Grunge Is Dead

by Greg Prato

  CRAIG MONTGOMERY: We were getting ready to go out on the U.S. In Utero tour. I had chosen the sound system they were going to take on the tour, a bunch of us on the crew were at the sound company preparing the gear and the band’s equipment. That was when I found out that they wanted to use somebody else on tour. It was a shock at the time, because I took my job seriously and took pride in it. We always got compliments about the way Nirvana sounded. We had a reputation as a band that had good sound. Things worked out really well — based on my reputation from Nirvana, I was able to get work right way. I think in retrospect, that wasn’t a bad tour to have missed.

  DERRICK BOSTROM: A friend moved up to Seattle, and he knew those guys. He started calling Curt [Kirkwood], and saying, “These guys are into you, you should reach out to them.” The next thing I heard, there was an article in Spin, in which [Kurt] was talking about playing Meat Puppets II for Courtney, and she wasn’t into it, until he explained it to her or sang the songs to her. He was having bands opening for him, giving bands a week at a time. It was for about five shows. We started somewhere in the Midwest. We played with them on Halloween — Cobain dressed up as Barney. I can’t remember if this is true or if this is what somebody told me — somebody hit Kurt on the head with a shoe, and he had taken a leak into it and thrown it back into the audience.

  CURT KIRKWOOD: He was into the albums — he saw a Black Flag/ Meat Puppets show in Seattle early on. It was a formative show for him, in terms of punk rock. It was probably around the time [Meat Puppets II was out], maybe even a little before.

  DERRICK BOSTROM: We just happened to be the band that was touring with them when they were doing MTV Unplugged. They were like, “Teach us ‘Lake of Fire.’” They took a couple of stabs at it, and we’re like, “Maybe we should just be on Unplugged with you.” And they went along with it! Mercifully, I didn’t have to go — the other guys went.

  CURT KIRKWOOD: It was pretty easy to do. We rehearsed for about a week over at a rehearsal studio. It was kinda surreal, having all these out of control idiots in charge of this really big deal. We were the special guest — a “surprise special guest” — and Nirvana hadn’t told anybody until we got there. Literally, the night we were there, [MTV] was thinking it was going to be Eddie Vedder or somebody. [Kurt] was amusing to hang around with. He didn’t say very much. He seemed pretty overwrought by the whole affair, even though he was doing really good shows and was really good on the Unplugged thing.

  ALLISON WOLFE: I have a twin sister — she went to see a show of theirs. I remember her calling me and telling me how horrible the experience was. It was like, “I was really looking forward to it, and I was being squished and pummeled the whole time by sweaty, shirtless, long-haired guys.” It felt like another excuse for guys to have their male bonding — be sexist and gross. She said that the worst part came when Nirvana was starting the song “Rape Me.” She was like, “Can you imagine what it feels like? To already feel completely threatened in this macho environment, and then, all these disgusting guys are screaming ‘rape me!’ at the top of their lungs. As a woman in a crowd, it was horrifying.” Somehow, she cruised backstage afterwards, and told Kurt Cobain exactly what she thought. “Do you know what it feels like being a girl in your audience with all these disgusting guys screaming ‘rape me’ all around you?” She said he was very disgruntled and defensive, and that he was saying, “God, I’m sorry, it’s not my fault. That song is supposed to be an anti-rape song.” She told me that he felt really frustrated by his audience, and that this audience was out of his control. Also, because she’s my twin, she was like, “I’m pretty sure he thought I was you” [laughs].

  MARK ARM: Nirvana surrounded themselves with really gross people, like John Silva. He had managed Red Kross, Sonic Youth, and the Beastie Boys, but was still such a weasel. My guess is that Nirvana went to John Silva because he managed Sonic Youth, and they suggested him. We did a two-week tour with Nirvana in ’93. The Nirvana tour was just awful. Everybody was stepping on eggshells trying not to disturb Kurt. Courtney wasn’t on that tour. They tried to make it “a dry tour” as some sort of example to Kurt. Kurt’s interest had very little to do with alcohol so it was a stupid exercise. They had no booze backstage, but we had beer on our rider. So every night, Krist, Dave, and whoever wanted a beer would come to our little room and take our beer [laughs]. It was ridiculous, why didn’t they just get enough beer for everybody who wanted it? Why this pretense that it’s a dry tour, when it’s not really? Kurt was taking massive amounts of pills. He was totally stoned anyway. The whole idea that this dry tour was helping Kurt in any way was just absurd. Why didn’t they take his fuckin’ pills?

