by Everett True
The performance did the trick. At the time, an appearance on Top Of The Pops guaranteed a rise up the charts. ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ had been hovering round the Top 10. The next week it dropped straight out.
The new UK dates were weird. It was weird that Nirvana were back in Britain, for a start. It went against all conventional industry wisdom to ignore the larger market, their home country, especially as Nevermind was exploding across the States – not that anyone over here was complaining. The tour travelled up to Scotland for three dates, and back down through Newcastle, Nottingham, Manchester [November 4] and London [ Kilburn National, November 5]. But it was obvious the band was starting to feel burnt out from all the attention and non-stop partying – Krist and Dave were in meltdown mode, while Kurt wanted to be anywhere other than on the road. “By now, Kurt had stopped moving on stage,” recalls photographer Steve Gullick. “He didn’t seem as interested. They were still incredible.”
It didn’t stop the mayhem, though.
“We decided to hire two Manchester Mafia goons to fend off T-shirt bootleggers8,” Kurt told me in ’93. “I got very drunk during Captain America’s set and exited out the side door with drink in hand to urinate. The two goons didn’t recognise me as being their employer and decided to rough me up a bit for pissing. I threw a rock star fit, threw my half-empty glass of vodka in their faces, and darted back in through the exit door. They chased me round inside the hall among the dancing fans until my Scottish tour manager [Alex MacLeod] rescued me.
“Two shows later,” he continued, “the same two goons were hired as bouncers to keep the unruly slam-dancers at bay. During the first half of our set, I kept noticing splashes of beer in my face, coming from one of the goon bouncers. I threw off my guitar and jumped straight on to his chest and bounced off of him. He and the other goon began to beat me up, but I was soon rescued by my Scottish tour manager again.”
At the Kilburn show, I turned up late and wondered how the fuck I was going to get in past the enormous queue lined up in the street outside. Afterwards, there was a UK record release party for Nevermind ; bored with the industry shenanigans I tried to start a food fight with Krist, throwing a stick of celery at the bassist. Krist came over to me, looking quite serious, and said, “You shouldn’t do that, man. We got thrown out of our own party in Seattle for doing that.”
The next morning, lying awake in their hotel bed, Kurt and Courtney decided they should get married. As was her wont, Courtney soon called me – and several other thousand friends – to impart the happy news. I wasn’t totally enthused, mainly because I had a stinking hangover. I wasn’t the only one worried, either: “Kim Gordon and Julie Cafritz9 told me when me and Kurt got serious,” Courtney told Rolling Stone’s David Fricke. “They spelled it out. ‘You know what’s going to happen? You’ll become junkies. You’ll get married. You’ll OD. You’ll be 35. You’ll try to make a comeback.’ I don’t give a fuck. I love this guy.”
I lied, and told her I was very pleased for both of them – even though I hated the institution of marriage back then – but I wasn’t convinced they were being very punk rock. Courtney rose to the bait, and we happily got into another vitriolic one-upmanship match. But her heart wasn’t really in it: she was too happy. She celebrated with an engagement ring from the 1900s, with a ruby stone.
Later that day, Nirvana were up to more mischief, launching into a coruscating last-minute version of ‘Territorial Pissings’, instead of the projected ‘Lithium’, on late-night British TV chat show The Jonathan Ross Show. At the end, the band absolutely trashed their equipment, leaving the usually verbose Ross momentarily lost for words.
“It’s so hard to play on a live television show,” Kurt told me. “There’s no point trying to do a good job because you can hear the missed notes so easily. There’s too much attention on the guitar. I tend to just tell them to fuck off.”
After a brief visit to France to play the Transmusicales festival, Nirvana cancelled the remainder of their European tour dates (six days in Ireland and Scandinavia). Kurt’s stomach was troubling him again, and the stress had become too much. The band returned home. Krist and Shelli decided to buy a house in Seattle, and took out a small mortgage. Later on, they bought their $265,000 home in one go, cash.
Nevermind was now number four in the Billboard Top 40.
Do you remember Courtney meeting Kurt?
