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 Maybe John Fogerty said it best: "Big wheel keeps on turning." When bands like Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, and Soundgarden made Seattle the rock 'n' roll capital of the 1990s, their success was seen as the commercial flowering of the punk rock movement that had fizzled a decade earlier. Certainly Nirvana and fragile front-man Kurt Cobain evoked the nihilistic crunch of punk, but the Seattle bands were equally influenced by the hard rock bands of the early '70s that preceded even punk.
The fact that the sound of Seattle owed as much to Led Zeppelin as the Sex Pistols suggests why these bands were so readily embraced by rock fans. Yes, these groups heard London calling, but they harked back to not just The Clash, but to Black Sabbath, and to American bands like Grand Funk Railroad as much as to the Ramones. It made sense that Pearl Jam would come to tour and record with Neil Young, who was himself dubbed the "Godfather of Grunge," because they had not just long hair and flannels in common, but a common affinity for dramatically droning guitars.
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