Nirvana

by Everett True

  1 The story of the first meeting in Charles’ book is astonishingly similar to what actually happened: the crucial difference is that Charles’ version is 18 months too early, and thoroughly embellished.

  2 Trendy US teenage girls magazine, loved among the alternative rock literati for being pro-Riot Grrrl, and for not patronising its readers. Editor Christina Kelly had a great project band, Chia Pet, whose Shimmy Disc 1992 seven-inch ‘Hey Asshole’ still kicks (male) ass.

  3 Nirvana didn’t actually play Portland until January 1989.

  4 The festival where several Hell’s Angels beat an innocent black man to death, right in view of Mick Jagger, and the subject of filmmakers David and Albert Mayles’ inspired documentary Gimme Shelter.

  5 And not averse to cashing in on her daughter’s fame either, as Linda Carroll’s shamelessly marketed memoirs Her Mother’s Daughter (2006) proved . . . a case of ‘like mother, like daughter’.

  6 “Number five: befriend Michael Stipe,” read one particularly prescient journal entry.

  7 Live Through This was released the week after Kurt killed himself, in 1994. In the UK, Hole’s first album, Pretty On The Inside, was released the same week as Nevermind . In Melody Maker, it was reviewed on the same double-page spread.

  8 Where do I start? Lydia Lunch’s first band Teenage Jesus And The Jerks – she was 16, and they were formed with all the anger and certainty of youth – encapsulate NYC 1978 better than any band this side of Television. She followed that up with 1980’s slinky and lustful cocktail, Queen Of Siam, and two decades of disturbing, abrasive spoken harangues. Courtney owes her a lot.

  9 That’s one interpretation. Another version has Kurt phoning Courtney to come over and bring drugs. She declined. She wasn’t into him.

  10 This last quote was printed as a possible fact in Select magazine after Kurt’s death.

  11 Jennifer is getting totally confused here – the show happened on October 25. The reason for her confusion might be because it was at the Palace that Courtney arranged to fly to Chicago the following night, where it is commonly accepted the pair first ‘got it on’.

  PART II

  THERE

  CHAPTER 16

  Excess All Areas

  It ends with a knock on my door at eight in the morning.

  Two obscenely aggressive security men storm into my hotel room, wanting to know if I’m hiding a phone anywhere. Seems one went missing the previous night after Kurt took exception to a painting hanging in Chris’ room and threw it out the window. Shelves, tables, sheets, glasses, mirrors followed – and then, a quick trip to Kurt’s room for more of the same. The televisions stayed, however – have you ever tried lifting one of those fuckers? All of this culminated in a prompt departure from Washington, DC the next morning, before the journalist has even properly risen.

  My clothes are covered in vomit, someone’s using the back of my head as a pinball machine, there’s a barbecue happening at the end of my bed and the rats in the back alley are so fat and complacent you can use them as footballs. It’s just another day on the road with Nirvana.1

  Two days earlier, tour manager Monty Lee Wilkes2 was picked up for questioning in Pittsburgh at two in the morning. The show that night had ended with some harsh words spoken between band and club, and later someone attempted to set the place alight – piling up cushions, seat covers and carpets in the dressing room downstairs and dousing them in petrol – and The Man figured Nirvana might know something about it.

  “That was a classic case of coked-out Pittsburgh Mafioso promotion,” Kurt assures me. “That club was the type of place that would have John Cafferty And The Beaver Brown Band3, Huey Lewis And The News and all those other professional bar bands. What’s rock’n’roll to them?”

  Nirvana had nothing to do with it. Kurt had merely smashed some bottles in the toilet and thrown a couple of things around. But, fair do’s, Nirvana have been responsible for their fair share of trouble in the past.

  “When we were in Europe,” says Kurt Cobain, backstage at DC’s infamous 9:30 Club, “we nearly set the tour van alight. No one knows it, but those Sonic Youth kids, they’re wild,” he continues, gleefully. “They were instigating violence and terrorism throughout the entire European festival tour; their manager [ John Silva], also. He antagonises people and leaves us to take the rap, beating us up, tearing our pants, conking Chris over the head with a bottle, turning beetroot red when he’s drunk. He’s wild.”