  Communication within the band and the people around them was pretty much nonexistent. On the way to Chicago, someone realized that Nirvana’s hotel was far out of town, and the band wanted to stay in town, closer to the venue. They cancelled their rooms, ate the cost, and booked another hotel. So, they paid for two hotel rooms per person on that night, right? Our beer ran out during the Chicago show, so a friend of ours grabs a case of beer from catering, and brings it to our room. Next thing you know, a federal case is made out of twenty-four beers! All these guys in their crew are running around with walkie-talkies, like the Mona Lisa was snatched. Their tour manager, Alex McLeod, is flipping out over the fact that we stole a case of beer and they’re going to have to pay for it. He’s calling John Silva back in L.A. — calls are going back and forth, how are they going deal with this situation? They just fuckin’ spent how much money on two hotel rooms per person, but they’re flipping out over a case of beer that they have to buy from catering? It was the most absurd, insane thing. It was indicative of how that whole group of people were running themselves.

  They weren’t looking at the big picture at all. They weren’t looking at, “What do we really need to do to make sure Kurt is OK?” And I’m not talking about “OK” as in feels good, and everything is the way he wants it so he can keep touring and earning money. What are they doing to try to get his head cleared so he can think a straight thought? What are they doing to keep him alive? They danced around the real issue, and got focused on these tiny, stupid, ego-trippy things. It was just fucking horrible. And Krist and Dave seemed bummed the whole time, but they weren’t talking — no one really talked to each other. Alex McLeod is another example of someone I can’t believe Nirvana hired. We met him a couple of years before in the U.K., and he was kind of a jerk. A mean guy. He also seemed to think the glory of Nirvana’s ascendancy somehow reflected upon him. Why would they hire this mean dude, and why would they keep him once he starts power tripping because he’s a tour manager? Why would you want someone like that anywhere near you?

  CRAIG MONTGOMERY: I don’t know if I would agree with that opinion that much. If you’re going to play at that level, you have to have management that knows what it’s doing at that level — or else you’re going to get steam-rolled. The impression I had was John Silva was a good guy — honest with the band. If you’re going to get in that game, I felt like the people — for the most part — they were surrounded by were as good as you could find. People like Silva. I’m not surprised Mark would have an opinion like that — that’s sort of his aesthetic. At the same time, people like that, their interest is in the band as a business, so they want the business to be successful, with all that that entails — as far as keeping the band working. They only make money if the band is working.

  MARK ARM: We rode with Nirvana on their bus one night, while our sound guy and tour manager rode in the van by themselves [laughs]. I think it was on the way to Davenport, Iowa. During the trip, Kurt is explaining all these pills he’s on to me, and he’s going, “God, I would really like to stop doing all this shit. How did you do it?” I’d only stopped in July — so it was a couple of months. But I hadn’t hung out with Kurt and Courtney since New Year’s Eve of ’92 going into ’93. I had to stop seeing them because I was trying to save myself. I told him that you have to want to quit bad e
nough [and] that you’ve got to stay away from your junkie friends, because they’re not really your friends — they’re just people who share an interest in heroin with you. You’ve got to leave these people behind and make a clean break. And what I really wish I had said that night was, “You’ve also got to ditch your junkie wife.”

  1994 and Beyond

  CHAPTER 29

  “It felt like the world had gone seriously wrong”: Kurt Cobain’s Death and 1994

  In the world of music, 1994 will forever be known as the year that Kurt Cobain committed suicide, signalling the end of Nirvana, and to many, also the end of the whole grunge movement.

