Heavier Than Heaven

by Charles R. Cross

  At first Kurt helped with the housework, doing the dishes and even mopping the floor occasionally. Though the apartment was tiny, it needed constant cleaning due to their menagerie of pets. While the actual inventory would vary over the next two years depending on life span, they had five cats, four rats, a cockatiel, two rabbits, and Kurt’s turtles. The apartment had a smell that visitors would often compare unfavorably to a pet shop, but it was a home of sorts. Kurt named their rabbit Stew.

  He also painted the bathroom blood red, and wrote “REDRUM” on the wall, a reference to Stephen King’s “The Shining.” Since Kurt had a tendency to write on walls, they wisely covered most with rock posters, many turned reverse side out, so he would have more space to create. The few posters displayed face side up were all altered in some way as it was. A huge poster of the Beatles now sported an afro and glasses on Paul McCartney. Above the bed was a Led Zeppelin poster to which Kurt had added the following prose: “Loser, wino, alcoholic, scum, trash, degenerate, head lice, scabs, infections, pneumonia, diarrhea, vomits blood, urine, malfunctioning bowel muscle, arthritis, gangrene, psychotic mental illness, unable to form sentences, expected to fend for himself in a box in the snow.” Next to this screed was a drawing of a bottle of Thunderbird fortified wine and a caricature of Iggy Pop. The refrigerator sported a photo collage he created of images of meat mixed with old medical illustrations of diseased vaginas. “He was fascinated by things that were gross,” Tracy recalled. And though Kurt himself rarely talked about religion—“I think he believed in God, but more in the devil than actually in God,” Tracy said—there were crosses and other religious artifacts on the walls. Kurt enjoyed stealing sculptures of the Virgin Mary from the cemetery and painting blood tears under her eyes. Tracy was brought up Lutheran, and most of their religious discussions concerned whether God could exist in a world filled with such horror, with Kurt taking the position that Satan was stronger.

  After a couple of months of being a house-husband, Kurt took a short-lived $4.75-an-hour job at Lemons Janitorial Service, a small family-run cleaning business. He claimed to his friends that he cleaned doctors’ and dentists’ offices and used the occasion to steal drugs. But according to the owner of the business, the route Kurt worked was mostly industrial buildings with few chances to steal anything. He used some of what he earned to buy a rusty old Datsun. One thing was certain about this janitorial service: In ways both physical and emotional it left Kurt with little energy to apply to cleaning his own apartment anymore, which created the first tension between him and Tracy. Even after he quit the job, he apparently felt like no more cleaning was required of him in his lifetime.

  In Olympia, his inner artistic life was developing in ways that it never had before. Being unemployed, Kurt set in motion a routine that he would follow for the rest of his life. He would rise at around noon and eat a brunch of sorts. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese was his favorite food. Having tried other brands, his delicate palate had determined that when it came to processed cheese and pasta, Kraft had earned its role as the market leader. After eating, he would spend the rest of the day doing one of three things: watching television, which he did unceasingly; practicing his guitar, which he did for hours a day, usually while watching TV; or creating some kind of art project, be it a painting, collage, or three-dimensional installation. This last activity was never formal— he rarely identified himself as an artist—yet he spent hours in this manner.

  He also wrote in his journals, though the inner dialogue he kept was not as much a play-by-play of his day as it was a therapeutic obsessive/ compulsive device wherein he let loose his innermost thoughts. The writing was imaginative and many times disturbing. His songs and his journal entries fused together at times, but both were obsessed with human bodily functions: Birth, urination, defecation, and sexuality were topics he was accomplished in. One small segment illustrates the familiar themes that he would revisit again and again:

  Chef Boyardee is meaner stronger less susceptible to disease and more dominant than a male gorilla. He comes to me at night. Willfully opening the locks and bending the bars on my window. Costing me horrendous amounts of money in home burglary devices. He comes to me in my bedroom. Naked, shaved and oiled. Goose-bumped thick black arm hairs risen off his skin. Standing in a pool of pizza grease. Barfing up flour. It enters my lungs. I cough. He laughs. He mounts me. I’d like to kick his hot-stinking, macho fuckin’ ass.

