Nirvana

by Everett True

  Three days after the record release party, Nirvana played an in-store at Beehive Records in Seattle’s University District. It was notable for being one of the first occasions Kurt felt publicly overwhelmed by his new fame: the band was besieged by autograph hunters, fawning over Kurt, refusing to listen when he tried telling them about Bikini Kill, not allowing him any space. A year ago, he was their peer. Now he was their idol.

  Over 200 fans were lined up outside the record store built to take 50 comfortably. That was at 2 p.m. The event was scheduled for seven. When the show started, staff had to line up racks of albums in front of the windows to protect them: it was supposed to be acoustic but someone had brought along speakers – the crowd went crazy, slamming into the front like they’d learned to do from the ‘Teen Spirit’ video being shown on MTV. Even Tracy and Tobi were present, dancing. A couple of Montesano kids from Kurt’s old school showed up, demanding autographs – something that freaked Kurt out more than anything.

  Krist has cited this show as the moment when everything started to change, for the worse: “Things started to happen after that. We weren’t the same old band,” he lamented. “Kurt, he just kind of withdrew.”

  There’s a famous Charles Peterson photograph from that day, of Kurt sitting looking absolutely devastated, head held between his hands, on the brink of tears. “I was still fairly shy,” says Charles, “and the idea of these bands, that were going on the road and going through these press junkets, would come back here and have me shove my camera in their face was just wrong. The funny thing is that Kurt was painfully shy as well. So you get a painfully shy rock star and a painfully shy photographer, and it just doesn’t work. Kurt was sometimes a bit intimidating for me. Even more so once he became this supposed god-head, which he wasn’t.”

  Addenda 1: Kurt is cast out of Olympia

  Rich Jensen: “Calvin told me something about getting a call from Kurt while they were working on Nevermind in Los Angeles. It seemed to me it was about inquiring to be on the bill and playing. They had a conversation about the purpose of IPU, and given where Nirvana was at in terms of the rock music industry – something beyond just friends sharing things – it was agreed it wouldn’t be appropriate for them to play. IPU was for other communities to have an opportunity to thrive.”

  But, in a weird twist, Nirvana were partly responsible for helping launch kill rock stars because they had a track on that compilation album.

  “I would say it was Bikini Kill that launched kill rock stars, not a particular track on a compilation. I think kill rock stars was much more involved with an emerging social network. The Bikini Kill albums – because of what Riot Grrrl had already been in the fanzine community among young women and with the hype, particularly through Sassy magazine – sold 50,000 pretty darn quick. That’s independent of Nirvana. Olympia is a place that is so small, if anybody is working, you’re liable to be talking to each other about things and helping each other out if you’re on the same side of the revolution.”

  So I guess that conversation that Kurt had with Calvin about the IPU was fairly important. He referred to that conversation on several occasions afterwards to me, how he felt Olympia had turned its back on him. He might have felt that they were being deliberately exclusive and elitist.

  “One of the reasons why Nirvana is interesting is because, particularly in the figure of Kurt – Kurt was the most out with his personality, so we focus on Kurt – he encapsulates the problem of being a band of men engaging in this traditional macho practice while having sympathies that run completely counter to that practice. It’s a very complicated situation. It’s like, how far can this go? The quote should stop there, but in terms of what did Kurt think or what did Calvin think – it isn’t about anybody turning their back. I think Kurt understood that complication completely. It’s throughout his work and it’s one of the things that makes it worth talking about even today.”

  It is a point I need to make in my book. That casting out from Olympia, whether it was deliberate or not, it did happen.

  “It’s not just Olympia. You could look at revolutionary movements in Marxism. In order to try to advance an idea of a better world you come up with some measures. Before long, you’re finding some people high on the stick and some people low on the stick. Either you show that you think somebody’s low and they deal with it, or you don’t. It’s not just Olympia. It’s true that Olympia is a place where some of those formulations took place: the very idea that certain economic choices about how to go about making music could actually have importance in manifesting a better world. For 20 years that idea’s been banging around, and it’s generated a lot of noise. What that means is, it’s not just Kurt Cobain that’s been cast out. Almost anybody can find somebody that thinks they’re part of the problem, not part of the solution. The point is, I think people that might be down on Olympia might be more down on the process of even trying to figure out good from bad – solution from problem – rather than having an objection to a particular formulation of that.”

