by Everett True
“I travelled with the band,” says Lori. “Everybody was really nice, polite and respectful – there was surprisingly little nutty partying. But it was so fucking boring! It felt like sensory deprivation to me, all the travelling, being told where to go, playing the same set every night. I liked the music and I watched all the bands every night, but the circumstances didn’t suit me: to have the same set, same order, go home and watch cable TV. I talked a lot to Krist – he is, as you know, a hilarious guy.”
He’d given up drinking by then?
“Not completely,” the cellist replies. “But he wasn’t playing drunk, and that was a big switch for him. There was talk about politics, and his family circumstances. Jennifer [ Youngblood, photographer and Dave Grohl’s fiancée] was around. Shelli was around. They were great. Earnie was really nice to talk to.”
On October 26, Nirvana played the Mecca Auditorium in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was the final show with Mudhoney and Jawbreaker in support – Boredoms17 and The Meat Puppets took over the following night in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
“That tour with Nirvana was horrible,” exclaims Mudhoney guitarist Steve Turner. “It was the least fun we’d ever had, it was heartbreaking how fucked-up their organisation was and how, like, Krist was trying not to drink so the management was telling us we couldn’t have beer in our room, yet at the same time their management would be coming into our room asking for a beer. They were spending all this money on hotels that they wouldn’t even use sometimes, like thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, yet they’d be worried about little things so they were firing people on tour almost every day, like crew members for saying the wrong thing. Kurt was miserable and secluded, it was so horribly sad . . .
“And then we were supposed to do this Pearl Jam tour a couple of months later,” Steve continues, “and it was like, ‘Oh my God. What’s this gonna be like?’ And it was great. Everyone’s happy, their crew was all happy, big hugs with everybody, management was totally nice, but the decisions came from the band. It was night and day. It just made me hate . . . Nirvana’s manager,” he laughs. “Quite a bit. I just feel sorry for everything, and hate the world of big rock more than ever.”
A show at the Michigan State Fairgrounds Coliseum in Detroit followed – Kurt stormed off stage after being hit on the head by a shoe – before two nights in Ohio. At the first, in Dayton, Kurt and Krist got it into their heads that Chad Channing was in the audience and refused to proceed until their old drummer came up on stage to play on ‘School’. The show stopped for 10 minutes while the pair jammed on a version of The Stooges’ ‘Down On The Street’ until they realised Chad wasn’t present.
At the second, at the University of Akron on Halloween, the band dressed up for the occasion: Kurt as Barney, the big purple dinosaur, with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, Dave as a mummy, Pat as Slash from Guns N’ Roses and Krist as a blackface Ted Danson from Cheers18, with PC marked on his forehead (for Politically Correct). The party mood continued after another shoe was thrown, hitting Kurt on the head once more. Instead of storming off stage this time, he unzipped his flies, pissed into the shoe and hurled it straight back.
The tour moved across the border to Canada. After the sold-out show at the 8,500-capacity Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Krist accompanied The Meat Puppets to an after-hours party where the four musicians jammed. They played noodling instrumentals, with Krist on guitar – but it’s possible that Nirvana got the idea of asking the Kirkwood brothers to guest with them on MTV Unplugged from it.
On November 5, Nirvana played a tumultuous show at the University of Buffalo in Amherst, NY. Halfway through, Kurt stopped ‘In Bloom’ to shout at the security staff for holding their fans back from dancing at the front. “You guys in the yellow shirts, get the fuck out of here, you’re spoiling the fun. They’re not hurting anybody, so let them stay.” Kurt then stagedived into the audience.
“There was a huge crowd at the show in Buffalo,” remembers Cali, who was there with Courtney and Frances. “It was a lot of shirtless, thick-necked men screaming. For the encore, I went on stage with them and the Boredoms and The Meat Puppets. Kurt started to play ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and then everyone made noise and the Boredoms screamed and blew horns and made a racket [with Boredoms’ Yamatsuka Eye on vocals]. All those thick-necked, shirtless men started hurling stuff at us, and screaming, ‘ Fuck you!’ Kurt liked that.”
I remember the audiences being pretty respectful.
“There were good ones and there were bad ones,” he replies. “There were shows where the entire arena would be flipping off the Boredoms and the next night everyone might enjoy them. It was really something else to watch the Boredoms play to that many people.”