  Kurt is one of those people for whom the words ‘butter’, ‘melt’ and ‘mouth’ were invented. He looks angelic. Yet last time I saw him, backstage at Reading Festival, he had one arm in a sling after leaping backwards into Dave’s drum kit, and the previous time, his manager was sent a bill for God knows how much, after the band destroyed an LA apartment.

  Yes, Nirvana like to wreck stuff: Chris usually finishes a set by throwing his bass 20 feet into the air (and occasionally catching it). In Pittsburgh, Kurt rammed his guitar straight into the snare drum out of sheer frustration; in DC, he ran off the stage 10 minutes before the end to take a breather and throw up, it was so damn hot, before rushing back on to destroy the drums. New York’s Marquee was blessed with an encore that was just bass, drums and Kurt screaming melodically from somewhere within the audience, he’d fucked his guitars up so bad.

  Nirvana have a $750 equipment allowance per week.4 And Kurt hates cheap guitars! They live the classic rock’n’roll lifestyle (rampant vandalism) because it’s the only life they know, and because it’s fun. And, along the way, they’ve been responsible for some of the most invigorating rock music of the Nineties.

  One listen to their new album Nevermind confirms this. I’m up to about 230 and still have the opinion there’s no better record this year. Songs like the terribly open ‘In Bloom’, ‘Drain You’ and mind-numbingly fine single ‘Teen Spirit’ (something to do with a girl sitting alone in a room, or is that the aching lament ‘Come As You Are’? Fuck knows, fuck cares) are my life. No exaggeration.

  All I have to do is hear the opening strummed acoustic chords to ‘Polly’ or the all-out melodic, self-centred attack of ‘On A Plain’ and my mind flips. One note from Kurt’s torturously twisted, magically melodious scream on ‘Stay Away’ and my heart beats at my chest and makes a try for the heavens. Works every time.

  Meanwhile, back in the real world . . .

  “Yeah, I lit the curtains in our tour van on fire while we were doing an interview,” Kurt says. “This was a few hours after some other destruction. This representative from MCA5 gave us a gift, a wastepaper basket full of candy and magazines, with a little note welcoming us to Germany.

  “The gift had been lying in the dressing room for two hours, while we’d been doing our set and eating our dinner. During this time, Kim Gordon had written ‘ Fuck you’ underneath the woman’s signature on the note. So we saw this and thought, ‘Gee, that’s kinda peculiar, but we can make good use of the sweets.’”

  Kurt is a candy freak. Does anyone else buy those little wax bottles you drink about one cc of pop out of?

  “So we met the rep, thanked her and Chris proceeded to get drunker and drunker,” he continues. “He shot off a fire extinguisher, ripped up the magazines, threw the candy all over the place and destroyed the whole room, Sonic Youth’s dressing room, too. Classic rock’n’roll angst.”

  So the band went outside, the MCA woman came back, saw the note, assumed Nirvana had written it and threw a fit, threatening to drop them from the label. “By this time,” Kurt goes on. “We’d been doing interviews in the van for about an hour and I lit the curtains on fire, and we opened the door and this bellow of smoke came into her face. She thought we’d set the van on fire. The rumours were a bit exaggerated when they finally got back to MCA to the extent that we’d assaulted the woman and destroyed the club and completely burned out our van.”

  Rock’n’roll, eh kids? There isn’t nothing like the real thing.

  “In Belgium,” Kurt continues, “all the b
and trailers were very close together. Ours was right next to Sonic Youth’s, so we were throwing our fruit and chairs back and forth through the windows at each other, having a war. We climbed on top of trailers. We stole [Pixies singer] Black Francis’ nametag and stuck it on our door. We went into the cafeteria tent where there were some nicely decorated tables with flowers, very chic. We changed the nametags so the party of 12 Ramones and their friends had to sit at a four-seat table. And [ Pogues singer] Shane MacGowan was sat on his own at this really huge table being spoon-fed baby food because he couldn’t chew, so we gave him a plate of apples.”

  Everyone giggles.

  “There were about 30 of us sitting at the tables with Sonic Youth,” the singer adds. “Someone throws a carrot stick and someone throws a grape. Then someone else throws back some dressing and it turns into a huge food fight. We wrecked the food tent, but it was a lot of fun. If there were televisions there we would have thrown them out the windows.

  “We snuck into Ride’s6 trailer and stole their champagne,” he continues. “This guy who was with us, videoing the tour, peed in their champagne bucket. We stole all their flowers and candy too.”

