by Martin James
Recording of what would become Nirvana’s third album, In Utero, took place in fourteen days over the end of February and the beginning of March. The sessions took place at Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minneapolis, where the band booked in as ‘The Simon Ritchie Bluegrass Ensemble’. It was to prove to be a relatively relaxed session, with the band completely focussed on the task at hand. Among the seventeen tracks recorded was a brand new version of Grohl’s ‘Marigold’, which although turning up on an early promo of the album, didn’t make it to the final cut.
Rumours abounded that their record company didn’t like it; that they pressurised Nirvana to make the mixes more palatable (Geffen staunchly denied this, so did Nirvana); suggestions the band were in disagreement with Albini and so on.
The furore surrounding In Utero refused to go away and more headlines about Kurt and Courtney’s relationship only served to heighten the frenzy around the band. And all this at a time when Nirvana were not even on the road or in the charts – they were taking a break from touring for an enforced holiday.
Where most people would use the free time to catch up on some rest and relaxation – Grohl, who was increasingly turning into the hardest working drummer in rock – rejoined Scream for an eleven-date reunion tour. Even Skeeter Thompson was in the line up.
The tour was in support of the aforementioned posthumous release of Fumble, which Dischord had released with hardly any fanfare. Once again here was a Grohl-related project in which he refused to use his connections with Nirvana. Interestingly, Grohl’s lone royalty cheque from his time at Dischord with Scream is framed and still on the wall of his home studio. It is made out for $30!
“When Pete said all this (Scream material) was going to come out on CD, first he just asked me some questions about remixing the stuff. Then it turned into, ‘Why not do a show at the 9:30? Then it turned into a whole tour!” Grohl explained. (13)
It may have looked to the observer to be something of a busman’s holiday for Grohl, but it gave him a necessary reminder that touring could be fun; that it needn’t involve a feeling that you are simply a part of the rolling machinery. Pete and Franz were, as he often mentioned, his brothers and working once more with them gave him a desire to regain that sense of togetherness within Nirvana. To ensure the reunion tour captured the same excitement that had helped them through those endless jaunts around Europe and the US, they even used their trusty old van, a Dodge Ram.
“I’m so glad that we’re doing this.” Grohl said at the time. “I think it will throw everything back into perspective. So we’ll play these clubs and maybe sleep on people’s floors like we always did, then in the Fall I go out with Nirvana and fly into cities and play in front of ten or fifteen thousand people, go to a nice hotel, watch TV until I fall asleep. It’s not the same as playing on a small stage with guys who are basically my brothers.” (14)
Among the Scream dates were three nights in Washington, two of which took place at the legendary 9:30 Club, which had been the first reliable venue in the city to book punk and new wave bands. It was subsequently where much of the early DC punk scene flourished.
However, by the early 1990s, the venue had turned into one of the least popular places for the local music scene to play. Subsequently drummer Dante Ferrando started to explore the idea of opening a live music venue with an emphasis on nurturing raw talent and embracing the cutting edge. He put the word out among the DC music cognoscenti that he was looking for investors in the project. A group of business people and musicians subsequently put money into the venture. Among them was Dave Grohl who bought a 20% stake.
“I knew when I was starting the club that I’d need investors who were in it for the right reasons,” explained Ferrando. “People who knew that a rock club is not a great investment and want to do it anyway so that the music gets heard. Dave was an obvious person to approach, of all the people I knew who might have money to invest and who might be interested in Washington having another good live music club.” (15) “…it’s something I wanted to do,” (16) explained Grohl, some four years later.
With Scream’s reunion tour over, Grohl returned to the Nirvana camp to prepare for the forthcoming In Utero tour. For this, they enlisted the services of Pat Smear from US punk legends The Germs on second guitar and Lori Goldston (a member of Seattle’s Black Cat Orchestra) on cello. It was the start of a musical union between Grohl and Smear that would continue into Foo Fighters.
