In discussing the matter a few months later, Kurt was still unrepentant: “If I ever find myself destitute and I’ve lost my family, I won’t hesitate to get revenge on people who have fucked with me,” he told Michael Azerrad. “I’ve always been capable of that. I’ve tried killing people before in a fit of rage when I’ve gotten in fights with people.... When people unnecessarily fuck with me, I just can’t help but want to beat them to death.” A month prior he had received death threats; now he was making them.
Kurt’s late-night phone calls became commonplace, though most were thinly veiled cries for help. Everyone from his lawyer to members of the crew would receive calls at four in the morning. He once called his Aunt Mari at 2:30 in the morning with a business proposition: He wanted to put out an album for her. “I figure I might as well throw my weight around while I have it,” he explained.
Kurt phoned Jesse Reed frequently in the middle of the night—he knew Jesse would always be a sympathetic ear. There had been a gradual shift in Kurt’s friendships as both his fame and drug usage grew. Kurt and Dylan were closer than ever, but many of his old friends had fallen by the wayside—most were now unable to contact him due to the walls of his fame and his travel schedule. Kurt’s old friends complained that Courtney had become a wedge: Sometimes when they called she hung up on them, thinking they were drug buddies and wanting to protect Kurt from his vices.
Kurt increasingly depended on those he employed for advice and friendship. Co-manager Danny Goldberg took on a more important role, as did crew members Alex MacLeod and Jeff Mason. But his confidences rarely extended to the other members of Nirvana now. Krist and Kurt’s relationship had changed after the wedding: Though they would talk about band business, the days of social interactions were over. “I remember getting in big fights with Kurt over the phone,” Krist recalled, “and at the end of the phone call he’d say, ‘Well things are going to get better.’ And I’d say, ‘Yeah, things are going to get better.’ That’s what we’d agree upon, just to feel better about things.” And while Dave and Kurt had been like brothers when they lived together, by the end of 1992, Kurt openly talked about firing Dave whenever he was unhappy with something the drummer had done, either off or on the stage.
One of the more unusual friendships Kurt forged during 1992 was with Buddy Arnold, a self-described “geezer-Jewish-jazz drummer-former junkie.” Arnold ran the Musicians Assistance Program, which offered treatment referrals for musicians. Upon their first interaction in 1992, Kurt suspiciously looked at the bald, thin senior citizen and asked, “Did you ever use drugs?” “Only heroin,” Arnold replied, “and only for 31 years.” That was enough to cement Kurt’s trust. When in Los Angeles, Kurt would stop by Arnold’s condo, but rarely did he want to talk about treatment: Mostly he wanted to hear about Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, and other legends Arnold had known. Arnold tried to insert cautionary tales of how drugs had destroyed them. Kurt listened politely, but always moved the conversation back to the greats.
On October 24 Kurt reunited with Krist and Dave to begin work on their next album. They had decided to return to do demos with Jack Endino on the same mixing board employed on Bleach. Though they worked on six songs, only “Rape Me” progressed very far. Courtney and Frances came by for the second night’s session; Kurt did the final vocal take for “Rape Me” with Frances sitting on his lap. The session ended when a terminally ill seventeen-year-old from the Make-A-Wish Foundation came by and the band bought him pizza.
They ended October with a show in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for 50,000 fans. They were being offered huge paychecks to perform at such mega-concerts, and Kurt was now occasionally accepting them. But the show was painful for both band and audience: Nirvana hit the opening chords of “Teen Spirit” but did not play the song, and the crowd nearly rioted in their disappointment. Kurt also missed Frances— it was one of his first tour dates without her.
