I Found My Friends

by Nick Soulsby

  DANIEL RIDDLE: Krist and Kurt were roadies for their friends in a band called Earth, who opened for my band, Hitting Birth, one night. We all hung out in their Ryder rental box truck, smoking pot and talking about music. Kurt did not say much until my band mates mentioned that I had been listening to the new Pixies album nonstop, driving them all crazy. Kurt perked right up, exclaiming, “If you like the new Pixies album, you’re gonna love our new record. I rip the Pixies off on every tune!” Like a lot of people in that loose musical community of the time, he was funny and knew when to reveal his feelings.

  The brevity of Nirvana’s career often hides lengthy losses of momentum; mid-May to late October was only a blip before the anointed ruler of the Nirvana drum stool made his grand entrance; Nirvana genuinely didn’t know who would drum for them.

  GEORGE SMITH: There was this weird thing where Kurt asked me to audition to play drums, but it didn’t feel like an audition, it felt like “We want you to play drums” and we’ll go up to Seattle and see how it goes. But I didn’t realize he kinda handed out his business card to every drummer—I’ve gotten that sense since then! It ties into his response to me that he was waiting for me to call him but we’d left it that he was going to call me. He told me something like “I wanted you to love it and be so into it that you’d come back and beat my door down demanding to be in the band!” If he was flirting with a lot of musicians I can see him waiting for the one demanding to be in, the one interested enough. I was also somewhat reticent because by that point I’d heard that he was somewhat of a taskmaster … He had a distinct impression of what he wanted each composition to sound like and was not shy of telling each musician what they were going to play very precisely. I’d not been in a band like that—it wasn’t the way I liked to do things.

  JOSEPH HAYDEN, I Own the Sky: Kurt was frustrated and knew I was a pretty good drummer … Kurt expressed some concerns about Chad and the future of the band so I told him I was interested if a time came when, and if, they needed someone to fill that vacancy. I was given a cassette tape of some newer songs they had a demo recording of … I agreed to fly up to Seattle and see if things clicked … we ran through some tunes at their rehearsal studio. I remember we just played the songs through without Kurt singing any lyrics along. I also remember what a crappy-sounding drum kit was there and regretting not bringing at least my own snare and cymbals with me. It seemed to go pretty good and they assured me my playing was good. They were scheduled to play some shows with Dan Peters around that time up there. We talked about me moving up there.

  Nirvana’s musical friendships were good for throwing up candidates; the band considered J Mascis, who declined but passed the invitation to a friend.

  MATT HUNTER: My good friend George Berz was asked to fill that slot on J Mascis’s recommendation. He said no, obviously, largely to stay with his band Gobblehoof …

  LISA SMITH: We ran into him somewhere then went bar hopping. There were some great dive bars there that were not overrun with hipsters at that time. We ended up at this bar that serves clear Screwdrivers … mostly American Indians hanging there. We all got shitty drunk and Kurt leant over and threw up in the corner then ordered another! We were cracking up. Later that night Kerry [Green] was driving and our second bass player, Jennie Trower, and Kurt were in the back making out … Let me clarify: that was after his long-term girlfriend but before Courtney started stalking him. We like to give Jennie shit about kissing Kurt after he had barfed!… He also looked at me and said, “Hey, we’re looking for a drummer.” Think he was just being nice, but on a more serious note he asked about my friend Rey Washam in Austin because he was a big fan of his. Rey was one of my biggest influences out of the drummers that are still alive.

  They’d thought about another female drummer, Patty Schemel, and their old friend John Purkey auditioned with them too.

  JOHN PURKEY: Kurt talked about wanting to find someone like John Bonham; it made sense. That’s what he told me: “I want to find a drummer like John Bonham.” He was basically turning me down nicely.

  Part of the trouble was that Nirvana was centered on Cobain’s vision; not just anyone could play the rhythms in his head. When asked whether he actively plotted out drum parts, Tracy Marander recalls, “I didn’t see him doing it when we lived together, plus he had no drums in the house. I am sure, though, that that might be one of the reasons they went through so many drummers.”

