Nirvana

by Everett True

  “Backstage wasn’t like a big party scene,” comments filmmaker Dave Markey. “It was very sparse, pre-show. Eddie was just hanging with himself and several bottles of wine. As he got more and more drunk, he got more and more rude. I had my camera with me and it was pathetic enough for me not even to have it turned on. Then he started making racist comments about Pat and it got uncomfortable. Everyone’s had that experience with the really drunk guy at a party fucking with your friends, and it degenerates into a fight – but this was Eddie Van Halen . He also pretended he was coming on to Krist.”

  During the destruction at the set’s end, Kurt used one of the dummies’ arms to play his guitar. He then picked up a drill and started boring holes into his instrument before spinning it above his head. Meanwhile, Krist sang The Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me’.

  “I was on the whole California leg of the In Utero tour,” says Jessica Hopper. “That was a little weird, because Cali wasn’t working, and so he and Rene were totally on drugs. It was fucking freaking me out. Cali and I went with Pat in a limo down to San Diego. Chokebore were awesome. I remember Kurt saying after he heard the Chokebore record it was the sound he hoped for on the next Nirvana record: at the time, they were this dramatic loud/quiet, volatile, damaged outfit. Troy [Von Balthazar, Chokebore singer]’s vocals were almost like caterwauling. Abrasive.

  “The whole tour was denial, denial, denial,” the writer continues. “There were a lot of factions, caused mainly by the drug factor.

  “There was definitely an air of Kurt being more reclusive,” she adds. “There was a separation between people in the band. Even during the previous summer there had been more camaraderie. Kurt spent a lot of time with Frances.

  “Kurt, me, Jackie Farry, Rene, Cali, Frances and Pat were all on one bus,” clarifies Jessica. “Patti [ Schemel] may have been with us at times too, if Courtney was along. On that bus it was a typical situation of no one talking about anything, terse silence and sporadic, light conversation only – Frances was the focus of everyone’s attention by way of denying the pall that hung over Kurt, the band, the tour. Bad things were happening and it was never getting addressed; management and the rest of the band was seen as an enemy, there were castes to the inner circle. When I got back home, my mom was like, ‘You’re not allowed to be on tour any more. You’re a mess.’ ”

  On New Year’s Eve, Nirvana played the Oakland Coliseum Arena in Oakland, California with Bobcat Goldthwait MC-ing. It was somewhat of a punk rock fest.

  “At the time, the East Bay was the centre of punk America,” explains Jessica. “ Maximumrocknroll had a store called Epicentre that Matt Woben-smith8 worked at. Cali and I went there and bought a bunch of zines and records, and Cali told Matt that he could have whoever he wanted on the list that night, with backstage passes. So all these people from [San Francisco/Oakland punk bands] Green Day, Spitboy, J. Church and Monsula came down. Green Day had just been signed, and they were really star-struck, like, ‘Whoa, we’re backstage at the Coliseum.’ There were probably about 30 of these punk musicians, sat at those dumb tables in the green room watching Nirvana, and at midnight Bobcat descended from the ceiling wearing a diaper, dressed as Baby New Year, and all these balloons and weird crap fell from the ceiling.

  “That was probably the best Nirvana show I ever saw,” Jessica finishes. “They were so insanely good. All these punk kids from this notoriously holier-than-thou scene were psyched to be there. Either Kurt or Cali remarked about what a coup it was to have all these ideological punk rockers going round saying how amazing the show was, despite having called them sell-outs before. It was the last thing these people expected – that they’d spend the New Year drinking Nirvana’s beer.”

  The final leg of the American In Utero tour then moved on through Medford, Oregon, Vancouver9 and Spokane before finishing up with two nights at the Seattle Center Arena on January 7–8. “The Seattle shows were kinda nice,” comments Lori, who parted company with the band after the second night, “but everyone was exhausted by then.”

  The homecomings were ebullient: Kurt introduced ‘Teen Spirit’ at the first show saying, “This song made Seattle the most liveable city in America.”

