No one knew this was happening except for a very close inner circle of the Nirvana organization. Given that the couple was fighting for the custody of their own baby—and that a magazine article was virtually being used as evidence—their extreme reactions to subsequent bad press start to become more understandable.
Courtney still becomes distraught when telling the tale. Toward the end of her account of the Vanity Fair fiasco, this tough, seemingly indomitable woman begins to cry openly. “It’s one thing to ruin your credibility or to be publicly humiliated but they took our baby away and there was nothing wrong with her,” she says, sobbing. “I did not do drugs during my pregnancy after I knew I was pregnant. I went and got all the help I could fucking get. I went to every doctor in town. I have medical records to prove it and they just fucking tortured us.”
It seemed hopeless—doctors, government agencies, the press all were against them. At one dark moment, they took out Kurt’s handgun and considered taking their own lives.
“It was just so humiliating and it just felt like so many powerful people were out to get us that it just seemed hopeless,” says Kurt. “It didn’t seem like we’d ever win. It was amazing. We were totally suicidal. It’s not the right time for a woman trying to get rid of the hormonal problems of just having a baby and me just getting off of drugs and just being bombarded with this. It was just too much.” But in the end, they put down the gun.
The next day, the band flew to England to headline the closing night of the 1992 Reading Festival. The English press was running with rumors that the band was breaking up because of Kurt’s health. Kurt says the rumors were completely unfounded. “No, it was classic, typical English journalism,” he says wearily. “Sensationalism. I have absolutely no respect for the English people. They make me sick. I thought I’d never say anything racist in my life, but those people are the most snooty, cocksure, anal people and they have absolutely no regard for people’s emotions. They don’t think of other people as humans at all. They’re the coldest people I’ve ever met.”
Kurt had personally programmed the bill for that day, purposely leaving out “lame-ass limey bands.” The festival organizers originally balked at including the Melvins and Screaming Trees, but Kurt threatened to pull out of the festival if they weren’t included. Also on the all-day bill were old friends like L7, Mudhoney and Eugenius, as well as Pavement, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and the uproarious Abba tribute band Bjorn Again.
Kurt getting wheeled onstage at the Reading Festival, 1992. (© Charles Peterson)
It rained all day and festival goers wallowed in the traditional Reading mud bath. At last, it was Nirvana’s turn to play. Kurt rolled out on stage in a wheelchair and wearing a hospital gown, as a poke at all the rumors about his bad health. Yet less than a week before, he had vomited and then passed out onto a cot as his daughter was being born; the day before, he had contemplated killing himself. At any rate, Nirvana played a glorious show—an eight on a scale of ten, by Kurt’s reckoning. Tens of thousands of English voices turned virtually every song of the hour and a half set into a gigantic sing-along. The band played with staggering power. Rumors of Nirvana’s demise had been greatly exaggerated.
Kurt at Reading ’92. (© Charles Peterson)
Ever the fashion victim, Dave models some avant-garde haberdashery at Reading ’92. (© Charles Peterson)
Dave trashing a guitar at Reading ’92. Chris sits in on drums. (© Charles Peterson)
The stage after Nirvana’s triumphant set at Reading ’92. (© Charles Peterson)
Still, the controversy surrounding the band would not go away. The two main U.K. music weeklies arranged for cover stories on the band at the time of the European make-up tour earlier that summer. Melody Maker agreed to run their piece, by the band’s longtime friend and supporter Everett True, just after the interviews took place, while the NME agreed to run their piece to coincide with Reading six weeks later. Nirvana also required that the piece be written by Keith Cameron, who had developed a good relationship with the band through doing profiles on them ever since the Sounds cover story back in the summer of 1990. While True had glibly skirted around the controversies, in the NME, Cameron confronted the myriad of rumors with the wounded tone of a disillusioned fan, which is precisely what he was.