On September 14, In Utero was released in the UK, reaching a disappointing #8 in the charts. The album had its US release on September 21 entering the Billboard chart at #1. However, the sales were much less than had been anticipated, with US sales of 180,000 and worldwide figures of only 500,000 in first week of release. In contrast to the multi-platinum album Nevermind this was a very poor performance. In Utero would eventually go triple platinum, although its predecessor hit six-times platinum by 1994.
It has been said that In Utero was the sound of the band hitting the self-destruct button. But in reality, this was the sound of the band wide open and at their most brilliantly honest. An album where self-expression was everything and, as such, it was, almost ironically, their most alive, energised and razor sharp set. It was almost as if each member of Nirvana sensed that this was their final statement, and they had nothing to lose. Sales were irrelevant, In Utero had to be the definitive Nirvana beast.
Inevitably however, given the confusion that surrounded the band at the time, In Utero came across as incredibly confused. A collection of fractured tomes to Cobain’s increasing confusion at life. Which could in fact be brought down to three things: the intensity of his relationship with Love, the disappointment at his relationship with an ill-informed yet obsessively invasive press and utter disgust at the whole idea of grunge.
Although the former two subjects would dominate the lyrics, the latter obsession cane to the fore in the breathtaking diversity captured in the music. Here the trio could be heard leaping from the safety net of both the formulaic Bleach and the mainstream-rock-dressed-up-as-punk ambiguity of Nevermind into an unknown universe. At once hard, but unnervingly gentle, brittle yet muscular, the songs offered an almost childlike wonder at the concept of extremism. But laced with that almost adolescent petulance, manifested in the increasingly pantomime-like gear trashing.
Witness here the disgruntled temper tantrums, the snarling oneliners, the snide put downs and above all, the defiant gestures; In Utero was the ultimate reaction to the disappointment Nirvana found at the door of global fame. Furthermore, it was their answer to the self-loathing they felt at creating Nevermind the album that had started a revolution, which would ultimately see punk rock tamed at the hands of MTV. It may not have been the sell-out album in its creation, but it was the vehicle upon which their own generation of garage bands and angry punks would jump aboard to grab a piece of the corporate pie. Middle-of-the-road rock bands would listen to Nevermind then grunge up their sound and start wearing lumberjack shirts to appeal to a new audience.
Indeed, with punk now tuned into a soundtrack to adverts, punk icons used for branding exercises and both grunge and heroin chic dominating the cat walks, it seemed as if the entire punk dream had been sold to the highest, and the lowest, bidders. 1991 – The Year Punk Broke was the claim of Sonic Youth’s documentary film of the time; however by 1993 its spirit was broken. In Utero was the sound of three men living with the knowledge that they had to take some of the blame.
Yet, there was an irony in the whole punk sell-out debate. Nevermind was always going to be a mainstream album, from the minute they started recording to the point they mastered it. There was no attempt to leave any edges that might snag the mainstream listener. There was no intention of playing the underground game.
Not that In Utero was the underground champion that it had been rumoured to be. The press reaction to the album was somewhat muted. NME’s John Mulvey concluded: “As a document of a mind in flux – dithering, dissatisfied, unable to come to term with sa
nity – Kurt should be proud of it. As a follow-up to one of the best records of the past ten years, it just isn’t quite there. Perhaps it was dumb to expect anything more.”
Elsewhere Melody Maker’s Sharon O’Connell suggested that Nirvana was the perfect example of Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulacrum in action. She suggested that anything of sufficient cultural significance can become obliterated by the mountain of media coverage it inspires. “If the images of that thing are reproduced ad-infinitum, if the text it generated piles up high enough around it, they will resonate so powerfully as to obliterate the original. That thing will be devoured by its own ghosts.
