Nirvana

by Everett True

  “The Melvins also had a band called The Meltors where they would play covers of Mentors songs. Krist Novoselic would be their singer.30 The Melvins were always doing goofy stuff like that; opening for themselves or having their friends sing.

  “I wish I could say the first time I saw Kurt sing was a brilliant performance. I can’t. I just know I saw it. I have a visual picture. It’s Kurt in a trench coat in a big empty room, risers borrowed from the college; Buzz with his little Les Paul and one of those flower-shaped rubber things from the bath so you don’t slip was stuck on his guitar, but I don’t remember the music. About that time I started a band with Dylan, Mike Nelson [aka Mikey Dees, singer with fiery Olympia punk band Fitz Of Depression] and Kurt Flansberg called Nisqually Delta Podunk Nightmare.

  “The first Nirvana show that I remember, I did not see. Tracy was a part of our crowd. Then there was this new girl who worked at the coffee shop everybody went to, Tam Orhmund. Tracy and Tam became best friends. One day I heard that Tracy and Tam both had huge crushes on one of the Melvins kids in Aberdeen, Kurt Cobain. They both decided he was going to be their next boyfriend so they went down to Aberdeen to visit him and Krist.

  “I’d known Krist for years as the one cool Melvins guy, but I didn’t know Kurt during that time. So I went with them to Aberdeen to see Dale Crover’s new band – that’s how we were talking about it. Dale’s band was going to play at this party because his parents were out of town. The house was full of scary Aberdeen people, mostly heavy metal people. Earlier that day, we went by the house where Kurt was living – it was a squat. I was disgusted by it and we were only there for a couple of minutes. I saw the turtles in the tub and I was like, ‘Well, where do they bathe?’ Then we went thrift shopping. The show itself was boring and scary and nothing was happening. It was just this one project band. I’d seen lots of parties where project bands had played. It was like, ‘OK, Dale Crover is going to play really good drums and these other two losers are going to fuck around and play blues scales.’

  “Once I saw it, I realised, ‘This is not a band playing, this is everybody getting wasted and then there’s going to be a jam session.’ After three hours I got tired of it so we left and went to the Smoke Shop and had coffee. Then the band that turned into Nirvana played. I’m pretty sure that was their first show but I didn’t see it because I got tired of waiting. Two weeks after that, they played at the Tacoma Community Theater. I think they played with us, and they were called Skid Row31 for that show.”

  What was Krist like back then?

  “Tall and drunk.”

  Any particular habits?

  “Yeah, getting up on a table and dancing on it till it broke, or setting off a fire extinguisher in a crowded apartment until nobody could breathe and ruining the party. He would call drunken people bitches and think it funny, but he would get people mad instead. He would get so drunk he would inevitably do something inappropriate. The Melvins loved having people like that around – people who would inevitably make a fool of themselves.”

  NOTES

  1 Three highly individual and idiosyncratic artists. Boredoms play a frequently hilarious but always deadly earnest Japanese noise-skronk-thrash that often threatens to topple over under the weight of its own ingenuity. Sonic Youth define US independent rock music (OK: Sonic Youth, Beat Happening and Ian MacKaye). And Captain Beefheart was notable for melding manic, twisted and alien dance rhythms to blues-rock at a time (the Seventies) when having a moustache virtually condemned you to a life of pomp mediocrity.

  2 Ian MacKaye – through Fugazi and his Washington, DC label Dischord – gave voice to a thousand thrashing emo rockers at a time when youth was frowned upon. MacKaye refused to be co-opted, and almost by accident invented ‘straight edge’ via his first band Minor Threat: the attitude that says music alone is enough for the body (certainly not drugs or alcohol, being capitalist inventions to keep the worker satiated). Dead Kennedys were the US answer to the acidic anger of Sex Pistols two years on, tackling politics head on with such singles as ‘Holiday In Cambodia’. Bikini Kill were three girls and a boy from Olympia, WA inspired by DIY culture and the pressing need to right the patriarchal hegemony of rock’n’roll.

  3 “The Wipers started Seattle grunge rock in Portland, 1977,” Kurt told me. “Their first two albums were totally classic, and influenced the Melvins and all the other punk rock bands. I write very similar lyrics to [singer] Greg Sage. Sage was pretty much the romantic, quiet, visionary kind of guy.”

