by Nick Soulsby
MICHAEL MCMANUS: They went to their dressing room for a while, then Krist and Dave came back out onto the stage to chat to the backstage folk … once the curtains were drawn. I met Dave and Krist really briefly; they were easygoing and down to earth. It was pretty brief; as I said, there was a lot of folk around backstage, so it was all group conversation. I don’t remember seeing Kurt then; he may have still been in their dressing room … I said something to Krist about his bass sound, and hanging the bass low ’cause we both did it. I said something to Dave about his vocals sounding great too. It’s pretty hazy from there; we hung about drinking the rider and talking to a lot of friends. I do remember taking a peek in their dressing room at the end. I was a bit jealous about the food platters they’d had; there was one of various meats and sandwiches … and one with fruit. A few large bins full of drinks, too, most of which had probably been swiped by the band and crew for drinks back at the hotel.
RICHARD LEWIS: Kurt was charismatically quiet; he seemed almost meek until he hit the stage and was instantly transformed. There was a sense that anything could happen at any time; he was very unpredictable, he had a charm, a quick wit, he was wild and funny, self-deprecating, and a little cynical—he was really a big music fan and from the conversation I had with him seemed as though he was kind of nervous of people. Dave was the kid, the newest member in the band, an incredible drummer and very professional. He was approachable and easy to talk to, he was loving every moment. I spoke to him a lot, great drummer, great dude. Krist was solid, he was cool, he was hanging with his girlfriend, taking photos, having a laugh.
MARK HURST: The whole show was disappointing to me and a bit of a circus and I felt sorry for them, to be honest. They were in the eye of a hurricane, which did not look like fun.
By the time they reached New Zealand, a month on the road enduring the new pressures placed on the band meant they were visibly worn out.
CHRIS VAN DE GEER: We watched sound check and yeah, they were pretty subdued and exhausted … I think the NZ show was on the tail end of their tour … We were possibly the last stop in Nowheresville … I think they did one or two songs as an encore and got the hell out of there. Kurt especially looked tired and depleted.
DAMIEN BINDER: At their sound check … I recall Kurt said, “I want CD-quality sound” over the mike to the sound person. He seemed a little annoyed at what he was hearing back through the monitors. I don’t recall much, if any, interaction with them. It lingered with me that he/they seemed rather sullen and exhausted and played that way too … Their performance was workmanlike but lacking any great enthusiasm. As I said, they looked like they weren’t that thrilled to be there.
THEO JACKSON, Second Child: Kurt looked very cool and seemed totally unapproachable or interested in any goings-on around him. I was really struck by how upright all of Dave Grohl’s drum kit was and how high he set his hi-hats … Krist gave me a smile and hello prior to the show and got on with a conversation with a lady who was part of their crew. I thought they played fine and didn’t seem tired to me. Just doing the business. They were certainly committed at sound check to getting things right for the punters. The other thing was how good their light show was! Plain color behind them changing from time to time, red and blue, I remember. It’s always been my benchmark for lights since.
JULES BARNETT: I remember watching them sound checking “Drain You” when we walked in, across the main floor with our gear. Kurt was wearing a super-cool pair of shades … lime-green frames … Their set was OK enough, however not very energetic … Krist jumped around in his bare feet while Kurt was much more subdued … After the show I went upstairs anyway to look around. Nirvana’s dressing room door was open and I saw Dave sitting on the floor, back against the wall. He looked at me for a second and then back to whoever was talking in there …
Just one month into their first tour as globetrotting superstars, their lingering impression was of a band standing on the edge of the world looking over with trepidation. Yet it didn’t mean things weren’t going reasonably well.
NAOKO YAMANO: On February 13, 1992, they came to Osaka. On the day that they arrived, we took them to a restaurant and ate dinner. Kurt looked to be having a good time in Japan. The next day, Nirvana played a big venue and we also had a show at a club. Their showtime was earlier. The drummer Dave said that the band would come to our show after their show onstage. Much of the audience followed the band and came to our club! The neighbors of the club claimed many people were hanging out on the street.
All Nirvana had to do now was await DGC’s plan for what to do with Nirvana’s accidental rise to global domination.
16.0
Festival Season
June to September 1992
In the aftermath of the Asia/Pacific tour, DGC Records could now begin treating Nirvana as a multimillion-dollar revenue stream. They set twenty-two US dates for April and booked European festivals for the summer. It was a chance to establish Nirvana as one of the handful of megastars with the power to pick and choose top billing at the world’s most revenue-rich events … Except Nirvana was exhausted. They’d toured ceaselessly since August, so DGC had to accept the US tour being canceled. The band mates went their separate ways and began finding their own methods of dealing with having suddenly become unbelievably famous.
