by Nick Soulsby
13.0
Corporate-Rock Whores
January to July 1991
Nirvana had benefited from benefactors and mentors throughout their career—the give and take of the music community. Now it was the patronage of Sonic Youth that took them to DGC Records.
DON FLEMING: I think it was very meaningful to them to be a part of the Sonic Youth party at the time. Everyone in Sonic Youth liked them a lot … when they [Sonic Youth] got their Geffen deal they got a deal to bring bands in—which is usually, or almost always, a deal thrown in there to make the band being signed feel like they’re the “big cheese” and they can get stuff going and have a lot of power there; many more bands than Sonic Youth get that kind of deal. But typically, what happens is the label doesn’t give a fuck about the bands you bring in—they’ll sign one to appease you but there’s a whole game in every major label—Geffen is a good example—there’s power within the label and to get any band really noticed you have to get every division behind it and there’s usually few people in a label who can do that. Most A&R guys don’t have enough clout within their label to get everyone—Marketing, Promotion and so on—to really come out and work the record, so typically records get a little bit of work from one or two people who really like the band and like the A&R guy, but only like 1 or 2 percent get this huge push from the label. So when Sonic Youth got Nirvana signed to Geffen, it was kinda like that.
Nirvana began to make a point of playing for causes they respected; 1991 started with a No More Wars benefit.
JELLO BIAFRA: I was pleasantly surprised when I realized a lot of the grunge-era bands who initially appeared to be a full-on revival of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll in the lyrics and attitude department turned out to be pretty politically active and aware … It seemed like Green River on down was a deliberate response against the more dogmatic areas of political hardcore—they weren’t going to play that sound and those lyrical angles got tossed out the door.
PAUL KIMBALL: Evergreen was a very socially conscious environment, sometimes to a fault. But we and the other bands were really feeling it. It was an intense moment. Krist Novoselic spoke at length from the stage that night, and though I remember it being less than entirely eloquent, it was definitely right-on … The big difference at this one was Dave Grohl. All of a sudden what Nirvana had been trying to do finally became undeniable. The songwriting, the time on the road … The fact that Dave could harmonize with Kurt is something that pushed the songwriting way upfront, and his drumming—well, c’mon!
TIMO ELLIS, Nubbin: That antiwar show should have been a “peak,” but I remember it as one of our worst shows ever, performance-wise—also made that much more cringe-worthy by the fact that for some unknown reason I decided to wear this ridiculous one-piece sleeveless jumper type of thing … a pretty emotionally charged atmosphere that night, as of course people were generally really disillusioned and pissed off about the fact that a war/invasion of Iraq was likely.
RYAN VON BARGEN, Fitz of Depression: Krist had written something he was reading about his opposition to the US war and some idiots in the crowd kept yelling at him to “shut up and play.” I have to say that that was one of the things I thought was sad about watching a cool band like Nirvana get bigger; more brain-dead assholes were going to their shows. Good for business, bad for the subculture. That was another thing about watching Nirvana shift the whole perception of rock ’n’ roll up to that point: dudes can get all the tribal tattoos and piercings their parents can afford, but it will never make them better individuals at heart. I hope some percentage of them did “get it,” wherever the wind has blown them.
For a band that would later spend the In Utero tour halting to shout at meatheads harassing the female audience, the shift in audience wasn’t a positive.
DANIEL RIDDLE: You could see that in the self-hatred and frustration those dudes and many others expressed when their bands got “big and successful.” They had guilt and felt responsible for bringing the industry vampires, the violent jocks, the rich-kid poseurs, and corporate consciousness into our sacred spaces—the clubs, the parties, the underground subculture, and even our minds. It couldn’t be stopped. It was going to happen sooner or later. The beatniks, the hippies, the punks, every counterculture underground movement eventually gets infiltrated, diffused, polluted, dumbed down, then repackaged, sanitized, and sold to the masses. Most of us in the underground music community saw this happen with the “Nirvana explosion” and we felt a great deal of compassion and empathy for those guys. Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it, right?
RYAN VON BARGEN: If some redneck idiots started shit, which they occasionally did, I really liked how there were a few who were like the protectors of the Northwest pacifist punker types … People don’t realize how outwardly violent, ignorant, and cruel some of the bastards were around here. There was no Hot Topic to create an air of acceptance around “individuality” for the redneck, just hatred and contempt for these weirdos with Mohawks wearing surplus Army clothes.