  4 From Olympia. Beat Happening’s music was a mix of warmth, hostility and gladness straight out of the adult-rated version of Huckleberry Finn. Poignant and direct, deceptively childlike, the trio mixed dark metaphor with fuzz tone. Much of the music that you read about in these pages follows on directly from their two-chord, no bass, call to arms.

  5 Jimi was a native of Seattle: a statue honouring him still stands, rather incongruously, at one end of Capitol Hill.

  6 Apparently, Kurt was a fast sprinter.

  7 Or perhaps I amended the quote myself to make it read funnier. There was a lot of that going on back in those days.

  8 Two reasons why the UK will never understand America: The Grateful Dead and The Dave Matthews Band.

  9 ‘Stairway To Heaven’ was the staple try-out riff in guitar shops across the Western world for nearly two decades, although some shops would levy a £5 fine for playing it. In a weird twist of fate, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ briefly replaced it at the start of the Nineties.

  10 Appropriately enough: The Kingsmen’s raw-assed 1963 version of the garage classic ‘Louie Louie’ is one of the most famous rock songs associated with Washington state (even though The Kingsmen themselves were from Portland, Oregon).

  11 Sammy Hagar was an Eighties soft rock star renowned for his ‘poodle’ hairdo. He later joined Van Halen.

  12 Kurt himself claimed to have seen Hagar play when he was in the seventh grade, which would have made Kurt 12 and the year 1979.

  13 Kurt’s journals were made public after his death by his wife, against his express wishes.

  14 Melvins took their name from an Aberdeen Thriftway shop assistant’s name tag.

  15 San Pedro, CA art punk group featuring bassist Mike Watt, heavily influenced by Captain Beefheart – the Minutemen’s early songs were frantic, angular one-minute bursts of aggression and humour.

  16 Short for Millions Of Dead Cops, Millions Of Dead Children or perhaps Millions Of Damn Christians.

  17 Rollins was notable for his tattoos and fiercely misogynist statements. A talented poet and stand-up comedian, he went on to become an MTV presenter and currently performs for US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  18 The Minutemen were a clean-cut early Nineties metal band from NYC – often confused with grunge. Singer Page Hamilton had formerly been in the far more interesting, sonically dissonant, feedback-heavy Band Of Susans.

  19 Singer Shannon enjoyed playing trumpet wearing nothing more than a big hat and a bigger smile. Cows were almost avant-garde in their shuddering, feral blast of noise matched to surprisingly melodic pop structures.

  20 The triumvirate of Hüsker Dü, The Replacements and R.E.M. helped invent ‘alternative rock’ in the Eighties by adding a soulful, melodic edge to their abrasive punk influences. Particularly awesome is Hüsker Dü’s 1984 album Zen Arcade and their mind-blowing cover of The Byrds’ ‘Eight Miles High’ (also 1984). The Replacements played exuberant, blues-tinged rock, shown off to great effect on their debut album, 1981’s Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash. Even R.E.M. were OK, once upon a time . . .

  21 Bob Whittaker was Mudhoney’s manager for years, and is currently R.E.M.’s tour manager: anyone who knows him could see his drunken fingerprints all over the 2004 Peter Buck ‘air rage’ incident.

  22 He fled it a second time a few months after retiring there in 1991 when the Serb artillery started pounding the nearby town of Zadar, returning in 1994.

  23 Great band, and surprisingly mainstream; A
kron, Ohio’s Devo ploughed a staccato, spasmodic groove with mordant satirical lyrics similar to that of David Byrne’s art school punks Talking Heads – their debut album, 1978’s Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! , is pure warped genius.

  24 Warren was also Kurt’s guitar tutor.

  25 The title’s lower case is deliberate: reflecting kill rock stars’ disdain for the machinations of the recording industry.

  26 The Cramps were one of the great early US punk bands: dressed in fetish gear and wallowing in the same primal slime that spawned Sixties garage outfits such as The Rats and The Sonics.

  27 GESCCO was run by Beat Happening’s Bret Lunsford and Olympia artist Lois Maffeo, among others. According to Slim, GESCCO was “just a dumb acronym to impress the college into giving us some funding. Actually,” he adds, “it stands for Greater Evergreen State College Community Organisation – nobody knew that, I’m just a total nerd.”