  “It was fun backstage, like a homecoming scene,” recalls Earnie Bailey (who had the advantage of having dropped out of the tour again after Unplugged). “Earlier, we were over at Krist’s house, waiting to go down the venue, when a group of Kurt’s relatives approached him, wanting Kurt to ride with them. He didn’t want to get into conversations about the old days, and there was an awkwardness as it felt like so much had changed in the time since he last saw them. So as Krist and I were driving off, he ran up and asked if he could get in the middle seat of Krist’s old pickup truck and ride down there with us.”

  The second night at the Center Arena was the last time Nirvana played in the States.

  Addenda 1: Pearl Jam

  Many local musicians think Pearl Jam got an unfair press in ’92–’94, in regard to their relationship with other Seattle bands. Maybe it’s because people like myself didn’t understand the place Pearl Jam came from – suburban metal.

  “At least two-fifths of Pearl Jam came from punk rock,” Mark Arm corrects me. “Well, Jeff [ Ament] did. And Stoney [Stone Gossard] was a metal kid, but he played at punk rock shows. I think a lot of people locally – punk rock purists or whatever – saw a difference in intent with Pearl Jam from the get-go. Mother Love Bone had been pursuing a major label deal since the break-up of Green River. But fuck it, almost all of the original Sub Pop bands ended up on major labels. It’s just retarded.”

  It’s weird: why Pearl Jam and why not Soundgarden? They too were signed to a major label, almost from the start.

  “Yeah,” agrees Mark. “They were signed to A& M essentially, but decided to do an album on SST – which is more of a crass commercial move than just going to a major label, because they were doing damage control ahead of time. I know there was this big controversy between Kurt and Pearl Jam, but people weren’t hammering on Alice In Chains! Alice In Chains was considered irrelevant in some respects.”

  I think it was because someone was trying to sell Pearl Jam as a hipster band. And they’re not.

  “But Pearl Jam probably did as much for unknown bands as Nirvana ever did,” argues Mark. “And way more than Alice In Chains, or Soundgarden. We did the first few weeks of the In Utero tour in the States, and by this time Nirvana was a big machine and they had a roadie for each person in the band, they had a lighting crew and a sound crew – a separate bus load of people travelling with them. And that tour was fucking painful. It was one of the worst experiences in my life in a rock environment. The whole vibe that was going on – they’d surrounded themselves with so many gross management people. Just fucking sick, gross people that I would never want to associate myself with in any kind of relationship. And this is from a band that came up through Sub Pop, through punk rock roots! If you take any kind of care in what you do and who you deal with, you can make the hugest difference . . .

  “One of the amazing things about Pearl Jam to me,” Mark finishes, “is that at some point they realised, ‘We’re only on this treadmill the record label put us on for as long as we want to be.’ You don’t have to blow your brains out to get off of it. You just stop doing interviews, stop making videos . . . stop doing whatever you don’t want to do. Pearl Jam totally closed ranks and helped each other out through a weird, difficult time.”

  Addenda 2: Ben Shepherd

  “Last time I saw Nirvana was down on the waterfront in Seattle.”

  Yeah, I was there; I was having a bad day. I hated that MTV shit.

  “I liked meeting Cypress Hill. You got used to that weird MTV world where stars are treated this way, and friends and family are treated another way. It was just weird that our town was suddenly . . . that. It’s like, ‘Why is all this shit here?’ ”

  I remember being shocked at Pier 48 because I went into a bar outside the super-privileged backstage a
rea and there were all the guys I knew. I thought, “Why are they all here and Nirvana’s in there? That’s retarded.”

  “It wasn’t the same spirit at all.”

  I remember finding it really odd. It was the last time I saw them as well.

  “I got to see them with Pat Smear, who I’ve always wanted to see because I love The Germs and he’s one of my favourite guitar-players of all time. I love how loose and fluid his guitar playing is.”

  Did you speak to Kurt that day?

  “The last time I saw Kurt, Frances was in the backseat, and we were mixing the [Ben’s garage-stamped Soundgarden side-project] Hater record on 3rd Ave. I was walking with Kim [ Thayil, Soundgarden] and someone else towards the House of Leisure and I saw Kurt and I ran up and said, ‘Hi,’ to him. He goes, ‘Hey, get in here,’ because he didn’t want to talk to the other guys. We drove around the block, caught up real quick and said we’d get in touch with each other really soon. Through the grapevine I’d hear how he wanted to jam with me and Buzz [ Osborne] and somebody else. I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ We tried to set it up, but that was the last I saw him. I got to meet Frances. I grabbed her little finger and put my finger in her hand.”

