Did King’s X Invent Grunge? Frontman Doug Pinnick Has Thoughts.

The debate over where grunge started will probably be debated for eons, but one school of thought is that Missouri-born rock band King’s X invented it.

In a recent interview on The Lounge With Jake Ellenbogen, King’s X frontman Doug “Dug” Pinnick was asked about when, in the early ’90s, Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament went on MTV and said that “King’s X invented grunge,” at a time when his own band was catapulting the genre to notoriety in the mainstream.

“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,” Pinnick said, as transcribed by Blabbermouth.

“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,” Pinnick 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.”

He then explained that King’s X guitarist Ty Tabor “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.”

“It was the easy thing to do, I think,” Pinnick added. “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.”

Pinnick went on to explain, “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 went on to share. “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.”

Pinnick also reflected on how Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was such an industry and culturally changing song when it was released, marking the end of glam rock/hair metal as the world’s dominant rock sound.

“Well, they wiped out the germs, if you wanna look at it in a pharmaceutical way of looking at it,” Pinnick said. “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,” Pinnick concluded. “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.”