by Neal Pollack
“I’d better go find a bridge to live under,” he said.
Great wind gusts blew sharp sheets of rain under the bridge. Pollack’s mouth felt silty and rotten. His pants and coat and hair were caked with slime and mud. The cats, terrified beyond imagining, had burrowed into a hole in the concrete. Crap, Pollack thought. I’ve lived for seven men. Enough. He looked at his wrists, which were in need of slitting.
Then, from the other side of the Young Street Bridge, he heard a voice, soft and young and sweet and full of hope. He looked to the embankment on the other side. There sat a young man, stringy blond hair cascading over his face, in a Kermit the Frog T-shirt. He played a guitar and sang.
I’m unconscious
In the darkness
I’m unconscious
So alone
Crawling crawling on the floor
A cigarette consumer whore
Eating from the feedbag
Living by the sea
Feel the needle, Mr. Flea
I’m unconscious
In the darkness
I’m unconscious
So alone
My aloneness
In the darkness
I’m unconscious
So alone
My family is a famous lie
You want to live
I want to die
Patriotism
Made of jism
It’s a prism
I’m in prison
I’m in prison
I’m in prison
Pollack swore he saw a halo shine around the young man’s head. He had come at last. The golden one had come. I’ve lived my whole life for this moment under a bridge in Aberdeen, Washington, Pollack thought. Suicide? Bah! I must wade across that river to my destiny.
“Come, kitties,” he said. And they miraculously swam together, while the boy sang, penetrating the dawn fog.
From the river, young Kurt Cobain heard a voice shout, “Your song is sentimental nonsense!”
Kurt saw a man’s head and shoulders barely bobbing against the current. Two cats clawed desperately at the man’s scalp. The man swam toward the tiny rotting island where Kurt sat.
Kurt thought, I need some weed.
Pollack emerged from the river a muddy, rotten, wasted, confused-looking junkie wreck. He bore the scars. But somewhere, in the bag of bones that was Neal Pollack, lay the essence of rock.
“I’ve been searching for you,” Pollack said. “For you are the chosen one.”
“Ch-ch-chosen?” said Kurt. “Me? But I’m just some stupid kid who says he lives under a bridge!”
Pollack took the guitar from him.
“I like your singing,” Pollack said, “but your song selection is all wrong. I want to play you something.”
Pollack took the guitar. He began to thrash as young Kurt had never heard thrashing before, and he screamed:
On Wisconsin
In the darkness
On Wisconsin
So alone
In the darkness
On Wisconsin
In the darkness
I’m alone
On Wisconsin
On Wisconsin
On Wisconsin…
The guitar ripped through chords of unbearable grief and anger, the very sound of savage rebellion being born. Pollack sang. He created a wall of noise like nothing Kurt had ever heard before. When he finished, he said:
“Bad Brains! Bad Brains! Fucking rock ’n’ roll!”
“You totally got my lyrics wrong, dumbass,” Kurt said.
He made quote marks with his hands.
“Whatever.”
Kurt’s flip, ironic tone hung in the air, becoming a poison gas of cynicism that withered everything it touched. It diminished our national character, nullified debate, and across the country, people prayed for it to end. But like most diseases, irony lingered, a festering sickness on the body politic. Would sincere discourse ever be possible again after the withering pessimism of Generation X?
“Human existence is pitiful and meaningless,” Pollack said. “All we can do is chronicle it with agonized mockery.”
“Will you be my dad?” asked Kurt.
“Sure, kid,” said Pollack. “Let’s go get some smokes.”
There was, between Neal Pollack and Kurt Cobain, an instant, pure, and total love. All his life, Kurt had sought a man to replace the man who thought he was his father, and all his life, Pollack had sought a son to replace the man who had been his father but failed. In Pollack, Kurt had a mentor and friend. In Kurt, Pollack had a willing, naïve tool, a boy of raw mental clay. Pollack could, at last, create his perfect rock machine.
That afternoon, Kurt took Pollack home. Kurt’s mother was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking, drinking whiskey by the glass. She gave Pollack a sly look.