After interviewing the band at a show in Valencia, Spain, Cameron wrote that the band, or at least Kurt, had begun to behave like the self-indulgent dinosaurs they had disdained and displaced, missing soundcheck for unexplained reasons, making themselves difficult to be interviewed and photographed, and very likely, doing hard drugs. The piece ran through the litany of drug-related rumors, many of which, as it turns out, were not far off the mark. “They’ve begun to blow it all via smack, the biggest sucker punch of the lot,” Cameron wrote. “From nobodies to superstars to fuckups in the space of six months! That had to be a record.” Cameron wrote that when he asked about the heroin rumors, Kurt made him check his arms for needle marks. Of course, there were none because he was on methadone by that time.
But the real target of the piece, with its “LOVE WILL TEAR US APART” headline, was Courtney. The piece quotes one crew member who referred to Courtney as “The Wicked Witch of the West,” while someone else on the tour recalled Kurt as being a nice guy, “BC—‘Before Courtney.’ ”
Cameron even laid into Janet Billig, who had recently joined Gold Mountain to work with Nirvana and Hole. “Her role on this tour is like a cross between wet nurse and human sponge,” wrote Cameron, “indulging whims and soaking up all of Courtney’s excess bullshit.” Courtney, Cameron concluded, is a “Grade A pain in the arse.” The band was on the verge of breaking up, and it was all her fault (Cameron now admits he was influenced by the Vanity Fair article).
Cameron bumped into Kurt and Eric Erlandson at the traditional post-show wingding at the Ramada hotel in Reading. Kurt scolded him for the piece, then Erlandson poured a glass of vodka and lime juice on his head. They walked away, leaving Cameron literally to cry on the shoulder of NME photographer Steve Double. “I wrote what I thought was a sensitive piece,” he says. Cameron remains persona non grata with the Nirvana camp.
“If there’s any sense of me feeling betrayed in any way by Nirvana, which there really probably isn’t, it’s that reality as I discovered it on that day in Spain,” says Cameron. “This was a band that totally inspired me. They’d been the most meaningful musical event in my life, ever. And they became this cliché that your favorite bands just don’t do, at least not mine. I was shocked at that reality.”
Days later, Nirvana played the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards show.
The band was told they could play whatever song they wanted during their performance, which would kick off the ceremonies. At soundcheck the day before the show, the band played a then-unrecorded song called “Rape Me” and another new song provisionally entitled “New Poopy.” The next day, perhaps because of the title of “Rape Me,” perhaps because it wasn’t a hit, perhaps because the show’s organizers thought they had made a deal with Gold Mountain, MTV insisted that Nirvana play “Teen Spirit.”
Hours before show time, Nirvana decided they weren’t going to play.
Then the band began to ponder the repercussions of the move—MTV could fire their best friend and ally at the channel, programmer Amy Finnerty, if she didn’t manage to convince them to appear, and could blackball other Gold Mountain acts including Sonic Youth and the Beastie Boys, and perhaps even other acts on Geffen/DGC. Suddenly, Nirvana found themselves forced into the world of high-stakes corporate rock—and they had to deal with the situation in a matter of hours.
Then MTV said it was “Teen Spirit.” Or “Lithium.” Or else.
“We didn’t want to fuck everything up for everyone so we decided to play ‘Lithium,’ ” Kurt says. “Instead of bowing out and keeping our dignity, we decided to get fucked in the ass. It would have hurt us worse than it would have hurt them if we actually had gone through with it.”
On
ce they got on stage for the live telecast, Kurt sang and played the first few bars of “Rape Me,” “just to give them a little heart palpitation.” He succeeded. As soon as Kurt started playing the offending song, MTV VP Judy McGrath let out a startled little scream and dashed toward the control room. Just as they were about to cut to a commercial, the band launched into “Lithium.”
As the song ended, Chris threw his bass high in the air and missed catching it. The butt end hit him square on the forehead. He writhed on the floor for a moment then ran off stage somewhere. For several tense minutes, no one could find Chris. Was he staggering deliriously around the Universal lot? Was he lying unconscious somewhere? Eventually Alex Macleod found him. He was lounging in the ready room with an ice pack on his head and a champagne bottle in his hand, chatting with former Queen guitarist Brian May.