Early in November, Kurt and Courtney moved to the Four Seasons Olympic Hotel in Seattle, registering under the name “Bill Bailey,” Axl Rose’s real name. They would stay for almost two months and ring up a bill of $36,000 before the ritzy hotel kicked them out. Eventually they would be kicked out of every luxury hotel in Seattle and forced to move to more modest accommodations. It wasn’t their drug use that typically got them in trouble, but instead their habit of leaving cigarette burns on the carpets and wrecking their rooms beyond repair. “I always would tip the maids,” recalled nanny Jackie Farry, “but it would get to a point where the hotel would say, ‘We don’t want your business.’ ”
In the Four Seasons’ Garden Court restaurant, Courtney sat for an interview with The Rocket’s Gillian Gaar a week before Thanksgiving. Mostly Courtney talked about the upcoming Hole album—but she had one comment on her husband: “This whole concept of the man being so weak, and not making any choices—has anybody ever put on his record? Has anybody ever put on my record? You’re talking about two people who are absolutely not stupid!” She attacked the sexism of rock, where “a woman, of course, can only use her pussy to get anywhere. Men can get by just playing good songs.”
The Rocket interview was the first in what would be a larger campaign of damage control—the couple felt so burned by the Vanity Fair piece that they began encouraging interview requests from sympathetic writers. Sub Pop’s Jonathan Poneman was solicited by Spin to profile them, and his piece, titled “Family Values,” painted a portrait of loving and overprotective parents. “We knew we could give [Frances] what we didn’t get,” Courtney told Poneman, “loyalty and compassion, encouragement. We knew we could give her a real home and spoil her rotten.” But more effective than the article were the accompanying photographs of Kurt and Courtney playing with their child. The pictures showed they were a remarkably good-looking family, and Frances was a beautiful baby who looked both healthy and well cared for.
During October, Kurt spent many hours obsessively composing liner notes for Incesticide, an album of B-sides slated for release before Christmas; he also painted the album’s cover of a baby clinging to an alien parent staring at poppy flowers. He wrote at least twenty different drafts of the liner notes, and used this forum to slam what he perceived as his growing list of enemies. In one draft, Kurt challenged the image of him as controlled by others: “A big ‘fuck you’ to those of you who have the audacity to claim that I’m so naive and stupid that I would allow myself to be taken advantage of and manipulated.”
That October, Kurt’s managers suggested he consider putting out an authorized biography, which might deter more damning press. He agreed, deciding that if he told the story of his life—even if it was controversial—it would give him spin control. Gold Mountain approached Michael Azerrad, who in October began work on a book done with Kurt’s cooperation. For its cover, Kurt even created an oil painting, which wasn’t used. He did a series of interviews with Azerrad that fall, and though he mostly told the truth, as in his interview with Hilburn, he many times directed the writer to a smaller light scene so as to ignore the larger dark landscape. As it was, Azerrad’s book included Kurt’s frank admissions of drug problems, though the extent of his addiction was downplayed. When Kurt read the final manuscript, he made only two factual changes, but let many of his own mythical stories, from guns in the river to living under a bridge, stand.
The second week of November Kurt did a photo session for Monk— he was to be on the cover of their Seattle issue. He arrived alone at Charlie Hoselton’s studio and, unlike most photo sessions, cooperated fully. “Here’s the deal,” Kurt told Hoselton. “I’ll stay as long as you want, I’ll do whatever you want, you just have to do two things for me: Turn off your phone, and don’t answer the door if anyone knocks.” Courtney had already called the studio five times looking for him. The Monk editors convinced Kurt to dress like a logger and pose with a chainsaw. At one point during the shoot, Kurt dared to venture outside, and when Hoselton asked him to pose in front of the espresso machine, Kurt did one better—he pushed the barista as
ide and made a coffee.
A month later, when Kurt sat down for an interview with The Advocate, a weekly gay magazine, writer Kevin Allman found the couple looking surprisingly domestic—Courtney was getting ready to take Frances for a walk in a stroller. When Allman commented they looked nothing like Sid and Nancy, Kurt replied: “It’s just amazing that at this point in rock-and-roll history, people are still expecting their rock icons to live out these classic rock archetypes, like Sid and Nancy. To assume that we’re just the same because we did heroin for a while—it’s pretty offensive to be expected to be like that.” The interview was far-reaching and saw Kurt play to the magazine’s gay readership. He falsely claimed he’d been arrested for spray-painting “Homo Sex Rules” in Aberdeen, and talked about his support of homosexual rights. He retold the Axl Rose/MTV Awards story, but exaggerated to claim that Rose had an entourage of “50 bodyguards: huge, gigantic, brain-dead oafs, ready to kill.” When asked about heroin, Kurt admitted to once having struggled with the drug, but explained that the rumors about him continued because, “I am a skinny person. Everyone thinks we’re on drugs again, even people we work with. I guess I’ll have to get used to that for the rest of my life.”
Kurt admitted the past year had been his least prolific period. At least he was reading books, he argued, including Perfume, by Patrick Suskind, for a second time; he also professed to being a fan of Camille Paglia’s work—this was one of the many influences Courtney affected. He talked about painting, and said that making dolls had been his primary artistic expression of late. “I copy them from doll-collector magazines,” he explained. “They’re clay. I bake them, and then I make them look really old, and put old clothes on them.” When asked for any final words, he responded with an answer that didn’t sound like it came from a 25-year-old: “I don’t have the right to judge anything.”
By mid-November, the Los Angeles court relaxed their restrictions on the Cobains and Courtney’s sister Jamie departed. During her three-month period of guardianship of Frances, Jamie had proven a strict master, rarely allowing Kurt and Courtney time with their daughter without supervision. With Jamie gone, Jackie continued to impose rules, shielding the baby from her parents when they were high. Jackie took care of the bulk of the diapering and feeding, though she would frequently deposit Frances, with a full bottle, with her parents at bedtime. “Sometimes, Kurt would say, ‘I really want to see her,’ ” Farry recalled. “And I’d bring her in, but he’d not really be capable so I’d take her back because he was nodding off.” Yet when Kurt and Courtney were sober, they were affectionate and doting parents.
During the final months of 1992, Kurt finalized many of the songs for his next record—which he was still calling I Hate Myself and I Want to Die—and most were about his family, old and new. Seeing his father haunted Kurt, and Don became a central character in this latest song cycle. In “Serve the Servants” Kurt crafted his most autobiographical lyrics, starting with a direct reference to the mania around Nevermind: “Teenage angst has paid off well / Now I’m bored and old.” There were pokes at his critics (“self-appointed judges judge”) and the way Courtney had been treated by the press (“if she floats, then she is not a witch”). But most of the song was about Don, with the infamous line: “I tried hard to have a father / But instead I had a dad.” In the chorus, Kurt downplayed the most significant single event in his life: “That legendary divorce is such a bore.” When he performed the song, he sang this phrase as if it were a cast-off, but in his very first draft of the lyrics, he wrote this line twice as big and underlined it three times.
Though no explanation was needed, Kurt penned extensive liner notes for the song. “I guess this song is for my father,” he wrote, “who is incapable of communicating at the level of affection in which I have always expected. In my own way, I decided to let my father know that I don’t hate him. I simply don’t have anything to say to him, and I don’t need a father/son relationship with a person whom I don’t want to spend a boring Christmas with. In other words: I love you; I don’t hate you; I don’t want to talk to you.” After writing this, Kurt had second thoughts—he crossed most of it out.
Kurt also wrote Don an unsent letter that next spring, reflecting on how Frances had changed him:
Seven months ago I chose to put myself in a position which requires the highest form of responsibility a person can have. A responsibility that should not be dictated. Everytime I see a television show that has dying children, or see a testimonial by a parent who recently lost their child, I can’t help but cry. The thought of losing my baby haunts me every day. I’m even a bit unnerved to take her in the car in fear of getting into an accident. I swear that if I ever find myself in a similar situation [to what] you’ve been in (i.e. the divorce), I will fight to my death to keep the right to provide for my child. I’ll go out of my way to remind her that I love her more than I love myself. Not because it’s a father’s duty, but because I want to, out of love. And if Courtney and I end up hating each other’s guts, we both will be adult and responsible enough to be pleasant to one another when our child is around us. I know that you’ve felt for years that my mother has somehow brainwashed Kim and I into hating you. I can’t stress enough how totally untrue this is, and I think it’s a very lazy and lame excuse to use for not trying harder to provide your fatherly duties. I can’t recall my mother ever talking shit about you until much later in the game, right around the last two years of high school. That was a time when I came to my own realizations without the need of my mother’s input. Yet she noticed my contempt for you, and your family, and acted upon my feelings in accordance, by taking the opportunity to vent her frustrations out on you. Every time she talked shit about you, I’ve let her know that I don’t appreciate it, and how unnecessary I think it is. I’ve never taken sides with you or my mother because while I was growing up, I had equal contempt for you both.
