Longtime Soundgarden Manager Susan Silver on Rock Hall of Fame

In the fall of 1987, Ronald Reagan was president, Bon Jovi was the breakthrough band of the year, and mullets were still worn without irony by people who were not country musicians. Into that world dropped an orange-vinyl EP called “Screaming Life” by a band named Soundgarden — from Seattle, of all places — that combined the then-disparate sounds of punk and hard rock in a way that no one had really done before. In many ways, that EP represented the birth of grunge.

It would be drastically reductive to say “the rest is history,” but this week, Soundgarden will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame .

And after nearly 40 years of articles and books and documentaries and deluxe reissues and whatnot about the band and the scene, there is one key person whose story hasn’t really