Two nights later, in Williamsburg, Virginia, The Breeders and Half Japanese joined the tour: “The Breeders were great,” says Cali. “Kim [Deal] didn’t change her clothes the whole tour. I’m sure it’s an exaggeration, but as my memory serves, it’s real. She dressed like a gas station attendant. She’d wear these dirty jeans and a dirty T-shirt. She would always have Jim Beam and a joint. She has grey hair – not totally, but she used to put grease in her hair before she went on stage so that you couldn’t see the grey. It was funny to see someone be vain about that when they didn’t change and they were drunk. One night the band started warming up without her. They were like, ‘It’s time to go on stage’. She went, ‘ Shit’, and looked around, grabbed the ham off the deli tray and wiped it in her hair for grease and ran up the stairs. She left us all sort of speechless. I think it was Courtney who said, ‘Her name now is Rawhide.’ I was impressed.”
I caught up with the In Utero tour on November 9, the same day that ‘All Apologies’ was released as a single in the UK. Once again, Geffen refused to release it in the States, fearing it would affect album sales.19 It was backed with ‘Rape Me’, even more stark and unnerving when heard in isolation, and the totally excellent non-album track, the playful and heavy ‘ MV’.
I made it joint Single Of The Week in Melody Maker, alongside Bikini Kill’s thrilling ‘Rebel Girl’, because:
“It’s the most supremely resigned, supremely weary fuck you to the outside world I’ve heard this year. ‘All Apologies’ has the most gorgeous, aching tune, an emotionally draining ennui. Every time I hear Kurt break into that line, ‘Choking on the ashes of our enemies’, I grow close to tears, and I can’t help but wonder at the stupidity of people who see Nirvana as a fashion accessory.”
That night, I can still vividly recall the scary ride from the tiny airport in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to the Stabler Arena at LeHigh University, through endless miles of pitch-black woods – I’d stepped off the plane to find no taxi rank, no transport, nothing; just some bloke wandering up to me asking if I fancied a ride – and my feeling of relief when the bright glare of arena lights made itself known through the trees.
The sports arena itself was massive, cold and unwelcoming. Nobody was outside. There was no cause for anyone to be outside. It was in the middle of nowhere and I was late and freaked out by my mid-America surroundings. It seemed a very far cry from those early days spent thrusting my head into a bass bin in Seattle clubs or leaping off the Astoria stage in a blind frenzy, unconcerned with personal safety, as instruments worked themselves into a tumult of contrition around me. It seemed the total antithesis of everything I loved about rock music, loved about Olympia, loved about Nirvana. Where was the scope for spontaneity, for communication now? Was it on the faces of the thousand or so orange-coated security men directing me through a pointless chain of barricades? Was it in the echoing, cavernous sound of the venue itself, the brutal claustrophobia of rock unleashed into still, tepid evening air? Was it in the plastic seating, the rows upon rows of Aerosmith and Pearl Jam fans watching the band in MTV-led acceptance?
I sauntered up to the door and told the bullish hicks to let me in. I was Everett True! I was a fucking friend to the stars. One call to Alex MacLeod, and I was free to wander wherever I liked.
I met my travelling companion, Melody Maker photographer Steve Gullick, who’d driven up from New York with eccentric Mercury Rev20 singer David Baker. Steve amused us by burping the alphabet and enacting an entire kung fu movie with belched sound effects. Indeed, I recall that one reason Kurt took to Gullick so easily was the fact that, on one of the first occasions they met, Kurt belched loudly in Steve’s face whereupon the photographer threw his head back and did perhaps the loudest belch I’ve ever heard. Kurt was suitably impressed.
“I got a picture of Kurt looking like Christ in Bethlehem,” remarks Steve, “which was quite funny.”
I later introduced David Baker to Kurt – when he’d gone, Kurt took me to one side and instructed me to, “Never let that man near me again.” This was odd, because Kurt was usually tolerant of my strange companions and David was very likeable. Kurt could be intense and paranoid, though.