“Dude,” Pollack said to Kurt, “your mother is hot.”
“Stay away from my mother,” Kurt said.
In Kurt’s bedroom, Pollack looked through the LPs and cassettes.
“These aren’t very good,” he said.
“I keep all the records for my favorite band in my closet,” Kurt said.
“What’s your favorite band?”
“Judas Priest.”
Pollack brought a fist down on Kurt’s head.
“Ow!” Kurt said.
Pollack hit him again.
“Stop it!”
And then he hit him again. Kurt fell to the ground, unconscious, an experience that he would later chronicle in an early song, “Unconscious.” It went, I’m unconscious, in the darkness/I’m unconscious, so alone…
When Kurt awoke, it was night, and he was on his bed. Pollack sat in a chair next to him, daubing his forehead with a cold cloth. He said, “You’ll probably have some minor brain damage. Which is good.”
Pollack produced a large red box, on which he had written, in thick black marker, the words “RECIPE FOR ALIENATION.”
“I have a gift for you,” he said.
Kurt opened the box. Inside were old copies of Creem and Punk and Crawdaddy, Slash and Bomp, and many English magazines of which no other copies existed in North America. Every one of them contained at least one story with Pollack’s byline. Also in the box were albums from X, the Germs, and the Dickies, to which Pollack had contributed the exact same liner notes, word for word.
“Wow!” Kurt said. “You even gave me a dirty needle!”
“It belonged to Nancy Spungen,” Pollack said. “Don’t touch it without gloves.”
That night, and all through the weekend, Kurt read the history of rock as told by Neal Pollack. Kurt had never heard of half these bands. Pollack told him that the corporate media wanted it that way so they could sell him inferior musical products that would keep him from thinking for himself. As Kurt read, he got angrier and angrier. Nothing was going to control him from now on. He wrote that night in his dream diary:
Neal Pollack is meaner stronger less susceptible to disease and more dominant than a male gorilla. He comes to me at night. Without warning, he bends the bars on my brain and infects my mind with his words. He is costing me my sanity. I see his cats and I want to slit their throats and drink their blood. He comes to me in my bedroom, appearing in a pillar of fire, and he sprouts horns. His body is covered with thick black greasy hair. He stands in a pool of his own semen and vomits bile. I lick it up, and vomit out my own. He laughs. He mounts me. I’d like to kick his hot-stinking, macho fuckin’ ass.
An American poet had been born.
Around midnight, from his mother’s bedroom, Kurt heard a man moaning. Not again. He was tired of the men his mother brought home, all of whom wanted to be his dad. But he only had one dad, now, a rock dad, Neal Pollack, who’d made his life weird.
“Neal, oh, Neal!” he heard his mother say.
“Crap!” said Kurt.
He ran to his mother’s room. The door was open. Pollack wore nothing but an L.A. Dodgers baseball cap, backward. He was sitting straight up, ri
ding Kurt’s mom, howling like a beast.
“Damn it!” Kurt said.
“Sorry, man,” Pollack said. “Your mother’s hot.”
That night, in his journal, Kurt Cobain wrote the word “kill” for the first time.
Days passed, as days do, and then they turned into months. Pollack and Cobain lived with Cobain’s mom. So he wouldn’t hurt Kurt’s feelings, Pollack only slept with his mom when Kurt was at work or at school or running errands or out of the house for any other reason. When Kurt’s mom finally found another man, who called them both pansies, Pollack and Cobain were forced to move from house to house, Kurt sleeping on the couch, Pollack on the floor. Every well-meaning person in Aberdeen put them up, and subsequently booted them out. Kurt got a job at a pet-food store so he could steal grub for Max and Kansas City. Pollack drank copiously and worked on the first sentence of his novel, The True Story of How Rock ’n’ Roll Smacked Me in the Mouth Until I Bled Real Tears. In the evenings, they would go see the Melvins play at the Thriftway. Before bed, as they nodded out on lithium, Pollack told Cobain stories.
“I once lived with the Rolling Stones,” he said.
