Grunge Is Dead

by Greg Prato

  CHAD CHANNING: Half the songs that came out on [1991’s] Nevermind were songs we recorded with Butch Vig, that was to be the next album for Sub Pop. But we didn’t know at the time — at least I didn’t know — that Sub Pop was talking to Geffen. A deal was made that this wouldn’t be quite a Sub Pop release, and Geffen would take over and put out the album. They ended up doing that — but rerecorded the album.

  CRAIG MONTGOMERY: Them firing Chad was way before Nevermind came out — before they [re-]recorded it. I was disappointed, because we liked Chad. They liked Chad personally, but there were times — like in the earlier tours — where you could see Kurt frustrated with Chad if he would drop a beat. Chad would be the first one to tell you that he wasn’t the most solid drummer in the world.

  SCOTTY CRANE: My memory of Chad and Nirvana was that he didn’t think they were really going to do anything. In all honesty, a lot of people felt that way. They were amazing to see live, but I don’t think even Sub Pop at first thought they were going to be anything. Cool songs, great performance — that was about it.

  CHAD CHANNING: Everybody’s heard things like, “He left” or “He was fired” — it was actually a combination of both. I was hoping to get the opportunity to chip in with some songwriting. After Bleach, Kurt talked about it — he wouldn’t mind having some help [with] writing. And of course being a songwriter, I was like, “I’m all for that.” But over time I realized that wasn’t going to happen. What slowly happened was I just started losing my inspiration to play — it shows. Ultimately, I didn’t give them much choice but to kick me out of the band.

  DALE CROVER: I played some shows with those guys when they were getting attention. We opened for Sonic Youth on a West Coast tour. They were talking about having me play on the record, but then they decided they were getting Danny from Mudhoney.

  NILS BERNSTEIN: There was that period where Dan Peters was in Nirvana, and I thought they were amazing with him. He’s such an interesting, distinctive drummer. That was a really exciting period — right between Bleach and Nevermind.

  KURT DANIELSON: We were demoing songs with Jack. During our lunch break, Nirvana came in — Krist, Kurt, and Dan — and recorded “Sliver.” That’s a little known fact — all the amps and drums are Tad equipment. We were only too happy to let them use the gear, because Krist brought a big spleef and we smoked it. They did that in three or four hours — diligent and workmanlike, no bullshit in the studio. They were just like everybody else — even humbler. I think Kurt was the humblest person I ever met — at the same time, a complex person.

  JON AUER: The first song that really did it for me was “Sliver,” probably because it reminded me of the Replacements — one of my all-time faves. Only amped-up with a serious metal edge, which, having metal roots myself, really drove it home.

  ALICE WHEELER: The show that really changed everything was the Motor Sports Garage — all of a sudden, there was a ton of people, and you had to have a backstage pass. I didn’t have a photo pass, but I brought my camera. Dylan came up to me during the Dwarves, and said, “Here’s my pass, Kurt wants you to come backstage.” I went, and Kurt said, “Save some film for the end, I’m going to have a surprise.” It turned out he was smashing his guitar. He used a different guitar to smash, not the good one [laughs].

  BLAG DAHLIA: We played at the Motor Sports Hall. Nirvana was the big buzz band — I liked their singles and thought they were the only catchy songwriters in a sea of sad and tedious bands from Seattle. We got added to the bill at the last minute because we were on Sub Pop, and because Cobain and Novoselic were fans of our bass player, Saltpeter — the only guy in our band who could really play well. Their friends at the show were mostly dirt-head-beer-gut-heavy-metal-type guys, from their dreary suburb of Aberdeen — the kind that they would later claim to be much more sensitive than.

  We never used to ask what we were getting paid, but it turned out to be $100. We really needed some money for gas so we asked Novoselic if they could give us money. He got really nervous and fidgety, but he finally said he’d give us $100 if we promised not to ask the Melvins for money. We said sure … and then went and asked the Melvins for money. We had played a few shows with them and got along fine [and] had more shows with them that month, so we figured they would be understanding. We were wrong. I didn’t realize that everyone up there needed money for dope at that point. Near the end of the show, Saltpeter got hit with a beer bottle, and it knocked him to the floor. Vadge threw his sticks down and jumped randomly into the crowd. I took Saltpeter to the emergency room and got him stitched up. Because we had to leave the show, we never got paid anything … but I’m sure a check will show up any day now.

