Did KING’S X Invent Grunge? DOUG ‘DUG’ PINNICK Weighs In

In a new interview with The Lounge With Jake Ellenbogen, KING’S X frontman Doug “Dug” Pinnick was asked about PEARL JAM bassist Jeff Ament’s declaration in the early 1990s, at the height of his own band’s success, on MTV that “KING’S X invented grunge”. Doug said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “It was really, really, really, really so cool for him to say that, especially when nobody else would, especially those who would agree with him, who wouldn’t say nothing. And it meant a lot for him to publicly say that. ‘Cause I’ve been told how influential KING’S X has been by almost every musician I’ve run into, but very few will make a big statement about it. They’ll mention the classics… And for us, I think we just carried the torch of a type of music that needed to be explored.”Drop D tuning isn’t nothing new,” Doug continued. “We just decided to play [THE BEATLES’] ‘She’s So Heavy’ in Drop D tuning. That’s about it. Drop D country music with BEATLES singing. Because Drop D tuning is basically bluegrass music. And Ty [Tabor, KING’S X guitarist] listened to bluegrass when he played it, when he was in grade school and stuff. His dad and his brother, and his brother played banjo and so he comes from that. And he would play these riffs with this Drop D thing, and he just took the distortion up, and there it is. And grunge happens. And it was the easy thing to do, I think. And I think that when a lot of people heard the difference in the sound of when you Drop D tune, it’s just a different tone. And we weren’t used to it at the time. Everybody’s used to it now. It’s, like, everybody’s even lower. It’s not even special anymore. Drop D tuning is, like, what’s that? That’s, like, weak. It really is. Now, regular Drop D tuning is, like, ‘Huh?’ Yeah, we got KORN, we got MESHUGGAH. Fuck that. But back in the day, just Drop D was, like… METALLICA was in E. And that was the heaviest shit. SLAYER, that was the heaviest shit we ever heard. Now, every now and then, Eddie Van Halen would drop his E string down to D, and Tony Iommi would tune down on some BLACK SABBATH stuff, but at the end of the day, the whole Drop D way it’s played and how you phrase it and stuff is a unique way that bluegrass players play. And it’s an easy, simple way.”Someone told me one time that the easiest way to change the world with your music is make up something cool that any kid could play as soon as he picks up a guitar,” Pinnick added. “So think about when grunge hit — from HELMET to you name it. FILTER. I mean, within six months there was like a whole another wave of music. And people said it was grunge because it was grungy like Neil Young.”Reflecting on how NIRVANA’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, upon its release in September 1991, wreaked confusion upon the hair metal vanguard, putting an end to an era dominated by glamorous, androgynous and sparkly rock stars who absolutely saturated the radio waves and were almost exclusively what aired on MTV, Doug said: “Well, they wiped out the germs, if you wanna look at it in a pharmaceutical way of looking at it. We were just burnt out on late ’80s everything. And it was like a virus. Everything sounded the same. It was on the radio, it was on TV — everybody looked the same, the songs sounded the same. And when grunge came out, right before that, there was KING’S X, RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS, FAITH NO MORE and JANE’S ADDICTION, all within a year of each other. All of a sudden, there was this new thing that was happening. Nobody was following anybody, but we were all listening to each other. And kids wanted something new. And I think that because of those bands and KING’S X, the grunge thing, those bands kind of helped push people to look towards Seattle, which was coming out with some radical stuff that was inspired by these bands, I feel us included.”He continued: “I know that Kim [Thayil] told me, from SOUNDGARDEN, that he showed Chris Cornell Drop D tuning in ’85. And Ty wrote ‘In The New Age’ in 1985… So both bands had never heard of each other and had started writing songs in Drop D tuning. Chris and I both — I’ve gotten to know him before he passed away and stuff. We talked about tunings and all that stuff. And so there was like a neck-and-neck SOUNDGARDEN-KING’S X thing happening where we were that generation that was daring to do different tunings and different timings, and we had these two different singers. And you listen to some of the SOUNDGARDEN and KING’S X stuff, and there was times where you’re going, ‘Which band is which?’, like ‘Outshined’ and ‘Spoonman’ and ‘Black Hole Sun’ and stuff. And even though nobody’s gonna go, ‘Oh, that sounds like KING’S X,’ but I know that we were all listening to each other. Well, not all. There was always like one person in all those bands that was a KING’S X fan, the rest of them couldn’t care less. But that one person always would bring in that thing that pushed it towards that vibe, which was pretty cool. I mean, even PEARL JAM, they don’t sound like KING’S X, but put on the first record and listen to that rhythm section… That’s us, me and Jerry [Gaskill, KING’S X drummer] slamming that shit.”I think we all started to see this new thing happening. We all started pushing each other. We all became fans of each other. Everybody was going, ‘Uh oh, we found something, guys.’ And most of them would give KING’S X credit, but in the soup of everything, we were all kind of pushing each other’s buttons, in many ways.”Pinnick previously spoke about the influence KING’S X had on the grunge scene in the early 1990s during an August 2022 interview with Meltdown of Detroit’s WRIF radio station. He said at the time: “There was thing called Drop D tuning we did in ’88 when our first record came out. And almost the whole record was Drop D tuning.”Someone told me one time, they said, ‘The quickest way to get everybody to mimic you is to play something that any kid can play when they pick up a guitar immediately.’ And Drop D tuning, when you pick up your guitar, you can play with one finger up and down the neck,” he explained. “All of a sudden you’ve got HELMET and you’ve got — down the line, all these bands that were playing two-chord Drop D songs. And then ALICE IN CHAINS and PEARL JAM, they’ll all tell you that we influenced them.”I know Chris Cornell, and me and him were neck-and-neck sometimes writing songs. We’d talk about it. Somebody called me up one time and said, ‘You heard the new SOUNDGARDEN tune?’ And I go, ‘Why?’ And they said, ‘It sounds like a KING’S X ripoff.’ I go, ‘What was it?’ They said, ”Outshined’.’ And I’m going, ‘Yeah, it has that vibe.’ Somebody said ‘Spoonman’ sounds like a song Ty wrote. And we were making those records at the same time.”I remember talking to Chris when we were making the ‘Dogman’ record [and] they were making ‘Superunknown’, and we were laughing about how high we used to sing. And we made an agreement to sing lower on the record. And we got ‘Black Hole Sun’ and ‘Flies And Blue Skies’. So I think that me and him, I’m sure, we influenced each other and pushed each other.”I remember when [KING’S X’s] ‘Gretchen [Goes To Nebraska]’ came out, we went on tour. And I remember coming home after seven months and turned on ‘Headbangers Ball’ and every band was drop-D-tuned and they were all new — except for BON JOVI. All the rest of them, because of this whole new thing that had happened. And I’m going, ‘My goodness, they’re doing kind of what we do.’ And the screamers had disappeared, and those singers that sang real high to glam rock were gone. And people were grooving again and they were singing lower melodies. And that’s kind of what we were doing when we first came out. So if that was an inspiration to people, yeah, I’ll take that, ’cause we were just imitating people that we heard. [Laughs]”Pinnick went on to say that he has known the ALICE IN CHAINS guys “since before they got signed.” He recalled: “Layne [Staley, late ALICE IN CHAINS singer] did say to me, ‘Keep putting out, writing songs so we can keep ripping you off.’ He said that to Jerry, actually. But he told me that on ‘Rooster’, he said, ‘I was just doing Doug.’ And I gave him a big hug. And I love those guys. They were just young kids. I remember PEARL JAM, they didn’t have a record deal. And Jeff [Ament, PEARL JAM bassist] sent me a tape with TEMPLE OF THE DOG on the other side of it. And neither band was out. Back in the day, they looked up to us and they used to say, ‘We can’t wait till we can open for you guys and get record deals and stuff.’ And we thought that was so cute. And then they all get record deals and just blow us out of the water. They all did — every one of them. And I smile and look at them and go, ‘Man, I knew you guys when you were riding around in vans playing for nobody.'”I remember KING’S X was on the road with AC/DC, opening, and some of the guys from PEARL JAM and ALICE IN CHAINS came to the show in Tacoma, Washington,” Doug added. “And they were playing a little club. And they said, ‘Would you guys come to the show?’ And so after we got done playing, we went over to the bar, and ALICE IN CHAINS had MOOKIE BLAYLOCK, which was PEARL JAM, opening for them. There was probably, maybe 20 people in the place. And it was awesome. I remember watching Mike McCready and going, ‘This kid plays like Jimi Hendrix.’ He looked like he was 15. I loved them all.”So, yeah, we all go way back. And yeah, we’ve all kind of inspired each other in some ways, I think.”KING’S X’s 13th studio album, “Three Sides Of One”, came out in September 2022.[embedded content]