“No!” said Kurt.
“Yes,” said Pollack. “They attached electrodes to my testicles.”
“Wow!” Kurt said. “Oh, wow!”
“Those were the days. With the old sounds. We had real bands then, like the Yardbirds.”
“I’ve heard of them.”
“And the Monks.”
“I haven’t heard of them.”
“They were these American soldiers in Germany in the mid-sixties. They didn’t have anything better to do, so they started a band. Their heads were shaved like monks’ tonsures, and they just thwacked away at their instruments like idiots. One of them cut a hole in a banjo and stuck a microphone inside. I saw them play once at an army base in Hamburg. They were horrible.”
“Right.”
“But they were also the greatest band of all time. They were the first punk rockers. And they taught me an important lesson.”
“What’s that?”
“Remember, Kurt,” Pollack said. “There’s nothing more important in life than being cool, except for making music on your own terms, unfettered by corporate constraints. If you live by these principles, you’ll be happy. You have my guarantee.”
Neal Pollack had lucked into one of the greatest cultural flowerings in the history of the world. Fifth-century Egypt, the golden age of Athens, Greece, the Italian Renaissance, the Babylon of Hammurabi, none of them had much on western Washington state in the late 1980s. The area’s relative geographical isolation, high concentration of colleges, and cheap weed all contributed to what Pollack called “the largest gathering of talented morons in human history.” Every day, a new band crossed Pollack’s ears. He wrote about them in Brand New Age, and in his journal. The March 1, 1988, entry read, “Screaming Trees is the greatest band in the world.” The March 2 entry read, “Jesus. I can’t believe this new Green River record. They’re the greatest band in the world.” On March 3, he simply wrote, “Mudhoney, Mudhoney, Mudhoney! Motherfucking Mudhoney!” The next week, in an article for the Rocket, he wrote, “Mudhoney has sold out like the troglodyte college-boy indie-rock posers that they are. They never rocked at all.” Then he wrote, “Shonen Knife, Shonen Knife! Shonen Knife! TAD TAD Fastbacks Walkabouts! Swingin’ on the flippity flop!”
Pollack and Kurt moved to Olympia, and Pollack named himself Kurt’s manager. When Kurt complained, Pollack said, “First of all, I’m your dad, so you do what I tell you to. Second of all, I have a lot of experience in this business. I know what works.”
Despite Kurt’s protesting, Pollack named the new group Kurt and the Cobains. He said that the world was ready for a return to eponymous garage bands. Using a stolen mixing board and “borrowed” amps, he recorded a seven-inch single of “Unconscious,” which he considered Kurt’s best song. He arranged for a meeting with Calvin Johnson, founder of the band Beat Happening and also the boss of Olympia’s own K Records. Johnson was the ultimate proponent of honest indie-rock business practices. Pollack despised him.
Kurt and Pollack cut their hair short, shaved at the bus station, and wore clean T-shirts and blue jeans.
“No flannels,” Pollack said.
They met Johnson at a coffeehouse. Over decaffeinated tea, they made their pitch.
“Um, I’m really ethical,” Kurt said.
“He is,” Pollack said, “the most ethical musician in all of Olympia.”
“And I’m a vegetarian,” said Kurt.
“Vegan,” said Pollack.
“Right,” Kurt said. “Locally grown produce.”
Johnson studied them carefully for signs of weakness or sellout potential.
“Do you know how to play your instrument?” he asked.
“No,” Kurt said.
“Do you hurt girls when you dance?”
“No.”
“Do you believe in purity?” he said.
“Oh, yes,” said Pollack. “We are rigidly pure. We fly in the prevailing winds of rock decadence.”
Kurt vomited.
“Shit,” he said. “Sorry.”
“I don’t think you’re for us,” said Johnson.
Outside the café, Pollack considered the situation.
“Fuck it,” he said. “We’ll just sign with Sub Pop.”
Kurt nodded off while standing up.
Pollack shook him by the shoulders.
“Goddamn it, Kurt, you’ve got to stay off the junk!” Pollack said.