  CRAIG MONTGOMERY: We saw Dave Grohl playing at this show in San Francisco, with his band, Scream. Kurt said, “Wow, I wish we could get a drummer like that.” And then later, word got out that [Scream] had broken up. So they got a hold of him, and the rest is history. I wasn’t there for their rehearsals [and] Dave living with Kurt. But when they first came out to do shows, it was a breath of fresh air. He was really solid — he hit solidly and he could sing — he fit in really well.

  JENNIE BODDY: I remember the Nirvana shows where Dave Grohl was drumming for the first time, at the Off Ramp. Two a.m. was the cutoff time. They played and played, and they used to have a thing called “Hash After the Bash,” where there were really terrible scrambled eggs — greasy food. So they closed the place down for a minute, let everyone back in, and they played for another two hours.

  STEVE MANNING: They kicked everybody out, because of the liquor license. They cleared the club of all the alcohol supposedly, and then came back in to continue playing. Krist came up and said, “OK, there’s no alcohol, who’s got weed? No, I’m serious — I need to smoke some weed if we’re going to keep playing.” So I got up onstage and broke out my proto-pipe — all brass and on the side is a little holder for your weed.

  JEFF AMENT: I remember we came back home and I saw them at the Off Ramp. It was a totally different band. To this day, I think Dave Grohl was at least as much of a reason why they were great as Kurt was. Kurt was a poet and had an incredible knack for writing a melody, but Dave gave them all the power. He gave the songs a ship to sail on.

  STEVE MANNING: Even now — and it seems crazy — Dave Grohl seems like “the new guy” in the band.

  STU HALLERMAN: Five bands played upstairs in a cafeteria-ish room [at Evergreen State College], the fourth floor of the library. It was Nirvana, Bikini Kill, and other bands. There’s this one guy who kept looking at me — a little guy with white face makeup, really messy mascara and lipstick, and torn flannel shirt. I don’t know what was on this guy’s mind, so I avoided him. A couple of hours go by, all these bands play, and it’s Nirvana’s turn. They get up, and who was that “guy”? Kurt!

  TINUVIEL: One show that really sticks out is when they played at Evergreen — it was right as we started the Iran–Iraq War. They were opposed to the war — they put black charcoal or makeup on their face, looking ghoulish. In terms of the audience, the general atmosphere was we were all frightened, and wondering what we were doing bombing the Middle East. I really appreciated that they would bring that into what could otherwise have been just another stupid rock show.

  SUSAN SILVER: Before Nirvana signed, they had come down to my office. Krist was always the spokesperson, and was asking about labels and lawyers. They really wanted to meet Peter Paterno. I said, “I’m going to L.A. tomorrow. If you guys get a ticket and meet me down there, I’d be happy to introduce you to people.” They whispered and conferred with each other, and said, “OK. We’ll drive — we’ll meet you there tomorrow.” Krist and Kurt got in their van and off they went. Twenty-four hours later, met me at A&M. Unfortunately, it didn’t work with Peter’s schedule — he had an emergency and had to go out of town. So I introduced them to Alan Mintz, who became their lawyer.

  JONATHAN PONEMAN: When we did our deal with Geffen and the band — to be bought out of the contract — wha
t was important to us was when people buy the records, it would help the band to have the Sub Pop logo on a certain level, because the band wouldn’t be considered a sellout. These sorts of things mattered, or so we thought. But what was really going [on] — we were interested in getting the Sub Pop logo out to as many people as we could. That was just part of the settlement and agreement — for two records, which ended up being Nevermind and In Utero, that were supposed to be the second two records in the Sub Pop contract — we could get logo identification. You see that logo on other records — Incesticide has it because there are Sub Pop masters on that record. People thought that we released or co-released the record, but we had nothing to do with it. We just had a logo stamped on there.

  SLIM MOON: In Olympia, there was a feeling against major labels. And Kurt was conflicted. As soon as he signed, he really started downplaying that and not talking about it much. It became sort of taboo to talk about.