The band didn’t want to go onstage to accept the award for Best Alternative Music Video, so it was Kurt’s idea to have a Michael Jackson impersonator come up and accept for them. Except for Kurt’s suggestion that he introduce himself as “the King of Grunge,” the impersonator improvised a speech, which was greeted by a confused silence out in the audience. No one got the concept. “I wanted it to be used as a reminder that I’m dealing with the same thing,” says Kurt. “All rock stars have to deal with it. It’s the fault of the fans and the media.”
The band didn’t have any other celebrity impersonators prepared when they won their second award, for Best New Artist, and Kurt initially refused to go up to the podium, but friends and associates convinced him that if he didn’t go up, people would talk. “I was just kind of nervous up there,” Kurt says. “When we played, I didn’t look out in the audience and realize how big it was. And once I got up there, I realized millions of people are watching and it’s a really big place and these lights are really bright and I don’t want to be here, this is really stupid. I just wanted to leave right away.”
Kurt managed to thank his family, his label, and the band’s “true fans.” Then he paused a moment, fixed the camera with a soulful gaze, smiled, and said, “You know, it’s really hard to believe everything you read.” Chris spoiled the moment by bellowing into the microphone, “Remember Joseph Goebbels!” but Kurt had made his point, even though most people in the audience had no idea how much it meant to him.
But with that one little smile, Kurt struck a major blow for his tarnished image. In terms of PR value, the MTV appearance was the equivalent of eight months of touring. Before an audience of millions of people, the band reminded people of why they liked Nirvana in the first place.
But the day was far from over. Also on the bill was Pearl Jam, whom Kurt had been skewering in the press for months, although he jokingly denies there had been a full-blown feud. “No, I just happened to express my feelings toward their music, that’s all,” he says with a little smirk.
But it wasn’t just their music—Kurt felt that the band was a bunch of hypocritical sellouts. Two members of Pearl Jam—Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament—had been in Green River, the first band to put out a record on Sub Pop. Kurt’s friend Mark Arm had quit the band and formed Mudhoney because he felt that it was going in an overtly commercial direction, largely because of Ament, who was among the first of the early Sub Poppers to openly declare he wanted to be a professional musician.
“I know for a fact that at the very least, if not Stoney, then Jeff is a definite careerist—a person who will kiss ass to make sure his band gets popular so he can become rich,” Kurt claims.
And Jeff Ament was also a jock, an all-state basketball player in his native Montana. “Jocks have completely taken over music,” carps Kurt. “That’s all there is nowadays is muscular bicep Marky Mark clones. It’s pretty scary. And just to get back at them, I’m going to start playing basketball.”
Pearl Jam had assumed the look and some of the sound of “grunge rock,” or just enough to ride the commercial wave. It was a calculated—and highly successful—attempt to dress up the same old corporate rock in lattered flannel shirts and Doc Martens boots. Also, the band’s label spent enormous amounts of money in promoting a band with no indie-style grass-roots following—it was another case of major labels burying the indie rock revolution with money. All this annoyed Kurt to no end. He began sniping at Pearl Jam in the press.
In the January 1992 issue of Musician magazine, Kurt had declared that the members of Pearl Jam were going to be “the ones responsible for this corporate, alternative and cock-rock fusion.” “I would love to be erased from my association with that band,” Kurt said of the band in the April 16 Rolling Stone cover story. “I do feel a duty to warn the kids about false music that’s claiming to be underground or alternative. They’re just jumping on the alternative bandwagon.”
But by that time, he had decided to at least forgive Pearl Jam’s fey but immensely likable singer, Eddie Vedder. “I later found out that Eddie basically found himself in this position,” says Kurt. “He never claimed to he anybody who supports any kind of punk ideals in the first place.”
Vedder was standing around the backstage area at the MTV Awards show when out of the blue, Courtney walked up to him and slow-danced with him as Eric Clapton played the elegaic “Tears in Heaven.” Kurt walked over and butted in. “I stared into his eyes and told him that I thought he was a respectable human,” Kurt says. “And I did tell him straight out that I still think his band sucks. I said, ‘After watching you perform, I realized that you are a person that does have some passion.’ It’s not a fully contrived thing. There are plenty of other more evil people out in the world than him and he doesn’t deserve to be scapegoated like that.”