TIM KERR: After Nirvana broke big, a lot of the people fucking with us became the ’90s crowd who acted like, “Yeah bro. We are with you! We are of the same cloth!” And I am sure that bugged the hell out of Kurt.
Nirvana increasingly acted on the underground’s social activism. In Cobain’s journal list of his top fifty albums, of four released after 1990, three were female-fronted. The other, by the Frogs, had a gay theme. Cobain would befriend Kathleen Hanna and Kathi Wilcox of Riot Grrrl legends Bikini Kill and dated their drummer, Tobi Vail, while the band attended classes at Evergreen State College.
GILLY ANN HANNER: Evergreen—it was very level, a lot of talk about feminism, a lot of feminist courses, women-focused writing courses and so on. I met Kathleen Hanna in a couple of my classes like my Women in Poetry class. Kathi … she was dating my boyfriend’s best friend—that’s how we ended up living together and she started playing music after hanging around with us, so she took up the bass … They coined the Riot Grrrl thing—made the fanzine, the pictures, really good work—they put together the full concept. Tobi was a really good drummer, Kathi took to the bass real quick, Kathleen’s a great singer … I think some of that came out of the way the classes were at Evergreen—integrating pieces together. The concept of having a fanzine, a band, a certain look … all of that—brilliant! I was very jealous at the time. [For us it was like] “We’re just a band, we’re all women but we’re really rocking—but we’re not Riot Grrrls.”
The hardcore scene of the early ’80s had become increasingly male-oriented by the middle of that decade. Even venues that are now legendary in punk-rock circles were not necessarily female-friendly, even if unintentionally so.
LISA KOENIG: Tropicana—uh … that was sort of out of my league. I was just a young pup and the Tropicana crowd was like “professional” punk rockers … It wasn’t a place for a female newbie on the scene—well, not me anyway, I was too scared, ha. But there were places like Reko/Muse, the backstage of the Capital Theater, the Surf Club, Thekla, Rainy Day Records, and the Smithfield … These places contributed to the whole Olympia vibe in the late ’80s/early ’90s—a time where art, music, and coffee harmoniously collided; pretty cool and way-less intimidating than the Trop.
The punk scene wasn’t a homogeneous entity, however. It had both a progressive wing and a macho side.
COLIN BURNS: At the time, the women playing heavier music confused some of the audience. For an example, we played a show in Worcester, Mass., with Boston hardcore stalwarts Slapshot and a couple of Worcester hardcore bands. It was an all-ages show, packed for the first two bands. After we started, everyone but four kids left. And then everyone returned for Slapshot. Those four kids loved the show. That show definitely felt like an extreme reaction to the women in the band.
Supported for years by strong women like Tracy Marander and having been on the receiving end of plentiful macho idiocy Nirvana’s progressive instincts saw them supporting anything favoring a
more equal and respected place for women. There was certainly plenty to be fought over.
SIOBHAN DUVALL: Girls who played guitar were literally laughed out of guitar shops, and the music scene, although often run by women on [the] management side, was very male-dominated and sexist band-wise … The Bombshells once played a benefit concert for Rape Relief, an organization to assist victims of sexual violence. We were slammed by the hipster “politically correct” college-radio press, who said it was “laughable that the sex kitty Bombshells could possibly take a stand against rape.” That article was written by a woman, who seemed to subscribe to the “she was asking for it” view of sexual violence. We found that very shocking and offensive to say the least.
The surge in female participation was certainly not localized, either; wherever there was a scene, there were women rocking. Nirvana’s pro-feminist approach built on their close association and regular performances with a wide range of talented women.
GILLY ANN HANNER: Right before that was “foxcore”—supposedly Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth coined this term because of Babes in Toyland, L7, Hole … Basically meaning chicks playing hardcore-y music … I didn’t see very many females playing music at the time—there were a few. Once I started with Calamity Jane, we played with Scrawl—they were Midwest, three women, the first all-female touring band I saw, super-cool.
LORI JOSEPH: I just wanted to learn to play the guitar so I wasn’t just the “girlfriend” hanging out listening to my boyfriend’s band practice … I really became interested in the lack of female musicians. I was a huge Girls School fan and was really annoyed that most woman musicians at that time in my area were nonexistent or terrible, so I practiced my guitar solos and formed an all-girls band called Bhang Revival.