Despite the anaemic surroundings, I too recall this show – and the ones that followed it – as rare good fun, the best I’d seen Nirvana since 1991. Tons of people in the vast hockey arena threw their shoes on to the stage, and walked home barefoot afterwards, in some strange Pennsylvania ritual. The mood was upbeat, Pat was clearly a tonic, Courtney most definitely wasn’t around and everyone adored the Deal sisters (Kim and Kelley from The Breeders). Plus, it was such a thrill seeing Half Japanese warp and throw strange shapes on such a large scale, and Nirvana . . . Nirvana sounded amazing. I soon found a favourite spot to watch the show, just behind Earnie’s massive rack of Kurt’s guitars21, to the side of the drum riser – either that or I’d be out the front, going crazy as the band hit the opening chords to ‘Lithium’, or ‘Rape Me’, or ‘Blew’, or ‘In Bloom’, or whatever.
From my vantage point, I watched Lori weave her magic on the cello, and exchanged constant grins with Pat Smear – both Pat and I still disbelieving at our good fortune at being allowed to be part of this – and shake my body around without fear of annoying the ever-stressed MacLeod too much.
The following day, Steve and I travelled up to Springfield, Massachusetts on Kurt’s tour bus alongside Dave, Krist and Alex – the old gang, back together momentarily. We watched a Cheech And Chong movie. Dave was wearing a comedy Michael Jackson T-shirt, so Steve made a tasteless joke about Michael Jackson. Kurt suggested Steve shouldn’t make jokes about people if he didn’t know them.
“I’m just waiting to go to hell now,” Steve comments, “so I can tell him some jokes about himself.”
At the gig that evening, Kurt was standing at the side of the stage, watching Half Japanese, when a fan shouted over for a light – so Kurt ran into the crowd and obliged, freaking him out. The show once more was superb, ‘On A Plain’ sounding particularly poignant, and the noise finale of ‘Scentless Apprentice’ and ‘Blew’ so intense and extended that the only way anyone could drag Kurt off the stage was when Pat threw a bottle of Evian water over him where he knelt, hammering shit out of his guitar. Old songs such as ‘About A Girl’ and ‘Sliver’ seemed to be taking on new layers of resonance with every play – and anyone doubting Kurt’s feminism should have caught his confused self-castration on ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ or fiery ‘Frances Farmer’ on this tour.
Other reports suggest that Kurt seemed pretty wasted at this show – that’s possible. I recall the pair of us sharing a fair whack of whiskey beforehand. But it certainly led to an entertaining performance, with ‘Territorial Pissings’, ‘Teen Spirit’, ‘Rape Me’ and the searing refrain from the opening ‘Radio Friendly Unit Shifter’, “What is wrong with me?” in particular benefiting from his alcohol-fuelled spontaneity.
“Both gigs were great,” confirms Steve. “They were a professional arena rock band. Both gigs were pretty much the same: really fucking tight and good. I enjoyed them a lot more than the Scandinavia gigs and Reading gigs in 1992, but In Utero is fucking amazing. I got the impression they’d worked out their problems.”
Later, a handful of us threw a Queen party in Nirvana’s other tour bus: Krist, Steve, Kelley Deal, Nirvana biographer Michael Azerrad and me. “The evening ended superbly in some car park,” Gullick wrote in the Nirvana photo-book Winterlong . “ Krist presented me with a bowling ball and a piece of broken TV screen that we’d been watching the Queen videos on. I think it was the prize for ‘best Freddie impression’. They were Kurt’s videos – he usually managed to hide his love for Queen from the press.”
They had the following day off: Nirvana watched old school English punk band Buzzcocks play in Boston. I too departed, and hitched a ride back with Sebadoh/ Folk Implosion22 singer Lou Barlow and his future wife Kathleen Billus to the Fitchburg, MA show at the George Wallace Civic Center on November 12, where I introduced Lou to Kurt.
I knew the pair were fans of each other’s work.
Can you remember the first time you met Kurt?
“Yeah, it was the only time I met Kurt,” replies Lou. “They played that ice rink in Massachusetts. It was weird. We were mutual fans of each other, and had this uncomfortable conversation that people that are fans of each other’s music generally have when they first meet. He was playing a show. People were hovering around. The first thing he said to me was he felt frustrated that Nirvana couldn’t jam. He thought Sebadoh was more unfettered, like we were free. He was feeling self-conscious about Nirvana being locked into this rock routine and being in big buses.”
What did you like about Nirvana?