GEORGE SMITH: The pinnacle of fame was when “Weird Al” Yankovic did a Nirvana song! It sounds kinda trite, but it’s true: when you’ve gotten to the point where you are a cultural icon to the point that people can make money by making fun of you, that’s the top. They had risen to a cultural peak where [Kurt] was worth making fun of.
ABE BRENNAN: Krist lived in Tacoma, the town My Name ended up living in, so I’d see him around; really nice guy. I remember one time after Nevermind came out and went to number one, I was at a show in Seattle, I saw him outside and I wasn’t going to say anything to him because I’m sure everyone bothered him all the time, but as I was walking by he called my name and we talked for a bit. The success didn’t seem to have changed him; still a really nice guy.
DANA HATCH: Krist Novoselic came to see us at Rock Candy but passed out with his head on a table before we went on (we were the first band) and stayed there until he was awakened and politely asked to leave as the club was closing.
SCOTT VANDERPOOL: I remember Krist being fairly drunk most of the time—of course, so was I … My fave Novoselic story was at the Neil Young/Sonic Youth show at the Seattle Center Coliseum … Sonic Youth had invited half of Seattle to their dressing room … The promoter decided the party was getting out of hand and sent someone in to take all the beer away, which they loaded on a cart … I was out in the hall hitting on some chick or something, and all of a sudden Krist comes running out of the door as the cart is going down the hall … “Nooooo!” He ran and jumped/flew onto it Superman-style, yanking it out of the hands of the guy pushing it, and by the time it crashed into some double doors at the end of the hall, he’d drained a beer.
JOSH SINDER, Tad: I first met Krist Novoselic at his new house at the time in Greenlake. He was having a party the day after Nirvana played on Saturday Night Live. Kurt and Dave were not there, but Matt Lukin, Dan Peters, and Mark Arm, whom I met for the first time at this party, were all there. Tad brought me over … “This is our new drummer, Josh,” to which Mark replied, “Ha, hope you can cut it!”
RYAN VON BARGEN: Saw Dave Grohl at a Shriekback/Sky Cries Mary show at the Moore Theater in 1992. I saw him in the lobby surrounded by a bunch of people. I started to head his way, then thought, Man, he has enough people hassling him already. As I started to turn away I hear him say “Ryan!” as he came through the semicircle of people that had him surrounded. We ended up walking off and chatting. After the show, we met back up backstage and then ended up going to a club called the Vogue on Second Avenue, which was nearby.
ABE BRENNAN: At another show in Seattle, Chad and I commiserated for a time, because we’d both been kicked out of our bands; I ended up getting ba
ck in My Name before we started putting stuff out with C/Z Records, but Chad never made it back in Nirvana.
Cobain, however, no longer had a home in the Northwest. Instead, he and his new bride were ghosting around L.A. rental properties, hotels, and rehabs while evading crowds.
JOSH HADEN: I was working at the Rhino Records store (no longer exists) in L.A. with the drummer of Treacherous Jaywalkers and one night around closing time Kurt and Courtney came in to shop.
JON WAHL: The next time I bumped into Kurt was stepping over his passed-out self, leaning up against Courtney on a couch backstage at the Hollywood Palladium at a Mudhoney/Claw Hammer gig. Not an entirely talkative fella.
GERARD LOVE: We met up with Kurt and Courtney after our show in Los Angeles. They invited us over for lunch the next day, but we had to travel on to Vancouver. In Seattle, Krist and Shelli offered to do some laundry for us, which was very kind.
Nirvana regrouped in April to record for a single with the Jesus Lizard.
DAVID YOW, The Jesus Lizard: [We] opened for Nirvana at Maxwell’s in Hoboken—a full-on fucking blast! They kicked ass. We kicked ass. And it was our first meeting, so we’d made new acquaintances, which is always exciting. Kurt and I were talking about stuff and kind of mutual back-patting each other when I suggested we do a split single much like Sonic Youth had done with Mudhoney, but instead of releasing it through Sub Pop, we would put it out via Touch and Go. Kurt loved the idea and we started working on making it happen … The next time I saw Kurt was in Denver at the Gothic Theatre and he came up to our van to make sure that we were still doing the seven-inch. We were.
Cobain’s persistence of vision never faltered; these shows were a year apart, April 1990 to June 1991. It was a further year until the song was recorded and almost another year until the single emerged.
DAVID YOW: They signed to Geffen, and that slowed the process somewhat. Kurt was insistent with the label, but the label limited the number of copies to be released: 50,000 for the USA and 50,000 for the rest of the world … When it was first proposed, Nirvana was just a band on an indie label. There was no kind of commercial thinking at all when the thought was an infant. Once Nirvana became the biggest band in the world, we all just sort of figured, “Cool, that can’t hurt.”
Nirvana didn’t need the money; they wanted to reconnect with the underground and took genuine pleasure in shoving the spotlight onto bands they loved.
STEVE DIGGLE, The Buzzcocks: We were on a two-month tour of America—we had a lot of old secondhand TVs behind us showing soaps, films, bit of politics, bit of porn, nine of them every night. Drove the roadies mad!… We’re playing in Boston, we do the show and at the end there’s a great bit where we get to smash the screens so they implode, smoke. Did that in Boston, came off, it was around the time “Teen Spirit” was number one and the Nevermind album was number one. I came off a bit breathless and someone said, “Nirvana are here.” [And I’m like] “Oh, bring ’em in!” So, stepped out of the dressing room and straight in front of me is Kurt. We started talking—he loved the way I smashed the televisions. “I smashed a television once!” he said, so we went on discussing how to smash televisions because I told him how I’d gotten an electric shock in Germany—was using an old steel mike stand, probably last used by Bill Haley! Hit the wrong bit but luckily thanks to my adrenaline I managed to get my hands off and after that I thought I needed to treat these with some respect. So I discovered that when you throw it at the screen, the base of the mike stand, if you flick the screen, the screen will implode and smoke’ll come out. It took me a while to learn it but I perfected it! Kurt loved it! Dave and Krist were there, they were fans of the band—nice to meet us, they said they had our records, we said we’d heard their records. We got on really well, had a drink, they said, “Come and do a tour with us!” … We told them to stay in touch and that when they were in Europe we’d do something there. We met again in Japan but we were all pretty exhausted and out of it. It was straight after a show—we said there’d be another time.
Cobain forgot nothing; having last seen the Buzzcocks in February 1992 the call came in late 1993 to tour in 1994.
His artistic drive was aimed in directions other than playing with Nirvana; in 1992 Cobain worked with director Kevin Kerslake on four music videos then posited a lengthier endeavor.
KEVIN KERSLAKE: We talked a bit about it in L.A., then I went up to Seattle and spent a week at Kurt’s house just going over tapes every day—that was also when we shot “Sliver.” But that wasn’t the first session we’d done—we’d gone over tapes in L.A. too. I can’t remember if I pressed them to shoot the “Sliver” video or it was scheduled … but it may just have been convenient to shoot it while I was up there. I had a Super 8 camera with me and all three guys were around so we ended up shooting it in Kurt’s basement … As the band started to recover from Nevermind, and started setting their sights on the future, a lot of different things came into our conversations. Obviously there were a lot of B-sides and various singles that were going to find their way onto an album, and they’d started doing In Utero, but we started talking about the film … We never got into real deep detail about what the film was going to be because when you’re going to do a long form like that and there’s a lot of different material, you just start by gathering things, putting things together. You don’t say, “I know exactly what this will look like in the end.” Kurt probably appreciated this more than anybody—definitely more than any record executive—that when you’re making music, when you’re making films or doing anything like that, it’s a process. You go into a studio and start putting chords together—you don’t preconceive what chords you’re going to put together until you pick up the guitar and you do it. In the same way, for a film, you just start gathering all this material and you start putting it together.
Nirvana met up in June ready for ten of the biggest shows they would ever play.
