by Everett True
“Every day,” Kurt explained, “we pass through heaven and we pass through hell.”
The following day, the pair went down to local alternative radio station WFNX’s5 birthday party at the Axis in Boston – Nirvana were headlining with Smashing Pumpkins and local rock band Bullet Lavolta in support. Before the show, MTV News filmed Krist Novoselic playing a game of Twister with the support bands using Crisco oil for extra lubrication – Krist was stripped down to his boxer shorts, and used an American flag hanging nearby to wipe some of the oil out of his butt-crack. A few locals took exception to Old Faithful being used in such a way, and Krist ended up with a bodyguard.
Kurt, meanwhile, ducked out of most of the band’s promotional tasks to spend time with Mary Lou.
Mary Lou Lord has been almost written out of the Kurt Cobain story. Courtney long ago invented a scurrilous story about how Kurt was once disturbed in the middle of receiving oral sex from a Boston girl in the back of a van – and how this was the only time they met. Yet I have a strong memory from around this time of meeting a besotted Kurt going on and on about this girl called Mary Lou Lord, how in love with her he was, and how he was going to move to Boston to be with her.
Fantasy perhaps, but he believed it at the time.
Hi Everett.
Sometimes you meet people and you know right away that your life is about to change. That’s how it felt when I met Kurt. The intensity of the situation is enough to merit an entire lifetime of the memory of that short time – one of those ‘love at first sight’ affairs you read about in books. A brief but nevertheless real relationship where you learn the person’s entire history in a very short time and just get so close somehow. Hope I’m not being too Bridges Of Madison County here . . .
I am well aware that my relationship with Kurt was brief and that there was so much going on in his life it seems impossible that he could have felt the same about me as I did about him, but deep in my heart, I knew he did. I also know that Courtney played a big part in changing his mind about me – not just by the fact she moved in on what I had going on with him, but also through the lies she made up about me. He wasn’t the kind of guy that would take on a challenge of asking me, ‘Is this information true?’ Just a few weeks after I left Kurt for the last time, Courtney went to Europe, and a week or so later, in Europe, right around Thanksgiving, Courtney became pregnant.6
So, I would guess that my relationship with Kurt lasted all of about two months, but it could have been two days and it would have been just as unforgettable. It had nothing to do with sex. It was more of a chemistry between two people that really worked. It was like I had known him for years and we were just getting reacquainted. It was as special as it gets.
I sometimes wish I had taken more risks at that time. Like the night in Detroit: he begged me to come to Chicago with him, but I couldn’t. I was fearful of losing my job and I didn’t want to be a burden on the band. I had no money and I didn’t want to have him think I was trying to latch on for a free ride. I think he looked at it entirely differently. I think he thought I was being ‘aloof’ and ‘disinterested’. It was the image that I was trying to pose, even though I felt the exact opposite. I just didn’t want him to get frightened away. I didn’t think a boy in a rock band would want something serious. If I had only known how much he had wanted to be loved, I would have shown him exactly how I felt.
It was that very same night in Chicago when Courtney really made her move on Kurt: what would have happened if I had been there? Would he have introduced me to her as ‘his’ girlfriend? She was still sort of going out with Billy [ Corgan], or had recently broken up, and she’d flown up there to get the rest of her clothes from Billy’s. If I’d stayed on the tour, the whole thing would have been different. He would have been taken, and hopefully she would have respected that – but maybe not. I’m sure Courtney would have found a way. After I hooked back up with Kurt in England, she found a way to break us up . . .
Kurt didn’t mention anything about Courtney when I met back up with him in the UK a few weeks later. The first show was in Bristol. I don’t remember much about the show, but it was great to be back with Kurt again. He’d called me from the road four or five times a week – this was before everyone had cell phones – while they were touring the States. I had played in the subway 10 hours a day every day to save enough for the trip. All through October I would play until my fingers bled. I got a horrible bout of carpal tunnel syndrome7 and I was in agony, but there was nothing that was going to stop me from buying a plane ticket to meet up with him again. I wanted to surprise him. I didn’t know anything about Courtney, and I don’t think he had any idea that they were to become as serious about each other as they did. He never mentioned her.