  28 Producer Steve Albini’s relentless, superb, drum machine-led, Eighties noise band. When Big Black split, he formed the equally uncompromising Rapeman with Scratch Acid’s David Wm Sims. Both bands were brutal in their minimalist, almost industrial beats and malevolent lyrics – and gave vent to the paranoia of urban living with strictly focused bursts of rage: incessant, nasty and oddly tinny.

  29 Project band – like a one-off or a side-project.

  30 The Mentors were a joke Eighties hardcore band that had (crap) songs about sex and related topics. Their singer, El Duce, claimed to have been offered $30,000 by Courtney Love to “snuff Kurt Cobain” in the ‘documentary’ Kurt And Courtney. El Duce was so clearly taking the piss out of the filmmaker, the guileless Nick Broomfield, it’s painful to watch.

  31 Skid Row was originally named after Yesler Way, a steep street leading down to the Puget Sound in Seattle. Lumberjacks used it as a ramp for sliding timber to a sawmill. It became synonymous with down-and-outs during the Thirties.

  CHAPTER 3

  Class Of ’86

  HERE’s the problem in writing a Nirvana biography: Kurt liked to construct myths around himself. It was part of his appeal. I recall being at the Cobain residence a few times when his biographer Michael Azerrad called up; Kurt would shout up the stairs to Courtney and myself, asking if we had any stories we wanted to pass on. Kurt exaggerated certain aspects of his childhood, ignored other parts and sometimes downright lied. Often he would do this to give additional weight to songs: so he would talk about living underneath a bridge in Aberdeen because it tied in with the lyrics to ‘Something In The Way’. Fact or not, it’s a great image.1

  There’s an apocryphal story about how Kurt claimed he bought his first guitar in return for the proceeds of some recovered guns. The strange thing is, Kurt never actually claimed this – but the falsity provided a useful stopping-off point for one journalist to pontificate about Kurt’s storytelling abilities. And now, because it’s been written that Kurt made the claim, the supposition that he was lying about that moment is now itself part of the myth. Confusion is layered on top of confusion. In reality, Kurt pawned the guns and spent the cash on an amplifier. The guns were dragged out of the Wishkah after his mother Wendy had thrown them in after a particularly volatile fight with her second husband Pat O’Connor. She was scared she might kill Pat if his guns remained in the house. So did Kurt buy a guitar with the proceeds, or an amp?

  Does it even matter?

  The second problem is – obviously – Kurt is dead. Others are at liberty to manipulate history in favour of how they would prefer Kurt to be remembered. He can’t refute it. One biography portrays his mother as promiscuous and uncaring. But Wendy had refused to talk to the book’s author: was the writer exacting revenge? In Kurt’s own words, his mother wasn’t so bad. Did Kurt kill a cat as has been claimed, or is this merely an example of the singer’s later infatuation with Sex Pistols’ bassist Sid Vicious? There’s a famous line in Sid’s version of ‘My Way’ that goes, “To think . . . I killed a cat”. Killing animals seems very out-of-character for him, but Kurt isn’t around to disprove the charge. And did he molest a “half-retarded” (his words) girl when he was 16 – his school called in the cops after her father complained – or was he simply guilty of exaggerating a certain incident in his own journal? It is possible to lie in your own diaries.

  Rock stars and actors – or those who manage and promote them – have always created myths to enhance their image, whether it’s simply a year or two clipped off a singer’s real age or a more elaborate romanticising of a mundane childhood. Kurt wasn’t the first to invent a past. Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Keith Moon . . . they all did it. It’s an accepted tradition.

  Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

  In December 1982, Kurt brought a guitar along to his Aunt Mari’s house in Seattle, where she’d moved after marrying – and with the help of her bass, some spoons and a suitcase2 made his first musical recordings.3 The sound was bare. “Mostly, I remember a lot of distortion on guitar, really heavy bass and the clucky sound of the wooden spoons,” she told Goldmine writer Gillian G. Gaar. “His voice sounded like he was mumbling under a big fluffy comforter, with some passionate screams once in a while. It was very repetitious.” Mari later revealed that she’d told Kurt he was welcome to use her computer drummer if he wanted. “I want to keep it pure,” he replied.

