I know. Candlebox.
Go ahead.
Get it out of your system.
I first started hearing about them not long after I moved to Seattle in ’92.
They were still a pretty new band then — Kevin Martin, Peter Klett, Bardi Martin and Scott Mercado — playing around town and trying to get somebody interested in their demo.
They did one of those label showcases at the Off Ramp and eventually Maverick signed them.
Yeah.
Madonna’s label.
Again, the ’90s were fucking weird.
Their first record came out in the summer of ’93.
I liked it.
Apparently that became an increasingly uncool thing to admit around here.
The funny thing is, they didn’t explode immediately. “Change” started getting some attention, then “You” took off, and by ’94 “Far Behind” was fucking everywhere.
Radio.
MTV.
Cars driving past with the windows down.
You couldn’t escape that song for a while.
And I still liked it.
Kevin could sing, Peter Klett was a really good guitar player, and those songs were built for rooms a hell of a lot bigger than the ones they started in.
Candlebox got lumped into grunge because they were from Seattle and happened to show up at exactly the right — or wrong — moment.
I never really heard them that way.
There was way more straight-up hard rock in what they were doing. Blues stuff. Classic rock. Big choruses. Guitar solos that actually sounded like guitar solos.
Around Seattle, that distinction mattered.
By ’94 they were huge.
I mean huge.
They played Woodstock. They opened for Rush. They went out with Metallica. The first record eventually sold something like four million copies.
And the bigger they got, the more shit they seemed to get for it.
Some people around here acted like Candlebox had somehow shown up late, copied the clothes, stolen everybody’s lunch money and walked away with a platinum record.
I never thought that was fair.
Were they part of the same underground world that produced Green River, Mudhoney or Skin Yard?
No.
Not really.
But they were a Seattle band.
They played the clubs.
They got signed.
They got fucking enormous.
That happened too.
And pretending otherwise because they weren’t cool enough misses part of the story.
Lucy came out in ’95, right when the backlash was already pretty ugly.
I actually like that record more now than I did then.
“Simple Lessons,” “Understanding,” “Best Friend.” It’s darker and less immediate than the first one, which probably wasn’t what anybody wanted from them after selling millions of records.
Then Scott Mercado left and Dave Krusen came in on drums.
Yes, that Dave Krusen.
Pearl Jam’s original drummer.
There’s the family tree again.
Happy Pills came out in ’98.
By then the world had moved on.
Seattle wasn’t the center of the universe anymore, radio had found a hundred newer bands to play, and Candlebox suddenly sounded like something from another part of the decade.
Which is weird considering the first record was only five years old.
They finally called it quits in 2000.
From what I understand, there was plenty of record-company bullshit involved by the end.
Kevin’s got another band going now, Kevin Martin & the Hiwatts. I haven’t heard enough of them yet to have much of an opinion.
I still put the first Candlebox record on sometimes.
And yeah, when “Far Behind” comes on, I usually let it play.
Maybe that makes me uncool.
I work in a record store.
I got used to that a long time ago.