  “Kurt was pure and he was also insanely ambitious,” explains Courtney Love. “He wanted what he got, but because of his training, because of Olympia, he decided he didn’t want it. One has only to look at old Nirvana when Jason Everman was in the band, to see him posturing like Soundgarden but beating with a pop heart. Nirvana were exposed to Olympia, though – and none of that is talent-based and that’s where those people bother me the most, Everett. It’s not about talent, it’s about purity – it’s about having a manifesto and it’s bullshit.”

  Hold on a moment . . .

  “No,” Love replies. “I believe that Ian MacKaye had a sacred, divine vision but that by the time it got to Calvin Johnson it was elitist and un-inclusive and cutie-pie – and I’m not saying that because they ostracised me, there are plenty of scenes I love that I was ostracised by. Listen. Lois Maffeo 24 was my roommate, and I had Marine Girls and [ace late Seventies Swiss all-girl band] Kleenex played for me about the same time Kurt was getting that shit played for him, maybe even before. For him, it was a save because Olympia provided him with some pop – as did Teenage Fanclub and The Vaselines and The Pastels and all those cute personalities I didn’t care about. He was as aware as me of fame. He just couldn’t handle it.”

  Listen. Mariah Carey has so missed the point – it doesn’t matter how many damn notes you can hit. What the fuck is talent? The purest form of music is gospel. Mariah has nothing to do with gospel. Gospel is all about passion, purity – it’s not whether you hit the note, but that you try to hit the note. It has nothing to do with talent, and everything to do with passion.

  “You and me are absolutely in agreement on that, but that doesn’t apply to Olympia and its elitism and its lack of spirituality.”

  (The Stranger, February 25, 1999)

  Addenda 2: grunge lite

  How soon did bands start coming into Reciprocal and saying, “Can you make us sound like ‘Touch Me I’m Sick’ ” – specifically wanting to sound like a grunge band?

  “Oh, not until the early Nineties when everybody got self-conscious about it,” laughs Jack Endino. “Nobody wanted to sound like another Seattle band, people had too much self-respect for that. The people that wanted to sound like Seattle bands were not in Seattle. Everybody in Seattle was running from it as fast as they could. Sub Pop was running from it. I was running from it. Over the mid-Nineties I ended up working in 10 other countries just because people would call me up and pay my way; France, Denmark, Portugal, Australia, England, Germany, Holland . . . and I’d get these very earnest, slightly naïve bands who would be, ‘Oh, we love that Bleach album’ . . .

  “I stayed away from the ones who were obviously trying to be imitative because I don’t want to be the Leonard Nimoy of engineers, stuck in this one role for the rest of my life,” the producer explains. “It almost happened. It was just ‘Grunge, Grunge, Grunge’ for a few years until I was ready to scream. Right around ’92, ’93, that was everybody’s meal ticket;
‘Oh, we’ve got to sound like Nirvana, or the Melvins or Soundgarden’ . . . or, times a thousand . . . ‘We’ve gotta sound like Alice In Chains.’ That was the easiest blueprint for the suburban metalheads to follow because Alice In Chains made the transition from metal into grunge, whereas the other bands had come from punk rock. You couldn’t imitate Mudhoney convincingly. You could sort of imitate the mechanics of Nirvana but you’d end up sounding like bad Nirvana. And bands still do that today. The difference is they usually have a shittier singer, and no originality. It’s hopeless. You just want to make them stop. But everybody copped to the metal side of grunge and that was where the really bad horde of imitators came from, the Soundgarden and Alice In Chains side of the grunge equation. The people who were hair metal bands a few years ago and now they’re a grunge band.”

  Did you ever get people in the studio saying, “Wait, that sounds too much like a grunge album”?

  “Not that often, no,” laughs Endino. “Sometimes it would be me playing devil’s advocate, going, ‘You know, that sounds exactly like the second Black Sabbath record, third song, it’s the same riff, you sure you wanna do that?’ ‘You know, that sounds exactly like that AC/DC song on Let There Be Rock.’ I try to be a watchdog because people plagiarise more than they’d like . . .”

