by Everett True
“Also,” says Kurt, “they wouldn’t have played any Gold Mountain acts, like Sonic Youth, Beastie Boys . . .”
Yeah, I heard about that from Thurston Moore. They threatened your management with a boycott of all their acts if Nirvana didn’t toe the line. You can be as subversive and radical as you like, but they only really bother with you once you’re big enough to be a threat.
“So all the political nastiness that I’ve heard of for years from independent record people is true,” Kurt snarls. “A lot of people, especially people like Bruce Pavitt and Calvin Johnson – people who have been pretty successful throughout the years with introducing underground, independent music and creating a community feel within their environment and just exercising the whole DIY ethic – have known a lot of people who have experienced the major label fuck-overs . . .”
Calvin Johnson runs Olympia’s fiercely partisan, independent K records, Olympia being where Kurt moved to after leaving Aberdeen and forming Nirvana. Calvin used to help Bruce (Sub Pop) Pavitt run a fanzine in the early Eighties.
Olympia is a small liberal college town an hour’s drive away from Seattle, which, in 1991, housed the International Pop Underground Convention, thus providing part of the initial stimulus for Riot Grrrl. Nirvana even contributed a track to the convention’s kill rock stars compilation LP, before being (apparently) ostracised for signing to a major label.
Kurt continues with his rant.
“I know that some of these people I used to look up to – people who have put out magazines or who’ve had a record label for years – these people had the real inside dirt on what a major label is like, but they never told me . . .”
He sounds oddly betrayed.
“I never paid any attention to mainstream press, either,” Kurt continues. “I never understood the mechanics of it, how it works. I never read a major label rock’n’roll interview, except when I was a kid in Creem magazine and that was always so tongue-in-cheek. I’ve never read a Rolling Stone article that I can think of – just skimmed through a couple of the political ones.”
From below, we can hear the sound of Frances Bean crying. Kurt half rises to go downstairs, but changes his mind. “Now that it’s happened, I still can’t help laughing at it,” he adds. “But it went overboard. It went just a little bit too far to take in good humour . . .”
“A little bit?” Courtney interrupts him, angrier than ever. “Social workers coming to take your baby because of something you didn’t do and you didn’t say is not judicial, and it’s not justice . . .
“That article,” she spits. “The whole drug thing . . .”
She’s floundering because she’s so riled.
“We did drugs and it was really fun, and now it’s over. Anybody who knows me knows I’m way too paranoid to get wasted all the time . . .”
She pauses again, searching for the right words.
“It’s just so insane,” she cries, “what it’s done and who it’s hurt because of one woman’s vendetta. When you look at it, Everett, I think the end of rock is pretty near when Madonna is trying to buy Pavement for a million dollars and put out Xerox fanzines. 2 When Madonna thinks that I am the cutting edge – that’s how you can judge how out of it she is.”3
The Vanity Fair article dwelt fairly and harshly on Courtney’s claim that Madonna was vampiric, ready to take from Courtney what she wanted, and leave the rest for dead.
“Who,” Madonna was quoted as saying, “is Courtney Love?”
She should know. It was Madonna who asked her manager to sign Courtney’s band to her label last year. It was Madonna herself who phoned Courtney to arrange a meeting. Want to know why I’m so sure? I spoke to Courtney immediately after the call, and nobody makes shit like that up.
“I wish I’d never come in her eye-line,” Courtney cries. “Isn’t there any punk rock value in the fact I turned her down?”
“It’s twice as bad for Courtney,” explains Kurt, “because she hasn’t even had the chance to prove herself like I did. It’s one thing for me to be subversive at this point, because I can afford to be. I can pretty much get away with ripping up a picture of the Pope on television and it wouldn’t create so much of a stink as someone commercial like Sinéad [ O’Connor] – or Courtney, who doesn’t have the security of having sold lots of records . . .”
The baby cries. Courtney interrupts her husband, excited.