When I arrived in England, I went to the show and soundcheck, and met up with Kurt. He seemed really tired and a whole lot less enthusiastic about touring. He was having a bad time with his stomach and I feel that this was where the drugs really started to come into the picture. I was totally naïve about heroin. I had seen what it had done to some of my heroes from a very early age and wanted nothing to do with it. I let Kurt know right from the beginning how I felt about drugs. I could tell that there was tension, and that my disapproval of drugs did not sit well with the direction he was going in.
I hung out through a couple of shows in the UK. The Astoria in London was the last show of Nirvana’s that I would see. After the London show Kurt and I went back to the hotel, went to bed, and the phone rang at about 3 a.m. It was Courtney. I had no idea that she had been in the picture. I had no idea who she was apart from the fact I owned a copy of [Hole single] ‘Retard Girl’. I also owned a copy of Courtney Love’s ‘Motorcycle Boy’ – talk about confusion . . .
Courtney had found out about me while being interviewed for a radio show in Boston. The radio host was a friend. Courtney pumped him for info and used it as a trap. She had enough info on me to twist stuff around and make it seem true. After the interview, she called Kurt. The phone call lasted for about 40 minutes. I tried not to pay attention. The next morning, Kurt asked me, “So how are you going to get to Wolverhampton?” I had no idea what he was trying to say, so I said, “I have things to do in London” (a lie). Although I was confused I thought I would see him some time soon. He gave me an itinerary book and a kiss, and told me he would be in touch.
The next afternoon, Nirvana were on a TV show called The Word. Kurt came out and the first thing he said was, “I just want everyone in this room to know that Courtney Love, the lead singer for the pop group Hole, is the best fuck in the world.” I was crushed, and as confused as anyone could be. Just the night before, I had been with him and he never said a word about her. Well, he did, but I have always been too much of a good person to repeat what he said. I feel that he said that because she forced him to. It was vicious and mean. This is where I knew that he would be forever changed by whoever this ‘Courtney Love’ person was.
By the time I returned back to the US – November 11 – Nirvana were totally blowing up. It was really hard for me because everywhere I looked there was the music or Kurt’s face or voice. Kurt looked like total shit. You could see the drugs beginning to ravage. It was so gross. By this time Courtney was pregnant. It was really quick . . .
There was a period where Courtney was leaving messages on my answering machine non-stop. It was ridiculous. I never once tried to get through to Kurt or did anything to either of them for Courtney to have gone so far out of her way to harass me like that. I think she was bored, or they were paranoid during that phase. And I will always feel that she considered me a threat because she knew all along that he really did like me, and that she had ‘artificially’ broken us up through her lies . . .
Mary Lou
I love rock’n’roll, me.
All my life I’ve been looking for a purpose, a sense of belonging, the knowledge that perhaps there are others like me out there after all. All my life I’ve been looking for a semblance of glamour �
� “The nearest thing to desperation I know of” (The Legend!, 1983) – for a sprinkling of stardust to lift me above the mundane. You think that part of me didn’t enjoy this strange new power I had in the wake of Nirvana’s success? You’re crazy. I relished it, revelled in it, rolled around in the dirt with it and got good and mucky. I loved how female musicians and groupies were suddenly starting to flirt with me – me! – and that notable faces across the underground rock scene wanted to hang out. I was up for it. If people wanted me to get drunk and behave outlandishly, all the better. That part was easy. I once had a fellow Melody Maker journalist scream at me for the entire duration of a train journey from Brighton to London, “You’re just a fucking music journalist!” No, I wasn’t. I was Everett True. I was untouchable. Hate me or love me . . . that didn’t matter. At least someone was paying attention.
One event lifted me above the herd that was soon to follow Nirvana’s every move. Shortly after the Reading Festival in September 1991, someone at Melody Maker complained that our rival NME had been offered the first major Nirvana exclusive for Nevermind ; this, despite the fact we and the soon-to-be defunct Sounds had been the major supporters of grunge in the UK. NME was the brand leader, with the bigger circulation, even if it wasn’t on the ball, and that’s all that counts to management types.
