If you have ever visited a bookstore, library, or any other place that might hold books about music and the arts, then you have most definitely seen the name Greg Prato. Over the years, the New York-based journalist has done a lot of research, interviewed a plethora of artists, and attended many a concert, informing the mountain of books he has written. From Pearl Jam to Iron Maiden, bassists to drummers, yacht rock to heavy metal, Prato has had something to say on the matter. His sprawling collection of books inspires various levels of music lovers all around the world and encourages them to dig a little deeper into the genres and bands that they either love or know nothing about. Prato’s most recent book, Alternative for the Masses: The ‘90s Alt-Rock Revolution—An Oral History, takes a deep dive into one of the most exciting decades of music. He covers the force of Nirvana, the rise of female rockers, the power of MTV, and more, and does it all through the 60+ interviews he conducted. We recently caught up with Prato to go over some of the content, where we learned about the creative process, favorite chapters, and his own opinions on the alternative rock genre overall.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and time.
Hi, Greg. It’s nice to meet you. I just have a few questions for you about your new book Alternative for the Masses. It’s an oral book, so instead of you presenting the information yourself, other people are providing their viewpoints throughout. So, how did this come together for you? Did you know who you wanted to include or did people come forward and ask to be included?
It was pretty much me reaching out to people. I’ve actually done a few books in this oral history style. There’s a book I put out in 2009 or 2010 called Grunge Is Dead, which was about all the Seattle bands, and that was in the oral history. So, this is a little bit related to that—the same time and era—but not strictly Seattle. So, I went back and watched old episodes of 120 Minutes, and there’s a very good site that lists all the videos that 120 Minutes ever showed, and it reminded me about a bunch of the artists that I may have forgotten about. Ever since the 90s, I’ve kind of always listened to these bands. It wasn’t like I totally forgot about that style of music, but there were some that, by doing this book, I got reintroduced to. But, it was pretty much me remembering what was going on at the time, ‘cause I was lucky enough to be of age that I was witnessing it as it was happening. I was going to shows and buying the albums as they were coming out, so it was a little bit of everything putting this book together.
Was there anything from the interviews that you did that stood out to you or resonated with you?
Yeah, there’s quite a few things. There’s the famous story, which I think I finally got the true story, from Ian MacKaye from Fugazi about what happened with the whole… There’s been rumors over the years that he turned down a million dollars to sign with a major label. It’s based a little on that fact, but it wasn’t exactly that, and we finally got to the bottom of it. I asked him straight up what was the true story, and he was able to finally set the record straight. There’s also, I interviewed Jerry Casale from the band Devo many years ago for a book I did called MTV Ruled the World, which was about the early years of music video, and he was a fantastic interview for that. So, I knew for this book, it’d be interesting to speak to him because he directed a lot of the videos from that time in the ‘90s. I didn’t know he had great stories about working with Foo Fighters, Soundgarden, and also the band Silverchair.
At the beginning of each chapter, you have a little blurb on what’s going to be discussed throughout the chapter. How did decide on this format?
Yeah, those blurbs. You know, after I would do the chapter and after it was edited, I guess I just went back and I just kind of tried to set the stage for what was gonna happen. I’ve had some books where I just go right into it, and it seems like it’s better to set the stage a little bit because not everybody knows the story. There are some people that are kind of familiar with ‘90s alternative rock, but by reading this book, they may learn some new stuff and also maybe refamiliarize themselves. And there’s other people that know nothing about it, so I kind of have to look at it from both angles. I figured that starting each chapter with a little blurb that kind of sets the stage would make the most sense.
For everyone you featured – did you have them broken up or did you have groups that you interviewed at various times?