“Well, I had known of Courtney before because of Mark [Arm],” replies Carrie Montgomery. “He’d call me and be like, ‘Yeah, this girl from Hole is real . . . uh . . . interesting. And friendly. She won’t leave me alone. As a matter of fact, she’s here now in my room . . .’ But I didn’t have any specific preconceived ideas when Kurt told me about her. I lived with my mom at that time in Madison Park and he used to stay down there with me in Seattle, and he had given her my mom’s number to call him at while she was in Europe – I remember answering the phone to her, and we were lying in bed together, so I assumed she must’ve known about me . . . The first time I met her [on December 22], we went to that fancy French restaurant, Maximilien’s, in Pike Place Market. Kurt really wanted us to be friends. When she went to the bathroom he was like, ‘What do you think?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know, she seems like a natural disaster to me but it’s fun to watch, I guess.’ ”
What was she doing?
“Just screaming at the top of her lungs about how famous she was, and causing a commotion, crazy – but nice. We got along. I was like a deer in her headlights. I’d never ever met anyone like this before. But he liked her. I liked her. He was my best friend at that time so it was like, ‘If you like her, I’ll give her a chance.’ We actually did get along for a long time. Courtney likes to talk, so I would sit and listen to her talk for hours and hours and hours. She’s a genius. She’s a very intelligent, well-rounded, educated person and very dramatic and exciting. It was a lot. Wait . . . Kurt made me go with them when Courtney met his mom for the first time. He made me go.”
How was that?
“Well . . .” Carrie hesitates. “Kurt’s mom wanted me and him to go out. Because we were such great friends, she didn’t understand why we wouldn’t be a couple. She was reluctant to . . .” She stops herself and laughs. “Can you imagine Courtney in Aberdeen, Everett? It just didn’t go together. And we were all reckless and debauched. Probably he just wanted me to drive, and to act as a buffer between Wendy and Courtney. I tried, but there was no buffering that.”
At the end of 1991, Nirvana set out for another week of dates, this time at 20,000-capacity arenas – December 27: LA Sports Arena; December 28: O’Brien Pavilion at Del Mar Fairgrounds; December 29: Arizona State University; December 31: the Cow Palace in San Francisco; January 2: the Salem Armory, Oregon. These dates were absolute proof that the music industry had got its claws firmly into the band. Nirvana were sandwiched in the middle of two bands they had little in common with, ideologically or musically: the emo-metal band Pearl Jam, formed out of the ashes of the doomed Mother Love Bone and already being tipped for major league success, and the horrendous funk rock strutters Red Hot Chili Peppers.
At that point, Nirvana were far bigger than either band.
“The Chili Peppers were headlining,” recalls Barrett Jones, “but everyone was there to see Nirvana – crowds of people jumping up and down, going nuts for Nirvana. It was me, Nick [Close] the Sonic Youth tech, Alex, I don’t think we had Susan [ Sasic] yet. During Pearl Jam’s set at midnight on New Year’s Eve someone tried to jump from the balcony to the stage and missed, hit his head and got carried out. I had never seen a crowd this size be so unified with a band. Their live shows were just so powerful, but I attribute most of that to Dave.”
Before the Sports Arena show, local industry ’ zine BAM conducted an interview with Kurt that rapidly became notorious. In the article, the writer noted that the singer “kept nodding off occasionally in mid-sentence” – a trait that Kurt would later try to explain away as narcolepsy – and described his “pinned
pupils, sunken cheeks and scabbed, sallow skin”. The heroin rumours had begun. It was an accurate enough depiction: by his own admission, Kurt spent December 1991 in a narcotic haze, he and Courtney staying on the floor of Eric Erlandson’s apartment until Eric kicked them out for doing smack.
It was also on the arena tour that Krist finally admitted to himself that Kurt was on heroin: “He looked like a ghoul,” he said. “But what am I going to do? It’s his fucking trip, his life, he can do whatever he wants.”
Kurt announced to the BAM writer that he was planning on getting married, much to the surprise of most people outside what was fast becoming a very small, intimate circle of confidants – Courtney throwing out anyone she considered ‘disloyal’, or threatening to their relationship.
“I’ve always blamed Courtney for it,” mentions Ian Dickson, who fell out of favour once the pair moved in together at the start of 1992, “but I don’t even know if it’s true any more. A lot of it was his inability to deal with his fame. She was a very intimidating person. She’s so smart and so vocal. And she had this amazing x-ray emotional vision, where she could instantly size you up and cut you to the quick. She has the ability to say the shit that nobody else will say.”