“OK,” I stated rashly. “Get me out to America and I’ll do the rest.”
Three hours later, our features editor announced he’d fixed up a trip for me to interview The Breeders, in New York. Fine, I thought, but Nirvana are on the other side of the country! No worries – the night we arrive, Nirvana are playing at New York’s Marquee Club. I go straight over and sit by the entrance during the soundcheck until Kurt notices me.
After the show, Kurt asks if I want to come on tour. He also begs for an introduction to singer Kim Deal, whose debut album Pod he loves. I agree to both, with some relief. So we go down to the studio where The Breeders were recording, Kurt cowering behind the partition in the control room, almost too shy to talk to one of his heroes. A few days later, I clamber up on stage at Washington, DC’s 9.30 Club to scream my a cappella punk/soul songs in front of a sell-out crowd of 800 rabid punks who, to my surprise, all sing them back at me. I discover that my status as performing artist entitles me to free drink tickets, so I knock back doubles and triples with alacrity – later the band have to pour me into their van, where I break all rules of tour etiquette by throwing up and then rolling out on to the pavement.8 Oddly, Nirvana seemed to enjoy my indiscretions. They still allowed me to travel with them the next day.
“Most people have this idea that the band travelled with a black cloud following us everywhere we went,” Dave Grohl told Stevie Chick in 2005. “And it’s absolutely not true. So many great things happened, and we had so many fucking good times, good laughs. A lot of it was dangerous. A lot of it was fucking dark – but not all of it. If I had a nickel for every time Everett True threw up in our van . . . those guys got to see a lot of great shit, and there was a lot more.”
In Pittsburgh, the show was even crazier and smaller.
Rock’n’roll, however seedy or disgusting, gave me a sense of glamour. Kurt Cobain understood all about this desire for glamour, it had been his escape from teenage years filled with upheaval. He was also narcissistic in his self-loathing. Many suicidal people are. As he sang on ‘On A Plain’, “I love myself, better than you/ I know it’s wrong but what can I do?” Oh, but I could relate to that.
Initially, rock music helped to define a new me far removed from the taunts of schoolmates who looked down on me because my family didn’t have enough money to buy new clothes. When I started making records, records fired with anger and sexual frustration and disaffection, I became someone. I knew finally that I was unique, also that I had a place to turn to when all around rejected me. How could I not love the music that had given me The Beatles, Yoko Ono, early Ramones, The Jam, Young Marble Giants and Mudhoney? Of course I love rock’n’roll. Even now, especially now, it has the power to move me, to keep my spirits from flagging. Just flick the volume up a notch higher, and play the new CD from The Gossip or Quasi or The Concretes or Misty’s Big Adventure, search out an old Dexys Midnight Runners album or Teenage Jesus And The Jerks 12-inch or SST single. How can I despise anything that has given my life such validity and direction – that has enabled me to communicate with so many others over the years? It’s not rock music’s fault that most people are dumb. As a US punk band once said, stupid people shouldn’t breed. I love rock music, and they don’t come any more rock than Nirvana.
Important qualification, though: depending on your definition of rock.
On September 24, Nevermind was released in the States: 46,251 copies were sent out – approximately 953,749 too few. Despite Goldberg’s assertion that Geffen realised what a monster they had on their hands after the Roxy show, the company still greatly underestimated the demand for Nirvana. It was a similar story in Britain.
“When Nirvana signed to Geffen, Jo Bolsom was the product manager,” says Anton Brookes. “She was used to bands like Guns N’ Roses – and then Nirvana got dropped on her lap. At first, she seemed like a rich middle-class girl with no idea how to handle Nirvana, but after a few months she was 100 per cent into them. Without her, my job would have been a thousand times harder. Geffen pressed up 6,000 copies, initially. They thought they’d be lucky to sell two or three. After two days, all the albums were sold out and consequently Nevermind went in at number 34. Even Mudhoney’s album went in higher.”