  SUSIE TENNANT: The first time I met them, I think they had just signed to Geffen — they hadn’t even started recording [Nevermind]. We hung out when they came to Seattle — hit it off immediately. From that point on, whenever they would come to Seattle, they would stay at my house and hang out. Dave was happy-go-lucky, really fun to hang out with, Krist the same, and Kurt was Kurt — he was great. A lot of times, they’d be here for a couple of days. [Kurt’s] girlfriend and Krist’s girlfriend would stay — we’d pull out the futon and everyone would crash.

  ROBIN TAYLOR: Krist Novoselic called me a couple of days before they were going down to L.A. to record Nevermind, and asked if I would book a show [at the OK Hotel] the next day. I was like, “Dude, give me a break — I want to promote, I want to get it on KCMU.” There was a line around the block at a quarter after three to see the show.

  EDDIE VEDDER: They played these shows at the OK Hotel, which is right down the street from that basement I was sleeping in, and somehow [managed] getting into the first one of those. Which I think was the first night they played “Teen Spirit.”

  SUSIE TENNANT: The place just exploded. Across the street in a warehouse, they were filming the music scene from Singles. I remember trying to get some of the radio people in town — “You’ve got to go see this band, they’re really great!” “No, we’re going to go see Soundgarden.”

  STU HALLERMAN: Midway through the set, Kurt gets up to the mic — “We’re going to play a song we never played live before, but we recorded it for our upcoming record. The name of the song is ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.’” The audience cracks up, because it was kind of a funny name. They play the song, and everybody’s blown away. The quiet/loud stuff — they just nailed it. You see a punk rock band play, they say the names of their songs, but the next day, do you remember any of it? In this case, yes — the funny title and the glory of that song were unforgettable.

  STEVE MACK: When Nirvana played the Reading Festival that first year, it was on a Friday at two or three in the afternoon — they were, like, ninth on the bill. But after that, everyone was walking around going, “The festival’s over. We just saw the best [band] — nothing’s going to top that.” That was one of those rare times in your life when you see a band, and go, “I guarantee they are going to be the biggest thing next year.”

  CRAIG MONTGOMERY: It was a very steady progression. You would hear them working on ideas at sound checks. You could see him moving away from the really heavy, noisy stuff, towards more pop melodies. I mean, on the first European tour, we spent just as much time listening to ABBA as to any kind of noisy punk rock or heavy metal. Kurt definitely had an appreciation for pop song craft. The first time they played me their rough demo of “Teen Spirit,” my first thought I said to Kurt was, “Wow, Pixies!” And he said, “Yeah, I know. Do you think it’s too obvious?”

  Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, at the Paradiso in Amsterdam, November 25, 1991

  EDDIE VEDDER: Nirvana’s record — people were passing around advance copies of that. Like it was a keychain — everyone had one. Everyone’s office, you’d just hear it playing. Really exciting. But that was based just on music — everyone was excited about the songs. That was months before it came out.

  ART CHANTRY: I was working at The Rocket, and a guy brought in a cassette tape. These two records by Nirvana and Soundgarden were being released — we had this 90-minute cassette in the production room, it was Badmotorfinger and Nevermind on the other side. So we started playing it — “Hey this is a great record!” Flipped it over. “Hey, this is a great record!” We flip it over. “Hey, this is a REALLY great record!” After a while, we quit flipping it and just played Nevermind over and over.

  VAN CONNER: Krist came over to Dan Peters’ house — we were having a party. Dan, him, and I listened to Nevermind right after it got done. We were like, “Wow, this is really good man. You guys are going to sell … 100,000 records [laughs]. You guys will be bigger than Hüsker Dü.”

  SLIM MOON: What I remember more was not the general impression of “This is a great record,” it was, “OK, this is the new Nirvana record — let’s parse it.” Like, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the original first feeling was, “Wow, he’s using ‘the Mudhoney rhythm,’” because there is a Mudhoney rhythm that all the early Mudhoney songs had. I remember picking it apart, like what’s going on in Kurt’s head — what his influences were, why he wrote this record. We were trying to figure out which people we knew that the songs might be about. I don’t really remember [thinking], “Wow, this is going to change the world.”

