and you could turn on the radio without turning on the ignition. So I would listen to KJR and hope for "Green-Eyed Lady" or something. More often than not it was "Billy Don't Be a Hero," or "Afternoon Delight." Every once in a while I got a good song. So I think one of the main attractions for me is that it was so completely forbidden.

Did you get into Kiss and the other sorts of things high school kids liked in the late 1970s?

I didn't have any older brothers or friends, so I didn't have anyone to guide me through it. So there were some really bad steps made there. The first album I ever bought was Sweet's Desolation Boulevard; that was a very lucky move. And there was a time when I was really into Rush; which culminated in me going to see them in '78 or '79. This is something I was looking forward to for a long, long time, and I actually fell asleep.

How did that happen?

We were up front waiting for the show to happen, suffered through .38 Special, and then ended up looking for seats that just happened to be as far away as possible and still in the Coliseum. And the show was just these little figures, two of whom would just kind of move back and forth on this tiny stage way down there. There was like this slow-moving movie projection behind them and it was just boring as hell.

I saw a couple more coliseum/arena type shows. It seems almost every show I saw either Loverboy or Angel City was opening up.

I saw the Kinks show where the guy fell through the ceiling. Things were so bad for a kid around 1980 - what was there that a kid could go to? There was a Sammy Hagar concert I went to just because it was New Year's Eve, and that was, of course, awful.

And then later on that summer, Devo came to town and it just basically changed my whole view of what a concert going experience should be. It was in the Showbox which has bouncing floors - everybody was bouncing, everybody had a smile on their face, everybody had a good time, everybody was involved, no one was sitting back watching what the band was doing. I worked my way up to the edge of the stage. I remember reaching up and touching Bob I or Bob II's guitar - and him knocking me over the head, like "Cut that out!" I was just "That was great." Y'know, it hurt. But that was fucking great. That wasn't what made me think I could play, but that's what made me realize there was still something good about rock 'n' roll.

How did Mr. Epp get started?

We were already knocking around with tape recorders and making noise with vacuum cleaners and recording them and hitting on things. But, at the time, it seemed like if oyu wanted to be a musician, you had to already be a good musician to be one. The whole idea of picking up a guitar and daring to get onstage without knowing what you were doing was just so completely out of line.

(Mr. Epp) already had these songs and we were thinking that maybe we were going to play a show. Then we saw the Fartz open up for the Dead Kennedys. Those guys were horrible, but they were great. And (we were) thinking that if they can do it, we can do it. We had Darren, who was a really good drummer - we figured he would keep a beat and we would just play whatever.

I seem to remember in the early days of Green River you were kind of looked upon as a joke band. People saying "Oh it's just Mark and those guys goofing around."

Maybe. That never really crossed my mind. There's a certain amount of goofing around no matter what I do. But even the Thrown-Ups I still take seriously on a certain level. A lot of what was happening at the time of Green River was discovering some of the stuff I missed in the '70s. Like I missed Black Sabbath and I missed Alice Cooper.

And the Dead Boys?

Well, I was aware of the Dead Boys already - I had pretty well brushed up on my punk rock history. And it doesn't take a huge leap to go from the Dead Boys to early Alice Cooper.

And one of the most obvious things for me to say, about profoundly changing my life in terms of the course of music, was hearing the Stooges for the first time. I remember you could buy Raw Power in the late '70s for $3.00 as a cut-out record. But you couldn't find the other two records. (Then I found) this one record store that had these imports and they had one Canadian copy of each (The Stooges and Funhouse). So I remember one week going in and buying the first record, taking that home, and then going back to get Funhouse. That definitely set me off on a detour - for the rest of my life.

It's hard for me to rank those records, because they're all so close to my heart at this point. I don't even need to hear those records any more. It's like I can click a switch in my head and the song plays. The whole bored vocal approach on that record...it was like hanging out in front of the drug store in Kingsgate, trying to act cool.

There's something about a concept like "Now I Wanna Be Your Dog." You think: "Of course. Why didn't I think of that?"

Or even simpler, "No Fun." It's such a simple concept, but the kind of thing that no one dared say, especially in rock. It was like "Let's all have fun. Let's get our kicks tonight."

What was your first sign that some Seattle bands were becoming a major success?

We went out on this tour for Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, and when we left we were going to be headlining a show at the Paramount with Nirvana (after the tour), and when we got back they headlined the show.

Or maybe the turning point was that classic movie, Singles.

My big question from that movie is that I have a platinum record for the soundtrack, so that means it sold at least one million copies. And our song "Overblown," that means at least a million people and probably a lot more have heard that record. The (full-length release) of ours that came out around that time, Piece of Cake, was probably our biggest selling record, it sold about 150,000 copies. It means there are 850,000 people out there who have heard us and just said no. that's the way I look at Singles.

I have to ask you about (the Mudhoney song) "Into Yer Shtik" - when it came out, everyone read it as a slam on Courtney Love, but I've never heard you actually say that.

It was meant to be broader than that. The whole idea basically formed into my head of someone being into their shtick...where it's this kind of pose that they've adopted. We're in Chicago for a couple days and Dan (Peters) was hanging out at some club and Steve Albini was there. And Dan went up to him and said "Hi my name's Dan and I'm in this band Mudhoney, and I just wanted to say I really like your stuff." And Steve just says "I know who you are" and turned and walked away.

And it's like "Fuck you, what's that all about?" What's the point of being so incredibly rude to someone? It just seemed unreasonable. Dan never did anything to this guy.

So the next night I went out and I just happened to run into Steve Albini. So I walked up to him and took this opportunity to shake his hand and said "Hey Steve, good to see you again. I'd just like to say I really like your shtick." And I just walked away. And that was like the germ of that whole idea.

One thing that surprised me about writing a Northwest music history book was hgow many bands either never broke up, or have a reunion show once a year or so. Do you see Mudhoney doing that sort of thing?

Oh, I don't know. I don't see playing a Green River show or a Thrown-Ups show or a Mr. Epp show ten years from now. I think those bands are safely put to rest.

So, what is it about Mudhoney that has endured?

I have no idea; you're talking to the wrong person. You should probably be talking to a musicologist.

Is Monkeywrench sort of your main band now?

Ask me in different weeks throughout this year, because it'll be shifting back and forth. Like in 2000 we did a fair amount of traveling for Monkeywrench, which isn't going to happen this year. We'll be getting a new record though. The same is true for Mudhoney (next show, May 11 at the Croc). Dan said maybe in August we might be able to go out for a couple of weeks. He just had a kid though, and he's really tied down. Tom in Monkeywrench is really tied down, too; he just had a kid. Responsibilities are killing rock 'n' roll.

Is this something you envisioned as a 20-year-old, that you'd still be playing in bands and working around family and that kind of stuff?

As a 20-year-old I couldn't even conceive of being 30.