The Living

During their short run in the early 1980s, the Living delivered aggressive, fast-tempo punk that left almost no footprint at the time. Two members, however, later achieved far greater visibility: guitarist Duff McKagan rose to arena status on bass with Guns N’ Roses, while drummer Greg Gilmore later joined Mother Love Bone alongside Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, years prior to Pearl Jam. The handful of tracks the Living committed to tape capture a youthful, abrasive attitude shaped by the melodic directness of early British punk and the stripped-down approach of the Ramones, with rhythms and drive drawn from the American hardcore wave then prevalent. Their entire recorded output consists of seven songs cut in spring 1982; those tapes remained unreleased for nearly four decades until Loosegroove Records issued them in 2021 as the EP 1982.

McKagan was only sixteen when he helped start the Living, yet he already carried experience from earlier Seattle punk outfits the Fastbacks and the Vains. He brought in longtime acquaintance Todd Fleischman on bass; the pair had first met on a Little League diamond, and Fleischman’s reputation for toughness in confrontations proved useful. An advertisement led them to drummer Greg Gilmore, whose tastes leaned toward progressive rock and King Crimson in particular. Once vocalist John Conte joined, the quartet stood complete. Their most prominent appearance was an opening slot for Canadian hardcore stalwarts D.O.A.; they also performed at smaller venues alongside various other local punk acts. In 1982 the group entered a studio to lay down seven songs, but the band dissolved before the material could be issued.

McKagan and Gilmore promptly formed 10 Minute Warning later that same year. That project ended in 1984. In 1997, after McKagan’s success with Guns N’ Roses and Gilmore’s work with Mother Love Bone, Doghead, and Endino’s Earthworm, the pair briefly reunited for several shows and recorded a self-titled album released by Sub Pop the following year. In 2014 John Conte located the long-unheard Living masters; Gilmore had them digitized and handled the remix and mastering. After two unsuccessful attempts to arrange an official release, Stone Gossard—Gilmore’s former Mother Love Bone colleague—stepped in to issue the songs on his Loosegroove Records imprint. The resulting EP, titled 1982, appeared in both digital and 12-inch vinyl editions in 2021.