RENÉE DENENFELD: Here in Portland some of the earliest punk bands were female, like the Neoboys. I think the media “discovered” the Riot Grrrl thing, but it had been happening for a long time. Only, before that point being a punk-rock girl wasn’t about trying to look conventionally sexy or even fashionable. Most didn’t care about fashion at all. And if we did, it was more to mock it. If I recall right, I performed the entire New Year’s show dressed in an old woman’s swimsuit with lipstick smeared on my face.
Likewise, it wasn’t a one-size-fits-all deal, easily packaged for stereotyping. Being a female musician didn’t mean automatically falling into lockstep as a gender. To a significant extent, it was Nirvana’s rise that drew further attention to female-fronted bands in the Northwest, but mostly just to the media-friendly Riot Grrrl phenomenon.
MARIA MABRA: One thing about Seattle, and everyone knows this: it had the best reputation for pumping out the best rock chicks ever. When I came here to Austin it was so disappointing that all of a sudden I was a minority—are you kidding me?!… Courtney Love, when she wanted to create Hole, she came up to Seattle to get people—I remember when she picked Patty [Schemel] to be her drummer … Olympia also produced the Riot Grrrls—the worst! Oh God, chicks all of a sudden became popular … The whiny ones. You don’t reverse sexism to get something right—those chicks had the nerve to set up gigs where guys weren’t allowed to stand in the front … I was like, “Excuse me? Fuck that.” You do not set up reverse sexism to try and fix a problem. So the whole Riot Grrrl thing is lame to me and a lot of other chicks from Seattle, and the fact a lot of us got looped into that [sucked]. I remember being interviewed and being called a Riot Grrrl, and we protested; we will not be your Riot Grrrls, your Riot Grrrl shit stinks. The guys weren’t allowed in the mosh pit, they weren’t allowed to punk-rock dance, they weren’t allowed to stage dive and they had to stand in the back—I remember thinking, Is this fucking Jim Crow here?
RENÉE DENENFELD: The whole media focus on the Riot Grrrl thing was more about devaluing women as artists and thinkers and acting as if our role in music is meant to be titillating sexually and risqué. Honestly, the media didn’t care about punk-rock women until we stopped being political and started looking like porn.
LISA SMITH: When you are the novelty chick band, you don’t get a sound check. If we ever did we were lucky. We were usually the opening act, so then you just push your drums to the side and get entertained the rest of the night … We had the correct anatomy for the Riot Grrrl crowd, but who knows if we were hated or looked at like pigs singing about living on beer and sex. Kurt thought we should do the cover “Green Eyed Lady.” As far as Seattle, how much more macho could you sound with tiny Kelly Canary sounding like a drunken four-hundred-pound man … Or Meagan Jasper in her garbage-bag dress and dog collar? Or, better yet, Mark Arm and Duane (Derelicts) in one of our dresses and all made-up! Mark asked what he should sing about and we told him to write lyrics as if he was a girl. He wrote some hilarious shit like “Tell me you love me, or I’ll scratch out both your eyes … Tell me you love me, between both my thighs.”
Nirvana lent weight whenever asked. Cobain dueted with Courtney Love at a Rock Against Rape event. The band played Rock for Choice, contributed to the Home Alive compilation, invited female-fronted bands on tour, and on occasion would chastise male members of their own audience if they spotted them molesting girls in the crowd.
GILLY ANN HANNER: We played West Coast dates, including some in L.A. that were filmed by Lisa Rose Apramian for her rockumentary Not Bad for a Girl, featuring Hole, L7, Babes in Toyland, and dozens of other female musicians. The film was released in 1995, and Kurt and Courtney ended up partially funding it.