  These inner thoughts, many times full of violence, were in marked contrast to Kurt’s external world. For the first time in his life he had a steady girlfriend who doted on him and saw to his every need. At times the attention Tracy paid him bordered on mothering, and in a way he needed mothering. He remarked to his friends that she was “the best girlfriend in the world.”

  As a couple, they exhibited signs of domestic tranquility. They’d walk to the Laundromat together, and when they could afford it, they’d get take-out pizza from the Fourth Avenue Tavern (they lived next door to a different pizza joint but Kurt insisted it sucked). Kurt enjoyed cooking, and he frequently made Tracy his signature entree, “vanilla chicken,” or fettuccine Alfredo. “He’d eat the kind of stuff that would make other people gain weight, but he never gained any weight,” Tracy observed. His size had always been a matter of concern, and he’d write away to ads in the backs of magazines for weight-gain powders but they had little effect. “His hip bones stuck out and he had knobby knees,” Tracy recalled. “He didn’t wear shorts unless it got really hot because he was so self-conscious about how skinny his legs were.” For one trip to the beach, Kurt came dressed in long johns, a pair of Levi’s, a second pair of Levi’s worn over the first pair, a long-sleeved shirt, a T-shirt, and two sweatshirts. “He wanted to make himself look bigger,” Tracy said.

  The one thing in his life that successfully made him feel bigger was his music, and by the summer of 1987 the band was going strong. They still hadn’t settled on a permanent name, calling themselves everything from “Throat Oyster” to “Ted, Ed, Fred,” after the boyfriend of Greg Hokanson’s mom. They played a couple of parties in early 1987, and in April they’d even performed on the college radio station KAOS in Olympia. Tracy gave a tape of the radio show to Jim May at Tacoma’s Community World Theater (CWT) and urged Jim to book them. Tracy and Shelli contributed to the band in those early days in ways that cannot be underestimated: They played the informal roles of press agents, managers, bookers, and merchandise-salespeople, in addition to their job of making sure their men were fed, dressed, and rehearsed.

  May gave the band their first non-party gig, for which they played under the name Skid Row—at the time, Kurt was not aware that a lite-metal band from New York had the same moniker. It didn’t matter; they would change names for every early show, the way a socialite might try on hats. This performance, though not long after the Raymond party, showed the band growing by leaps and bounds. Even Tracy, who was biased since she was in love with the singer, was impressed by how much they’d developed: “When they started to play, my mouth dropped open. I said, ‘These guys were good.’ ”

  They may have sounded good, but they certainly looked strange. For this gig, Kurt had attempted to be glam. He wore, as he did at many shows this year, flare pants, a silk Hawaiian shirt, and four-inch platform shoes to look taller. Musician John Purkey happened into the CWT that night and, despite their strange attire, recalled “being blown away. I heard this person’s voice singing and it completely impressed me. I never heard a voice like his before. It was very distinct. There was one song, ‘Love Buzz,’ that definitely stuck out.”

  “Love Buzz” had been one of the missing pieces the band needed. Krist had discovered the song on an album by a Dutch band called the Shocking Blue, and Kurt embraced it immediately and made it their signature tune. It began with a mid-tempo drum beat, but quickly transitioned into a whirling guitar riff. Their performance of the song mixed equal parts psychedelic-trance with a thudding, slowed-down heaviness from Krist’s bass part. Kurt wou
ld play the guitar solo on his back on the floor.

  They began to play regularly at the CWT, though to suggest that they built an audience there would be an exaggeration. The theater itself was a former porno movie house, and the only source of heat was a propane blower that ran loudly even during the band’s sets. Kurt commented that there was the “ever-present smell of urine” in the place. Most in the crowd at their early shows came to see other groups— the night before Kurt played, the lineup was Bleeder, Panic, and Lethal Dose. “Jim May booked those guys when nobody else would touch them,” explained Buzz Osborne. “It was where they cut their milk teeth.” Kurt, always learning from Buzz, realized that even a gig in front of their friends was a chance to grow. “I could count on them to play anytime,” remembered May. “Kurt would never take any money, which was also good for me because I was only doing about twelve shows a month, and only two would make money.” Kurt had wisely sized up his situation and realized the band would get more gigs, and more experience, if they played for free. What did they need money for anyway? They had Tracy and Shelli.