  NOTES

  1 The first I knew about any of this was wandering out on to the landing a few minutes after convincing the security to leave: the tour manager was hiding behind a corner, finger pressed warningly to his lips. “What the . . .?” “ Shh,” he admonished. “Don’t say anything. Get your shit together and meet us outside the hotel in five minutes. We’re leaving.” Later that day, we went to a barbecue thrown by Dave’s cool mum: “I don’t know, man,” Kurt said, laughing at my dissolute state. “If I’d drunk as much as you last night I wouldn’t even be alive.”

  2 Monty lasted as tour manager of Nirvana for just over a month, until October 29.

  3 Yes they do exist!

  4 Really? I think I invented this figure out of thin air.

  5 MCA were Geffen’s parent company.

  6 Ride were a classic UK guitar band of the time: renowned for staring at their feet on stage. Cynics might remark Coldplay used to sound uncannily similar.

  7 Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, The Breeders, Upside Down Cross (a spoof Satanic Boston hardcore group, that J. Mascis briefly played drums for), Shonen Knife, Nine Inch Nails (Trent Reznor’s poppy industrial Cleveland rock group) . . .

  8 Whom he had yet to start dating . . .

  9 A reference to the title of Sonic Youth’s second album.

  10 The title of 1991: The Year Punk Broke was inspired by a comment of Dave Markey’s, made when he saw Mötley Crüe struggling through ‘Anarchy In The UK’ live on MTV. “Wow, 1991 is the year that punk rock finally breaks,” the film director caustically remarked.

  11 Gumball were a demented heavy powerpop band from NYC. Singer Don Fleming also co-produced Hole’s Pretty On The Inside, Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque , Seattle pop band The Posies and Alice Cooper. When I caught up with the nascent Gumball, Don got me stoned and took me to a Greenwich Village chess shop where we did battle to the sound of three Greek guys screaming, ‘Master Dick!’ and betting openly on the players sitting at the table next to us. The only rules of the place were ‘no gambling, no eating, no iced tea’. Within five minutes we’d broken every rule.

  12 Famous porn broker – subject of the 1996 film The People Versus Larry Flynt , co-starring Courtney Love.

  13 In Dublin, Kurt found a rare OG copy of William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch – “He was happy as a clam,” remarks Dave Markey.

  14 Oddly, in 1990, Reading wasn’t ‘it’ at all – it was stuck in a morass of bad Eighties chart bands and sub-metal. MTV wasn’t the only institution to benefit from a grunge makeover.

  15 Silverfish were excellent madcap and noisy Camden types: progenitors of the ‘Camden Lurch’.

  16 The dancer’s name was Tony, the drummer from grungy Nottingham, UK band Bivouac.

  17 They probably did, however, due to the volume of seven-inch bootleg singles from the Nevermind sessions.

  18 Feederz were a situationist punk rock band from Arizona – Dave Markey is referring to the title of their 2002 album, Vandalism: Beautiful As A Rock In A Cop’s Face.

  19 Contrary to other reports, neither Mudhoney nor Hole played the 1991 Reading Festival.

  20 The Paperclip agency was a telephone number in the book of every USA band in the late Eighties. They brought over dozens of great and not so great American bands for European tours.

  21 A reference to the Smashing Pumpkins’ appalling 1991 album.

  22 Although it’s much more likely he slept on a friend’s floor.

  23 ‘Loch Ness’ is the best song recorded about a mythical underwater monster . . . ever!

  24 Later of the band . . . er . . . Courtney Love. Not sure if this statement of Courtney’s is true. Lois moved in after Courtney moved out.

  CHAPTER 17

  Beautiful, Beautiful Eyes

  “KURT had a straight choice. He chose. He wanted to bite that apple. He chose the darker, more interesting one, but that doesn’t make it right. Courtney’s position was probably that Kurt had no choice, because she had decided she wanted him – but he did. I think Kurt wanted to live out his junkie couple fantasy with her, like Sid and Nancy. That was his way out of the fame that had suddenly come crashing in on top of him. What craziness. It was Christmas Eve, 1991 and they were living in a tiny room in someone else’s apartment.” – Eric Erlandson, ex-guitarist with Hole