“I was a part of Jabberjaw,” explains Rene Navarette. “ Cali [ DeWitt] and I had run away from home to work there for free, on the door, serving coffee. Courtney was a big part of the beginnings of that place. We had a secret friendship. I would score drugs for her and in return she taught me about Leonard Cohen. I remember being in Courtney’s one-room apartment that she shared with Eric when she started getting calls from Kurt – listening to his messages while splitting a toasted sandwich. She’d downplay our friendship because I was a known drug connection – and she was on the way to becoming a star. She toted Cali a little more. He was the prettier, happier of the two of us.
“I met Kurt when Nirvana played Jabberjaw [May 29, 1991]. Right after that was all that mess with her going to see Billy Pumpkin in Chicago and getting in a fight with him and seeing Nirvana instead.
That’s when the whole crazy circus started. I lost touch with her for a while after that.
“The first real great conversation I had with Kurt was at the end of 1991. Kurt and Courtney were seriously together and talking about having a baby. Out of the blue, I got a call saying that she and Kurt wanted to invite me to San Diego. They said there would be a bus waiting for [ Jabberjaw founder] Gary Dent and me – I guess she was sending for some of the old friends to come along. Ten minutes later, I got another call from Courtney saying, ‘This is a secret between you and me, but please can you buy us $300 of drugs and we’ll give you $800. Keep it real quiet, go along with everybody else, and don’t steal from me.’ So I went ahead and borrowed the money and scored the drugs, because I knew they were good for it.
“I went along with the trip to San Diego, but when I got there they were looking for me already: ‘Hi everybody, but where’s Rene, where’s the chief?’ They took me backstage and got everything from me. I never saw Kurt look so healthy as he did that time – he’d been on tour forever, he was so happy, they were so in love. He was real interested to know who I was because he didn’t know anyone from the streets of LA, or any Mexicans. He was shy, but as forward as I ever saw him become. We hung out, used drugs and I got to see him play a big show.”
(Interview with author, February 2006)
At the Cow Palace date, Pearl Jam played the intro to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, and stopped – a gesture that served to irritate the Nirvana camp. The two bands became rivals, certainly in the press: Nirvana sought to distance themselves from a band they saw as grunge bandwagon jumpers. The enmity between the two bands – or more specifically, Kurt and Courtney (‘ Kurtney’) and Jeff Ament/ Stone Gossard – dated back to the time of the Green River/ Mudhoney split. Kurt and Courtney never missed a chance to take a pot shot at their Seattle peers, correctly seeing them as suburban metal kids who had nothing to do with the punk roots of grunge.
“So I am outspoken and I say nasty things about Pearl Jam and I get a lot of flak for it,” Kurt complained to me in 1992, “and a lot of people condemn me and put me down or call me an asshole. I have so many people who hate my guts for putting down Pearl Jam and then I think, ‘What value do those people have in my life?’ You know? I have to speak the truth, I have to say what I feel, I’m being honest and people aren’t used to that, especially in the commercial world.”
Not everyone in the Nirvana camp viewed them as the enemy: Krist Novoselic has been at pains to express his admiration for them. Barrett Jones thinks it was more down to the attitude of certain journalists than anything serious.
“They never had any problems with Pearl Jam,” Barrett states. “We did a lot of shows with them, the two years I was with them. There was just that one thing where Kurt said that he didn’t like them following on their coat-tails. I thought it was ridiculous to take this word, grunge, and apply it to these incredibly different bands. That’s your fault, you know.”10
Nirvana played for about 35 minutes in LA, including an irreverent version of The Who’s ‘ Baba O’Riley’. The Who fascinated Kurt, especially what he perceived as their rapid transition from being a taut Mod whirlwind of destruction and incisive pop anthems to bloated rock gods in the Seventies. “Hope I die before I turn into Pete Townshend,” Kurt caustically remarked about The Who’s guitarist, referencing the English band’s most famous lyric.11
The Cow Palace show was an industry bun feast. River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves showed up, among myriad other slumming film stars. And of course the rock cognoscenti were present. Kurt was spectacularly unimpressed – a sign hung later on his and Courtney’s hotel door read, “No famous people please. We’re fucking.”
