Heavier Than Heaven

by Charles R. Cross

  When he wasn’t being the CEO of Pine Tree Janitorial, Kurt was writing songs and touring. They left the first week of February for a West Coast tour with Tad that was their most successful yet, drawing large, enthusiastic crowds in Portland and San Francisco (for a Valentine’s Day gig that billed the bands as “hot hunks”). Even in cynical Hollywood, people clamored to get into their show at Raji’s. “That was the night they won over L.A.,” recalled Pleasant Gehman, who booked the room. “People were just in awe. The club only held 200 people, but I swear there were 400 there.” In Los Angeles they stayed with Jennifer Finch of the band L7, who described their appearance at the time as “looking like the Great Dane and Poodle act at the circus: Chad was tiny, his hair was down to his ass, and his eyes were feral; Kurt was a bit taller than Chad, but with hair that was stringy and long; and then there’s Krist, who is so tall it hurt your neck to look up at him.”

  The tour also saw Kurt reunite with his old buddy Jesse Reed, who was now living outside of San Diego. They met up at the San Ysidro McDonald’s, infamous for being the sight of a bloody shooting, and a place Kurt insisted on making part of their travels. Jesse drove with the band to Tijuana for a show, and later that night, a couple of days before Kurt’s 23rd birthday, the two old friends celebrated by drinking a half gallon of booze and snorting crystal meth. Despite continued stomach problems, by early 1990, Kurt had started to drink again, and though his use of alcohol was still infrequent, when he drank he did so to excess.

  When Kurt returned to Olympia, he had only three weeks before heading out on yet another long tour, which was to include a stop in Wisconsin to record the follow-up to Bleach. Kurt and Tracy tried to rekindle their romance, but the strain was obvious to all around them. “They didn’t interact much in public anymore,” recalled Slim Moon. Kurt complained to Slim that Tracy wanted to have sex more often than he did. To her, it was part of the bonding of their relationship; to him, it meant an emotional commitment he could no longer give.

  That March, Damon Romero stopped by one night, and they rented videos, a frequent activity for a homebody like Kurt. Kurt had picked the latest film by Alex Cox, titled Straight to Hell—it starred Joe Strummer and Elvis Costello. During the film, Romero gestured at an actress and said, “Hey, there’s that girl from that band down in Portland.” Romero was pointing at Courtney Love. Despite the savage reviews the movie had garnered from critics, Kurt enjoyed the film. “It had just enough kitsch for Kurt to like it,” Romero remembered.

  On March 20 the band snuck into an Evergreen classroom with a few friends to film what Kurt imagined would be an official video release of his own. Kurt’s plan was that the band would perform while vignettes he had taped off of television would be projected in the background. “He had hours and hours of this wacky shit,” director Jon Snyder recalled. “He had recorded ‘Star Search’ with an old Donny and Marie routine, bits of ‘Fantasy Island,’ and all these insane late-night ‘Lee Press-On Nail’ commercials.” For the first song, “School,” the band played while Donny and Marie tap-danced behind them. For “Big Cheese” the background images came from a silent film about witches Kurt had sent away for, along with some of Kurt’s Super-8 films from his childhood. “He had broken dolls, dolls on fire, or stuff like in Toy Story where the dolls are all put together wrong,” remembered Alex Kostelnik, who operated one of the cameras. Kurt discussed extending the taping and going to Aberdeen to add more footage from his childhood haunts. Like many of his ideas, it was never pursued.

  A week later, they packed up the van again and headed back on tour. Tracy was sleeping when Kurt left, but she had written a note in his journal: “Goodbye, Kurdt. Have a good tour and a great recording. Hang in there. I’ll see you in seven weeks. Miss you. Love, Tracy.” It was endearing, but even in her affection one could sense a defeat. Even Tracy was now spelling his name as his alter-ego “Kurdt.” She had lost her Kurt.

  In Chicago, on April 2, the band premiered “In Bloom.” After the show, they drove all night to arrive in Madison, Wisconsin, home of Smart Studios and producer Butch Vig. They had only a week to cut their album, but Kurt reminded everyone of how many tracks they had managed during five hours for their first demo. Most of their new songs were still embryonic, a fact Kurt tried to downplay. Yet they had every confidence that Vig—who had worked with hundreds of alternative rock bands—could transform their ideas. Vig did impress the band; as a drummer himself, he managed to capture the drum sound Kurt thought was missing from their other efforts.