  “We were doing a station ID for a station called Space Shower TV so Kurt goes, ‘Hi, I’m Dave from Nirvana, you’re watching Space Shower TV,’” recalls Chris. “And I go, ‘Hi, this is Chris from Nirvana and you’re watching Golden Shower TV,’ and they didn’t get it and said, ‘Oh thank you very much,’ and then the lady at MCA heard it and it got turned around that I told them to suck my dick.”

  Isn’t this rather rock’n’roll? Isn’t this all opposed to what Nirvana are about? I thought you were meant to “hate the average American macho male” (not my quotes). I thought you’d abhor such boorish behaviour as the province of Axl Rose and his ilk.

  “Well, no one does this stuff any more,” Kurt says. “They’re too scared. But that isn’t our point. We only do it cos we’re bored and we want to have fun. And we do – real sincere fun!”

  “I think the alcohol has a lot to do with it, too,” Dave adds.

  But doesn’t this sort of behaviour lead meek Limey journalists like myself to assume you’re just a bunch of redneck no-good delinquents?

  “We’re not boasting about it,” Kurt retorts. “You asked us.” I asked you? Me?

  “Yes, you did,” he replies. “You started the whole fucking thing!”

  “But at the same time, who fucking cares?” Dave asks. Dave woke up this morning on his mom’s couch to the strains of ‘Teen Spirit’. It was being used as background music to an advertisement for antique cars. He thought that was kind of cool. “It’s all entertainment,” he adds. “The people who’d call us stupid rednecks are the people who give us that champagne to pee in, are the people who put on those shows.”

  “Champagne,” Chris says disgustedly. “Like if there was a fifth of whiskey there, I’m going to drink champ-agne!”

  “Ride should have had that fucking champagne,” Dave sneers.

  “Make them stop staring at their fucking feet the whole time, goddamn it!”

  Do you think it’s a conspiracy that all this stuff never gets written about?

  “We want to keep it out the press so we don’t turn into a third-rate Sex Pistols,” explains Kurt.

  So how much do Nirvana love rock’n’roll? Let’s find out. “ Rock’n’roll?”

  asks Dave perplexed.

  Yeah!

  “When they asked Jesus how much he loved the world, they nailed his hands to the cross – ‘This much!’ ” Chris comments.

  C’mon guys. Let’s talk about rock’n’roll – Sammy Hagar, Van Halen, Warrant or whatever their damn names are!

  “They’re not even worth slagging,” Kurt replies, aware that I’m trying to wind him up. “Let’s just say I don’t want to be associated with 99 per cent of rock’n’roll bands.”

  “The Youth, the ’Honey, The Breeders, the Cross, the Knife, the Nails7, Fugazi – they’re the bands we like,” explains Chris.

  Do you provide an alternative to heavy metal? Courtney Love reckons ‘Teen Spirit’ is your anti-heavy metal song.

  “Why?” asks a perplexed Dave.

  I think she thought you were singing ‘heavy metal’ over and over again at the end.

  “A girl at the Melody Maker interview said [puts on English accent], ‘There’s a line in the song that says, “A metal band we’ve always been and always will until the end,” ’” the drummer replies.

  “Oh, we’ve been called an alternative band before,” Kurt sneers. “But we eat meat so I think we’re disqualified: chilli dogs, corn dogs, Jimmy Dean sausage breakfast.”

  “When I first joined this band,” Dave comments, “I was living on Kurt’s couch and there was an AM/PM convenience store right down the street where you could get three corn dogs for 99 cents. I lived on them for a year.”

  “It kept him regular too,” Kurt adds. “I knew when to avoid the bathroom, nine in the morning and 12 at night. He had to walk through my bedroom to get to the bathroom.”

  “That’s right,” Chris agrees. “I took a shit in your backyard once, because I didn’t want to stink up your whole house. It was really pleasant: warm and wet. Sweet!”

  I ask Kurt if he thinks he’s developing a rock star complex. It seems appropriate.

  “We talked about that,” he replies evasively. “I can’t remember what I said.”

  “What the hell?” Chris asks, shocked. “Where did that come from?”

  You were saying that sometimes you couldn’t work out what the matter is.

  “What did I say? Can you remember?” he asks pitifully, sounding like Courtney Love momentarily.8

  It’s something to do with wanting to weed out certain elements of your audience.

