by Everett True
Mark Arm and Steve Turner say the same thing at this point. They can’t figure out why Nirvana chose to absolve themselves of all power and give themselves over to just about the biggest management company going.
“That was the same management company that was working with Sonic Youth and The Beastie Boys.”
But Sonic Youth took control of their own lives.
“Well, I wasn’t familiar with the inner dynamics of that relationship, but that’s the management company that all the large progressive acts were working with. It doesn’t surprise me at all.”
Again, Mark, Steve and Dan from Mudhoney all cite the In Utero tour – they say it sucked in so many different ways. And they all draw a parallel with the Pearl Jam tour they went on shortly afterwards.
“I heard those stories, too, and at the time, it was not seen as a reflection of the management at all. It had everything to do with Courtney Love. It was like, ‘Oh, we went on tour with Nirvana, and Kurt and Courtney had their own bus separate from the rest of the band.’ Their management had nothing to do with this decision. It was Courtney separating Kurt from his own bandmates! I remember them coming back and telling me the same thing: ‘And then we went on tour with Pearl Jam, and even though they are the corporate band, the energy and the connections and the culture that was cultivated with their group was inclusive, was human.’ That was an interesting paradox. That the alternative band was behaving in a more grossly corporate way than they could possibly have imagined. It had nothing to do with John Silva.”
Pat Smear travelled with Kurt.
“Pat Smear travelled with Kurt,” the former Sub Pop boss repeats. “That’s true, and that’s interesting. Why him, and not Krist?”
Pat was from LA, so he was Courtney-approved. Also, Krist’s wife had a major problem with Courtney, and Shelli’s not the type to hold back.
“Right. Shelli’s pretty cool.”
NOTES
1 Laidback, harmony-laden and based round an acoustic riff with a softened vocal from Grohl himself – ‘Marigold’ was to prove an incisive glimpse into Dave’s future career as bandleader of the unit-shifting, radio-friendly Foo Fighters.
2 In Utero was released a week earlier in the US on clear vinyl only, a limited edition of 25,000. The UK release date (both vinyl and CD) was also September 14.
3 Having said that, I should add that Danny Goldberg has been very helpful and supportive during the writing of this book – and I have considerably revised my opinion of him.
4 The list ran: Danny and Rosemary, Kim Cobain, Janet Billig, Eric Erlandson, Jackie Farry, Nikki McClure . . . and then his own mother, Wendy. The will was never signed. Apparently.
5 One of The Germs’ drummers was Dottie Danger aka Belinda Carlisle, who later formed all-girl chart band The Go-Go’s, most notable for the bouncy number one ‘We Got The Beat’.
6 Pat Smear and Courtney Love became friends after meeting on the set of Joel Silberg’s 1984 hip hop movie, Breakin’ .
7 Remember Courtney’s Portland list of How To Get Famous? Number five: make friends with Michael Stipe . . .
8 It was almost certainly The Count Five’s frenzied 1966 Top 10 hit, ‘Psychotic Reaction’.
9 It was quite possibly The Zombies’ sweetly melodic 1964 Top 10 hit, ‘She’s Not There’.
10 Craig Montgomery was no longer touring with Nirvana, having left after a disagreement over the sound on Saturday Night Live.
11 Jawbreaker were a second-generation hardcore band from Santa Monica. Their third album, 1992’s brooding 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, benefited from the almost obligatory Albini production. They signed to Geffen in late 1994, on the back of Nirvana’s patronage. They shouldn’t have.
12 With rich irony, Courtney Love later collaborated with 4 Non Blondes producer Linda Perry on her truly appalling solo album, 2004’s America’s Sweetheart.
13 The set ran: ‘Radio Friendly Unit Shifter’, ‘Drain You’, ‘Breed’, ‘Serve The Servants’, ‘About A Girl’, ‘Heart-Shaped Box’, ‘Sliver’, ‘Dumb’, ‘In Bloom’, ‘Come As You Are’, ‘Lithium’, ‘Pennyroyal Tea’, ‘School’, ‘Polly’, ‘Milk It’, ‘Rape Me’, ‘Territorial Pissings’, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, ‘All Apologies’, ‘Blew’, ‘Endless, Nameless’.