SLIM MOON: The hardcore scene in the ’80s was macho and sexist. But California was the nexus for the hardcore scene on the West Coast … The music thing that was happening in the Northwest in the ’80s was much weirder and more eclectic, and women had a bigger role … Rock ’n’ roll is sixty years old now—that’s a mighty long time. It had a macho phase, but that phase was less than twenty years out of the sixty-year history, it wasn’t the default “truth” of rock … Even the rest of “grunge” in the ’90s, which might have been made possible by the success of Nirvana, was comparatively sexist and “rock” compared to the intentions of Kurt. Many of the successful grunge-band members had been in sexist rock bands up until the moment they jumped to grunge for careerist reasons as the new trendy sound. Some bands like Alice in Chains had actually been Mötley Crüe–style bands up until they decided to go grunge and change the spelling of their name. I remember how pissed Kurt and Krist were when they started dressing like Kurt and changing their sound.
STEVE MORIARTY: There was an all-girl band on Sub Pop, Dickless, but other than that you couldn’t count on one hand how many bands on Sub Pop had a female vocalist until 1995. I think part of it was what they were into, part of it was ignorance, and part of it was that they weren’t easy with women—they were dudes’ dudes, and they didn’t have much of a sympathy for a woman’s voice in a band.
Sub Pop, meanwhile, made sure to get one last nugget of reflected glory by pairing Nirvana with the Fluid for a live split-single, which ended up being the last Sub Pop release for both bands simultaneously.
MATT BISCHOFF: [It was] an attempt to capture the ferocity of the live performance rather than a “polished” studio sound. It was certainly not to be our last of working with Sub Pop, however. Due to inability to come to terms on contracts it, unfortunately, ended up being so … I don’t really know why that one happened. We had played some pretty damn good shows with those guys. We all shared a common love of rowdy performances. I suppose we were going to be exposed to a wider audience, but that was all pre–“Teen Spirit.”
This was the first of many Sub Pop releases that knowingly piggybacked on Nirvana’s status. The Grunge Years compilation reissued “Dive,” then Bleach was rereleased with the previously unreleased song “Downer” to incentivize purchase. Nirvana would place both songs on the Incesticide compilation soon after, thus nullifying any benefit.
For the band, only five rapid-fire shows in March disturbed their practice and tranquility, and they remained barely more significant than any of the o
ther punk bands with whom they shared the stage.
KEVIN ROSE, The Wongs: It had a “mini festival” vibe, and there was a buzz about Nirvana. We were friends with the Doughboys; Chi Pig knew John Kastner from Chi’s touring days with SNFU. Kastner was very kind to put us up in his place in Montréal for a few days … We hung out with him and the fellas from Voivod, and Ivan from Men Without Hats … Nirvana caused a stir; everyone was impressed and energized by their set. I loved Kurt’s voice; everyone was saying what a great singer he was. They were heavy and powerful. I didn’t know the songs at the time … The Screaming Trees had their own room backstage and we hung out there. I was drinking and gorging myself on deli meat; I’ve tried to make better choices since.
BILL WALKER, Blank Frank and the Tattooed Gods: The same month we played with Nirvana we also opened for Social Distortion, which was a big deal at the time. The show with Nirvana was a nut house; we left after we played and didn’t even get to see them. I did however see some other cool shows in that particular venue around that time, notably Voivod, Primus, and Soundgarden.
JOHN KASTNER: The first night I saw them, it was a total snowstorm and it’s eight thirty and Nirvana haven’t shown up yet. All of a sudden the back door opens and this bass drum is thrown in. They threw all their shit into the club. This big yellow bass drum came rolling in—they didn’t have cases for any of their gear. They had one crew guy, Krist’s friend, and all he did was make martinis. They rented us a free hotel room and we went and had a big party in there—that was the first time I hung out with them … They were excited because they’d just signed their record deal, excited because they had laid down the first demos, ready for their album—they were enjoying it. Krist and Dave definitely, fun no matter what—Kurt you never knew what the fuck was going on, he never took off his gloves, he had this dark demeanor. We were watching the Screaming Trees play and I asked him, “Who are these guys?” He said to me, “He’s my favorite singer in the whole world.” He was a really quiet guy. Everyone was drinking beer, he had a little micky in his pocket, whiskey or something and would just take little sips. Kurt sat at the merch desk all night because they’d bought a whole bunch of white lighters and he just sat there and wrote NIRVANA in pen on them, circling the A like the anarchy sign, and sold them for a dollar each—sold out that night, a hundred lighters or something! It was when we first really bonded with them; it was really sweaty, everyone stage-dived, crowd loving it … they were super-tight, Kurt was dark and mean—Krist happy jumping up and down—Dave just laying it out.
