by Mark Yarm
Three days into the session, Dave called John Silva and said that he’d just been hitting the snare drums for three days and that I’d just been moving the microphone around that whole time. At one point, John Silva said, “Well, you know, it’s like we said …”—and then Dave totally cut him off. It’s like he was about to spill the beans on whatever Plan B was.
DAVE GROHL Our A&R man at the time, Gary Gersh, was freaking out. I said, “Gary, man, don’t be so afraid, the record will turn out great!” He said, “Oh, I’m not afraid, go ahead, bring me back the best you can do.” It was like, Go and have your fun, then we’ll get another producer and make the real album.
DANNY GOLDBERG So the record came back, and I listened to it and Geffen listened to it and Courtney listened to it and other people listened to it, and my feeling was that the voice was buried. Kurt, he’s got a very good, extremely recognizable voice, and he put a lot of care into the words.
STEVE ALBINI When the record was delivered, the record label freaked out. Because it wasn’t something that they had been involved in, they were suspicious of it, and they instilled a lot of doubt in the band. The label started this whispering campaign about me and how I’d ruined the record. I was getting calls from journalists saying things like, “I just got off the phone with Gary Gersh. He said you’ve ruined the Nirvana album.” And that was all done as a means of trying to coerce the band to redo the record in a more expensive, more conventional, big-record-label manner.
I got a call from Kurt, and he sort of explained to me what was going down with the record label. I’m not 100 percent certain of this, but the way he was speaking, the way his voice was affected, I had the impression that he was back on drugs, so I wasn’t that confident in his decision making. He said, “The record label hates the record, they want us to redo it all. I’ve been listening to it and maybe there’s stuff we could do better. So we’d like to try and remix some stuff.” I listened to a dub of the record and was content with it and told him, “If you want to mess around with stuff on your own, it’s your record. Whatever makes you comfortable. I don’t think I can help any.”
DANNY GOLDBERG Kurt lived with it for a few days, and I think a lot of other people told him the same thing, and so he says, “Well, who can we get?” We talked different names and one of them was Scott Litt, who had done R.E.M. Kurt met Scott, and he loved him. Scott ended up remixing “Heart-Shaped Box” and “All Apologies.”
STEVE ALBINI They sent me a copy of the record after it was done. I thought it sounded okay. There was very aggressive mastering done. The band had been made so paranoid by the people that worked for them; those people had somehow convinced them that this awesome record they made was terrible.
The hostile publicity campaign that the record label, in particular Gary Gersh, had waged against me actually did have an effect on my business. They made me seem like I was poisonous, so none of the bigger mainstream bands, certainly no one on Geffen, considered using me for their records. On the other end of the spectrum, all the smaller bands that had been my bread and butter started to associate me with this mainstream culture that had been creeping into the underground; Nirvana were viewed with some suspicion by those bands. And there was a certain category of people that didn’t know anything about me, that just assumed I’d be out of their price range because I’d worked on this big hit record. There was an extended period there where I had no work. It almost bankrupted me.
ELIZABETH DAVIS-SIMPSON I told my dad about playing music, but I didn’t really want to tell him the name of the band. He would just say, “It’s a dead end. Being in a band is a dead end.” And then when 7 Year Bitch got signed to Atlantic, I thought, Here’s something I can tell my dad that’s going to mean something to him. Because my dad was born in 1912; he’s not going to find it significant that we are on tour or we have a show at a club. I was really excited. Finally I can talk to my dad. And I said, “We’re signed to Atlantic Records,” and my dad said—I’ll never forget this—he just said, “You’ll find nothing but Jews in the music industry.”
I’m not proud of that—my dad was super-racist and sexist and anti-Semitic—but I told that to Danny Goldberg, the president who signed us to Atlantic Records, and he thought that was the funniest fuckin’ thing.
VALERIE AGNEW We chose who we wanted for a producer and all that kind of stuff, whereas the label was trying to steer us toward something that would be more commercial. We didn’t realize at the time you basically have to get some kind of radio play or else you’re not gonna be able to go very far in their system. It means they don’t spend a lot of time working on your record, because there’s not much they can do with it.