GERALD LOVE: The shows were either arenas or festivals … I would have imagined that their appearances at the festivals would have been in front of 30,000-plus on average. Maybe more. The arena shows were in Ireland, France, and Spain … I would guess the average attendances at being around 10,000 per night. There was the palpable sense of the band breaking through on a massive scale. We had already played at the Reading Festival the previous year and had done a few supports in big rooms, so we were accustomed to the different experience of playing a large stage in front of a sea of people, sometimes in broad daylight … The first few shows with Nirvana, in Dublin, Belfast, and Paris, were indoor and with the four walls and the roof they were all loud and powerful affairs. At times the sound of the room can overwhelm the stage in big cavernous halls, so at the beginning I found it difficult to hear what was happening on the stage, especially vocals. We were playing pretty loud at this time and our original setup was to be pretty far apart on larger stages. We soon learned that it was better to set up close and to turn down just a little. At outdoor festivals, the sound escapes into the air and it can give you the feeling of being weak and exposed, as if nothing is coming out of the PA. With the experience you learn to get on with it, to do your best, and have faith that the sound man is doing his stuff. The buzz is definitely dispersed at a larger gig, and it can feel nonexistent at a festival in daylight, but a great band can make it happen anywhere and Nirvana were at the top of their game … Kurt seemed to be with Courtney most of the time on the tour, which was completely natural as they were a young couple expecting their first baby, and Dave and Krist mostly hung around within the general entourage. I remember Krist’s partner, Shelli, being aboard for a section of the tour … A few of their crew were Scots and this probably had the effect of making their touring party feel a lot closer and familiar to us. Nirvana had obviously made a quantum leap in popularity so security between band and audience was naturally tighter, but that’s the way it goes with success. Backstage, as I remember it, was an ego-free zone, very friendly, efficient, and calm … The first time I met the
m [in 1991] … I spent most of the time we spent together chatting with Kurt, and what struck me most was how unlike he was of the image I had in my mind of the stereotypical North American. His physical size and his demeanor felt more Glaswegian to me, more European; he was small-framed and wiry. I remember him as being warm and friendly; the chat was mostly about our respective home lives. During the tour [in 1992], it was obvious that something had changed; he was more distant but still friendly whenever he engaged. On the tour, Krist was super-friendly, wisecracking, and alert, Dave, from what I remember, was a little quieter than Krist but smiled a lot and liked to joke around with the crew … They were a great team, the band and the crew, and there appeared to be no hierarchy.
All was well, given that one key issue wasn’t in plain sight, thanks to a little careful management.
GERARD LOVE: There was a doctor in the touring party, and Kurt had been taken to hospital with a suspected overdose in the hours after the Belfast show, so everyone was aware of the situation early on. On a social level, we didn’t see Kurt around a whole lot on the tour, but he did make the effort to hang out a couple of times. When you’re aware of the reality of someone’s condition it’s easy to spot the symptoms but if I hadn’t known that Kurt had a drug problem I don’t know if I would have spotted anything particularly unusual, especially in the performances where he seemed completely engaged.
The band took another six-week breather before the now-legendary Reading performance.
GERARD LOVE: It was a stormy night and Reading was dark and muddy …
ROD STEPHEN, Björn Again: We were doing a concert in Melbourne and Nirvana were playing down the road. They were looking for something to do afterward and stumbled upon our gig. We didn’t know they were there; we were onstage. Then after, our guy who was selling the T-shirts—I don’t know how many we had, twenty-five or something—and the guys from Nirvana bought the whole lot and told him how much they loved the gig before they left. Our guy ran upstairs saying, “You’ll never believe who just bought all our T-shirts!” … Next thing we know, there’s a phone call through promoters and agents saying we’ve been asked to play at the Reading Festival. We knew the nature of it and though Björn Again had always had this Spinal Tap–meets–ABBA vibe in some regards, we were nervous if we were right for the festival. Ultimately, though, we understood it was more or less on Kurt Cobain’s insistence that we were being asked, so we thought, Let’s do it!… I positioned “Smells Like Teen Spirit” at about the twenty-minute mark just to establish Björn Again and our identity … I thought we needed something to nail the last ten minutes of the show and that guitar riff was the perfect thing. We launched into it and the crowd moshed like you wouldn’t believe—going mental. Absolute candy … Prior to the gig I’d spoken to Dave Grohl about us doing our version … Ordinarily you wouldn’t dream of doing a song when the main act is going to do it later on. He said, “No, no! You’ve got to do it! It’ll be great!” So we went ahead and it really capped off the performance. Krist was down in the pit with his camera, people could see him taking photos of us. In context, it was great light and shade for the day … the crowd made the connection to the three guys from Nirvana who, by the end, were almost onstage with us showing it was all right and they were having fun here. I was pleased to see Kurt doing that because before the gig when I went up to talk to them it was noticeable that Kurt was in the dressing room but there was this sense that he didn’t want to talk—nothing was said, but I didn’t wade on in there. Dave and Krist came out and I think they were kind of putting a bit of a protective layer between anyone else and Kurt. They were chatty, told us they wanted us to be there, but it wasn’t Kurt bouncing out. I didn’t ask about it, but I got that feeling things were going on. To me it felt like shyness. I know that he wanted Björn Again to be there but maybe he would have felt a bit uncomfortable chatting. He must have been bombarded with people just wanting to talk, people wanting information. Maybe part of the problem, he felt he had to be on full form to deal with people at all hours of the day … Kurt mentioned us on the liner notes of Incesticide; he says something about how he realized he’d reached “wunderkind” status when he had the power to bring Björn Again to Reading.
