I Found My Friends

by Nick Soulsby

  Sub Pop was in the best financial shape it had ever been in, given a percentage from Nevermind as well as Warner Bros. Records’ buying a stake in the label. This didn’t, however, mean a lavish lifestyle just yet.

  STEVE MORIARTY: They tried to have this businesslike facade about how brilliant they were, but they were fans and just about to go out of business when Nirvana signed to DGC and kept them going … They had some strange firings—there was a lot of controversy there for a while, then Bruce quit and Poneman sold part of it to Warner Brothers and now they’re living large.

  KURT DANIELSON: It became necessary for us to leave Sub Pop in order to preserve our friendships with Jon and Bruce, as well as to protect our relations with the label as a whole. The situation had become just too untenable in terms of financial security … had we known how soon Nevermind was going to go gold and then platinum, saving Sub Pop’s fortunes, we would never have left … Considering the circumstances, there were no wrong moves, just moves with unknown consequences. All too soon we would find out what those consequences would be: the most poignant one being how we would miss the intimate, supportive, always-creative contact with Jon and Bruce—something we never found elsewhere.

  MARK PICKEREL: Sub Pop wasn’t exactly “broke” at the time … I should know, I was working there. We just mismanaged our money as we tried to manage our passion and appetite for so much music, and with commerce and economics, that can prove to be a difficult juggling act!… You hear about how the band Kiss used to show up to their first shows in a limousine that they would have to wait to pay for till after they collected from ticket sales? That’s exactly how Sub Pop appeared on the scene! It’s also why they almost went bankrupt right before the success of Nirvana’s Nevermind. Nirvana’s huge breakthrough helped put Sub Pop back on the map with sales of Bleach entering the pop charts for the first time. It didn’t hurt that Soundgarden and Pearl Jam were having the best sales of their careers at the same time, leading to a new interest in their earlier titles associated with Sub Pop.

  RICK SIMS: My friend and collaborator suggested I give them a call and solicit them to be in the singles club … I think the deal was $500 and the money to produce the record and a split of the profits. Nothing very sexy about the arrangement business-wise. Great to be a part of that series, though.

  JOSH SINDER: We recorded the Salem/Leper/Welt EP as a final obligation to Sub Pop. I don’t think Sub Pop had much money, and they were not really supporting Tad, although we did do one last tour under the Sub Pop banner … The band drove in a 1993 Lincoln Town Car and the gear traveled in a Ryder truck that ended up smashing through a Taco Bell. I don’t think Nirvana’s success brought more music to Sub Pop; it brought more bands to Seattle and probably annoyed Jon and Bruce to no end with them all begging to be on the label.

  Meanwhile, Nirvana was still barely performing—there’d been just thirteen shows since the Asia/Pacific tour; only two of them in the mainland United States. They were all over the news at the time but barely anyone had seen them play. Keeping with the trend, the two remaining US shows they would play in 1992 were both secret gigs.

  BEAU FREDERICKS: Bellingham is about one and a half hours north of Seattle … There was the rumor that Nirvana was going to play that started a few weeks before the show. I didn’t believe it and ignored it, focusing on getting ready for our big show. I think that Nirvana was going to play from the beginning and I think it was booked as such. Carver Gym [at Western Washington University] was only used for the biggest campus shows … Nirvana played great that night and was used to big shows obviously. We were just scared.

  CHRIS QUINN: It was a secret performance at a Mudhoney show. I’d lost interest in them after they went to Seattle and became really popular … all they played was stuff from Bleach and odd singles and stuff—they didn’t do any of the big hits. And that was the perfect show for me—nostalgia only a few years in.

  FRED STEUBEN, Saucer: Megan Boyce, who booked the gig, told us she had a surprise for us but didn’t tell us what it was … I watched Mudhoney and Medelicious sound check and noticed a big, black drum kit sitting off to the side of the stage. I figured it out right away that Nirvana was in the house. I’ll never forget Megan walking us down the hallway and leading us up to the stage in a bright silver dress. It was like, Holy shit, here we go!

  HENRY SZANKIEWICZ: It was mostly obscure stuff and it took about two songs in for the crowd to realize who was onstage. A slow roar built up from the crowd. I don’t know if it was shock, Kurt’s shorter hair, or what … I cannot gauge time after all that has passed. Maybe twenty minutes … Not much moving about by Kurt. Dave was an animal, though … What stands out was that they were the biggest band in the world at the time and we were lucky to be so close on the side of the stage to take it all in. More like an event to witness than anything musical at that point … What was most amazing was that three kids about ten years old went up onstage and took over bass, drums, and guitar. Just banging away on it. People started chanting, “Smash it! Smash it!”

  CHRIS QUINN: I was standing on the side of the stage with Matt Lukin and they sent these kids out to strum their instruments and me and Matt were trying to get this kid to smash Krist’s bass! He whacked it on the ground; one of the control knobs went spinning out across the stage but he didn’t break it.

  SCOTT HARBINE, Saucer: We tried to have fun playing but had no idea how to deal with the natural slap-back reverb from the gymnasium. We played very reserved and were pretty conscious of the poor sound … Nirvana seemed pretty solid and unconcerned. They sounded very good. Kurt seemed a little bored from my vantage at the side of the stage. I talked briefly to an old friend who was their guitar tech, Ernie, and he mentioned that Kurt was pretty “wiped out” from touring.

  FRED STEUBEN: Most of the people backstage were scenesters, friends, and local press … I remember Kurt and Courtney sitting on a bench in front of the lockers and the local press surrounding Krist with cameras and notepads. A huge entourage had come up from Seattle. There were people in the showers .I heard someone had put a fucking kayak in the pool, pretty nuts. I didn’t meet anyone from Nirvana that night; the backstage party was pretty chaotic and none of them seemed approachable.

  HENRY SZANKIEWICZ: They did not look too cheerful. A friend offered to take a photograph of me with them but I declined. Didn’t want to bug them. That is the vibe I got. I do remember Courtney Love smoking inside the gymnasium behind the stage. First of all, no smoking allowed and secondly, don’t put your cigarettes out on the carpet. Western Washington University’s varsity football team were security that night and were about to throw her out. I had to explain to them who she was … I also remember her staring at my wife with a mean look. Just a glare. I guess she didn’t like the skinny blond competition. Of the three, Kurt seemed very distant, Dave and Krist the most cheerful—if you could call it that. I think they were tired of all the fans and hanger-ons by then.

  SCOTT HARBINE: We had heard that Mudhoney stole our beer, so we went to the Mudhoney/Nirvana locker room to steal some back … I saw a friend named Michelle, who knew Cobain and was good friends with Steve Turner. She told me she wanted to introduce me to Cobain and I followed her into the shower area. We overheard an argument between Cobain and Love and I saw him sitting down under a shower. Love was telling him he was a “fucking baby” and he was staring down at the floor. When Courtney saw Michelle and [me], she told us to “get fucking lost.” We turned around and left as she continued to yell at him … He looked pretty depressed and defeated to me.

  17.0

  Politics, Pressure, and South America

  October 1992 to January 1993

  While a rarities compilation—Incesticide—was readied to capitalize on Nirvana’s unexpected fame and the Christmas sales bonanza, Nirvana was dispatched abroad once more. Sound commercial planning had gone into the show in Buenos Aires on October 30, 1992. An audience of 45,000 promised significant money, which, along with the strong atten
tion from Argentine media, would create a major boost to local sales. It was also the first show to indicate the scale Nirvana could now play on regularly if they so wished; this wasn’t a festival, this was a stadium-filling audience just for Nirvana.

  GABRIEL GUERRISI, Los Brujos: In the middle of the Cannibal tour we were invited to play with Nirvana. I must make it clear that at that moment we felt worried because the B-52’s were coming and they were the ones who we wanted to play with, but we couldn’t; we felt happy either way.

  This is a telling point; at home, Nirvana still claimed to be an underground band that just happened to be on a major label. In South America, however, there was no knowledge of the US underground, and the band existed only as a mainstream phenomenon.