  ADAM KASPER: The next session [at Robert Lang Studios] — which was their last session — got “You Know You’re Right.” I remember Grohl set up a drum set in the studio, and played drums for eight hours a day while we mixed it. Nonstop. Kurt was not really around for most of the day, but would wake up in the evening, come in, and throw down a vocal harmony, or lay down a line or two. We spent about three days a song — really slow-paced. In the end, I think that people were just burnt out as far as remixing the whole thing — they left it the way it was.

  Same kind of scenario [as the In Utero mixing session]. Kurt coming here and there. But when he did show up, it was pretty solid — he knocked it out pretty quick. Just to get him in to do that much at that point seemed like … basically, Krist would pick him up and drive him to the studio, which was fairly close. He worked with me and nobody else, as far as it being just us in the room. It was a tenuous time, as far as saying, “Let’s do demos for eighteen songs and go in and record them.” It was more like, “Let’s just get him in the studio and see what we can get.”

  I think the idea was that he took some tapes and listened to stuff that Dave and Krist had written. He was opening up to maybe putting vocals on some of the songs that ended up being on that first Foo Fighters record [1995’s Foo Fighters]. Dave knocked out a batch of those while we were there — I think to present to Kurt, as a possibility for the Nirvana thing. I remember saying to Dave, “Dude, you should do a solo record someday!” Some of the songs might have worked with Kurt — I’m not sure what he actually heard. That was making the band real happy — they wanted to have some input songwriting-wise too. Or more input, I should say. I think he had [“You Know You’re Right”] ready, which he had been working on for a while. He played it before in concert. We did a lot of vocal tracks — punching in, doubling up stuff. We spent a good half a day just doing vocals. A couple of takes and there it is … Nirvana.

  KIM WARNICK: It was steering out of control. It was kind of hard to watch that all going on.

  KURT DANIELSON: I remember bowling with Dave Grohl in Seattle — and we said, “We’ll see you in Stockholm.” We figured during Soundgarden’s tour [for which Tad opened], we would be in Stockholm the same time Nirvana was during their tour. But this was when Kurt od’d in Italy. So that “look forward to meeting” never occurred. Sometimes what happens is you’ve got human beings who are in intensely personal situations, and they’re thrust into the spotlight at the very moment when they least need it. To have to stand by and watch that happen to a friend of yours — who has been isolated by this or that chemical dependency — it’s a sad and profoundly moving experience.

  EDDIE VEDDER: There was that thing in Rome. I went to buy some smokes, and I saw this thing in the paper about Kurt OD’ing in Italy. I got home — I was alone in the house — and I remember all of a sudden shaking with panic. Feeling like that that would be the worst thing — being panicked at the thought of the music world without him. And then when that kind of blew over, I felt like, “Jesus Christ. Fucking Seattle, it’s just fucking crazy.”

  STEVE TURNER: The last time I actually saw him walking down the street, he looked like absolute hell. I knew he wasn’t doing well.

  MARK ARM: Right before we went on tour with Pearl Jam in March of ’94, Bob Whittaker was talking to Krist a lot. Bob kept telling me that Krist was really concerned about Kurt.

  KIM THAYIL: We heard rumors from people that had crossed paths with him, or people that were closer to him. And of course, there was stuff that would pop up in the tabloid and the gossip mill. I don’t think Kurt himself was tabloid fodder, but there were elements in his life that openly solicit that kind of attention. So every once in a while, you’d hear shit on the news, the radio, or in a magazine. I remember when there was the incident in Rome, they were calling it “a botched suicide attempt.” I probably knew what you knew — plus some extra-added scenester gossip. That’s hard to give credence to all that we hear. In retrospect, a lot of what we heard was very credible.