  Kurt called this recording ‘Organised Confusion’ – a name he would later sport on one of his home-made T-shirts.

  Being a nightclub performer, Mari Earl left her equipment set up in a corner of the dining room. “Kurt was probably about 10 when he started asking if he could play my guitar and sit behind the microphone,” she said. “I don’t have any vivid memory of what he sounded like, but he was very careful not to damage the equipment.”

  Soon, Kurt was developing a strong desire to get a band together, partly fuelled by revenge fantasies.

  “When I was about 12,” he told me in 1992, “I wanted to be a rock’n’ roll star. I thought that would be my payback to all the jocks who got all the girlfriends all the time. Girls wouldn’t even look at me when I was a little kid growing up, or at least until I was 15. I had this attitude that someday I’ll be a rock star and be able to get girlfriends. But I realised way before I became a rock star, when I was a punk rocker, that that was stupid. That was just because I was a geek.”

  It took him a while to discover the right vehicle for his talents. Early on, Kurt had auditioned for the Melvins, but failed. In the meantime, he began writing his own songs – ‘Wattage In The Cottage’, ‘Ode To Beau’ (a song poking fun at a fellow classmate who’d killed himself ) and ‘Diamond Dave’.

  In August ’84, Kurt drove up to Seattle to see Black Flag with Buzz Osborne and Matt Lukin. One Nirvana book wrote that Kurt claimed in “every interview he did later in life” this was the first concert he saw. This is more myth making, perhaps fuelled by the journalist’s desire to make Kurt Cobain seem less cool. Cobain never claimed anything of the sort: but by writing that he did, it makes it look like he was overtly concerned with making himself seem cooler than he really was.

  In April ’84, Kurt lost his virginity in the haphazard way that teenagers often do. Stung into action by his stepfather’s boasts of how sexually active he’d been at Kurt’s age and how Kurt must be a ‘faggot’, Kurt picked up a couple of girls at a party and took them back home. One passed out drunk: the other, Jackie Hagara (whose own boyfriend was in jail), stripped off and joined Kurt in bed. Right at that moment, his mother walked in and unceremoniously threw the teenagers outside into a raging storm. The threesome walked over to Jackie’s friend’s house – just as they arrived, so did Jackie’s boyfriend. (Sounds unlikely? Don’t question the myth!) Kurt ended up sleeping with Jackie’s friend.

  Wendy didn’t want him back.

  Kurt’s possessions were packed into rubbish bags: the next four months were spent flitting between friends’ houses – a cardboard box on Dale Crover’s porch (where the Melvins also rehearsed) �
� and hallways in Aberdeen apartment buildings. He even returned to his birthplace, Grays Harbour Community Hospital, where he’d crash out in the waiting room with a friend. He then moved back to his dad’s place in Montesano, where Don persuaded Kurt to talk to a navy recruitment officer, pointing out that at least they’d provide shelter and food. Kurt spoke to the officer once and then refused to see him again.

  It’s been claimed that Kurt flirted with religion, encouraged by his friend Jesse Reed, whose parents Dave and Ethel were born-again Christians.4 Whatever the truth, Kurt moved into the Reeds’ spacious North River house that autumn.

  Dave wasn’t a typical Christian youth counsellor. He’d been playing rock music for two decades; he was the saxophonist in cult Sixties garage band The Beachcombers5; and there was plenty of musical equipment around. It soon became obvious, however, that things weren’t working out – Kurt skipped lessons to smoke pot and, by May 1985, dropped out of high school altogether, rejecting the idea of a possible art scholarship. Kurt was a bad influence on Jesse, convincing his impressionable friend to skip classes. Dave Reed got Kurt a dishwashing job but it didn’t last.

  It was at the Reed residence that Kurt first jammed with Krist: nothing auspicious, just a few bad heavy metal licks and a couple of artless Cobain originals, Kurt and Krist and Jesse fooling around . . . 6

  Krist Novoselic graduated from high school in 1983, a few months after meeting future wife Shelli Dilly, whom he first encountered after he overheard her praising The Sex Pistols’ album Never Mind The Bollocks – she recognised him as the “class clown-type guy, always joking”. Soon afterwards, Shelli dropped out to work at McDonald’s, while Krist got a job at the Foster Painting Company.