Susan Jean Silver (born July 17, 1958) is an American music manager and businesswoman, best known for managing Seattle rock bands such as Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Screaming Trees. Silver also owns the company Susan Silver Management, and co-owns the club The Crocodile in Seattle. Silver was named "the most powerful figure in local rock management" by The Seattle Times in 1991. In 2025, Variety called Silver "one of the most important female managers in music history".
Susan Jean Silver was born in Seattle, Washington, on July 17, 1958, to Emmogene Molly (Jean) Silver (née Higman) (1924–2017), who had Irish heritage, and Samuel Wilson Silver (1916–2015), who was born in North Dakota to Jewish parents from Belarus. She has two younger brothers, an older half-sister from her mother's first marriage, and an older half-brother from her father's first marriage. Her mother worked at Boeing in her early twenties during World War II as part of the war effort. Her father was the fourth pilot hired for Alaska Airlines and represented the company as one of many pilots that participated in Operation Magic Carpet in 1949–50, where he flew approximately 1,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel.
Silver played keyboards and clarinet during her youth. In college, Silver took choral classes and loved singing, but she said she realized she was bad at it and never considered being a musician as a career.
Silver majored in Chinese at the University of Washington.
Silver had attended all the major concerts in Seattle since she was 15. She started by booking concerts for the club The Metropolis and Sub Pop co-founder Jonathan Poneman's club parties. After The Metropolis was closed, Silver was putting shows on wherever she could find a venue, without working in a particular club. Later on, she was doing production work on bigger shows, such as working on catering or in the production office for the biggest promoters in Seattle. Silver organized shows for bands that were underground at the time, such as Soul Asylum, Faith No More, Meat Puppets and Sonic Youth.
Silver started working as a music manager in 1983. Her first clients were the bands The U-Men and First Thought. In 1985, Silver met Soundgarden, whose lead vocalist was her then-boyfriend and future husband Chris Cornell, and in the following year she started managing the band. Back then, Silver was also managing Screaming Trees. Silver said she became a manager because she wanted to help musicians achieve their dreams.
At the same time that she was managing rock bands, Silver was also the manager of a John Fluevog shoe store in Seattle where several local musicians would hang out. The store would become famous years later for selling the Dr. Martens boots worn by several members of Grunge bands from Seattle, which along with flannel shirts and jeans became known as "Grunge fashion". One of Silver's employees at the store circa 1987 was Kevin Martin, lead vocalist of Candlebox, when he was still a teenager and before the band was formed.
In 1988, Silver met music manager Kelly Curtis. Curtis and his friend Ken Deans owned a company, and Deans was the manager of the band Alice in Chains. Deans gave Silver an Alice in Chains cassette tape and she liked it. Silver then went to an Alice in Chains concert and thought they were fun and very energetic. When Curtis became interested in working with the band Mother Love Bone, Deans decided that he did not want to work with Alice in Chains anymore, so he offered the managing job to Silver and Curtis, who started co-managing the band. Curtis and Silver passed on the Alice in Chains demo tape The Treehouse Tapes to Columbia Records' A&R representative Nick Terzo, who set up an appointment with label president Don Ienner. Based on that demo, Terzo signed Alice in Chains to Columbia in 1989, and the band released their first studio album, Facelift, in 1990, which became the first album from the grunge movement to be certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Some time later, Curtis started managing the band Pearl Jam, and Silver became the sole manager of Alice in Chains. Alice in Chains' guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell was living at Silver and Cornell's house at the start of 1991 when he wrote the band's hit song "Rooster". In the early 1990s, Alice in Chains' lead vocalist Layne Staley enrolled in several rehab programs, but he failed to stay clean for long. During the band's tour in support of their 1992 album Dirt, Silver hired bodyguards to keep Staley away from people who might try to pass him drugs, but he ended up relapsing on alcohol and drugs during the tour. Alice in Chains stopped touring in 1996 and Staley became a recluse.
Silver had other jobs until her work as a music manager became her full-time paying job in 1991. She also founded the company Susan Silver Management.
In May 1990, Seattle-based record label Sub Pop sent Nirvana a new proposed contract, but vocalist Kurt Cobain was reluctant to sign it, complaining about the label's lack of promotion for their debut album, Bleach. Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic consulted Silver for advice because she had helped Soundgarden sign with A&M Records, and she looked at the contract and told them they needed a lawyer. Cobain and Novoselic asked Silver to be their manager, but she declined the offer because she was busy with Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Screaming Trees and other bands, but she promised to help them. A few weeks later they met Silver in Los Angeles and she introduced them to agent Don Muller and music business attorney Alan Mintz, who specialized in finding deals for new bands. Mintz started sending out Nirvana's demo tape to major labels looking for deals. MCA Records expressed interest, but the band ended up choosing DGC (part of Geffen Records) following advice from Sonic Youth, and the label released their hit album Nevermind in 1991. When Nirvana was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014, Novoselic thanked Silver during his speech for introducing them to the music industry properly. "There aren't many things I regret about my life, but of course not managing Nirvana was a mistake", Silver said in 2022.
Shortly before Cobain's death, Silver received an emergency call from his wife Courtney Love asking for help because she feared that Cobain would kill himself. Silver told Love that first she needed to make sure that she and her daughter were safe, then she helped Love and Nirvana's manager get in contact with Lou Cox, a New York doctor who had helped Alice in Chains and Aerosmith through their recovery, but they ended up choosing a different interventionist and the intenvention they staged for Cobain (that Silver was not a part of) did not go well and he ended up killing himself in April 1994. Following Cobain's death, Silver organized a private funeral service in a church and a simultaneous public candlelight vigil for him at Seattle Center.
In 1996, Silver was featured on Doug Pray's documentary Hype!, talking about the Seattle music scene. Pray said about Silver in a 1997 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times: "In a world where the music industry is a really crazy place, Susan is an island of sanity."
Among Silver's clients in the 1990s were the bands Hater, Inflatable Soule, Crackerbox, Sweet Water, Sponge, singer Kristen Barry, and producer Terry Date.
In 1998, Silver retired from the music business to concentrate on her family. In 2005, Silver and Deborah Semer formed a new company in Seattle, Atmosphere Artist Management. Their first client was the music and dance group Children of the Revolution.
Alice in Chains was inactive from 1996 until 2005. After lead vocalist Layne Staley died of a drug overdose in 2002, the band only performed in public again in February 2005 for a benefit concert with guest vocalists in Seattle. After that experience, the band called Silver and said they wanted to tour as Alice in Chains again. The band released their first album with new vocalist William DuVall in September 2009, Black Gives Way to Blue. The album debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 chart, and was certified gold by the RIAA in 2010 for shipments in excess of 500,000 copies in the United States.