Yeah, no interviews were done in person. It seems like nowadays, most interviews are never done in person, like it’s always either through Zoom or over the phone. So for this one, I’d say 75-80% were done through Zoom, the rest through phone. It was never more than one person at a time. There were a few people that I have contact information for, just by speaking with them in the past, so I was able to get in contact with them directly. Then it’s easy nowadays just going through websites, publicists… I can’t remember who, but there were probably also some instances of people putting me in contact with people as well. So, it was a mixture of each. I don’t think anyone got in contact with me though saying, ‘Oh, I hear you’re working on a book, I’d like to be involved.’ It was really me reaching out to people and seeing if they were interested or not.
How long were you working on the book overall?
I’d say the interviews—probably four, five, six months, something like that. Again, not to pat myself on the back, but I’m kind of well-versed in this era of music ‘cause I was such a fan of it. I was watching 120 Minutes pretty regularly at the time, going to the record store once or twice a week to buy the latest albums, going to shows… So, I kind of knew the outline of what the story was gonna be. And then just speaking to people, they kind of filled in the blanks and I had them tell the story. Of course, when you’re doing a book and you’re interviewing people, you don’t know what they’re gonna say. So, there’s things that people bring up that are surprises, so it’s not something that you’re planning. Also, I started with a set list, but then after a while, people bring up topics I didn’t even think about. After a while, you’re not following a set list of questions, you’re kind of letting each person you’re speaking to dictate the types of questions you’re gonna ask.
Which chapter was your favorite to put together?
Hmm. Well, okay the last two because the last two are the stories behind the albums and also stories of the songs. Like I say in the book, with the songs—if you make a playlist on Spotify, it’s actually an outstanding playlist. It’s a very cross-section of great music from the ‘90s. So, those are probably my favorite, but I also enjoyed the chapter about women in rock. I remember in the ‘80s, I was still a teenager, I was listening primarily to heavy metal. With heavy metal in the ‘80s, it was pretty much all white and also all male. Something I noticed with alternative music is it was women, it was people of all different races and colors… It was a much more inclusive group of people, and they’re much more politically-minded, which was very refreshing. That’s something that I definitely wanted to include in the book, so that’s why I felt like I wanted to have a chapter just about that. Also, the section about drugs I just found also kind of interesting. I know that topic has been discussed a lot, but still, I thought it was kind of interesting that some people were pretty brutally honest. Al Jourgensen was pretty honest about his drug problems, Cris Kirkwood from the band Meat Puppets was also very honest. So yeah, those are some chapters off the top of my head that stand out.
There’s a point toward the end of the book that gets into how music kind of rotates and things come into the mainstream again. Do you think there’s a chance that alt-rock could be at the forefront again like it was in the 90s or do you think it’s on its way out?
Well, I think it was Corey Glover from the band Living Colour that I spoke to for the book had a great quote. It was something like, ‘Yes, it will happen again, but it’s not gonna be like what you think. It’s gonna be like a shoegaze band fronted by a rapper,’ or something like that. I think Corey Glover said something else interesting, that he thinks that it’s probably gonna come from the hip-hop world, which I think he’s right. I, admittedly, don’t listen to too much hip-hop, but it seems like hip-hop by and large almost replicates what hair metal was in the late ‘80s. It’s all same-sounding and it’s all very predictable. It’s gonna take someone like a Kurt Cobain that totally is fearless and goes against the grain and speaks out and brings it back to a more realistic type thing. So yeah, to answer your question, I think that it could come back, but it’s not gonna sound like what we think it would sound like. If it does, then it’s just gonna be what we saw in the mid-to-late ‘90s, where you have third and fourth-rate Nirvana rip-offs which, that would totally defeat the purpose. It’s gonna have to be someone doing something totally unique.
In the beginning of the book, there’s mixed views of when punk broke and when grunge happened and when alt-rock formed. Do you remember your experience of that, like how do you remember the timeline?
