My reference to the sinking ship had to do with how huge TAD was right out of the gate in '89 and the band's slow fall from grace.
There was the whole Sub Pop thing going on with all the other bands (Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Nirvana, etc) and life was good. Then Nirvana broke big and, combined with the other local bands that had signed to majors that were getting unprecedented success, the waters were rising giving a major lift to all those core bands, including TAD.
Then they signed to major like everyone else (two, actually) and were eager to share in the riches and spoils that their contemporaries were enjoying. But due to a string of missteps and calamities (both internal and external), fortune and larger fame was not to be. So as they were getting dropped by their last label, management, publicist, guitar player, and finally their drummer... well, that's when I got the call.
They really were one of those seminal bands, but it was all short-lived and all the really good stuff happened before I got there. In fact, I was more of a footnote in their history, basking in their residual glory - which was still pretty dang cool; I got to play a some arena-sized venues to thousands both as headliners and as support for bands like Rage Against The Machine and Henry Rollins while touring through Europe. Not bad for a band doing a nosedive, right? But things petered out eventually and the band found a permanent berth a few miles below the iceberg.
Anyway, during their first tour of Europe with Nirvana, where they were co-headliners back in '89, Tad got sick a lot for whatever reason and Kurt Cobain stepped in to help the band through the set from time to time. Sometimes, they even played together:
