I Found My Friends

by Nick Soulsby

  RICHARD LEWIS: When Nevermind came out, it broke the banks of the narrow stream that we were all used to swimming in. People who were not a part of the scene got into it as well—“Smells Like Teen Spirit” was huge! It was a revolution! It was such a great album, it retained all the things we loved about music and punk rock but was produced so well it was commercially viable. It felt special; Australian audiences were totally aware of Nirvana’s impact.

  The Asia/Pacific market was not a musical dead zone yearning for good rock bands.

  RICHARD LEWIS: I know Kurt was a Cosmic Psychos fan; he was also into the Scientists and Feedtime and Lubricated Goat. The stuff that was happening in Australia in the late ’80s had a big impact on a lot of the bands in Seattle; the term “grunge” was used to describe the Scientists in about ’87!

  Like the US punk underground, the scenes in Australia and New Zealand had benefited from being able to do their own thing without interference.

  MICHAEL MCMANUS: Pre-Internet, there was a large geographical isolation factor here, so only a handful of bands are known internationally. In a way that made the scene here a little self-sufficient, and full of its own quirks and deviations. Melbourne had the advantage of having really strong public radio and street press to promote the scene.

  PAUL BROCKHOFF: There was literally a band on every street corner in inner Melbourne … Some of the pub owners got wise and settled into a particular night of the week. The Tote held the Friday-night pole position. Friday or Saturday it was the Punters Club and the Evelyn Hotel. Tuesday, Great Britain; Wednesday, the Bendigo Hotel. Melbourne’s music scene was strangely divided by the river: north of the Yarra and south of the Yarra. South it was like big city, larger venues. North it was a hangover from its heritage as semi-industrial, semi-high-density living. Purely in terms of numbers of punters and dollar contribution to the economy, live music is bigger and more popular than football in Melbourne.

  PETER FENTON: Sydney was more a Detroit/swampy rock sort of a place but had many elements, as there was many subcultures happening at that time in the ’80s … Sydney was the place for everyone who had run from somewhere. For a place with such magnificent geographical power, it sure had a dark, beautiful heart!

  During Nirvana’s tour, corporate business as usual made its presence felt, which didn’t enthuse the local bands.

  MARK HURST: Just before we went on I needed a piss and went into Nirvana’s band room. Got stopped by some people and they nearly didn’t let me in there. One of them did a sweep of the room to make sure it was empty before they would let me in and they told me to hurry up and waited close by to escort me out again. That was all a bit ridiculous and insulting; what did they think I was going to do?

  RICHARD LEWIS: We definitely felt like the crew and tour party were somehow arrogant. Before the first Palace show in Melbourne, Kurt’s effects pedals went missing; they were stolen. We were accused, we were locked out of our dressing room while all of our bags and dressing room was searched by the crew, and they were dicks about it too. We thought it said more about their character than ours. We knew Nirvana had nothing to do with it, it was just a case of the role going to people’s heads … it seemed like [Kurt] wanted to hang out, but we felt like he was in the middle of a protective circle, being dragged around and told what to do, we were sort of kept at arm’s length. People were all of a sudden working with a “big band”—the biggest band in the world! And it went to their heads and people we had been working with for years and been friends with suddenly became assholes.

  PAUL BROCKHOFF: I remember being told by a bouncer not to try and talk to the band, or we’d get thrown out, regardless of whether we had played or not … Nirvana were quarantined from the outside world … We were allowed to drink the water once they came on but that was all, and during the performance we weren’t allowed to even look at them from our band room … I remember feeling a little ripped off because my chance to see a really cool band had been steamrolled by the very thing that kind of music was supposed to be anathema to.

  SHAUN BUTCHER: I remember walking around backstage looking for them (after I had a bit of Dutch courage) but I stumbled in on the promoter counting money and was shooed away immediately.

  An additional problem was that, for all Cobain’s claims that he was merely dabbling, his heroin use had become significant, if not, at this stage, all-consuming.

  YOURI LENQUETTE, photographer: On the Australia tour obviously I saw it. I warned him about drugs in general, this one more than any other. Having experienced it myself and having had a lot of people around me on that drug—some close friends—I could see when someone had taken it straightaway. We talked about it … he may have started to play with it in a dangerous manner, but it wasn’t quite so critical as it became … In Australia, though he had already started, he wasn’t that much into it.

  Some had long realized there was a pharmaceutical issue, but talk of other sicknesses kept the waters muddied.

  MARK HURST: [I] got the impression they were overwhelmed by the whole thing and not enjoying themselves, they seemed very tired and Cobain did not look at all well. He was very thin and pale and I remember thinking he was a sick man.

  MICHAEL MCMANUS: Kurt didn’t look that healthy, and maybe a bit giddy on his feet. But I’d seen many musicians be a lot more messed up and pull off great shows … I was pretty young and naïve to that sort of thing at the time too, and probably a bit star-struck.

  RICHARD LEWIS: We heard about it, we attributed his quiet distance to it. But it was not out there; it was a secret, only rumors and speculation. It never affected their performance, and personally we did not see any evidence.

  SHAUN BUTCHER: Our drummer, who was a nurse at the time, was asked by someone if he could get anything for Kurt’s “stomach problems.” It was well publicized in the media about Kurt’s bad health in Australia and the inside information was that he was a junkie …

  PETER FENTON: They found this “Dr. Rock”—that’s how Pav described him—who helped medicate Kurt. The doctor involved is now a psychiatrist, but he prescribed this medication that totally did the trick with Kurt, and from all reports he was the best he’d been for a while—at his happiest and best.

  YOURI LENQUETTE: It was true that he did get sick with stomachaches. I remember one time in Sydney, they had played some kind of small pub—a really small place. After the show he was sitting in a corner with his various pains, I spoke to him: “Hey Kurt, what’s going on?” He said, “I don’t feel good and the car to take me back, it isn’t coming.” I offered, “Look, Kurt, let’s go, I’ll take a taxi with you.” We made it back to the hotel and suddenly he was OK.

  Cobain’s skewed perceptions of the world at this time, and another way he reacted to his fame, can be seem in an innocuous remark made at one of the New Zealand shows.

  JULES BARNETT, Second Child: Kurt walked out onto the stage, slung his guitar on, and said, “Hello … this is a song off our first album, which you can buy at Really Groovy Records.”

  This jocular intro in New Zealand speaks volumes about the whirlwind that was compressing Cobain’s existence. The young man of February 1992 was barely six months away from being so poor he lived in his car. Cobain genuinely felt no one had bought Bleach and that he had to tell these new crowds it existed. Onstage for the MTV Unplugged performance in November 1993, he still introduced “About a Girl” with “This is off our first record, most people don’t own it,” then continued to repeat almost these exact words throughout the 1994 European tour, even at Nirvana’s last show: “This is off our first record. Our first record’s called Bleach.” Even with Bleach approaching platinum sales Cobain was hypersensitive to Nirvana’s new audiences, wanting to remind the Johnny-come-lately crowds that Nirvana hadn’t sprung into existence only when MTV paid attention. The audience in Australia confirmed Nirvana was attracting a pop clientele who knew nothing of the underground but all too much about “in” trends.

  PAUL BROCKHOFF: I had be
en living in the forest in a swag for six weeks prior to the gig and had trouble adjusting. I remember not being allowed to stay in the band room and hating the crowd … I remember being offended at seeing such a large and young crowd that weren’t into us and were all wearing Dayglo orange and white. Such were the fickle fashions of the time.

  The shows were packed, with one show in Canberra, at the Australian National University, even involving a riot.

  RICHARD LEWIS: It was sold out and there were just as many people outside as there were inside. The walls at the ANU are glass and some of the people outside smashed the glass wall to get inside, there was blood everywhere backstage, we were slipping around on it … My favorite was the Phoenician Club show in Sydney. It was the first show and it was a great venue. It had three levels all looking over the stage. People were diving from the upper levels, there was just this incredible energy in the room, the sound in there was huge, I remember the sound check: Kurt sat on the drum riser for about twenty minutes playing one note over and over, staring out from under pink hair. I thought it was interesting that Kurt’s guitar was patched through an effect rack backstage and that the guitar sounds from Nevermind were programmed into it and controlled by his guitar tech. It sounded just like the record, only louder and wilder.

  SHAUN BUTCHER: Selinas was an old ’20s biggish hotel/motel venue just south of Sydney CBD [Central Business District] on Coogee Beach. It had balconies where you could watch bands from if you didn’t wanna fight the mosh. I saw heaps of overseas bands there and thought it was a great choice by Steve Pav.

  MICHAEL MCMANUS: The Palace … It was a low, squat chunk of a building near the beach in St. Kilda built in the ’70s I think … The room itself was quite square, with a balcony above the back half. There was a glassed-in VIP area on the first floor between the balcony and the stage, three bars, and another slightly smaller room at one side. It didn’t have the greatest air-conditioning … They’d brought in a big PA for the night, I remember getting there and being impressed by the size of it … Even arriving at the Palace in the afternoon was intense; there were a lot of people outside hoping to get tickets, or even a glimpse of the band. Tickets were well and truly sold out, but I did hear of a few folk that managed to get in at the last minute. Our guest list had been full for a long time, and I’d had to knock back many friends who called in hope of getting on it … [there was] a real frenzy in the air.

  The band snatched whatever rest or amusement they could amid the rigmarole of anonymous hotel life.

  YOURI LENQUETTE: One night in Sydney [Kurt] had problems sleeping and noticed I was up late. He knocked on my door, asked me if I was sleeping and what I was doing. I replied I was listening to music so he asked, “Can I come in?” He was intrigued by all this music. He knew the Sonics, the great ’60s Tacoma band, but I could play him dozens he hadn’t heard of before. That’s something that maybe gets forgotten sometimes with Kurt Cobain. He was a huge music fan, he loved music! It’s not always the case with all musicians, but he loved listening to music … I had all these tapes of ’60s garage music. He was really interested in that period, in that sound, but he didn’t have a deep knowledge of it. I was a real specialist on that era and had all these compilation tapes I was carrying around when traveling … That’s how we got to know each other, not because I was a photographer, but through a common love for music and the fact he wished to discover it.

  RICHARD LEWIS: We shared a dressing room with the Cosmic Psychos or the Meanies—Lenny, our guitarist, had his twenty-first birthday at the Melbourne show; our manager got him a cake and Krist and Dave came to our room, sang “Happy Birthday,” dug their hands into the cake with us, and had a drink to celebrate. Kurt was quiet, didn’t see him much, I remember I had a chat about kangaroos and cricket and the usual first Australian experience stuff with him in Canberra … I think they went to a wildlife park to see some Australian animals. I saw Krist taking lots of photos, not of the gigs but of Australia, and I think they had a good time. Dave watched a lot of our shows and then when we played in Seattle later in the year he rocked up to our show at the Crocodile so I assume he liked us.

  Once sound checks were done, activity would ramp up throughout the day of a performance, as the assorted memories of the bands that accompanied Nirvana on this tour make clear.

  SHAUN BUTCHER: They opened the doors early, as it was getting unsafe outside, and thousands of kids rushed to the stage to be met with us onstage and our “’roo-in-the-headlights” look.

  CHRIS VAN DE GEER, Second Child: I remember at one stage Damien’s amp fell over backward; I was looking at the side-of-stage roadie and indicating to him to put it back up and him just staring at me basically refusing to do it.

  DAMIEN BINDER: I learned a valuable lesson that night: Don’t ever, if you are supporting a big band, say “This is our last song!” I think that got us the biggest cheer. I, in turn, promptly told the crowd to fuck off, serious young man that I was. I hadn’t yet developed my inimitable stage banter.

  PAUL BROCKHOFF: There was condensation dripping from the ceiling, so people were yelling, “It’s raining it’s raining!”

  MARK HURST: It was completely packed that evening. Very hot and humid.