“They were like Melvins but catchy,” the singer says. “I felt bad for Kurt that he wanted the band to be experimental and radical, but they were a hit songs, catchy band. It was his voice. Black Sabbath meets Bay City Rollers, or whatever he said, that’s how it worked for me. I didn’t confuse them with being an experimental, indie, lo-fi band.”
Do you think Nirvana opened a lot of doors?
“Not at the time,” Lou sighs. “I just thought they were a really accessible sounding band, they wrote great sounding songs that were heavy, they produced their records in a way that translated to a larger audience. But it was great to have a metal band that doesn’t have lead guitar and has a great screaming vocalist who doesn’t sing about pulling chicks and taking drugs. He’s singing impressionistic lyrics. That’s a great combination. They’re probably my favourite metal band other than Black Sabbath. They presented to me the best aspects of chunky, simple lyrics you can get behind, and a great vocalist. That was Nirvana. I know he was such a fan of indie rock, and he felt a little bit at odds with what he was producing, as opposed to what other people were producing. What he could do though, he did well. He probably did it effortlessly. Which probably really confused him.”
The next night, in Washington, DC, I was standing at the side of the stage watching Nirvana encore, furtively drinking my whiskey, hiding it from the fiery glare of Alex MacLeod. I wasn’t supposed to drink while I was travelling with Nirvana, management orders, for fear of being a bad influence. Frequently though, Alex would come up to me, check my mug of black coffee and give me a snifter from a bottle hidden inside his jacket when assured I’d been a good boy. Suddenly I became aware that he was shouting my name. “Oh fuck,” I thought to myself. “What have I done wrong now?” I was a bit scared he might have discovered I’d had a hand in Pat Smear’s prank of busting his hotel toilet with the aid of two towels earlier.23 I look up, and see he’s rushing towards me.
“Kurt wants you to sing the encore. Get on stage NOW!” he yells above the noise of the PA. On the live recording of the show, you can hear Kurt going, “Please don’t throw your shoes,” before screaming “Everett” down the microphone several times. It’s spooky to hear your own name shouted with such passion.
I’d been joking with Kurt beforehand that he should get me on stage because the last time I’d performed live with Nirvana was at the 9:30 Club in the same city, two years earlier. I never expected him to take me seriously. So I rushed on, parka pulled up over my head, whereupon Kurt did his usual trick of shoving his guitar-strap over me amid confusion because he’
s left-handed and he’s putting it on upside down and I can’t fucking play guitar anyway. “Don’t worry about it,” he laughed. “It looks better with you wearing it. You can always smash it afterwards.”
What did I sing and play? I have no idea: something to do with doughnuts. I kept chanting in a vague approximation of the beat and distorted guitar the band was playing behind me. As they continued, so did I. The audience looked . . . bamboozled isn’t the right word. Cheated.
Did I smash Kurt’s guitar at this show? Who knows? “If it feels good, do it,” as Kurt himself said a few years earlier. And it feels fucking great to smash a guitar. They’re also a lot harder to break than you might think.
“I don’t think you did break that guitar,” says Earnie Bailey – who should know. Hmm. It was probably because I could see Alex drawing a line across his throat, like he was going to murder me if I did any such thing. “Yeah,” he laughs. “Still, I would have remembered that.” Kurt grabbed the guitar from me, and started hurling it at a mirror ball hanging a few feet away – he never did manage to hit it. Eventually Krist had to climb back on stage and carry him off, tucked underneath his arm.
That night I clambered on to a bunk in Kurt’s tour bus alongside Pat for the journey back to New York. We watched videos of puppet sex created by insane Midwest band The Frogs most of the way. It was a long drive, and no one was saying much.
When we arrived in New York at 6 a.m. I discovered I had no money, and furthermore my booked hotel room didn’t come into effect until midday. Kurt offered me his floor to sleep on, and departed upstairs to go check the situation out. Confused, I wandered out on to the streets of New York with my rucksack and got caught up in the preparations for the NYC Marathon that were taking place across the block in Central Park. Kurt came back downstairs, surprised that I’d disappeared. “Where did you go, man?” he asked later on that day as we sat outside in the catering tent by the Javits Center Coliseum and I tried to nurse my ravaged voice back into health again with copious amounts of honey, herbal tea and hot lemon. “I looked for you for ages.”