The night Nevermind came out, Nirvana played a last-minute all-ages show at The Axis in Boston: “The excitement was palpable,” remembers MM photographer Steve Gullick. “The club was shaking with energy. It was like being on the edge of a tornado.” In the tiny cordoned-off VIP area, Krist was holding court next to Kim Gordon, talking politics and totally in his element. “We went back to the hotel,” continues Gullick, “and they were playing ‘Teen Spirit’ on MTV. I was like, ‘ Fucking hell, this is going to go off.’ ”
The following night, Nirvana played Club Babyhead in Providence, Rhode Island – where Kurt blew his amp during the first song, and Nirvana opened with The Vaselines’ disturbingly sexual ‘Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For A Sunbeam’, before segueing into the Velvet Underground cover ‘Here She Comes Now’ and an edgy version of The Wipers’ classic ‘D-7’. Shows in New Haven and Trenton followed, before they arrived in New York on September 28, where Kurt saw himself on TV for the first time. He phoned his mother to let her know he was on 120 Minutes, MTV’s ‘alternative’ show. “He was really excited,” recalled Mary Lou. “He would playfully tell her every time he appeared during the video.” ‘Teen Spirit’ went US Top 20, and Nirvana played an acoustic in-store at Tower Records, Kurt pulling out a pack of Oreo cookies from a fan’s bag and washing them down with a carton of milk, mid-performance.
That evening’s show, at the tiny Marquee, was killer: I watched from the balcony alongside Breeders singer Kim Deal as the crowd bounced up and down in unison, Kurt and Krist and Dave a welter of emotion and movement, guitar shattering guitar, drums pounding drums, bass hurled high in the air never to return. Kurt laughed the entire show. The crowd got crazier and crazier. At the set’s climax, ‘Negative Creep’, Kurt had no guitar left so he dived into the crowd where they bore him triumphantly aloft, still singing – with only the bass and drums in support. It still sounded like there was an orchestra of guitars playing.
“I was shocked at how good it sounded,” Gullick concurs. “Normally, it would’ve sounded flat without the guitar but it was unbelievably full.”
Pittsburgh I don’t even remember, too hopped up on alcohol and the infectious excitement surrounding the tiny tour bubble. I have a vivid memory of the minuscule JC Dobbs show in Philadelphia the next evening (October 1), though: people flying feet first over the speakers wedged on to the front of the stage, sheer pandemonium reigning as Kurt struggled to make himself heard above the constant hubbub and cheering,
tune after razor-sharp tune cutting through the fog of cigarette smoke and clink of glasses from the bar. I was sat by the monitors, to the right of Kurt, fuming alongside the band as folk started chatting through a quietened, devastating version of ‘Polly’, happy at Nirvana’s refusal to come back on stage after the set’s end to a chorus of boos, arms flailing wildly as they launched into ‘Drain You’ followed by ‘Aneurysm’, body a mess of sweat and emotion, laughing as the trio launched into yet another extended jam much to the bemusement of most of the punters.
As I wrote at the time:
In Pittsburgh, Kurt pushes guitar through drum kit at the end, snare I believe. Dave smashed up drums. Pittsburgh didn’t leave much impression. Philadelphia club was really fucking small. Crammed monitors and speakers around drum kit. Nice though. More fun. Made impression. Club was down a street full of occult or voodoo shops, and the Mutter museum of human deformities. Weird town. From where I’m sitting I can see factory chimneys.
Kurt’s moods were swinging wildly. After the reaction in Philadelphia, he became depressed – his feelings probably exacerbated by a hangover and the fatigue of travelling. The following day, I accompanied Nirvana up to the top of some megalithic tower on the outskirts of DC, to conduct a commercial radio interview: Kurt and I walked out, leaving Krist and Dave to cope with the corporate beast. Years later, in the immediate aftermath of Kurt’s death, my one overriding image of the band – the one I wanted as the illustrated frontispiece to a book I knew would never appear – was Kurt standing, frail and small, head down, hacking on a cigarette, dwarfed by the shiny metal tower behind him.