14 Courtney initially laid claim to ‘You Know You’re Right’ by performing it with Hole on MTV Unplugged. It later resurfaced on DGC’s 2002 ‘greatest hits’ compilation Nirvana.
15 Contrary to reports in Heavier Than Heaven, Nirvana never once played a gospel song entitled ‘Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam’.
16 For example, at the end of the Kansas City show, as ‘Endless, Nameless’ blew itself out in a orgy of distended guitar strings, Kurt informed the audience he was leaving his guitar switched on (where it was resting against an amp, feeding back) until they all went home.
17 From Osaka, Japan – Boredoms are a vivid explosion of colour and light and communal belching and feedback and blaring trumpets: brilliantly, bizarrely hilarious.
18 Ted Danson had been ridiculed a few weeks previously, for appearing in blackface with his girlfriend Whoopi Goldberg.
19 Later that month In Utero was certified platinum in the US (sales of one million), so it seems that perhaps Geffen could have relaxed a little about the sales. Nevermind , meanwhile, had just passed the five million mark.
20 I wrote that on NYC band Mercury Rev’s second album, 1993’s Boces , “Guitars meld, and fuse into one gigantic, multi-headed beast. Flutes whisper in and out like the wind on the Interstate 5. Drums echo cavernously and spring off on multiple paths of exploration. Listening to Mercury Rev is like slipping down a shopping mall of freaks and hairdressers, only to be confronted by wilderness.”
21 Earnie had been convinced to join the tour by that point.
22 The Folk Implosion were Lou’s peculiar chart crossover band – Sebadoh honed down and slightly cleaned up, basically – best known for 1995’s hit single ‘Natural One’, taken from the raw Kids movie soundtrack.
23 Earnie Bailey: “ MacLeod was charging for everything back then. It was only a year ago that Pat said he got his first cheque from Nirvana, saying he owed nothing.”
24 Tennis star John McEnroe was later spotted looking decidedly out of place in Nirvana’s dressing room.
25 Mudhoney also used to delight in inviting people up on stage while encoring with the same song.
26 Pat may be getting his Marc Bolan groups confused. In 1973, Marc was a heartthrob pop star. He actually used to smash his guitar with his first group, Sixties psychedelic pop stars John’s Children. They got thrown off The Who’s 1967 German tour for trying to upstage them in the destruction stakes.
27 MTV Unplugged was released after Kurt’s death, the sound cleaned up and the between-song banter and occasional jam removed. Cash in? Of course.
28 MTV themselves only belatedly decided it was ‘classic’ music TV after Kurt died. Up to that point, they hadn’t even screened it.
29 Kurt was in withdrawal, and incredibly nervous about playing acoustic.
30 Krist, on the other hand, referred to it as ‘Nirvana lite’ in the album’s press release.
31 It’s almost a prerequisite of being a bass-player: to try and stop the other musicians fighting.
CHAPTER 27
Fallen Angels
THE last conversation I ever had with Kurt was on Christmas Day 1993, when he and Courtney rang me up at my house in Brighton, England.
“You’re the only person we could think of out of all our friends who’d be in today,” Kurt explained, mindful of an anti-Christmas rant I’d given him and Kim Deal two weeks earlier in Seattle. “We haven’t spoken to anyone all day, except for the postman. How are you? Still miserable? Merry fucking Christmas.”
I tell this anecdote now, but I have a feeling the last time I actually spoke to Kurt may have been when Courtney called up and said, “Kurt wants to ask you something.” This was odd, cos Kurt didn’t usually call me on the pho
ne. After half-a-minute of heated argument in the background, he picked up the receiver and mumbled something about how he wanted me to visit his ‘doctor’ in a nearby town, pick up some supplies and ferry them across to Seattle.
I told him – very politely, I’m sure – to fuck off.
“What are you going to do on New Year’s Eve, Kurt?” asks Kim Deal.
“Get drunk off my ass, and play with pyrotechnics,” replies Nirvana’s singer. “We’re playing in San Francisco, and we’re going to have pyro-technicians come and shoot off some fireworks. Isn’t that cool?”
You’re going to get drunk? You never get drunk before you play.
“OK,” he admits.
How about you, Kim? What do you normally do on New Year’s Eve?