“How did it go so fast,” she asks, sounding genuinely bewildered, “from having a record of the year in Village Voice and being perceived as an artist, to being Nancy Spungen in three months?”
There’s something I’d like to get down on tape now. I’d forgotten that Hole were one of the inspirations behind Riot Grrrl. Seeing Hole play live was pretty much what motivated Kathi Wilcox, bassist of Bikini Kill, to form a band.
“ Kathi wrote me a letter saying she wanted to start a band and what should she do,” recalls Courtney. “And I wrote her back and said she should find the biggest slut-bitches in her town that everybody hates. I thought if there were three people who were like the town bitch in one band that would be fucking amazing. I don’t know if that really happened, but it turned out to be . . .”
Kathi recounted this event in her fanzine, Bikini Kill, about the formation of her band, adding that, when she saw Courtney, it was like “The guitar went into flames, almost a religious experience.”
“I’m very supportive of them, on a personal level,” Courtney adds.
She then moves on to talking about Julian Cope, stung by the recent adverts for his tour running in the music press that personally attacked her.
“He’s one of these people who actually knows me,” she says, hurt. “Not well, but he does know me, and who was somebody – for all his horns and back-up singers – when I was younger, really affected me and charmed me and made me feel, ‘Wow, for an English person he’s pretty original and cool.’
“And for him to be slagging me in his poem in his ad, it’s like . . .” She pauses, struck by another thought.
“Wait, where do people get this fucking Nancy Spungen thing from?” she demands. “I’m sorry I dyed my hair. Is it that superficial? Is it just because I’m blonde?”
Well, it’s partly because you joked about it in a couple of interviews.
“It’s this Nirvana/Sex Pistols thing, too,” she corrects me.
But Your Jo(e) Average Person On The Street never seems to realise that people in power can joke about what are perceived to be serious matters. Perhaps they aren’t allowed to. Maybe it’s just because Your Jo(e) Average Punter is obtuse, but I doubt if it’s even that. It’s probably more that it’s always been the case that people take whatever they want from what they read.
“Right,” Courtney agrees. “But the fact of this, too, is how women, unless they totally desexualise themselves, have no intellect subscribed to them . . .”
“That’s totally true,” murmurs Kurt.
“If I were subscribed intellect, nobody would ever think that I was Nancy Spungen, because Nancy Spungen is not intellectual,” she finishes. “It’s because I’ve chosen to negotiate the world on the world’s terms – I’ve said, ‘OK, I’m going to have this experiment,’ after having spent most of my life being plain and un-decorative. So I decided to lose some weight and wear some lipstick and see what fucking happens – be a little dangerous, more subversive.”
“It’s a lot fucking easier,” her husband says.
“It was for me,” she agrees, “but, at the same time, now what’s happened is that we are married and these people are trying to take away my livelihood and they’re trying to take away the thing that matters the most to me, other than my family. And now they’re even trying to take away my family.
“So me and Kurt get married and we’re peers – his band were always ahead, but they started before us – then, suddenly, his band get real successful and we’re not peers any more. He’s involved in free trade in America and I’m not making much of a dent. It’
s just amazing to see.” She pauses.
Part Two
“One thing that’s pleased me,” Courtney says, drawing on a cigarette, “that I’ve been really surprised by and learnt a lot from, is the psychic protection I’ve got from so many girls and women . . .”
She pauses. I’m not sure what point she’s trying to make.
“I mean, it’s really fucking obvious, unless you’re stupid,” she goes on. “Like, I walk around and say, ‘Oh, he should have married a model, but he married me,’ with a straight face.”
This is more familiar territory. This is, in fact, the line Courtney usually takes when she’s trying to wind up the people who think Kurt’s marriage to her was ill-advised. Her argument is something like, well, whom should he have married? A model? The point being, Kurt’s not like that.
“There were like 60 sarcastic things I told Vanity Fair,” she goes on, “that they quoted straight because they’re so stupid. Their whole attitude was like, ‘Let’s go and be condescending to these wacky punk rock kids and make allusions to how, in their world, success is bad. Aren’t they cute?’”