Well, I was too young to experience punk in the ‘70s, but yeah, it goes back to even The Stooges in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s. The Stooges, MC5, Alice Cooper could even be traced back to as the roots of punk. But for me, I could tell something was going on. If I’m thinking back to ‘88/‘89, at that point, I had just discovered Jane’s Addiction. But the first band that really, really struck a chord with me was the band Faith No More. They put out the album called The Real Thing, and I would say a band like Faith No More, also The Smashing Pumpkins’ album Gish and also Soundgarden—those bands, for me, really bridged the gap between the heavy metal I was listening to and the alternative rock that I was about to start listening to. It really connected the dots, and I know it did the same for all my friends at the time too. You know, it seemed like one month, we’re going to see Aerosmith and Metallica at a big arena, then a few months later, we’re going to clubs to see Primus and bands like that. You know, I personally never moshed or crowd surfed, but experiencing that is totally different to being in the 200th row at a big stadium. To actually be 10 feet away from Shannon Hoon, who’s jumping off and crowdsurfing, it’s a totally different thing than seeing Steven Tyler like 200 miles away, you know?
My favorite part was at the end of the book with everyone sharing their favorite albums and songs and bands, which you mentioned earlier. What are some of your favorite albums and bands from that time?
My favorite album of the ‘90s alternative movement is always Blind Melon’s Soup. That album, when it came out in the summer of 1995, I remember being very surprised that it was not a hit. But it was a really groundbreaking, great album, and when I first heard it, it didn’t hit me right away. It took a maybe like a week or two to get into it, and I really got into it. Sadly, of course, Shannon Hoon died just about two months afterwards. So that album, I haven’t stopped listening to. I always go through phases every year of listening to it, and I think it sounds as great today as it did back then.
By going back and doing this book, like I said earlier, I rediscovered some albums I totally forgot. I remember back in the summer of ‘94, I was obsessed with the Lush album called Split. I don’t know why I didn’t listen to it in so many years. Probably because I made it a point to interview Miki from the band Lush for the book, and when I was getting ready to do that interview, I went back and listened to all his albums and was blown away by that album. I don’t know why I stopped listening to it, but that album is definitely one of my favorites. I also love the Shudder to Think album called Pony Express Record. That’s an album at the time when I first heard it, I thought it was just very weird sounding. But again, it’s one of those albums where the more I listened to it at the time, I enjoyed it. And then over the years, again, it’s an album I can listen to repeatedly. It’s just so cutting-edge and different, especially at that time. There’s some mainstream ones, like I love Gish and also Siamese Dream from The Smashing Pumpkins. Those are two fantastic albums. Badmotorfinger and also Superunknown from Soundgarden are albums that I continue to listen to. Faith No More’s Angel Dust is also a great album. Those are the ones kind of off the top of my head. Yeah, oh Primus’ Sailing the Seas of Cheese was great. Jeff Buckley’s Grace. Those are probably the ones that stick out the most for me.
My final question is, if people like Alternative for the Masses, what are some other books of yours that you would recommend for them to check out?
I would recommend the book I talked about before called Grunge Is Dead, which is about what was going on in Seattle. It traces the whole entire Seattle movement from before grunge happened to after the whole entire wave took over the whole world. That one I’d probably point to the most. Also, the other book MTV Ruled the World because that’s in the ‘80s, but there is a lot about the alternative rock music of the ‘80s and also how MTV had a very big say in what was also going on with music. That was a very interesting thing as well, and then I’ve also done books about certain alternative rock bands. I did a book about Mark Lanegan simply called Lanegan that I put out as a tribute to him after he passed away. I went back and listened to a lot of his albums and totally rediscovered what a fantastic lyricist and also singer he was. He put out two books shortly before he passed away that were great, great books. The only thing is with those books, it was just his point of view explaining what was going on with his friendship with Kurt Cobain and The Screaming Trees and everything. So, I got in contact with former bandmates of his, friends, collaborators, producers, and we got kind of like his story but the other side of his story, and I think that’s a great companion piece to his books that he put out. So, those are the three books I would recommend people check out.
Alternative for the Masses: The ‘90s Alt-Rock Revolution—An Oral History by Greg Prato is out now via Motorbooks, an imprint of The Quarto Group. You can purchase a copy here.
Learn more about Greg Prato and his work here.