“Bang pots and pans,” she laughs, stoned. “Go out on the streets. Yeah!”
Kurt wants to know if I smoke pot. I shake my head.
“No?” he continues, amazed. “Have you never smoked pot?”
I feel a distinct sense of déjà vu coming on. Maybe the tape recorder is stuck on a loop. Maybe the lack of sleep is finally getting to me.
Yeah, of course I have.
Kurt isn’t satisfied.
“You don’t have a pot-smoking period in your life?” he persists.
No. I squatted once, though. Do you know what squatting is?
“You lived somewhere where there’s no electricity?”
Something like that. A guy OD’d in the room next to mine. “But you can’t OD on pot,” he laughs.
We both look at Kim, who’s sitting on the bed between us, lost, drifting in her own reverie.
No, you’re right. You can’t.
You just become . . . one more, sleepless in Seattle.
When I arrive in town, one of the first things I do is to call Kurt Cobain at home, where he’s waiting for his wife to fly back from Atlanta where she’s been remixing the new Hole album with R.E.M. producer Scott Litt. What do you talk about with someone you haven’t seen for six weeks or so, and whose lifestyle is so different from your own?
We discuss the insecurity that emerges from the lack of sleep caused by jetlag and/or alcohol, how tired we feel, and how much we hate Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam. Such an all-American jock! Kurt, having just got back from another gruelling leg of the In Utero tour. Me, having flown for 13 hours straight to try and arrange this Melody Maker Christmas cover story.
“Do you still want to try to do this thing with Kim?” the singer asks at one point, as I struggle to keep my eyes open.
Sure.
Sure, I do.
“Just tell me when, then. I need to go to sleep now.”
The feeling’s mutual.
The MTV New Year’s Eve spectacular, Live And Loud, featuring Nirvana, stoner rap band Cypress Hill, Pearl Jam and The Breeders, is being pre-recorded live at Seattle’s Pier 48, a cavernous, freezing, ferry terminal. Kids have been queuing for up to eight hours in the pouring rain to bear witness to what looks to be a legendary reconciliation between two of the city’s supposed leading exponents of ‘grunge’ – indeed, the two bands who have, between them, defined the genre, on MTV terms.
The rift between Nirvana and Pearl Jam has been well documented. Briefly, it started way back, in the days when Ament and Stone Gossard played in the ill-fated Temple Of The Dog and, before that, Green River. The friction between the bands was subsequently inflamed by their respective successes and the way they were inevitably bracketed together by the world press.
This has happened, despite the bands’ clear differences. Pearl Jam have always played classic FM American rock. Nirvana are something more extreme and mould-breaking altogether. Matters weren’t helped when Pearl Jam’s success was perceived to have resulted from Nirvana’s, or when sales of the new Pearl Jam album Vs far out-stripped those of In Utero .
Mr Cobain has told the press several times how much he despises Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam have tried to downplay any stories of a rift, perhaps conscious of a credibility gap, perhaps because life’s too short.
Rumours had recently surfaced of a reconciliation between Eddie and Kurt but, even so, for MTV – even with all its immense corporate muscle – to get these two bands together on the same bill is a hell of an achievement.
The only problem is: where the hell is Eddie Vedder?
Eddie Vedder’s presence (or lack of it) hangs heavy over the proceedings. Rumours abound as to why he hasn’t shown. Maybe it’s simply down to a rekindling of the old feud with Nirvana, although the presence of Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament on stage with Cypress Hill would seem to belie this.
Gossard tells Maker photographer Steve Gullick that Eddie is ‘extremely ill’ and his voice sounds ‘terrible’. So what’s new? But you can’t help recalling the recent well-publicised punch-up Vedder had in New Orleans, add it to the fact that recently he’s been drinking more heavily, and start wondering if this is evidence of something more serious.
Everyone’s trying their hardest not to let Eddie’s non-appearance get them down, however. Doubtless, MTV’s people are furious, but the kids don’t seem too bothered. And why should they? They got in free and have just witnessed one of Nirvana’s best shows ever. None of the Seattle drinking fraternity ligging it up in the green room seems too put out, either.