SELENE VIGIL-WILK Tim Sommer was our A&R guy. He was nice, but he was doing Hootie & the Blowfish, too, which kind of threw us for a loop. We just didn’t know how to deal with the label because we were still trying to be really DIY, which was sometimes a mistake on our part, because at times we really didn’t know what the hell we were doing.
VALERIE AGNEW We got really good advice from Buzz from the Melvins, because they were on Atlantic at the same time as us. He warned us not to expect that all the things they were saying were gonna happen—the whole “yes-man” type of deal—and that we have to really pay attention to the amount of money that was being spent. Don’t go accepting a bunch of crazy tour support or big-budget stuff because that’s often taken out of your back end, and just don’t have any illusions about this.
I can remember seeing the Melvins later when they were playing Lollapalooza and they were touring in a van and the other bands were on a tour bus. We were like, “Why are you guys in a van?” And they were like, “ ’cause we’re not gonna spend the money that way. Hell, no. We don’t wanna be indebted to the label.”
BUZZ OSBORNE It was going really good for us recording for Boner Records. We were doing fine, we were making more money than we ever had. We certainly didn’t have anybody knocking on our doors to do records. When we did get interest from a major was when I was recording my solo album—we did these Kiss [themed] solo records. I was actually with Dave Grohl in Seattle, recording with him in this basement that one of his friends had, and Crover called me and said all these majors were interested in signing us. We didn’t have a manager, nothing.
DALE CROVER I was out eating breakfast with Kurt—Nirvana might have been in town or something—and he was like, “Do you guys want to be on a major label?”
And I’m like, “Sure, yeah. Why not?” And somehow from that conversation I got hooked up with these lawyer guys who were working for Mudhoney. They pretty much said, “Because of Nirvana and all these other bands, there’s definitely interest in other bands from Seattle.” Grunge bands, whatever. We were a little leery about it, but these guys were actually pretty straight up.
DANNY GOLDBERG I asked Kurt, “Is there anybody you want me to sign to Atlantic?” He says, “Oh man, sign the Melvins. They’re the best band in the world. They changed my life.” I would never say no to him about something like that. First of all, I figured his taste was a lot better than mine, but secondly, he had done so much for me just by letting me be his manager.
DALE CROVER Danny Goldberg was at Atlantic, but he still owned Nirvana’s management company. He pretty much talked us into signing with his label. He’s like, “You guys are already an established band, I know you guys do weird stuff, and that’s fine.” He was completely realistic about the whole thing. He wasn’t some schmoozy A&R guy. We had other meetings with people that were more like, “Yeah, you’re a grunge band, you’re going to sell a million records!”
BUZZ OSBORNE We got about 25 to 30 offers in total, from a variety of labels. Everything was going crazy. What really pissed me off was all these offers from these indies. Where were you guys when we needed you? So what we’re going to do is sign with the biggest label we can. We got a lawyer and signed a deal with Atlantic without even having a manager. I just told them, “Here’s what I want.” We got 100 percent artistic
control, they didn’t have to put the records out but they couldn’t make us do another one, they couldn’t sit on us, they didn’t even know where we were recording. It was perfect.
DALE CROVER I think Danny Goldberg might’ve mentioned something about Kurt producing the Houdini record: “I think if you had him do it, you could guarantee that you could sell a bunch more records.” At first I was like, “I don’t want to do that. It just seems kind of cheesy.” But then Buzz was like, “You know, we’ve never done anything like that before. Kurt might help us in songwriting and doing something completely different.”
BUZZ OSBORNE I hadn’t been around Kurt for a long time—not really since we had toured with him, when I got the John Silva speech. Kurt played on “Sky Pup” and the last song on the album. He was just completely strung out, and I realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t going to work. I went to Danny Goldberg’s office in L.A. and said, “Look, Kurt Cobain’s strung out.” Kurt was really bad, as bad as he’s ever been.
DALE CROVER Well, Kurt did nod out a few times. But he definitely tried. But then, we kind of didn’t have any songs at the time. We would write a few songs and have him come down. We tried to convince him that “You’re really good at melody, and if you got any ideas, you should help us out. You should be involved in the songwriting process.”