The endlessly parroted rumour, half-truths and innuendoes (you’ve heard ‘em all) have built steadily up like layers of an onion around Kurt Cobain, who, shell-shocked by success, is literally shrinking from the world. Nirvana’s hungrily awaited third album,” she concluded, “is not quite the rubbed-raw confrontational, fan-alienating catharsis it’s been talked up to be.” (17)
It is true that the final version of the album was not the abrasive force originally envisaged. Indeed, producer Albini argued that the finished version actually suppressed the extreme edginess of the original recordings.
In the months that followed the album’s release, Nirvana toured the US. However, in the days – and sometimes weeks – between gigging, Grohl continued his own sessions at The Laundry Room. He had by now put together a large catalogue of self-penned and self-played tunes. Although he has never stated that they were ever intended for release, or even for Nirvana, when surrounded by so much uncertainty in Cobain’s band, Grohl must have inevitably – perhaps even subconsciously – been looking for the possible next step.
Grohl is, as has already been noted, almost a workaholic, whose energies and temperament would dictate that he would have to become involved with something else very quickly if his band split. He simply wouldn’t be able to tolerate being idle. Doing his own thing, even at this stage, would have been a possible, and indeed logical, option.
Towards the end of 1993, Grohl would once again supply his drumming skills to another band. However, this time around the band was being touted as an alternative-rock supergroup which was being put together to record the soundtrack to a forthcoming film about the Beatles’ Hamburg era, Backbeat. So, for Grohl it was a case of going from the biggest band of the decade, to the biggest band of all time!
The Backbeat Band consisted of Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs), Mike Mills (REM), Dave Pirner (Soul Asylum) and Dave Grohl. The songs recorded were rock ’n’ roll standards like ‘Money’, ‘Long Tall Sally’, ‘Twist And Shout’, ‘Please Mr Postman’, ‘C’mon Everybody’ and ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’. However they were delivered in a contemporary style, with vocals even echoing Cobain’s own strained, growling tones.
Both the film and soundtrack album would see the light of day in1994 (the soundtrack album in March and the movie in August), however they would be almost universally panned in the press. However, far from being the karaoke session that Backbeat threatened, the soundtrack actually allowed the combined forces of the players in the Backbeat Band to bring out fresh dimensions to these well-known and endlessly covered classics. Grohl’s drumming especially produced a forceful energy that was completely lacking in either the Beatles’ versions or the originals. The combination of his heavy hitting style and those trademark fills helping to bring out extraordinary performances from musicians who were often better known for their self-indulgence.
The Backbeat experience gave Grohl a taste for soundtracks that would resurface a few years later. It also gave him the impetus to get back to the studio with Nirvana when, in January 1994, the band went into Bob Lang Studios in North Seattle. Whilst there they recorded the song ‘You Know You’re Right’ which would eventually surface in 2002 on the Nirvana retrospective compilation.
The band also messed around on a few other Nirvana tracks that would remain uncompleted. Cobain hadn’t turned up at the studio until the last day of the session which gave both Grohl and Novoselic two days to sit around and wait. Unused to wasting time in this way, Grohl used the session to lay down some more of his own songs with Novoselic on bass. These were ‘Exhausted’ and ‘Big Me’. He also recorded a cover of Angry Samoans’ track, ‘Gas Chamber, plus an untitled track which featured him on drums and Earnie Bailey playing a theramin which was treated through an Echoplex tape-loop echo machine (a theramin is a musical instrument – in the past used by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and the Beastie Boys among others – that works by passing a hand over sound waves – it sounds like a violin bow on a saw and stars in the soundtrack to hundreds of horror films).
That they used Nirvana time to record songs not written by Cobain highlights the increased tension within the band. Both Novoselic and Grohl were growing tired of Kurt’s ongoing ‘health problems’. And the fact that he had chosen to squander the little time pencilled in to record new tracks was a matter of great concern to them.
On February 2, the band flew to Europe, to embark on their lengthiest tour yet. The opening dates in France, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and Italy went without hitch with the band giving what is considered among fans as being their finest TV performance in Paris’ Canal Studios.