To one side are Matt Lukin and Steve Turner from Mudhoney, plus their manager Bob Whittaker – the man who once drove me down a sidewalk in his Cadillac after a particularly fine party.1 The Screaming Trees brothers are talking to Kim Thayil of Soundgarden. Krist Novoselic is wandering around with his hand in a sling, having injured it quite badly during Nirvana’s apocalyptic encore. His brother’s somewhere, too – just as tall, and looking identical: his sister, too. There’s Kurt’s mate, Dylan from Earth; the Sub Pop entourage; Scott Litt; someone from R.E.M.; the Chili Peppers in drag and in Irish costume and generally behaving like dickheads. Eric from Hole rushes around trying to film people in compromising situations. Kurt sings the Pearl Jam song ‘Jeremy’ with an Eddie Vedder mask on for him.
None of which concerns your reporter, however, who faces an organisational headache trying to bring Kurt and Kim together. Kurt has the distractions of a wife and baby he hasn’t seen together for far too long, while Kim is content to chill with Cypress Hill – another band notable for their love of the weed. What I didn’t realise was that, despite the musicians’ mutual admiration, Kurt and Kim barely know each other.
What did you think of Kurt when you met him, Kim? (It was in New York, during the mixing of The Breeders’ Safari EP, just when Nevermind was taking off. Nirvana were playing a show midtown, and, knowing how big a fan of The Breeders Kurt was, I took him down to the studio.)
“That’s right!” she laughs. “I didn’t know he was who he was anyway.”
“You didn’t know I was from my band?” Kurt asks, incredulously.
“I knew you were probably from Nirvana,” she explains. “And somebody else probably was, maybe. But maybe you weren’t. I didn’t know anybody really – just that you [she points at me] were bringing some people from Nirvana.”
What did you think of Kim, Kurt? You were in awe of her at the time, right?
“Well, I loved Pod so much that I was freaked out to meet you,” he reveals to Kim. “Then, when I got there, you were really condescending. But, at the same time, you were so generous. I was right at the point of freaking out about being a rock star, and I thought everyone was making fun of me.”
“It was just, ‘I’m recording,’ ” Kim explains. “‘It’s my stuff on tape. You guys are listening to my shit. You know what I’m thinking about.
What the fuck are you doing here?’”
“I understand,” sighs Kurt. “I also felt like I was totally imposing on you, like the rock star come to hear a taste of the new album. I was under the impression that you knew exactly who I was.”
Kim murmurs something about whether we can hear her clicking her gums like an old person – she’s very stoned and very
tired. We’ve been waiting for about three hours for Kurt to come out of a marathon MTV interview, covering Nirvana’s entire history. Kurt’s just very tired. It’s been a long day.
Since you’ve gotten to know each other better, how have your perceptions of each other changed?
“But we don’t know each other,” Kurt exclaims. “This is a good way of meeting each other. Hi, Kim!”
“Hi Kurt!”
“I hardly ever show up in time to see their set, cos I’m so fucking lazy,” he explains. “I’ve seen them only about six times on this tour. That makes me feel like a creep.”
“I’ve seen them every night,” Kim tells me. “Our bus leaves at midnight usually, so it’s perfect. It’s so great! Nirvana do the best dumb songs in the world! They’re dumb in a good way, like the Ramones.”
Earlier, Kim revealed her favourite Nirvana songs to be ‘About A Girl’, ‘Scentless Apprentice’ and ‘No Recess’2, and that she likes to watch them with a joint to hand, hidden behind a pillar. Kurt returned the compliment by telling me how The Breeders keep getting better – they have to, “because they’re still learning to play their instruments. Which is great.3 We have to be absolutely phenomenal to even play a good show, because we all know our parts so well.”
Do you see any similarities between your personalities?
“No,” replies Kurt. “Kim is way more upbeat and happy and friendly. I’m the pissy mean one. We’re the opposite.”
Sure. But you both have this thing that Courtney pointed out to me, where you know your stuff is really good and that you don’t need to prove yourselves beyond that.
“Yeah, that sounds cool, doesn’t it?” laughs Kim. “That’s exactly what we think. You’re right, Courtney, goddamn it!”
“Don’t you have any questions about Christmas?” Kurt asks me, as he goes to gob out the window of his Four Seasons hotel room.
Sure I do. Here comes one now.