Even more telling was a collage Kurt created in his journal where he took Don’s yearbook photo and pasted it next to a picture of his A&R man, Gary Gersh. Above Don, he wrote “Old Dad,” with the caption, “Made me pawn my first guitar. Insisted I participate in sports.” Above Gersh, he wrote “New Dad,” without a description. Underneath this collage, Kurt pasted several pictures from old medical textbooks of deformed bodies, and headlined this, “The many moods of Kurdt Kobain.” Under the mood “baby,” he used an image of a retarded man; for “pissy” he showed a man wetting himself; for a skinny man, he wrote “bully,” to describe his mood; and for the only normal man, he doctored the man’s shirt so it read “Bratmobile” and drew a syringe on it, for the mood “sassy.”
Kurt and Courtney ended 1992 in Seattle seeing the Supersuckers at the RKCNDY club on New Year’s Eve. Later, at a party, Kurt ran into Jeff Holmes, a local booking agent. They chatted about music, and when the subject of the Meat Puppets came up, Holmes told Kurt he knew the band. Holmes phoned Curt Kirkwood and handed the receiver to Kurt. It was the start of a friendship between the Meat Puppets and Nirvana that would eventually lead to collaboration.
With the year ending, Kurt and Courtney compiled a list of those they intended to send Christmas cards to. Included were all the usual suspects and a few unlikely recipients: Eddie Vedder, Axl Rose, and Joe Strummer. Near Strummer’s name, Courtney suggested they write, “Thanks for siccing your friend Lynn Hirschberg on us, she’s really fucking sweet and honest. Give her our best regards, won’t you?” The card they sent to Susan Silver, Soundgarden’s manager, was addressed to “our favorite inside source,” since they believed—incorrectly—that Silver was the originator of the Vanity Fair quotes.
Also on their Christmas card list were two people the couple were truly close to—Dr. Paul Crane, who had delivered Frances, and Dr. Robert Fremont. In fact, by an accounting done for Kurt by Gold Mountain, the Cobains had spent $75,932.08 on medical bills between January 1 and August 31, 1992. Almost half went to doctors involved in their drug treatment, including $24,000 alone to Dr. Michael Horowit
z, whom Courtney later sued, claiming he released her medical records to the press. Dr. Fremont collected $8,500 for his treatments and the buprenorphine he gave them. A few of the bills were pre-rehab and represented the fees charged by “Dr. Feelgood” physicians who had prescribed narcotics. Though Kurt finally was making big bucks from Nevermind (total sales had reached eight million copies), these medical bills demonstrated how much of 1992 had been absorbed with their health struggles.
Kurt revealed more financial details in the Advocate interview: He earned over a million dollars in 1992, “of which $380,000 went to taxes, $300,000 went to [buying the Carnation] house, the rest went to doctors and lawyers, and our personal expenses were $80,000. That’s including car rentals, food, everything. That’s not very much; that’s definitely not what Axl spends a year.” Their legal bills ran $200,000. Though Kurt’s income had risen incredibly from the previous year, he was spending money as fast as he could make it.
Two weeks before Christmas, Incesticide, Nirvana’s collection of out-takes and B-sides, was released. It entered the Billboard charts at No. 51, a remarkable feat considering it wasn’t new material. Within two months it would sell half a million copies without major promotional effort or touring.
The only dates Nirvana played that January were two mega-stadium shows in Brazil undertaken for huge paydays. The January 16 show in São Paolo drew the largest crowd Nirvana ever played to—110,000— and both the crew and band recalled it as their single worst performance. It had been a while since the group had rehearsed, and Kurt was nervous; to make matters worse he had mixed pills with liquor, which left him struggling to play a chord.
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