  AARON BURCKHARD: “Floyd the Barber,” that bit at the end where we’re all playing the main riff—all of us together, then it’s just the drums on their own? That was my idea … Drummers don’t get much respect … Kurt would just show me what he wanted, then I could do my own thing; he didn’t mind that.

  RYAN AIGNER: “Mexican Seafood,” “Downer,” “Mr. Moustache,” for example … I remember Kurt physically sitting at the drum kit tapping out specifically what he wanted played, where and when for each one of these songs. He was writing the other musicians’ parts—but he wasn’t saying they couldn’t improvise. Like on “Love Buzz” when Kurt does the big blown-out feedback, phase-shifting solo, all that bass work Krist does, Kurt had nothing to do with it. That was Krist’s personal knowledge of music and theory and how that worked. Kurt didn’t have to teach these guys how to do time and tempo; they understood, they could do what was asked of them. He would simply say, “I wrote this song, I wrote a part for the bass, for the drums, and this is how it goes”—then they could play it. That’s not easy! Kurt told me one time, “Being in a band is not that spectacular. You can be in a very successful band like the Beatles and it doesn’t take this great amount of mechanical ability. You can have somebody that has 80 or 90 percent creativity and 10 percent mechanical ability and you’ll be a fantastic band. Or you can take a guy that has 99 percent mechanical ability but only 1 percent creativity and he’ll wither away in obscurity and no one’ll give a shit because he’s not creating anything.” My thinking about Aaron and Krist is they came to the table with that functionality. Aaron doesn’t need to be taught how to play drums; he knows how to play. Krist is the same way, he was capable—he’s a good guitar player even, he plays very nicely. Kurt got accomplished musicians.

  Having been offered a tour for eight shows in August, Nirvana temporarily shelved the hunt for a new drummer and got an old friend to join them.

  DAVE NAZ, Chemical People: We were big fans and they were very cool guys. Dale Crover from the Melvins was playing drums. The promoter had booked us in San Diego several times and knew we were big Nirvana fans and asked if we wanted to open for them. We were part of the Cruz Records family; ALL and Big Drill Car, later Skin Yard … Skin Yard were a good band with Jack Endino and Daniel House. Daniel put out the Kiss covers album with Nirvana, ALL, Hard-Ons, Chemical People … The grunge bands were always cool to us. There were no huge egos as far as I can remember … Keep in mind the capacity at the Casbah was one hundred people.

  DON FLEMING, Gumball: Sonic Youth, for many years, especially then, made a point of looking for what they thought were the most fun, cool local bands wherever they were playing and asking them to be on the bill—which is drastically different from the bands who come to town and either have a band who travels with them or just takes whatever band gets put on the bill. Nirvana was one of the ones they really loved and started doing more shows with.

  This was the first tour Nirvana had been offered without their own label mates. Also, Sonic Youth was at its reputational peak, so this was the greatest exposure Nirvana had yet had to show Cobain’s maturing writing.

  BEAU FREDERICKS: Hearing “In Bloom” for the first time at the Moore Theater show really impressed me. They were far better than Sonic Youth that night. And I love Sonic Youth.

  Back in 1988, Sub Pop had made the smooth move of arranging the marriage of their “crown jewels,” Mudhoney, to the underground’s most respected band.

  SHAMBIE SINGER: The fact that a Sub Pop band was splitting a single with Sonic Youth made Sub Pop seem like a bigger de
al. Sonic Youth was one of the super “big” alternative bands at that time, as I recall, in terms of airplay, record sales, concert turnouts, buzz.

  The rising label became a desirable association for ambitious bands; referring to their own single on Sub Pop, Hole’s bassist Jill Emery recalls, “It was definitely something that seemed like you heard more than any other place; it almost became manufactured, like, unless you were already doing it, and from there bands flocked there just like major labels later on wanted ‘their next Nirvana’ … this is where I say that was all calculated on Courtney’s part, not the music but all the business side. She would have made a great lawyer or business manager…”

  ERIC ERLANDSON, Hole: Hole’s first tour was a West Coast run in June 1990. We met Jonathan and Bruce, along with a few other Seattle scene luminaries. They saw us play, and after a bit of Courtney’s snake-charming, offered us a Sub Pop single. We recorded it in L.A. with a different producer a few months later. I flew up to Seattle with the master tapes in November 1990, and mixed it with Jack Endino. It was the same night of Nirvana’s infamous Off Ramp show. We worked late into the night comping Courtney’s vocals and never made it to the show.