  Working at a frantic pace, they cut eight songs, including a cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Here She Comes Now,” recorded for a compilation album. They did five new songs, and re-recorded two old ones in just a handful of days. Kurt was, of course, disappointed they hadn’t done more. Five of the songs they cut at Smart would eventually end up on the Nevermind album.

  The new songs found Kurt plumbing the emotional depths of his own life for material, and writing about the characters around him. “In Bloom” was a thinly disguised portrait of Dylan Carlson, while “Pay to Play” mocked the practice of clubs charging bands to play. “Breed” was the most complex song of the session: It had begun under the title “Imodium” about Tad’s diarrhea medicine, yet there is little in the version recorded at Smart to connect it with Tad; Kurt instead used the title to suggest a running on of the mouth. More elaborate than Kurt’s early screeds, it ended with the line “she said,” implying the song was captured dialogue, and adding another layer of narrative to decipher.

  Kurt had come up with an album title: Sheep. The name was his inside joke on the masses he was convinced would be buying his next effort. “Because you want to not; because everyone else is,” he wrote in a fake advertisement for Sheep. The ad read: “May women rule the world. Abort Christ. Assassinate the greater and lesser of two evils. Steal Sheep. At a store near you. Nirvana. Flowers. Perfume. Candy. Puppies. Love. Generational Solidarity. And Killing Your Parents. Sheep.” Around the same time, he wrote out yet another fake biography of the band, one that would prove strangely prophetic, even as it was filled with adolescent jokes. It described the band as “three-time Granny Award Winners, No. 1 on Billbored Top 100 for 36 consecutive weaks in a row. Two times on the cover of Bowling Stoned, hailed as the most original, thought-provoking and important band of our decade by Thyme and Newsweak.”

  A few hours after finishing their final mixing at Smart, they were back on tour, and Vig sent the masters to Sub Pop, even though the band had grave doubts as to whether they wanted the label to release the session. Two weeks later, in Massachusetts, Kurt called Tracy and a long phone conversation ensued—one they both knew was coming but one she had hoped to postpone or avoid. He told her things weren’t working out between them, and that maybe they should no longer live together. It wasn’t an out-and-out breakup; honesty wasn’t Kurt’s way of dealing with conflict. “He thought maybe we should live apart for a while because we needed a bigger place,” recalled Tracy. Kurt’s suggestion was peppered with “maybes” and tempered with the assurance that “even if we aren’t living together, we’ll still be going out.” But they both knew it was over.

  Within the next month Kurt slept with a young woman while on the road. It was the only instance of infidelity his bandmates ever witnessed. As it was, the sex was crummy and Kurt hated himself for having been so weak. He told Tracy about it when he returned; there had been plenty of opportunities for him to have been unfaithful over the years, and the timing of this one infraction suggests he was trying to emotionally distance himself, to give her a reason to hate him, which would make breaking up easier.

  As with all Nirvana tours, after about a month on the road, the band—and Kurt—seemed to fall apart. At a show at the Pyramid Club near the end of April, they had another bout of sound problems. Kurt’s spirits were lifted when he saw one person among the crowd of New York hipsters who was bouncing away, even during their long tunings; he couldn’t believe his eyes when he realized it
was Iggy Pop. But his elation lasted only a moment before turning into embarrassment: Kurt was wearing an Iggy Pop T-shirt. Other people might have been able to laugh this coincidence off, but to Kurt, it corroborated the rock idolatry he desperately wanted to hide. He ended the show by demolishing Chad’s drum kit.

  Chad had to pay close attention to Kurt’s moods to discern when he might torpedo himself into the drums. It was both a self-flagellation and an aggressive act—Kurt had grown dissatisfied with Chad’s drumming. In Boston, Kurt threw a full pitcher of water at Chad and missed the drummer’s ear by inches.