However, with the start of the German leg, things started to go very wrong. The opening night at Munich’s Terminal 1 went ahead as planned, but the following night’s show was cancelled due to Cobain losing his voice. A specialist diagnosed severe laryngitis and bronchitis and told him to take two to four weeks rest.
Grohl remained in Germany to record the ‘Please Mr Postman’ promo for the UK single from the Backbeat soundtrack, while Cobain and Smear headed for Rome. Novoselic returned to the US. On his first evening in Rome, Cobain sent a bellboy from the hotel to get a prescription for Rohypnol. He ordered two bottles of champagne.
The following morning, Courtney Love awoke to discover Cobain in a coma. He had overdosed, reported as accidental following the combination of the drug and the alcohol.
Following five hours emergency treatment at Umberto i Polyclinic Hospital in Rome, Cobain came out of his coma on March 5 and returned to the US three days later. Dates in Czechoslovakia and Germany were subsequently cancelled.
Cobain’s state of mind and volatile private life continued to take precedence over the band’s music throughout the coming weeks as more European dates in Germany, Holland, Sweden and Belgium fell under the axe. Further media reports of police being called to Cobain’s Seattle home amidst fears for his own safety (from himself) fuelled the growing sense of chaos around Nirvana.
The situation was becoming increasingly difficult for Grohl and Novoselic who were in effect being stopped in their tracks by their singer’s actions. Grohl continued to record material at Barrett Jones’ Laundry Rooms Studio but became more and more frustrated at the enforced sabbatical.
Novoselic’s concern for his friend, and anger at the situation, encouraged him to take Love’s lead to make Cobain undergo “tough love” treatment. Approximately ten people, including Novoselic, but excluding Grohl, spent five hours solid attempting to force Cobain to face up to his problems. He subsequently agreed to enter a detox centre.
Following this treatment, a series of revised British dates were announced. They were to take in Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, Cardiff, London and Dublin. But they would never take place.
On April 8, 1994, Cobain’s body was discovered in a room above the garage of his Washington Boulevard home. He had shot himself.
Grohl was reported to be “devastated” by the news. He even considered giving up playing all together. “I think about his smile a lot,” Grohl recalled some years later. “And his laugh. He had a funny laugh, this fucking cackle. I remember him being happy. It’s easy to remember him being sad… He really, really loved creating music. Every night, when we were living together, he used to go into his bedroom, I was sleeping on the couch, and he would go in and write for hours in
his journals… He was a gentle, sweet, caring person. He was always so nice to my mom [laughs]. A lot of people imagine him as this terror, when, honestly, he was one of the nicest people you ever met. And I like to think about the shape of his hands, and the way he moved his mouth when he played the guitar. Those are the kinds of things I remember. I definitely feel lucky to have known him. He changed my life forever in so many ways. And I miss him. I think about him a lot.” (18)
Any actual self-imposed retirement by Grohl proved to be short lived. On June 4, 1994, he played a one off gig with The Backbeat Band at the MTV Awards in New York. The band performed ‘Money’, ‘Long Tall Sally’ and ‘Helter Skelter’.
Grohl’s need to get back playing again underlined the fundamental difference between him and Cobain. Beyond all the weirdness that had enveloped Nirvana, the simple fact was that Grohl still loved playing and making music. He loved performing – why else would he have agreed to reunite with Scream, or play live with Buzz Osborne, or even perform Beatles covers with the Backbeat Band? Indeed, music remained beating at the heart of Grohl’s waking day and probably featured heavily in his dreams too.
By contrast, Cobain had began to despair at the lack of excitement he felt with music. In his suicide note Cobain admitted: “I haven’t felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music… for many years now,” he famously wrote. “I feel guilty beyond words about these things. For example, when we’re backstage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowd begins, it doesn’t effect me the way in which it did for Freddie Mercury who seemed to love, relish in the love and adoration from the audience. Which is something I totally admire and envy… sometimes I feel as if I should punch in a time clock before I walk on stage.” He continued “I’ve tried everything in my power to appreciate it.”