  Sub Pop enjoyed the reflected glory and spewed out singles with most major names of the era. Its success rivaled that of the Dischord label, which, in the early ’80s, had made itself similarly synonymous with a city (Washington, DC) and a new sound (hardcore.) Sub Pop also shared some of the same challenges.

  DON FLEMING: Dischord in the early days had no interest outside of the bands that all sounded like Dischord bands, so that was fine, that was why it worked, but I think in their case they became successful as much as they did because the guys there worked so damn hard. It was a very small crew there that ran an extremely efficient label and did it very well. I think that’s sometimes the difference. I don’t think it’s even the bands who are on it—with some labels you get one band that sells a lot of records, or gets picked up by a major and the indie makes a lot of money, and that’s more the case with Sub Pop: they ended up with a few bands who sold a lot of records.

  Like Dischord, the label had ridden a signature sound into the dirt, had branded itself the grunge label and now faced difficulties broadening appeal.

  MARK DAVIES, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282: As far as Sub Pop goes, I think my attitude by then had become that Sub Pop was pretty narrowly focused on grunge, and I’m always a little disheartened when a genre starts to crystallize into a standardized sound. It seemed like that was already happening, and it made me somewhat disinterested in where it was going. But I don’t know if I was being fair to them, since I wasn’t tracking what they were doing very closely.

  Sub Pop’s bosses were barely into their thirties and unexpectedly successful.

  CRISPIN WOOD: Sub Pop put Seattle on the map in a big way, and the rest of the world came to associate Seattle with grunge as a result.

  DUANE LANCE BODENHEIMER: Bruce and Jonathan are highly intelligent people and have a great sense of humor—it was overwhelming for them. They were awesome, they thought they could make some money at it and joke about it at the same time—it was sarcastic. Then look what happened!… Bruce is a very down-to-earth guy, warm, nice human being … Loves music. Very supportive. We were shocked when they were like, “We want to put a record out for ya”—they did it. They helped us with a van and everything. Very grateful for that. We were all friends, so they just brought us in one day and said, “OK, record some songs with Jack, we want to put out a record.” So we picked some songs, took them to ’em; they released one single then we did a double single … It was real casual. No expectations. When the Wash CD was released, someone called it “the worst Sub Pop release ever.” We took that as a compliment. They also released some stuff by Poison Idea—one of my all-time favorites.

  MARK ROBINSON: K [Records] was all about having fun and making your art. Sub Pop wanted to be a commercial success. For the K release, Calvin just asked us to do it. Bruce at Sub Pop, the same thing. The Sub Pop thing seemed like a bigger deal, since their single-of-the-month club was so hugely popular, but it had been a dream of mine to do something with K for years.

  As well as having exhausted the hard-rock-meets-punk amalgam they’d built themselves on, an increased presence of non-Washington bands—even if they were the cream of the underground—diluted Sub Pop’s brand, making it look more like just another label.

  Meanwhile, Nirvana had settled the matter of their drummer, finding a friend with proven chops: Mudhoney’s Dan Peters was told he was now a full member of Nirvana. His anointing took place at a now-legendary September show at the Motor Sports International Garage in gloriously irreverent company guaranteed to ratchet up the excitement.

  BLAG DAHLIA: We didn’t give a fuck about the Pixies or the Vaselines or David Bowie. What kind of dipshits would like that?! The Stooges, GG Allin, and Paula Abdul were our grunge-era heroes … Nirvana were big fans of the Dwarves’ bass player, Saltpeter; they knew he could really play. They never expressed any support for the rest of us that I am aware of, but Kurt never wore women’s clothes onstage or jumped into a drum kit until we had done both things numerous times in Seattle and nationwide.