  By the time the band arrived back in the Northwest in late May, it almost didn’t have to be said that Chad was out of the band. Nothing, of course, had been said. But about two weeks after the tour ended, Channing looked out the window of his Bainbridge Island home, saw the van edging its way up the long driveway, and, like a doomed character in an Ernest Hemingway short story, knew the end was near. He was actually surprised Kurt had even come along—it was a testament to how much Kurt liked Chad, despite how he soon would claim Chad “didn’t fit in with the band.” Many times they had all three slept in the same bed, with Kurt and Chad flanking Krist so they could share the one blanket. Krist did the talking; Kurt hardly said a word and spent most of the conversation staring at the ground. But even for Chad, it came as a bit of a relief. “I’d spent the last three years with these guys in really close quarters,” Chad recalled. “We’d gone through hell together. We’d been in shit together, in little vans, playing for no money. There wasn’t any big daddy with the big bucks bailing us out.” Kurt hugged Chad good-bye. Chad knew there had been a friendship, but he also realized it was now gone. “I knew that when we said good-bye, I wouldn’t see them for a long time.”

  Chapter 12

  LOVE YOU SO MUCH

  OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON

  MAY 1990–DECEMBER 1990

  Love you so much it makes me sick.

  —From “Aneurysm,” 1990.

  The same week Kurt fired Chad, he also broke up with Tracy. It too was a firing of sorts, and he handled all such partings poorly. Kurt’s edict to Tracy was that they shouldn’t live together: In saying this, however, he had neither the money nor the ability in his lethargy to move out. And since she’d spent all her money paying their bills, she couldn’t afford to move. They continued to share the apartment until July, when she found a new place in Tacoma. During those three months, they lived in alternate universes, in the same physical space, but miles apart emotionally.

  His was also a world of betrayal, because while Kurt had informed Tracy about his infidelity in Texas, he had neglected to tell her the greater betrayal, that he was in love with another woman. The new object of his desire was twenty-year-old Tobi Vail, an Olympia musician. Kurt had known Tobi for two years, but it wasn’t until early 1990 that he had the occasion to spend an entire evening with her. He told Dylan the next day that he’d met the first woman who made him so nervous he threw up. He put that experience into the song “Aneurysm,” with the lyric, “Love you so much it makes me sick.” Though she was three years younger, she was more educated than he was, and he’d listen for hours to Tobi and her friend Kathleen Hanna prattle on about sexism and their plans to start a band called Bikini Kill. Tobi had her own fanzine, and in its pages she had coined the phrase “riot grrrl” to describe the 1990 model of punk feminism. She was a drummer primarily, but could play guitar; she had an extensive punk rock record collection; and she was, Kurt imagined, his female counterpart. “You just never met a girl that knew so much about music,” observed Slim Moon.

  Yet despite their shared musical interests, Kurt had fallen for someone who could never love him the way Tracy had, and who, more important, would never need him. Tobi took a more casual view toward relationships than Kurt; she wasn’t looking for a husband, nor was she about to mother him. “Boyfriends were more like fashion accessories for Tobi,” observed Alice Wheeler. What Kurt was searching for in a relationship was the kind of family intimacy he had lacked since early childhood; but Tobi rejected the traditional relationship he sought as sexist.

  Even the word “girlfriend” meant something different in the Olympia punk rock community, where few would admit to being in a couple. It was as if to act like you were going steady was to adopt the traditional patterns of a society that everyone had come to Olympia to get away from. “No one dated in Olympia,” observed Dylan. By these standards, Kurt’s relationship with Tracy was downright old-fashioned; his union with Tobi would not conform to such stereotypical roles.

  Their relationship had begun in secrecy—he was still living with Tracy when he first slept with her. But even after Tracy moved out, their coupling didn’t seem to progress beyond coffeehouse discussions and occasional late-night sex. He thought of her all the time, obsessively, and he infrequently left the apartment, afraid she might call. She rarely phoned. Their relationship mostly entailed going to concerts, working on the fanzine, or talking about politics. He began to interpret her views of punk rock through his own lens, which inspired him to write lists of things he believed in, of things he hated, and of records he should listen to. One slogan he repeated again and again was, “Punk rock is freedom.” He began to emphatically state this in every interview, though never explaining what he was seeking freedom from: It became a mantra to resolve every contradiction in his life. Tobi thought it sounded great.