  KIM THAYIL: I already loved Bleach. Many of those songs are my favorite songs ever — of any rock band. I was really looking forward to hearing Nevermind with great anticipation. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” stuck out immediately. I remember they sent us a demo, and Ben really liked it — he started laughing, pointed at the boom box, and said, “That’s their fucking hit!” It sounded pretty produced — it was definitely a very “wet” record. A lot of reverbs and delays — whereas Bleach seemed punchy and dry. I know people like to think of Nevermind as being all punk rock and raw. Anyone who doubts that should put their headphones on and listen to it — it’s a very wet, slick, polished record.

  STEVE TURNER: I thought that they had overproduced it. I heard the demos they’d done with Chad on drums — some of the same songs, and I thought it was great. I was a bit disappointed with the sound of Nevermind. It sounds like a really big, almost ’80s hard rock record, the sheen that’s on it.

  CHAD CHANNING: Overall, all the parts were the same. In fact, when I heard that, I was like, “Wow.” I was flattered that they kept my stuff, the things that I had done. Kind of the greatest compliment I’d ever received. For instance, “In Bloom” — I had the single kick drum thing going on for the main verses, and then Dave added an extra one. But the majority of that stuff is all pretty much the same.

  JERRY CANTRELL: I thought it was amazing. It was a serious step up from the record before. It was like three or four steps up.

  CHRIS PUGH: My girlfriend at the time gave me a cassette of it that she’d got from Kurt. I remember thinking to myself, “These guys are going to be bigger than Guns N’ Roses.”

  DUFF McKAGAN: Nevermind was kick-ass. I had one cassette copy of it before it came out, and my girlfriend and I kept stealing it out of each other’s car — we wore it out. It was a really loud, well-produced, punk rock record. With something extra — a great drummer. Nirvana was straight up, they had three-minute rock songs that were perfect.

  CURT KIRKWOOD: Nevermind was like Aerosmith or something. I thought it was still hard rock — not realizing that there was another group of disgruntled teens coming out. I kind of started seeing that scene like that too — playing to the disenfranchised youth again. That’s alright — they can cloud it with their Mardi Gras beads and stuff. I was pretty cynical about it.

  NILS BERNSTEIN: Personally I didn’t think they were markedly better than any number of other bands, until Nevermind. Not that Bleach wasn’t fantastic, but so was 8-Way Santa.

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p; EDDIE VEDDER: There was something about those songs — not only was there an immediate connection, but you didn’t get sick of them. It was an incredible bit of playing, songwriting, and focus of energy — having it seem natural. And where they were coming from, and what he wanted to say — even though you didn’t [know] what he was saying.

  We drove out to the Mojave Desert to see Fugazi — free show in the middle of the desert. You get there and there’s a van, two work lights set up, they’re playing in the sand amongst these dunes. It was quite a drive out there, and I think we listened to [Nevermind] all the way there and back. All that was on our minds was Fugazi, but then we would listen to this music. It was like getting doused and lighting yourself on fire — in some kind of celebration.

  KIM WARNICK: Probably one of the funniest [memories] was going to their record release party for Nevermind. They got kicked out of their own record release party for starting a food fight and throwing a cake around.

  VAN CONNER: Those guys would get so blasted. I remember dancing with Novoselic that night — he had a pitcher of beer and he started going in circles. Dumping it over the whole bar. Right after that, they got thrown out.

  ROBERT ROTH: We were hanging out with Kurt early on — we were smoking cigarettes. The party was pretty fun — I remember “On a Plain” came on, and those guys started throwing food. A mini-food fight broke out, which fit perfectly with the song. We all went to, I think, Jeff Ross’s place downtown — a bunch of people drinking and hanging out. Probably twenty-five to thirty people in this warehouse. Another interesting thing I observed about Kurt was certain selflessness. After we all got kicked out of the Re-bar and went up to Jeff ’s, Kurt spent part of the evening consoling a friend out in the stairwell who was having girl trouble. A very mature gesture, especially just following being evicted from your own record release party. And then somebody let off this fire extinguisher, so we had to leave that place. We went up to Susie Tennant’s, and everybody got really wasted — at one point, there were, like, twenty drunk people rolling around the floor. A few of us stayed the night there — Susie, Kurt, me, a few other friends.