Which is where Axl Rose comes in.
Backstage, Courtney spotted Rose and called him over to where they were sitting with Frances. “Axl, Axl!” she said. “Will you be the godfather of our child?” With several bodyguards looming behind him, Rose leaned over, his face reddening beneath a thick layer of makeup, and pointed his finger in Kurt’s face. “You shut your bitch up or I’m taking you down to the pavement!” he screeched. The Nirvana entourage exploded in laughter, except for Kurt, who made as if he was about to hand Frances to Courtney so he could stand up to Rose. But instead he glared at Courtney and said “Shut up, bitch!” and they all exploded some more.
Rose’s then-girlfriend Stephanie Seymour then broke an awkward silence by innocently asking Courtney, “Are you a model?”
“No,” replied Courtney. “Are you a brain surgeon?”
When the band returned to their trailer, waiting for them was the formidable Guns n’ Roses entourage, veritable sides of beef. Kurt dashed into the trailer to make sure Frances was all right while Chris was surrounded. They started pushing him around. Guns bassist Duff McKagan wanted to personally beat Chris up, but a crowd began to gather and the confrontation dissolved (Guns n’ Roses refuses comment on the incident).
Rose may have been angry at Nirvana for spurning his offer to open on the Guns n’ Roses/Metallica tour that summer. They’d even turned down his request to play at Rose’s thirtieth birthday party. There may be an unspoken jealousy at work, too. The two have similar backgrounds and have similar audiences, yet Kurt is everything Rose is not—a gifted singer and a peerless songwriter, articulate and sensitive. The two bands had often been pitted against each other—early on, the English music weekly NME had pronounced Nirvana “the Guns n’ Roses it’s OK to like.”
Rose was such a fan that he had even put a Nirvana baseball hat in Guns n’ Roses’ “Don’t Cry” video, but he just didn’t get it. Before a Guns n’ Roses show at Madison Square Garden in December 1991, the band’s cameramen zoomed in on women in the audience until they lifted their shirts up, broadcasting the signal to giant video screens around the arena. The mostly male crowd stomped and hooted its approval while the other women in the audience looked embarrassed, disgusted, or giggled nervously. And what was playing during this loutish video rape? “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
Perhaps the enmity co
mes from the fact that the two bands are competing for roughly the same vast audience of frustrated, damaged kids. “I don’t feel like I’m competing at all,” Kurt says. “I’ve said in public enough times that I don’t give a fuck about his audience.” But Kurt and Rose hate each other with an almost brotherly intensity, as if they’re flip sides of the same coin. “We do come from the same kind of background,” Kurt says. “We come from small towns and we’ve been surrounded by a lot of sexism and racism most of our lives. But our internal struggles are pretty different. I feel like I’ve allowed my self to open my mind to a lot more things than he has.
“His role has been played for years,” says Kurt. “Ever since the beginning of rock and roll, there’s been an Axl Rose. And it’s just boring, it’s totally boring to me. Why it’s such a fresh and new thing in his eyes is obviously because it’s happening to him personally and he’s such an egotistical person that he thinks that the whole world owes him something.”
Nirvana at the Seattle Center Arena. (© Charles Peterson)
Still, Kurt admits Nirvana could learn a thing or two from Guns n’ Roses. “They fuck things up and then they sit back and look at what they fucked up and then try to figure out how they can fix it,” he says, “whereas we fuck things up and just dwell on it and make it even worse.”
Don Cobain showed up uninvited at the September 11 show at the Seattle Coliseum, a benefit for a local anticensorship organization called the Washington Music Industry Coalition. Along with his son Chad, Kurt’s half brother, Don got past the ticket-takers by showing his driver’s license with his name on it. He asked to get backstage, but nobody ever got back to him, so he stood around and waited. Finally, he discovered the room where the after-show gathering was. “Somebody opened the door and there he was so I just walked right in.” Kurt introduced his dad to Courtney, Frances, and Chris. Don had already found out that he was a grandfather from an item in the newspaper.
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