December 1989. The beginning of a story that took 35 years to tell fully.
Before Soundgarden were on the cover of Rolling Stone. Before Superunknown sold four million copies. Before Chris Cornell became one of the most iconic voices in rock history — there was a Tuesday night in Phoenix, Arizona, and a pro skater who drove across the desert because he wanted to see his favorite band.
The Night It Started
Kevin Staab was already a professional skateboarder when he founded 90 The Original in the late 1980s. Based out of Arizona — where the brand's office, warehouse and sewing operation were located — 90 was built around skateboarding culture, but Kevin's world extended far beyond the halfpipe. He was a music fan, especially The Cult and Seattle's band Soundgarden.
On December 5, 1989, Soundgarden played the Mason Jar on 23rd Street and Indian School Road in Phoenix. Tuesday night. 9pm. Kevin showed up specifically for that show — not as a random attendee, but with a purpose. He had brought two 90 designs with him: the Classic Logo and the Stretch.
After the show, he convinced Eric - their tour manager to high five band and have them box of 90 stuff ."They were amazing on stage," Kevin would later say.
Two Days Later
Soundgarden drove to Los Angeles.
On December 7, 1989, they walked into the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip. Inside that night, they recorded what would become Louder Than Live — one of the most important documents of early Soundgarden, a VHS that captured the band at full force before the world knew who they were.
Outside the Whisky, someone took a photograph of Chris Cornell. He is wearing the Stretch. The first 90 tee he ever wore. Two days after Kevin handed it to him in Phoenix.
Six Weeks Later
The story didn't end in Los Angeles. On January 14, 1990, Soundgarden played the Vic Theatre in Chicago alongside Voivod and Faith No More. Three days later, on January 17th, legendary Chicago rock photographer Paul Natkin photographed the band.
Kim Thayil is wearing the Stretch.
Two members of Soundgarden. Six weeks apart. Same tee. They weren't paid to wear it. They weren't asked to post about it. They simply wore it because they liked it — because a pro skater from Arizona drove to a Tuesday night show in Phoenix and handed them something real.
The Phone Call
A few weeks after the Phoenix show, Kevin received a phone call. It was Chris Cornell, calling from Seattle. He invited Kevin up to visit, to hang out, to see the city. Chris was into skateboarding — genuinely, not casually — and he had connected with Kevin the way musicians and skaters sometimes do, through a shared language of counterculture and craft. Kevin went to Seattle. He visited Soundgarden in the studio. What started as a box of tees handed to a band after a show had become something else — a friendship, a connection between two worlds that were never as far apart as people thought. Skateboarding and grunge. 90 The Original and Soundgarden.
The Stretch
Of the two designs Kevin brought to Phoenix that night, the Stretch was the one that caught their attention first. It was one of our very first designs — fluid, abstract, unmistakably 90. The kind of graphic that looked like it came from somewhere else, somewhere between surf culture and psychedelia and the raw energy of what was happening in Seattle in 1989.
Last batch was printed around 1992-1993
Now
For the first time since 1992, the Stretch is back. We didn't bring it back because it was popular. We brought it back because the story deserved to be told completely — and because the tee that started this connection between 90 The Original and Soundgarden deserves to exist again, in the hands of people who understand what it means. It's available now in the 90 store, alongside Kim Thayil's new book A Screaming Life — Into the Superunknown with Soundgarden and Beyond, which we've just added to the 90 bookstore. The story that started on a Tuesday night in Phoenix in 1989 is still being written.
Photography credits: Cornell outside Whisky a Go Go, December 1989 — [photographer unknown]. Kim Thayil, January 17, 1990 — Paul Natkin. Soundgarden 1993, Eddie Maluk