  As a well-established Argentine favorite, Los Brujos was chosen to add local flavor. With two gold albums they were, in local terms, bigger than Nirvana at the time—part of a new wave emerging.

  GABRIEL GUERRISI: The scars and blows of very aggressive military governments gave way, after the well-known War of Malvinas, to a new democratic period … The “democratic spring” generated an optimistic environment that, in the music field, made the protest groups of the ’70s obsolete and began to usher in “strange new hairstyles,” groups of optimistic pop … bringing in punk and New Wave that could only be listened to if smuggled in during the military period …

  Nirvana chose who would play right before them.

  GILLY ANN HANNER: I got home from work, my roommate says, “There’s a message from Kurt Cobain on the answer machine.” He was saying, “Hey, this is Kurt, I wanted to know if you wanted to come play a show with us in Argentina—give me a call.” I was shocked, excited, wow … I called him back, he said, “Here’s the manager you need to contact to set up how much you want to get paid—call him, or if you’ve got a manager get them to call him.” We didn’t have a manager so I spoke to the people at the booking agency. I didn’t know what to ask for because we’d never played a big show or been transported anywhere—we’d only played shows we’d booked ourselves and driven to in our van. It was a little daunting. I didn’t really know what I was doing but I wanted to play along so I threw out a number: “We want $5,000, plus all of our travel expenses.” They said, “Sure, that’s fine.” We were in the middle of a tour that I’d booked, so halfway through the tour—we were in New Mexico—we got on an airplane, marked up our equipment and shipped it, then flew down to Argentina. Crazy. We’d never done that before. We did it all ourselves, no management, no booking agent … they had a handler come meet us at the airport, got us to the hotel and told us where we were supposed to go and all that stuff [and we were all] “Wow, we have our own rooms, and a person showing us around! Exciting!” It was fun!

  There were good vibes all around. These were happy people lost in one of the world’s great cities.

  GILLY ANN HANNER: We went and partied; Kurt wasn’t really hanging out—he was feeling really ill so he wasn’t going out at night with everybody, he was just in his room and not out there. Frances [Kurt and Courtney’s daughter] was there when we played in Portland with Nirvana a month prior; they had a motor home they were traveling in but they didn’t have her in Argentina—maybe back in the room or home with a nanny. But Courtney, Krist, Dave, they were all going out—and the crew—we went out to bars, did karaoke and fun stuff the night before.

  ELIAS ZIEDE, Pirata Industrial: Well, well … I remember the magic and mysterious night when Novoselic, Grohl, Courtney, and two of Calamity Jane played with Pirata Industrial in La Cueva—a hard-rock club downtown in Buenos Aires! These nice rock people, we’re all onstage together with motorcycle gas tanks playing “Blue Monday”! Punk! New Wave! It’s just our fans, friends, groupies! Wild energy—hell of a party, there’s Pampa cocaine for anyone who wanted, there’s so many drinks we could keep going all night long!

  Buenos Aires started well enough, with the audience responding brightly to Los Brujos—the local heroes.

  GILLY ANN HANNER: They had a following there; they struck me as carnival music, Red Hot Chili Peppers a bit—party. They had big puppets on the stage with them, things you’d see at a parade … everyone got riled up for them. Then it was our turn to go on.

  GABRIEL GUERRISI: What happened was a combination of things; Los Brujos were at the peak of our climb and the 45,000 people knew our band very well so expected much of our performance … Our show was really good and, as we say in Argentina, “The stage was left on fire.” Then it was the turn of Calamity Jane, an unknown band with a more quiet intensity; people had been excited to see Los Brujos, then there was the anxious desire to see Nirvana—they wanted everything to occur now! It had nothing to do with Calamity Jane being women, it was because they were in between two acts who were very heavily promoted in Argentina … The scale of the intolerant audience was minimal but enough to be a major rejection … it was exceptional behavior and had nothing to do with manly stereotypes.