  Shelli had taken a job alongside Tracy at the Boeing cafeteria. She and Krist had moved to an apartment in Tacoma, 30 miles north of Olympia. With the move, the band briefly fell apart. Previously, with Krist and Aaron both living in the Aberdeen area, Kurt would take the bus back for rehearsals. But with Krist in Tacoma, and working two jobs (at Sears and as an industrial painter), the only one who seemed to have time for the band was Kurt. He wrote Krist a letter to talk him back into the group. “It was funny; it was like a commercial,” Krist remembered. “It said, ‘Come, join the band. No commitment. No obligation (well some).’ So I called him, and said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it again.’ What we did was we built a rehearsal space down in the basement of our house. We cruised construction sites and we took scraps, and built it with old two-by-fours and old carpet.” Kurt and Krist had been friends for some time, but this second forming of the band would cement their relationship in deeper ways. Though neither was particularly good at talking about their emotions, they forged a brotherly bond that seemed stronger than all the other relationships in their lives.

  But even with a Tacoma rehearsal spot, as 1987 wound down they again faced the drummer problem, which would plague them for the next four years. Burckhard still lived in Grays Harbor, and with a new job as the assistant manager at the Aberdeen Burger King, he couldn’t play with them anymore. In response, Kurt placed a “Musicians Wanted” ad in the October 1987 issue of The Rocket:“SERIOUS DRUMMER WANTED. Underground attitude, Black Flag, Melvins, Zeppelin, Scratch Acid, Ethel Merman. Versatile as heck. Kurdt 352-0992.” They found no serious takers, so by December, Kurt and Krist began to practice with Dale Crover, who was back from California, and they began to talk about making a demo. During 1987 Kurt had dozens of songs, and he had a yearning to record them. He saw an ad for Reciprocal, a studio that charged only $20 an hour for recording, and booked a January session with up-and-coming producer Jack Endino. Endino had no idea who Kurt was and he wrote “Kurt Covain” down in the schedule.

  On January 23, 1988, a friend of Novoselic’s drove the band and all their gear up to Seattle in a shingle-covered camper heated by a wood-stove. It looked like a backwoods shack deposited on a pickup, which it was. Driving into the big city they looked like the Beverly Hillbillies with wood smoke coming out of the back of the camper; their truck was so overweight it scraped against rises in the road.

  Reciprocal was run by Chris Hanszek with Endino. Mudhoney, Soundgarden, and Mother Love Bone had all worked there, and it was already legendary by 1988. The studio itself was only 900 square feet, with a control room so tiny three people could not comfortably stand in it at once. “The carpets were worn, the door frames all were coming apart and tacked back a few times, and it showed its age,” recalled Hanszek. “You could see that the place had the signs of 10,000 musicians who had rubbed their elbows against the place.” Yet to Kurt and Krist, this was exactly what they were seeking: As much as wanting a demo tape, they sought to be in the same league with these other bands. They quickly dispensed with introductions and went into recording almost immediately. In less than six hours, they recorded and mixed nine and a half songs. The last tune, “Pen Cap Chew,” was incomplete, as the reel of tape ran out during the recording and the band didn’t want to front the additional $30 for another tape reel. Endino was impressed by the band, but not overly so. At the end of the day, Kurt paid the $152.44 bill with cash, money he said he’d saved working at his janitor job.

  The camper then was reloaded with equipment and the band headed south—on this day they also had a show scheduled at Tacoma’s Community World Theater. During the hour’s drive, they listened to the demos twice. The ten songs were, in order, “If You Must,” “Downer,” “Floyd the Barber,” “Paper Cuts,” “Spank Thru,” “Hairspray Queen,” “Aero Zeppelin,” “Beeswax,” “Mexican Seafood,” and the half of “Pen Cap Chew.” When the time came for their set, they played the same ten songs in order. It was a day of triumphs for Kurt, his first day as a “real” musician. He’d been to a studio in Seattle, and he’d played another show in front of an adoring crowd of twenty. Dave Foster was in another band on the bill that night, and recalled the performance as particularly inspired: “They were great. Crover was killer, though you had a hard time hearing him above the propane blower, since it was a really cold night.”