  “That’s true,” Kurt confirms. “The people who scream ‘Negative Creep’ throughout the entire show, even after we’ve played it, and who talk really loud during songs like ‘Polly’. Like, last night, that exact type of people were the ones yelling, ‘Sell out’ after we played because we didn’t do an encore, because we didn’t sign autographs. But what could be more rock’n’roll than that?”

  Anything else?

  “We went to this alternative commercial station today and I’d already vowed I would never do something like that again. It frustrates me and makes me feel ashamed to be in rock’n’roll. I thought it was going to be for a college station ad. We were supposed to play an acoustic set, but they didn’t provide us with the right equipment, and I stormed downstairs and had a cigarette with you and we shared a cookie.”

  We also had a conversation a few days earlier, in that weird street in Philadelphia where every other building was a witchcraft store and the queue for that night’s show doubled back around the block, where you said how little making music means to you any more.

  “That’s partly true,” Kurt replies. “That’s because if we ever had any conscious goals, we’ve already gone past them. We now have guaranteed distribution, we’ve gone up to a pretty high level on the underground circuit and that’s all we ever wanted.

  “We’re not going to be proud of the fact that there are a bunch of Guns N’ Roses kids who are into our music. We don’t feel comfortable progressing, playing larger venues.”

  You mentioned how people in Olympia ostracise you, for not being ‘pure’ enough, now that you’ve signed to a major label. We spoke about the bullshit this industry gives up and you even had an inspired rant against ‘rockers’ like Hagar and Halen in the van between NYC and Pittsburgh when there was nothing else to do but scarf junk food and flip through copies of Sassy. You mentioned the buzz you get from the after-effects of your troublemaking, the exhilaration of being confronted by a truckload of angry officials.

  “I’m disgusted with having to deal with the commercial side of our band at the moment and, as a reaction, I’m becoming more uptight and complaining more. And it feels like I’m adapting a rock star attitude,” Kurt explains, “but i
t’s just a reaction of disgust.”

  So we’re talking your classic white liberal guilt complex here, right?

  “What?” Dave asks affronted.

  “The only guilt that I have is that I’m bumming other people’s fun,” Kurt patiently replies. “I’m not pleasant to be around in those situations and I’m concerned that my bandmates might be having a bad time.”

  Why are you doing this right now?

  “Because I’m under contract,” the singer responds. “Because I’m in fear of having to go to court if I were to leave the band.”

  What would you be doing if you weren’t doing this?

  “I’d be a street musician, definitely. That’s my goal in life.”

  “It’s better than working a 9–5 job,” comments Chris.

  “All my fucking redneck friends who live around this area graduated from high school, started working gas stations or being personal shit-boys for other people, they’re stuck,” Kurt says. “I was lucky enough to get something done.”

  (Melody Maker, November 2, 1991, supplemented by the original transcript)

  ON May 29, two days after finishing recording Nevermind , Nirvana did a riotous, drunken show at Los Angeles’ hip, tiny, all-ages punk rock club Jabberjaw – donating all the door money to Mikey Dees once more, whose Fitz Of Depression were also on the bill. In the audience to hear ‘On A Plain’ and ‘Come As You Are’ being played live for the first time were Courtney Love and Jennifer Finch – there’s a bootleg where Courtney mock-screams, “Jennifer loves you, Kurt!” Kurt was messed up on drugs and alcohol, taking 15 minutes to change a string – not that the crowd cared. It was all part of the occasion.

  On June 10, Nirvana were on the road again; a two-week West Coast trip opening for Dinosaur Jr, with The Jesus Lizard in support, taking in Denver, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Portland, among other stops. Some new songs were incorporated into the set: ‘Drain You’, ‘Endless, Nameless’, ‘Rape Me’ – the latter, a disturbing gentle number with its repeated exhortation to “Rape me/ Rape me again, my friend” and its deliberate loud/quiet echoes of ‘Teen Spirit’. Indeed, it was almost like an answer song to the soon-to-be-ubiquitous single, pre-empting the furore shortly to surround Kurt and his band. I’m sure I wasn’t the only journalist close to them who felt a twinge of unease every time I heard Kurt howling those words: his antipathy towards the music press was well documented – distrustful of outsiders and latecomers by instinct, it always sat particularly hard with Kurt the way, post- Nevermind , people only wanted to talk to him because of his fame, not for his music.