  “Nirvana’s success was like a validation for all the years I had worked in so many different capacities music-wise, in record stores, college radio, fanzines, setting up shows. Things back then were so different. Pussy Galore couldn’t get a show in Boston because of their name. When I came to Seattle the first time, I called Bruce Pavitt. He was like, ‘ Mudhoney, Soundgarden and The Fluid are playing at . . .’ Everything changed really quickly. Bills changed overnight from Nirvana opening for Mudhoney to Mudhoney opening for Nirvana. They changed for the better, no matter how horrible the worse was too.” – Debbi Shane, ex-Dumbhead

  “Someone hummed ‘In Bloom’ to me on the phone. It sounded so cool that I started looking high and low for it. The demos for Nevermind became really hard to find. I finally found it and when I heard it, um, I just started to cry. Not because it was so insanely beautiful, but because I couldn’t believe it was better than anything ever written in the underground. I instantly felt sorry for Kurt. I knew immediately the nightmare that awaited the poor thing. Like everyone, I over-listened to Nevermind on tour and it followed me wherever we went, every song better than the last. It’s also a totally depressing record because no one can top it, not even the Pixies. It’s bad for your self-esteem if you’re a songwriter. It makes me feel small and stupid for even trying to write a song.” – Courtney Love, 1992

  Four days after the Beehive Records in-store, Nirvana set out on another North American tour.

  Melvins opened for them on the East Coast; New York’s heavily psychedelic Das Damen1 played the south; Chicago’s sartorially elegant Urge Overkill2 took the Midwest slot; and Sister Double Happiness3 opened on the West Coast. The tour had been booked long before the release of Nevermind , and the places were ridiculously tiny for the band’s new status, a riot of bruised limbs and disappointed fans.

  “After Nevermind had broken,” states Craig Montgomery, “there was some talk of booking an arena tour but we couldn’t do it. We spent a lot of time overseas on that record but very little in the US.”

  ‘Teen Spirit’ debuted at number 27 on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart on September 21: radio stations – who had initially refused to play it because they couldn’t make out the words – were deluged with kids wanting to hear it. “My wife bought Nevermind and I was like, ‘Holy fuck,’ ” exclaims Tom Hazelmyer. “Nirvana had taken all the balls and gristle of what the Cows and Melvin
s and The Jesus Lizard were doing and made it into what Tad called it – Beatles pop songs.”

  Events began to snowball so rapidly it was impossible to keep track. The opening two nights of the tour Nirvana played in Canada, before heading down to Boston, Massachusetts on September 22, where they had dinner with Mark Kates, DGC’s head of alternative music. Almost inevitably, another food fight ensued: “They threw ribs at each other,” recalls DGC radio rep Ted Volk, who was present. “It was by far the best dinner I’ve been at in my life.”

  After dinner, Nirvana decided to go see Melvins playing at The Rat. They arrived to discover their names weren’t on the list and Kurt got into an altercation with the doorman. “Out of nowhere,” Volk told Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna, “this blonde grabs the bouncer’s hand and says, ‘Don’t you know who this is? This is Jesus Christ and you gotta let him in this club right now.’ I turn to my girlfriend and say, ‘Now that’s fucked up.’ ”

  The blonde was Mary Lou Lord, a local singer-songwriter4 who eked out a living busking in the subways. Kurt asked what her favourite bands were, and she listed The Pastels, The Vaselines, Daniel Johnston and Teenage Fanclub. “Bullshit,” Kurt replied. “They’re my favourite bands in that exact order” – and he asked her to name songs by each artist to prove she wasn’t having him on.

  The following day Kurt went round to Lord’s flat. A portrait of renowned gonzo Seventies rock journalist Lester Bangs was hanging on the wall. Bangs had long been the only acceptable face of rock journalism to musicians like Lord and Cobain – Kurt even wrote an imaginary letter to him in his journals – not that he couldn’t be boorish, narcissistic and derivative like everyone else. But during the Seventies Bangs championed good bands, and forged his own unique voice and, even more importantly, he was dead – so folk could get on with worshipping him without his tiresome presence being around to remind them how ridiculous it was. Kurt told Mary Lou he still really missed Tobi, and that he’d recently become enamoured of an Eastern religion called Jainism. Jainism venerated animals, and saw the universe as an endless succession of heavens and hells.