“We jumped in the car with Kurt and Courtney and ran over to see the Melvins at the Kennel Club,” recalls Debbi Shane. “We all walked into the dressing room and [Faith No More singer] Mike Patton was there. He looked up at Courtney, said something and laughed. She grabbed Kurt and they left. The next day we met up for breakfast – Kurt, Krist, everybody – and it was all so new. There was a table of guys sitting across from us, making fun of Nirvana for eating breakfast in a fancy place.”
Kurt felt increasingly trapped by the attention of his new fans – famous and unknown. He hated the continuous attention, wanted some level of control back in his life, just wanted to spend his days like he had in Olympia only a few short months ago, taking drugs and fucking.
Kurt wasn’t the only one having problems either – witness the following interview, conducted with Krist Novoselic halfway through 1992.
Krist, unlike Kurt, was facing up to his demons, though . . .
I heard you quit drinking . . .
“I quit drinking on January 1,” Krist laughs. “On New Year’s Eve, I was in San Francisco. I was a raging drunk for two weeks on a tour. I was going around a hotel and bumped my head on an overhead-heating appliance. Pow! I hit my head, it was all bloody, and I woke up in the morning and thought, ‘God, I gotta quit this shit.’ I went to Australia, Japan and Hawaii, and I didn’t drink for three months. I got home and all these bad influences like Matt Lukin [ Mudhoney] and Kurt Danielson [Tad] came around and corrupted me. Now I don’t drink when I play. I used to go on totally drunk, but now I go up there pretty sober. I moderate my drink more.”
Maybe the pressure/success you were enjoying made you want to drink more?
“Yeah, that’s what it was. I had to learn how to deal with it; either ignore it or deal with it like a mature adult instead of just running away. It’s the same old story, running away into booze, all human beings are the same and have pretty much the same reactions to things.”
People thought Nirvana would self-destruct.
“I was driving through Seattle listening to the radio station. They played a Nirvana song, I know I should have changed the channel, but I was listening to it,” he laughs. “The DJ goes, ‘Now there’s a band that I don’t see play
ing local loser clubs five years from now.’ I had that feeling too. We took off in such a fury. Our record came out, we were drinking, flying up the charts, flying into the stratosphere, and I know I was a really messed-up drunk. We had three months off where we chilled out, relaxed, so everything was OK.”
Do you find success makes it much harder for your art?
“No, it’s much easier now. I have all this time and not a lot of distractions, because other people take care of things. Managers worry about the band, accountants worry about money and I stay at home and do whatever I want. It’s weird I have this sense of liberation now. Did it take money to liberate me, or was it just that I got older and had a revelation and chilled out?”
Maybe cutting down drinking helped.
“Yeah, but I’ve had some of my most inspiring moments being drunk. Heartfelt inspiration, good things came out of it.”
(Author’s transcript of 1992 Krist Novoselic interview)
Addenda: Earnie Bailey
“I had a guitar repair shop in Spokane for many years, and then I got a job managing an espresso bar in Seattle. I missed working on guitars and I still had all my tools and collected guitars so I decided to get into it again.
“In January ’92, I ran into all three members of Nirvana separately. I ran into Kurt first at The Vogue, because I was at a Sub Pop showcase where Earth was playing. It was like a Sunday night. There was kind of this commotion out in the parking lot, there was a gal out there with bleach-blonde hair and she was really loud and really animated, and I thought that was odd, because most people around Seattle aren’t like that. She was pretty fascinating. Maybe Kat [ Bjelland, Babes In Toyland] was with her, and Kurt was too, but Kurt had his hair dyed red so I didn’t recognise him. They walked in right in front of me, and when they went to check his ID, I could see this picture of Kurt with blond hair and he looked healthy. And yet he looked horrible. His skin was a terrible colour and he was really rough. I said hi. I think I said congratulations for knocking Michael Jackson out of the game. [ Nevermind went to number one in the US on January 11, 1992, deposing the self-styled King of Pop.] I told him I was a friend of Rob [ Kader] and we talked about the old days a bit. I had a Seventies black Stratocaster that was left-handed that I’d just gotten in, so I said, ‘Hey, if you need a Strat, I’ve got one.’ Because I said it was Seventies he said, ‘Why would I want that?’ It had a maple fret board on it and he wasn’t crazy about it.