  Yet despite their intellectual joining, many in Olympia never knew they were a couple. “The whole time they were dating,” said Slim, “it was confusing to me whether they were officially dating. Maybe it was inconvenient to her when he broke up with Tracy, in a way, because it put her on the spot. I don’t think she really intended to be with him for a long period of time.” Tobi, Kurt found out, was allergic to cats, so his animal farm was usually off-limits. It was also filthy by now: Once Tracy left, the whole apartment took on the look of a garbage dump, with unwashed dishes piled up, dirty clothes littering the floor, and Kurt’s mutilated dolls watching over the scene with their crazed, busted eyes.

  A year earlier, Kurt had complained that feminists were threatening to him. But once Kurt began sleeping with Tobi, riot grrrl feminism was easier for him to swallow, and he soon embraced it as if it were a newly discovered religion. The same man who read Ciccolina pornography now used words like “misogyny” and talked about the politics of oppression. In his notebook, Kurt wrote out two rules of rock that were quotations from Tobi: “1: learn not to play your instrument; 2: don’t hurt girls when you dance (or any other time).” The “learn not to play” was one of the many teachings of Calvin Johnson, who argued that musicianship was always second to emotion.

  Kurt had originally met Tobi while playing with the Go Team, an Olympia band centered around Calvin, but then most of the Olympia music scene was centered around Calvin. With his boyish short hair and propensity for wearing white T-shirts, Johnson resembled a wayward Marine recruit. But when it came to punk rock, he had the manner, if not the look, of a dictator, creating policy the way a newly crowned despot crafted a constitution. He was leader of Beat Happening, co-owner of K Records, DJ on KAOS, and promoter of local rock shows. He preached a low-fi, indie rock ethic, and he ruled Olympia the way Buzz Osborne had commanded Grays Harbor. “Calvin was very non-rock,” remembered John Goodmanson. “The joke was that if you had a bass player in your band, you couldn’t be on K.” Calvin’s followers even had their own name: “Calvinists.” Tobi was not only a Calvinist, she had once been Johnson’s girlfriend.

  Every step of Kurt’s relationship with Tobi presented challenges to his self-esteem. It was hard enough for Kurt to fit into the cosmopolitan Seattle scene, but even in tiny Olympia he felt as if he were a contestant on a punk rock version of “Jeopardy!” and that one wrong answer would send him packing back to Aberdeen. For a kid who grew up wearing Sammy Hagar T-shirts, he found he had to constantly use his “Kurdt” self as a disguise to protect his real past. He admitted as much in a rare m
oment of self-disclosure in his journal: “Everything I do is an overly conscious and neurotic attempt at trying to prove to others that I am at least more intelligent and cool than they think.” When asked to name his influences during press interviews in 1990, he listed an entirely different roster of music than he had one year earlier: He’d grown to understand that in the world of punk rock elitism, the more obscure and unpopular a band was, the hipper it was to drop their name. Friends began to notice the divided self more: When Kurt was around Tobi, he might criticize a band that earlier the same day he’d advocated for.

  That summer both Krist and Kurt were fastidiously dubbing cassettes of the Smart Studios demos, but they weren’t wasting postage sending them to Touch and Go; they sent them to Columbia Records and Warner Brothers. After all the problems with Sub Pop, Kurt and Krist had committed to signing with a major label, if only to get decent distribution. To Tobi, this was anathema. She announced her band would never be on a major label. Influenced by her position, Kurt tempered his major label aspirations by telling interviewers Nirvana would sign with a major, cash the advance check, break up, and then put a record out on K. It was a magnificent fantasy, and like the many grand ideas that floated through his head, he had no intention of acting in so foolish a way as to jeopardize his chance at fame and fortune.

  Since their brief employ of Tam Ohrmund, Nirvana had managed themselves, using Michele Vlasimsky as booker, with Krist handling most of the financial arrangements. “I was the only member of Nirvana who graduated from high school,” Krist explained. In May 1990, Sub Pop sent the band a new proposed contract—it was 30 pages long and gave numerous unequivocal rights to the label. Kurt knew he didn’t want to sign this document. He and Krist turned to Susan Silver, the respected manager of Soundgarden. She took one look at the contract and told them they needed a lawyer.