Nirvana had just done that record with Steve Albini, so Kurt wanted to try some different drum things. But then, after a couple of sessions, he just kind of stopped showing up.
DANNY GOLDBERG Kurt was pretty drugged out. He was also upset that they didn’t have songs. Kurt was tremendously committed to the punk culture, but he was a traditionalist when it came to songwriting. He listened to the Beatles a lot. He didn’t only listen to Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys and the Melvins.
He was very disappointed that, in his mind, they hadn’t prepared for the record the way he prepared for his records. They didn’t have material. They were, he felt, more like jamming. I suggested that he cowrite with them, but he wasn’t that excited about doing that. Buzz asked him to also. Kurt was kind of possessive about his material. He didn’t write for Courtney, either. He liked his good songs to be for him.
Buzz said something about Courtney later on that got Courtney upset. I don’t remember what it was. Courtney was all pissed and said, “I want Kurt to take his name off the album.” I said, “Kurt, I’d really rather you not take your name off the album.” He said, “I’d never take my name off the album, don’t worry about it.”
BUZZ OSBORNE I said something in the media like, “She’s just a fucking gold digger.” And they all flipped out about it. So I called up Cobain and said, “Look, I’m sorry.”
DAN RAYMOND I know Kurt wanted to divorce Courtney. I heard that come out of his mouth, when he was supposedly producing the Melvins’ Houdini sessions. He said, “She’s running up my credit cards” and something or other and, “I want a D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” like out of that country-western song.
COURTNEY LOVE Kurt was Buzz’s Stepin Fetchit boy, and Buzz saw himself as some sort of big-deal motherfucker. And you know, Kurt’s the best friend I’ve ever had, and I’m not gonna put up with somebody putting down my best friend and being mean to him.
I don’t know anything about Buzz other than one Christmas Eve, which was about 1992. Goldberg signs the Melvins, and we go to San Francisco, and Kurt’s got a dependency issue and it has to be monitored. I fuckin’ leave to go Christmas shopping, and I leave him in the hands of this girl Debbie, who’s someone’s girlfriend.
I come to Shirley Temple Black’s daughter’s house to get my husband, who was intensively doing production notes with Buzz. And Buzz is shooting Kurt up with a big old needle—and all I see is this black, black … I know that the heroin in San Francisco is Persian and it’s better and it will kill people. Buzz is about to fucking kill Kurt, and I almost broke the needle in his arm. I took that needle out of his arm, squirted the rest in the fuckin’ sink, looked at Buzz.
He looked away, and it was one of those very rare looks that you get when you catch somebody doing something very bad. Very, very bad. And I don’t know what his intention was, but my God, whatever it was, it wasn’t right, and I knew it and he knew it and it was really bad. Very, very bad. Have you ever been caught in a lie? I certainly have. Someone looks at you and they bust you and it’s like, Ohhh, and you feel so bad.
And all of a sudden, I’ve got a blue fuckin’ husband and had an overdose on my goddamn hands. It’s just like, “You motherfucker.”
BUZZ OSBORNE Courtney actually went public saying that I tried to murder Kurt Cobain. That I actually took a syringe of heroin and tried to shoot him up and kill him. Somebody pointed out to me that it was online. That’s an absolute fabrication from someone who is insane. It’s complete and utter garbage.
The people from Babes in Toyland are friends with her and they said that she would tell them these rambling stories about how I wanted rid of Kurt because I was jealous of his fame, and at that point I was like, “That makes no sense at all. This is the biggest PR guy we’ve ever had and you think I want to kill him? Why the fuck would I do that?”
She first said these things publicly two or three years ago: “Oh, yeah, Buzz tried to OD my husband.” So she waited until now to say this? I don’t know about you, but if somebody was trying to kill my wife, I probably would have gone crazy over it. I wouldn’t wait 15 years to mention it. It doesn’t really do much for her case, does it? She’s fabricated this bullshit story to drag me through the mud once again.