  MICHAEL MCMANUS: Looking up at the VIP area and the glass was completely steamed up. I could see some minor celebrities trying to peer through the bits where the condensation was running down and found that extremely amusing.

  All the background distractions were forgotten when the switch was hit: lights, action.

  PETER FENTON: The rest of the night was defined by a sort of dark energy—I’m not really sure how else to define it. Suddenly it was showtime for Nirvana and we went into this caged mezzanine area and watched the show. They were an incredibly tight and powerful unit. One of my clearest recollections was that Kurt’s voice was mountainous. It was everything that you heard on record and more. He had a quality to his voice that was quite primal.

  MICHAEL MCMANUS: They hit the stage with gusto … I remember thinking it was one of the best rhythm sections I’d ever seen. So intense. Kurt seemed more fragile, but still swayed and flung himself about the stage at times. It was hard to tell if that was just his persona or if it was other factors … I vividly remember the first few chords; they started playing “Aneurysm” and the room exploded. I was standing at one of the smaller bars about twenty-five meters from the stage on one side, and was immediately thrown back against the bar. The entire front half of the room was a surging mosh of at least six hundred or seven hundred people … I ended up watching about half of the show from behind the monitor desk on Kurt’s side. I could hear his voice really well there, and it was enormous. I could see through to Krist on the other side and got a clear view of his lurching and bouncing ’round … There is a special something that bands get when they’ve played together for a while, and they had that and more. They were probably feeding from the electric energy in the room, and they were definitely sending it back in spades … Kurt laid his guitar against his amp stack after the last song and walked off while it fed back and the crowd went nuts … It’s funny, the most vivid memory I have of Nirvana is heading back into our dressing room to grab a drink, and peeking out through the stage door at the rear. It was right near the drums, and I watched Dave scream and belt into his drum kit … It wasn’t until then that I realized exactly how good a drummer he was, and how good his voice was.

  SHAUN BUTCHER: A blur of bodies, sweat, flannies, distortion, and this little blond-haired bloke onstage screaming into the mike with a voice that seemed to come from another being. Actually, I was transfixed by Kurt probably because with the giant bass player on the other side of the stage he looked even smaller … I seem to remember Kurt stopping and jumping in the crowd at one point to rescue a girl getting manhandled by security … they looked like they could’ve been any young band from the suburbs, in any city in the world … They jammed for a bit between songs just like we did. Dave Grohl was an incredible drummer and
Krist hurled his bass around like a toy. Never saw anyone play bass that low on a body before either … Kurt … his playing, his persona … played like a mongrel possessed and had a real connection to the crowd. He was just like any one of us punters watching, but he seemed to be purging himself of all the messed-up shit inside him by playing the way he did … Kurt attacked his guitars making sounds I never knew a Fender could make!

  RICHARD LEWIS: Watching Dave Grohl playing drums at the Palace one night, he was like an H. R. Giger machine: an orb of energy and perspiration surrounded him, every muscle and tendon like pistons, he hit the drums so hard, they were on fire—they were wild, volatile! And Kurt was truly amazing, great sound, incredible voice, weird, wacky, irreverent, funny and he just put everything into it, it was amazing. Then when they pulled out “Something in the Way” it was pins and needles and goose bumps up the back of your neck type of stuff, hauntingly sweet and beautiful … Courtney came to Melbourne. Kurt came out onstage and declared, “Courtney Love is the best fuck in the world.” … There was definitely a buzz backstage, maybe a bit of fear; she had a reputation for speaking her mind and being a little crazy …

  In the aftermath of each show it would be a while before the venue cleared, the gear was packed away, and the bands could leave; the musicians, adrenalized and exhausted, simply had to kill time until they were finally set free.

  SHAUN BUTCHER: Dave Grohl was at the side of the stage after we finished and gave me a thumbs-up, a nod, and something like “great show.” I passed by Kurt backstage and initially thought he was someone’s kid running around, but when he faced me I realized my mistake and blurted “G’day!” but he scurried off without acknowledging.