Nirvana, Soundgarden, and the Taliban: The Jason Everman Story

In case you missed it over the holiday weekend, the New York Times Magazine has a fascinating story about Jason Everman, a Green Beret who participated in the initial stages of Operation Enduring Freedom and Afghanistan (and by extension, the hunt for Osama bin Laden)* and numerous other capture/kill missions during multiple deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq before retiring from the Army in 2006 to pursue a degree in philosophy from Columbia University.

But as interesting as Everman's military accomplishments -- about which he says little -- may be, what makes him uniquely interesting are the "failures" that Everman overcame before enlisting. Specifically:

Jason Everman has the unique distinction of being the guy who was kicked out of Nirvana and Soundgarden, two rock bands that would sell roughly 100 million records combined. At 26, he wasn’t just Pete Best, the guy the Beatles left behind. He was Pete Best twice.

Okay, so this may be at best tangential to manhunting/counter-terrorism. But given that Seattle Grunge was the soundtrack of my youth (i.e. Soundgarden at Bender Arena in DC was my last concert before reporting for active duty at Ft. Sill back in 1994), this easily makes Everman one of the coolest military/CT stories of the past decade.

* Given that the article's author, Clay Tarver, notes that Everman was "one of those bearded guys riding around on horseback in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban," I'm making the assumption that he was in Afghanistan sometime between October and December 2001, when the SOF fought as "Horse Soldiers" alongside the Northern Alliance. If our SOF still used horses after Tora Bora, Everman may have not actually had anything to do with the hunt for bin Laden, in which case . . . this is still a pretty cool story, and Everman is still just as impressive!

Jason Everman (top right) with Nirvana in 1989

Everman (top) with Soundgarden



Everman somewhere downrange more than a decade later . . . Thank you for your service, Jason!