But Kurt, you never said success was bad, did you?
“What kind of success?” He sighs. “Success in general? Financial success? Popularity in a rock band? Most people think success is being extremely popular on a commercial level, selling a lot of records and making a whole bunch of money. Being in the public eye.
“I think of myself as a success because I still haven’t compromised my music,” he continues, “but that’s just speaking on an artistic level. Obviously, all the other parts that belong with success are driving me insane – God! I want to kill myself half the time.”
But people still don’t get it. Nirvana catch a lot of flak from people I know because (a) Kurt Cobain whines a lot, and (b) Nirvana slag off corporate rock bands, even though they’re one themselves.
“Oh, take it back from him, the ungrateful little brat!” mocks Courtney.
“What I really can’t stand about being successful is when people confront me and say, ‘Oh, you should just mellow out and enjoy it,’” explains her husband, interrupting her. “I don’t know how many times I have to fucking say this. I never wanted it in the first place.
“But I guess I do enjoy the money,” he relents. “It’s at least a sense of security. I know that my child’s going to grow up and be able to eat. That’s a really nice feeling, that’s fine, but you know . . .”
But Frances will only be treated nice to her face: people will kiss her butt and stab her in the back at the same time.
“Yeah, but she’ll know about it, because she’ll come from us and she’ll be cynical by kindergarten,” Courtney answers, looking fondly at the empty crib. “She’s already cynical.”
“I don’t mean to whine so much,” continues Kurt. “There are just so many things that I’m not capable of explaining in detail.”
“I am,” Courtney interjects.
“But people have no idea of what is going on,” her husband complains. “The sickening politics that are involved with being a successful, commercial rock band are real aggravating. No one has any idea.”
“It doesn’t matter though,” Courtney almost shouts. “The whole thing with you is that you’ve got your success and been victimised by it and I still haven’t proven myself to myself.
“I remember last year Kat came up to Chicago and we went to this bar and they started playing Nevermind – this was just when it was starting to get really big. So we sat there and drank and drank, and got really mad. Because we realised that no girl could have done that. I want to write a really good record and I haven’t done it yet.”
This is where I disagree with you, Courtney. Nevermind was a great record. But so was [Hole single] ‘Teenage Whore’. Nevermind was made by a bunch of blokes. Why should it have been made by a bunch of girls?
“No girl could have come from the underground and done that,” she argues. “It’s just the fact that somebody did it. It happened.”
But Hole were an astonishing band, particularly live. I can’t think of many artists who come across so powerfully and fatally magnetic on stage as you. I mean it.
“Yeah, but Everett, not many people remember that,” whispers Courtney.
What I’m saying is that you’re judging yourself on your husband’s terms, and that’s ridiculous. You don’t write songs like Kurt writes songs – why should you? You’re different people. If the commercial market refuses to accept your music, then it’s a failing of the market, not your music.
Another couple of things: your marriage and pregnancy means that your own career has been put on hold this past year. You haven’t written many new songs, you haven’t had a record out, you haven’t played live. Which means that people who only know about you through Kurt have nothing to judge you on but your public ‘bad girl’ image.
The bottom line is, you have to get back out there and perform if you want to regain the respect for your music you once had. No amount of hedging will alter that.
“The fact I judge myself on Kurt’s terms is part of me subscribing to the whole male rock ethic, too,” Courtney explains. “You know, Kim Gordon – like every woman I respected – told me this marriage was going to be a disaster for me. They told me that I’m more important than Kurt because I have this lyric thing going and I’m more culturally significant, and they all predicted exactly what was going to happen.
“I said, ‘No, that’s not going to happen,’ ” she recalls, bitterly. “Everyone knows I have a band, everybody knows about my band, I can do this – my marriage is not going to be more important than my band.”
She pauses and then explodes.