  SUSAN SILVER: Kurt was invisible to everyone. So the time that they spent in those latter days was around drugs, [rather] than music. Layne had been in and out of rehab, and Layne and Kurt spent a lot of time together. We were all in fear of what could happen. Alice was working with a really wonderful guy from New York, Lou Cox, a doctor who was instrumental in helping Aerosmith through their recovery. I got an emergency, out of the blue call from Courtney, who had no love lost for me. Previously, I had been a target of hers. She was in a very desperate, understandably frightened state. She said, “You have to help me — Kurt’s going to kill himself. What should I do?” I said, “First thing, you have to make sure you’re safe and your daughter’s safe. I will connect you to the people to do an intervention — you have to make sure the people that Kurt trusts are there.” I hooked the manager up with Lou Cox. They decided to do an intervention, but they decided to use a different interventionist. And not everybody came to the intervention. I wasn’t part of it — I was not “inner circle” with them whatsoever. They did the intervention, and it went very poorly.

  ROBERT ROTH: There was a percentage of people doing this intervention [who] were strung out themselves, or were basically living off him. And also, it was business people — who in another sense were living off of him. Maybe there were some people in there that had his best interests at heart, but I don’t think that he thought that. Tough love — draped in hypocrisy — completely backfired. It seemed to drive him the other way. I had always heard that a lot of his inner conflict came from the fact that his parents were divorced — he came from a broken family, and he dreaded ever doing that to Frances [Bean Cobain, Kurt’s daughter].

  DUFF McKAGAN: I bought a house in Seattle in ’92, and I was flying home a couple of years later. Flew out of lax, and Kurt was sitting an aisle over from me. That’s the first time I ever really talked to him. He’d told me he just left Exodus, was trying to get clean, and didn’t know how to. I could relate because I was trying to get clean at that same time. We talked about stuff we had in common — he seemed bummed. We went to baggage claim together when we got to Seattle. A friend of mine came to get me, and him and Kurt went out to have a smoke. My friend came back in, and I said, “Maybe you should have him come to my house — he seems bummed out.” He went out to get Kurt — his car had come and picked him up.

  SUSAN SILVER: Kurt went to rehab for a couple of days, went awol, and the rest is history.

  VAN CONNER: I remember him missing, and us going around Seattle trying to find him. Just thinking, “Oh, he probably just took off somewhere.” I remember going home, and hearing on the radio that they found his body. I just remember sitting there in shock. Like, “That’s got to be bullshit.” Then I thought, “Well, he has been missing for three days.” Then I called Lanegan, and he had just heard about it too. I had taken him over to Kurt’s house, dropped him off, and there were already news reporters there. It was like a circus.

  MARK IVERSON: It was like the Andrew Wood thing — times a hundred.

  KIM WARNICK: It was just such an awful time to remember — it seemed black. It really upset the city.

  ART CHANTRY: I remember when they announced that the body was found in his house. We were in my studio, and everybody knew exactly what it was — the moment that we heard it. It was my birthday when they found [Co
bain’s body]. The whole city came to a grinding halt. The impact of that was like 9/11 — in Seattle. It still affects me to think about it, because it was so profound.

  Everybody blames the music industry for killing Kurt. I’m not sure what killed Kurt — you’d have to ask Kurt that. I don’t think he had good health advice. I don’t think he had good people around him. See, I’m an alcoholic — I’ve gone through rehab, and I did a lot of research into that to get through it. Part of the symptoms of withdrawal are deep depression. And if you’re a depressed person in the first place, this depression is profoundly disabling. That’s actually a symptom that’s in the textbooks of withdrawal. And that is followed by very long-term, mild- or medium-level depression. I don’t think anybody told him that. Because every time he tried to get clean, he couldn’t deal with it — it’s like he didn’t know what was happening to him. So I wonder what kind of health advice, what kind of therapist that guy had. You don’t go through a program and not be told these things, and yet he didn’t seem to know. Either that, or he was incapable of dealing with it.

  ROBERT ROTH: My theory is there are three things that come closest to an artist’s soul — their art, the love and the passion for the people in their life, and drugs and/or spirituality. From what I gather, those three things were in disarray for him. He was very isolated. In my opinion, he would have had to break up his band, break up his family, and quit drugs. It was a tall order for him, or anyone in his position, to get out of the situation he was in. I’m not surprised it was too much to deal with.