  NOTES

  1 We had a record company rep cowering in the back. At one point it was clear we weren’t going to make it through the gap between a hedge on one side, and a lamppost on the other. So I started pummelling Bob, who was still driving. It was the only option. He took out half the hedge. Needless to say, Mudhoney didn’t sign with the record company in question.

  2 For some reason, I always used to refer to ‘School’ under this title: maybe it’s an old working title of Kurt’s.

  3 Kurt is clearly referring to the credo of spontaneity being at the heart of all great rock music.

  4 Kurt also had a half-brother Chad Cobain, born to his dad Don and stepmother Jenny Westby.

  5 Sonic Youth showed up at the Miami date, where Kurt played a snippet of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Heartbreaker’ – a song Nirvana covered many years earlier.

  6 Vic Chestnutt is a a quadriplegic folksy musician. His direct, confessional and depressive songs sometimes draw parallels with Daniel Johnston.

  7 Chokebore were a very male, hardcore band from Hawaii, with disturbing rhythms and an even more disturbing tendency to mutate into a less stadium-friendly version of the Chili Peppers.

  8 Matt Wobensmith was responsible for the queer punk rock zine Outpunk , which mutated into a record label. In 1992, Outpunk released two great compilation EPs, There’s A Faggot In The Pit and There’s A Dyke In The Pit, the latter featuring Bikini Kill and 7 Year Bitch.

  9 Two nights: on the first, someone kept screaming out for ‘ tourette’s’. Kurt finally replied, “What am I, a fucking jukebox?”

  CHAPTER 28

  Lovesick

  “IDON’T know how quickly [Nirvana] went to Europe after Live And Loud, but I think we went to LA pretty fast,” says Cali DeWitt. “I was young enough that I got spoiled real quick by staying in expensive hotels and flying first-class. My ticket was first-class, and on the way out the door, Courtney handed me this handful of pills. She was like, ‘Have a good flight, don’t take all these at once, I know you always do.’ I took seven or eight of them and I remember a bunch of stewardesses waking me up in the airport going, ‘The plane is waiting for you, sir, you have to get on,’ and being carried to my first-class seat.”

  Did you get paid well?

  “I got paid well,” Cali laughs. “Besides the fact that I got paid well, I could take money out, which I used for drugs and records. If I had $100 in my pocket, I felt pretty rich. It was kind of sad that I was the trusted one, and I was a drug addict. They both accepted it. I didn’t do drugs with both of them at the same time because they were always trying to hide it from each other. If one was gone, the other would call me and ask me if I wanted to do it. It was fairly dysfunctional.”

  On January 19, 1994, Kurtney purchased a new home: a $ 1.13m 1902 three-storey, five-bedroom house, 171 Lake Washington Boulevard East, in the upmarket Madrona neighbourhood of Seattle. It had stunning views of the lake and was fairly secluded, except for a small park right next door. The garden was massive – three-quarters of an acre – and populated by gorgeous vegetation, magnolia trees, hollyhocks and rhododendrons. On the top floor was a large, chilly attic and several unheated storage rooms; the middle featured the bedrooms, including a master suite with its own bathroom; and the lower level was given over to a spacious living room, modern kitchen and a drawing room that doubled up as Cali’s bedroom. A white staircase ascended from the middle of the living room. Outside the house was a greenhouse and garage, where Kurt’s Valiant stood.

  Most of Kurt and Courtney’s neighbours were either old money sorts, or representatives of the new, increasingly affluent Seattle1 – folk like Peter Buck from R.E.M. and Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks.

  “The house was incredible,” says Cali. “It was a bit big for him. There was a little bit of, ‘We’re buying a fucking mansion. Do we really need this?’ She talked him into it. It was more beauty than any of us were used to, but there was something scary about it as well. There was a big stone basement, a huge attic and a lot of space. The house was bought and we were moved in and then it was time for them to go [off on tour] again.”

  Did they unpack?

  “Kind of,” he laughs. “They unpacked the bedroom. I don’t know if any house they ever lived in was totally unpacked.”

  And you still did most of the grocery shopping?