  DUANE LANCE BODENHEIMER: The Dwarves, they borrowed our drum kit the first time they came up—destroyed it, and we got into a huge fight then made up the next day and became best friends. I think that was a Halloween show. I was dressed up as a girl and when the Dwarves were playing I lobbed a bottle at Blag and hit him right in the forehead. He chased me around … A lot of people didn’t like us just because we were dicks, not intentionally so but … when you’re drinking and stuff … We weren’t violent—it was mostly internal violence, we would fight with one another a lot. Me and Neil [Rogers] would get into it onstage—don’t know what caused that, love the guy to death, best friends, always were.

  Certainly Nirvana playing in dresses wasn’t an uncommon move. Many minds thought alike.

  DANA HATCH: There used to be a big pile of trash in the back of that club and I’d look for some kind of prop to use onstage. That night I found this old Big Ethel–type dress and put that on. Merle [Allin, bassist at the time] gave me a wig he had and his girlfriend made up my face so I played in drag. When Kurt wore a dress on SNL a few years later I liked to say he got it from me, but it was hardly an original idea when I did it.

  The show kicked in with the Derelicts.

  DUANE LANCE BODENHEIMER: I’ve no idea how we ended up on the bill with them—we just said, “Yeah, OK, wow … we’re playing…” I had no idea how many people were going to be there—to us it was like a fucking arena … I remember walking out and seeing all those people, I got serious stage fright—it was awesome … When I came out there were a lot of rocker-type people there. I think I said some stuff like, “All right then, you long-haired hippies…” just talking some shit, stage banter, trying to be charming. A good show, a lot of our friends upfront yelling at us, calling us rock stars. There must have been over a thousand—to us that was … wow. To bands used to playing on average a hundred or less, that was scary.

  Then the Dwarves kicked off.

  BLAG DAHLIA: There was a charged atmosphere that night, that’s for sure. We were more concerned with getting enough gas money to get home, though. We drove up from San Francisco at Sub Pop’s suggestion for what turned out to be $100. None of the supposedly cool indie bands on the bill or allegedly cool Seattle promoters offered us anything else. But hey, they were the “nice” guys and we were a bunch of real “assholes” from California … I know that there was general fear of us because of the bloodshed at our shows, and a general fear of our onstage nudity and the female nudity on our record covers. Seattle was, and is, a very asexual place. Although, I always managed to get my dick sucked there!

  DUANE LANCE BODENHEIMER: Somebody threw a whiskey bottle and hit the Dwarves’ bass player in the face—he started bleeding. They had that whole violent aura about them—very confrontational.


  BLAG DAHLIA: I would have loved to have seen Nirvana that night. I had enjoyed their sets several other times all over the country. Unfortunately, our bassist was struck with a bottle thrown from the audience during our set and I spent the rest of the show at the emergency room with him. Concerned promoters, our label, and fellow bands on the bill all pitched in to help though, it was really beautiful … Psych! No one from Seattle helped out or gave a shit … The vibe around the band [Nirvana] that night at Motor Sports was more like dumb-ass drunk ex-jocks from Aberdeen in Kmart flannel shirts. And because it was the Northwest, fat chicks.

  The Melvins tore it up and finally Nirvana burned it down.

  DUANE LANCE BODENHEIMER: Kurt was really passionate … lot of punks didn’t like them, hated that “grunge” word too—I can’t stand that word. But Kurt was a purist, he loved punk rock; what they did was honest rock ’n’ roll. He loved all types of music—loud, dirty, real, honest lyrically. The really hardcore punk rockers weren’t big fans. It was simple, raw rock ’n’ roll. Krist came up to me after the show and was like, “That was a great set!” He was really nice. There’s a story before that when he and I were at a show, Poison Idea was playing, a fight broke out—Krist got in a fight, I tried to step in and help and he told me, “Fuck you! Mind your own business!” so he got his ass kicked, he was hurt, and I walked up to him, “Yup … should have let me help ya.”

  It was only here, in Autumn 1990, that Nirvana finally overtook their former mentors by ceasing to compete on someone else’s turf.

  BEAU FREDERICKS: For me, Nirvana was a good live band then, but they could not match up to the Melvins as a heavy intense rock trio. The Melvins were consistently crushing it live, as I am sure Nirvana would agree. Nirvana came into their own when they tapped into their melodic gifts.

  12.0

  New Blood

  October to December 1990