  GILLY ANN HANNER: We maybe got through one song before we realized the crowd’s reaction—it seemed possible—“might” be negative. There were things flying at us! Chunks of dirt! Ice! Coins! A lot of spit coming up on the stage! I started taking it in. Up there you usually take in the crowd a little bit but mainly focus on what you’re doing, singing, hitting the right notes but then it was really obvious—I thought, Oh my God, they hate us! They’re booing us off the stage! Throwing shit at us! I just stopped, looked around, looked at my band mates and I think I walked over to the side—Courtney was over there. She said, “Go back out there! They love you!” They clearly did not love us! She’s like, “Come on, it’s punk rock, get out there!” So I went back out, started playing again, and made it partway through a song … My sister [Megan] and I had been on a US tour and played a lot for weird crowds, but we were completely bowled over. I can’t imagine what the new members were feeling. Marci [Beesecker] was hiding behind her drums trying not to get hit by stuff. Megan was just walking around the stage ignoring it and doing a pretty good job of it too, not really reacting. But we were like, What?! They’re being assholes! They’re flipping us off! Look—there’s people actually pulling their pants down, taking their penises out! All kinds of stuff, it was unbelievable, all kinds of crazy shit … Also, I’ve come from a place where there was a lot of stage diving and slam-dancing at shows and throwing things, bottles, hitting people. I’d taken to stopping the shows and saying, “Guys, you need to calm down or we’re not going to play—people are getting hurt.” I really wanted women to be able to come up and be in the audience without getting pummeled by some big huge punk-rocker punching people—trying to see a band when someone’s elbow is hitting you in the eye, it sucks. I’d done that throughout the tour and the shows that year. On this scale though, I wasn’t used to it. Everyone is flipping out partly because we keep stopping—it’s fueling the fire. So my band mates are like, “Don’t stop playing! Just keep playing! Don’t talk to them! Go, go!” I thought No, not cool, so I yelled obscenities through the microphone at the end—don’t remember what I said but I was very angry, shocked. My sister and I ended up smashing our guitars on the stage and letting them feed back. We left the stage—we might have played two and a half songs.

  Nirvana decided to retaliate.

  GILLY ANN HANNER: We went off, we’re all really upset. The crowd is booing and yelling. There was a big gap … partially because we didn’t complete the set and partly because Nirvana stalled after that; they were upset and didn’t like how we’d been treated. So they stalled as long as they could. Then it was time, they had to. Courtney came and told us, “Hey, they were going to not play because of how you got treated but they’re getting $250,000 for this show—they can’t really not play…” I totally understood, I didn’t expect them to not play just because of us. They went up, played, Kurt was … he never engaged with the audience anyway, but he was real standoffish even for him during that show—they didn’t play their hit song, they pretended to play “Teen Spirit” but n
ever did, they did a big noise jam, they really dragged it out.

  Cobain plainly stated his intentions in that warm-up jam, announcing, “I can shit on the stage; I promise to shit on your head…” As well as teasing “Teen Spirit,” they killed the clock by starting songs with weak runs then restarting. Cobain replaced a verse of “Come as You Are” with “Hey-hey-HEY-hey!,” barely mumbled “Beeswax,” then walked off, leaving Grohl to hammer on toy drums while Novoselic deadpanned, “We’re one of the most exciting bands on the face of the planet, as you can see…” At another point Krist roared, “Tu me gusto TECHNO!” and impersonated techno over Grohl’s improvising … This was music as mockery.

  The locals weren’t aware it was deliberate; all they saw was a famous junkie putting on a bad show.

  GABRIEL GUERRISI: It was not seen as a band being annoying; but everything did seem to be going without direction, Kurt not knowing the lyrics or the riffs, sometimes he walked off to the backstage and seemed absent from the show, a lot of things were said about it. People read the performance as a little bit crazy rather than seeing it as an angry one … It was known that Kurt was in rehab, so anything could be expected. Nobody related the tone of the show with the incident involving Calamity Jane until Incesticide came up … It was not one of the best; I was a little bit lost among the jams and songs that I didn’t know. I don’t like stadiums either, where the sound comes and goes with the wind.