COURTNEY LOVE I read recently, Kim Gordon—and she was just trying to fucking get to me, so I ignored it—Kim Gordon going in the NME, “Yeah, Buzz has some theories on Kurt’s death dah dah dah that I agree with.” It’s like, Kim, I can’t wait to see you at the Marc Jacobs store. I’m gonna stick my boot so far up your withered ass! Jesus Christ.
BUZZ OSBORNE I think that that’s where that came from, because I was having a conversation with Kim Gordon around that amount of time ago, and Courtney probably got word of that. That’s why she lashes out with something about me trying to murder Kurt. It’s absolute cockamamie bullshit. Anybody that believes any of that stuff needs to have their fucking head examined.
Remember this: How do you know when Courtney Love is lying? Her lips are moving.
COURTNEY LOVE I don’t like talking about Buzz. That one story, though, that I wanted to get on the record for a while because it really, really bugs me that he did that and then he goes around and talks about that “Kurt was murdered” nonsense. It’s like, you know what, say that to my kid, you asshole.
BUZZ OSBORNE As far as Courtney wanting to take his name off the album, that’s news to me. That wouldn’t have made any difference anyway.
I fired Kurt from the record. I didn’t talk to him about it. I think he was happy to have it go. I don’t know how it was worded to him. I think they just let him walk away from it.
DANNY GOLDBERG Was Kurt fired? Not to my knowledge. I wouldn’t have tolerated such a thing. He finished his work on it, and he did an okay job. I think it wasn’t the romantic thing that he had hoped it would be of working with his idols.
DALE CROVER We did some sessions on our own, and then Atlantic got this guy, Garth Richardson, to come in and help us finish up the record. And it was awesome. It was the most comfortable recording ever.
BUZZ OSBORNE We’d kicked out Lori before because she had a whole bunch of troubles. Joe Preston was in the band for about a year, and then Lori came back in for a few months maybe, but she never was on the Atlantic contract. Lori’s on Houdini a little bit, but it’s mostly me and Dale; the credits on that record are all wrong, it’s nonsense.
I broke up with Lori in ’92, I think, for good. Because it wasn’t really working, and I was just over it. What was interesting was, when I was done with the relationship with Lori, her dad called me. After having absolutely no interest in what I was doing for years, us being signed to Atlantic somehow legitimized the whole thin
g in his mind. He said that he didn’t see any reason why his daughter couldn’t still be in the band. He became really nasty.
And I was like, “Forget it, Charlie! Forget it. It’s not gonna happen. You had your chance, fucker, and good-bye!”
Was I afraid of him? Of course, I was. I was thinking, This may be the biggest mistake I’ve made in my life. I mean, her dad told me stories about strangling Japanese soldiers on the beaches in World War Two. With his bare hands.
But I’ve never been a pussy. I’d made up my mind, and I wasn’t about to let that kind of thing stand in my way.
STEVE MORIARTY Mia just had a way of connecting with the audience. I always knew when we got up there to play, no matter how dead the audience was or where anyone was in the bar or how big the place was, by about the third or fourth song, everybody in the place would be really close to the stage. She had a way of engaging everybody, bringing them forward to the stage to be part of what’s going on. It was wild. She would get on her knees and sing to people individually, practically. And it wasn’t showy, it wasn’t any kind of performance at all, it was just her being her amplified self. People would just be watching her, everybody staring at her and listening for every word that would come out of her mouth.
VALERIE AGNEW We had all been together in L.A. The Gits were down there to talk to Tim Sommer from Atlantic, who was our A&R guy. We had already signed with Atlantic; I’m not sure if the paperwork was finalized, but we’d made the decision. Mia had just done a couple of solo shows down there, which she was really psyched about.
When we were down in L.A., it was the anniversary of Stefanie’s death. I remember me, Selene, Liz, and Mia hanging out in the bathroom at the Hyatt on Sunset smoking pot and drinking a toast to Stef. Mia had a lot of encouraging words. And when we came back to Seattle, we were in the Comet and that came up again, so we had a round and did another toast to Stef. And then Mia left the bar, and that was the last time we saw her.