“Huh?” said Kurt.
Pollack scratched his forearm hungrily.
“Hey,” he said. “Do you have any?”
The tour van raced down the autobahn from Hamburg toward Berlin. There were ten of them in that Fiat minibus: Pollack, Kurt, and the rest of Kurt’s band, which, to Pollack’s disgust, he’d renamed Nirvana. There were also a couple of roadies, and another band called Tad, fronted by a three-hundred-pound behemoth named Tad Doyle. Nine countries, ten men, thirty-nine cities in forty-two days meant the van could smell like only one thing: ass.
“Damn it,” Pollack said aloud. “What am I doing here?”
“You wanted to come,” Kurt said.
“Well,” said Pollack. “I AM your manager.”
“Wish you weren’t,” Kurt mumbled.
Pollack grabbed him by the shirt.
“WHAT DID YOU SAY TO ME, YOUNG MAN?” he said.
“Nothing, sir,” said Kurt.
“YOU’D BETTER CALL ME SIR,” said Pollack.
It was the worst fight they’d ever had. Neither of them spoke for the rest of the drive. Kurt looked out the window at the Black Forest and wept. When would he no longer be poor? When would he find true love? When would the soul-sucking vampires stop haunting his dreams?
They got to Berlin at 2 P.M. Soundcheck wasn’t until 7. The show didn’t start until midnight. Kurt looked terrible. Well, he always looked terrible, but this time Pollack saw that he’d really hurt the little guy’s feelings. Usually, he didn’t care if he hurt someone, but Kurt was his son, after all.
Pollack started tickling him. Kurt started giggling. He could never resist when Pollack played Tickle Monster.
“Tickle tickle monster!” Pollack said.
“Quit!” Kurt said.
“Tickle tickle too!”
“Stop!”
Pollack put an arm around his son. He said, “We’ve got a few hours. I want to show you something.”
A quick subway ride and short walk later, they were knocking on an apartment door.
“Who lives here?” Kurt said.
“I don’t know,” Pollack said.
A woman answered. She was holding a baby.
“Yes?” she said.
“Excuse me. My name is Neal Pollack. I’m an American rock critic.”
The woman said, “So?”
“You speak excellent English,” he said.
“That’s because I g
rew up in Manchester, England,” she said.
“Oh,” said Pollack. “Well, I just wanted to show my son this apartment, because I used to live here with Iggy Pop, about twelve years ago.”
“Bullshit,” said the woman.
“Bullshit,” said Kurt.
“No, seriously,” Pollack said. “I can prove it. There’s a loose tile in the bathroom to the left of the sink. You should find a mouse skeleton. We buried it there in case something like this came up.”
The woman went back into the apartment. Pollack and Kurt heard a scream. They looked at each other.
“Let’s blow,” Pollack said.
A few blocks later, as they caught their breath in front of a department-store display window, Kurt looked at Pollack with renewed wonder.
“You knew Iggy Pop?” he said.
“Know,” said Pollack. “I know him well.”
“Iggy rules!”
“Yes,” Pollack said severely. “Yes, he does.”
A few weeks later, the band was in New York City, where they were scheduled to play a show at the Pyramid Club. Kurt was reluctant. As he ground away in front of a pit of bobbing hipsters, he saw a familiar figure, bony and desolate, moving in the crowd. Could it be? No. Someone like that would not come hear him play.
Pollack was in the crowd, and he saw the figure, too.
“Iggy!” he said, after the set. “Oh, Iggy!”
Iggy Pop approached Kurt instead.
“Hey, man!” he said. “Great fucking show! I fucking loved it!”
“Thanks, man,” Kurt said.
Pollack was tugging on Iggy’s sleeve.
“Iggy, Iggy, Iggy,” he said. “Hey, Iggy.”
But Iggy and Kurt were deep in conversation.
“You’ve gotta look up at the audience more,” Iggy said.
“Yeah,” said Kurt, “I know.”
Pollack said, “I’ve been telling him that for months!”
“Come on,” Iggy said to Kurt. “I’ll buy you a beer.”