“But not only has my marriage become more important than my fucking band, but our relationship has been violated,” she cries. “If we weren’t doing this interview together, no male rock journalist would dare ask Kurt if he loved his wife. ‘Do you love your wife? Do you guys fuck? Who’s on top?’ I’m not saying you would, Everett.
“They wouldn’t ask him to explain his relationship with me, because he’s a man and men are men and they’re not responsible for any emotional decisions they make.”
She’s shaking with emotion now.
“Men are men!” she exclaims. “They do the work of men! They do men’s things! If they have bad taste in women . . . whatever! All of a sudden, Axl and Julian Cope and Madonna decide I’m bad taste in women and it’s the curse of my life and tough shit. What can I say?
“I never experienced sexism before,” she says, excited. “I really didn’t experience it in any major way in connection with my band until this year, and now I have. The attitude is that Kurt’s more important than me, because he sells more records. Well, fuck you. Suck my dick!”
There’s a brief silence. Courtney’s just taking a breather before going for the kill.
“You wouldn’t look good in leather,” Courtney says to Kurt, looking fondly at him. “Kurt and Julian Cope and Axl Rose and Danny Partridge riding around in a limousine, fucking women that are idiotic and self-hating that want to fuck them to get some attention for themselves, instead of grabbing their guitars and going, ‘ Fuck you, I could do this better, with integrity and with more ethics than you, and with revolution and – fuck you!’ I created this rock thing in the first place for my own amusement and I’m going to take it back.
“I always have lofty ideals about it and yet I deserve it.” She’s resorting to sarcasm now she’s so worked up. “I deserve to get raped by a crowd if I stagedive in a dress, I deserve to get raped if I go to a bar and I’m wearing a bikini, I deserve to get raped because I did all these things I said before – nipping a hot young rock star in the bud, having a baby, having been a stripper, having used drugs . . .
“And then to be perceived as a child abuser!” she exclaims, anguished, off on another exclamatory track. “Two of the last people on earth that would ever hurt a child or a harmless person. Ever. I’ve never picked on harmless
people. I’ve always picked on people that I felt were corrupt or more corrupt than me.”
Silence.
“All right,” she adds, gently. “I’m done now.”
From far off comes the sound of a baby crying.
“I didn’t think in those terms when I was doing my record,” Kurt says, stirring. “Although, at the end, I did allow the record to be produced cleaner and more commercial than I wanted it to be. I don’t know what the reasoning for that was, besides just being dead tired of hearing the same songs. We’d tried remixing it three times and we rang this professional mixologist [Andy Wallace] to do it and, by that point, I was so tired of hearing the songs, I said, ‘Go ahead, do whatever you want.’”
“You say you didn’t think in those terms, cos you’re more punk than me?” Courtney asks him, affronted.
“No, I’m not saying I’m more punk than you,” snaps Kurt. “Actually, I’m wondering right now if I wasn’t subconsciously thinking that I did want success, because I did . . .”
“Is it such a sin to say that you wanted to be in Billboard?” she asks him. “That you knew you were going to be popular, or that you were going to be rock stars?”
“I knew we were going to be popular, but I didn’t know we were going to be this popular,” he says. “I’m so tired of saying this. I’m so tired of saying, ‘Oh, we thought we were going to be as big as Sonic Youth,’ and all that shit. It’s so fucking boring at this point.”
“But isn’t there another part of you, that personality who wrote ‘Aero Zeppelin’ that . . .?” starts Courtney.
“Right!” her husband exclaims. “There is! And maybe, because I allowed the record to be mixed commercially enough that any song could get on the radio, maybe I was thinking it would be kinda funny, really hilarious to see how far we could push it, how popular we could get.”
“Well, that was my excuse until this marriage thing happened,” Courtney shrugs, “that it would be really funny and kinda hilarious, and now I don’t think it’s either of those things. Yet the desire is still there. And I’m not the Yoko Ono of Nirvana – I’m the one who lost two band members, not Kurt.”