  “Oh yeah,” replies Cali. “I love grocery shopping. I bought soda and cereal, tons of it, and junk food, frozen dinners, ice cream, pop tarts.”

  By this stage, Cali’s responsibilities were more as a live-in buddy to Kurt. Although he still looked after Frances on occasion, his drug use had escalated during the In Utero tour, and so other nannies were hired – some from agencies, who mostly lasted only a week or two, and some trusted confidantes like Sigrid Solheim and Jackie Farry (who would sometimes stop by to help out).

  “ Cali was the house-sitter,” clarifies Jessica Hopper. “He was the go-between between Courtney and Kurt. He was ‘using’ a lot more than I was aware of. Kurt had given him a credit card with a $50,000 limit, something crazy. We weren’t estranged, but how close can you be to someone who’s strung out and miles away? I wasn’t talking to Courtney very often – once I became Cali’s girlfriend I was more ensconced in his world than their world. When I’d talk to him, it seemed there was a lot of drama: Nirvana was under a lot of pressure to do Lollapalooza, and Kurt didn’t want to do it. He would have rather broken up the band.”

  The Lollapalooza situation caused considerable friction between Kurt and Courtney, Kurt and his band, Kurt and Gold Mountain, Kurt and DGC, Kurt and . . . everyone, really. It was reported Nirvana were offered somewhere in the region of $7 million to headline the travelling rock road-show, but Kurt had no interest in playing along with more corporate games, certainly not when he was in the middle of a massive tour: Nirvana were scheduled to play another 38 shows in 16 countries over two months on the European leg of the In Utero tour. Kurt didn’t understand why it was necessary to go along with such gruelling schedules. Surely, rock music was meant to be a fun – a release?

  Yet even with Kurt’s violent objections to playing Lollapalooza, Nirvana got pencilled in to play the festival.

  “It seemed like things were pretty dire between him and Courtney,” continues Jessica, “and also for both of them individually. I remember Courtney telling me that Kurt was doing heroin and cocaine, and it was making him really paranoid.”

  It was necessary that Cali was around: back home, Kurt became even more reclusive – seeing only Cali, Rene, Dylan Carlson, Eric Erlandson and, occasionally, friends like Pat Smear. Kurt spent most of his time in the month off between the American and European legs of the In Utero tour taking drugs with Dylan.

  “It seemed like they were always looking for an appro
priate friend for Kurt,” says Rene Navarette. “Someone inspiring, to be all the things Courtney wanted for him, someone who wouldn’t take advantage of him. All he wanted to do was joke around. That was what he had going with Dylan: not a lot of brain science going on, just a comfortable friendship.” Every so often, Courtney became sanctimonious about Kurt’s drug use, conveniently forgetting the fact she took a ton of pills herself, and so Kurt would ask friends to hide the drugs outside in the bushes . . .

  “I can see them both doing that,” comments Cali dryly. “That part of the story where Courtney claims she attempted to stop drug dealers coming over – I’m not sure it’s the entire truth.”

  “Those three weeks at the start of 1994,” Rene explains, “were a dark time. I was not staying around the house so much because of the situation with Cali. [ Cali had slept with Rene’s girlfriend Jennifer Adamson, the ‘lost’ Culkin2 sister. Famously, she posed nude for a Mono Men record sleeve.] Kurt and I would joke about it. He thought it was funny that I swore vengeance on Cali and never carried out my threat. He would joke around in front of both of us: like, ‘When are you going to kick Cali’s ass?’

  “ Cali and I took care of everything around the house,” he continues. “Having two junkie teens taking care of the baby and the shopping, it was a beautiful mess. I would stay at Caitlin’s house. [Caitlin Moore, one of Kurtney’s drug connections.] I was seeing her at the time. There was one nanny who was a bag of emotions. She didn’t last very long. Me and Cali had become so jaded by all the stuff that was going on, if she complained about seeing a syringe in a bathroom we’d say something like, ‘That’s not a baby bathroom. You wouldn’t take a baby into an adult movie, would you? So don’t take a baby into an adult bathroom.’ Frances slept in the same bed between Cali and me, so we didn’t have any drug paraphernalia around. There were many areas of the house that were off-limits because it was a junkie’s house – and the baby wasn’t allowed in any of those parts.