  Backstage, an incident came up that would mark the night in ways Kurt might not have anticipated. Compared to Krist and Kurt, Crover was a veteran, and he and the Melvins had played the CWT several times. He asked Kurt how much they were making for the gig, and when Kurt told him they were doing it for nothing, Crover protested. May explained he’d tried to pay the band for their last few gigs—the club was finally doing a little better—but that Kurt continued to refuse to take any money. Crover started yelling, until Kurt finally announced, “We’re not taking any money.” Crover argued that even if the pay was only a paltry $20, there was a principle at stake: “You should never do this, Kurt. These guys are just screwing you. You’ll always get screwed. You’ve gotta get your money.” But Kurt and Krist saw the reality of May’s situation. May finally came up with a compromise that would let Kurt keep his integrity and make Crover happy: He convinced the band to take $10 for gas. Kurt put the $10 bill in his pocket and said, “Thanks.” He left the club that night for the first time in his life a professional musician, fingering the bill all the way home.

  A month later Kurt celebrated his 21st birthday, finally experiencing the American rite of passage that meant he could legally buy liquor. He and Tracy got drunk—this one time, Kurt bought—and had pizza. Kurt’s relationship with alcohol was an on-again/off-again flirtation. Being with Tracy, he was drinking less and doing fewer drugs than in his Aberdeen shack days. None of his friends remember him being the most intoxicated of their group—that distinction usually fell to Krist or Dylan Carlson, who by then was living next door to Kurt on Pear Street—and at times Kurt seemed downright temperate. Their other neighbor, Matthew “Slim” Moon, had stopped drinking two years previously, so there were examples of sobriety around. Kurt’s poverty during 1988 meant he could barely afford food, so a luxury like alcohol was saved for celebrations or when he could raid someone else’s fridge.

  At the time he turned 21, Kurt had temporarily quit smoking, and was adamant about people not lighting up around him (he signed a note to a friend that year as “the stuck-up rock star who bitches about exhaust fumes”). He felt smoking harmed his singing voice and his health. Kurt was always a strange mixture of self-preservation and self-destruction, and meeting him one night, you might hardly imagine he was the same person if you encountered him two weeks later. “We once went to a party in Tacoma,” Tracy remembered, “and the next morning he was asking me what he did, because he was really drunk. And I told him he smoked a cigarette. He was shocked!”

  His sister Kim visited around the time Kurt turned 21, and they bonded in w
ays they hadn’t done for years, recounting their shared childhood trauma. “He got me ripped on Long Island Iced Teas at his house,” Kim recalled. “I got sick, but it was a fun time.” By 1988, Kurt stopped drinking before shows—his focus was always on the band, to the exclusion of everything else. At 21, he was as serious about music as he would ever be. He lived, slept, and breathed the band.

  Even before the band had a permanent name, Kurt was convinced that getting a video on MTV was their ticket to fame. To this end, Kurt convinced the band to play at the Aberdeen RadioShack while a friend shot the performance on a low-rent video camera, using multiple special effects. When Kurt watched the completed tape, even he realized that it looked more like amateurs pretending to be rock stars than professional musicians.

  Soon after their RadioShack appearance, Crover left the band’s employ to go back to California with the Melvins. They’d always known Crover was only a temporary solution to their drummer problem. The Melvins’ exodus was indicative of what many Northwest bands at the time believed: It had been so long since any Northwest group had broken through—Heart had been the last big success—that a move to a more populous center seemed the only road to fame. Losing Crover added to Kurt’s frustration, but it also helped him find an identity of his own, and his group could be thought of as something other than a Melvins offshoot. As late as mid-1988, more people in Olympia knew Kurt as a roadie for the Melvins than as a leader of his own band.