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| Nirvana, about the time my article was published in Spin |
The first is that Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love were experiencing a lot of negative feedback due to an inflammatory article that ran in Vanity Fair in September of 1992. I knew Courtney from her pre-Hole days, and knew Kurt from the rock 'n'roll circles we ran in, where , back in those days, everybody knew-or at least knew of, each other from mutual friends. When Nirvana was going to be named as Artist Of The Year, Kurt and Courtney specifically asked Spin for me to be the interviewer and author of the article that was going to be published. The second is that even though I was an invited guest, at first, Nirvana regarded me suspiciously...because, I was, after all, A Journalist. They were all pretty suspiscious and mono-syllabic until new ( at that point) Nirvana member Pat Smear, mentioned out loud that in his pre-Germs days, I'd been his first serious girlfriend. Suddenly, the ice was broken, and everyone got comfortable and opened up.
Here's my article, the way it was published by Spin in 1992
Spin,
December 1992
"Lost amid a flood of rumors and the glare of the public
spotlight lies the very real fact that in 1992 Nirvana changed the course of
popular music."
PLEASANT GEHMAN journeys to Seattle and finds the trio bloodied by
unbowed.
ARTIST OF THE YEAR 1992: NIRVANA
I'm on my way up to Seattle, which is currently to the rock
'n' roll world what Bethlehem was to Christianity, and the only thing the
passengers on the plane seem to be talking about is the movie Singles. I'm
grateful to be sitting next to a serene-looking woman in a coral sweater and
Bermuda shorts, a string of cultured pearls around her neck, her upturned nose
buried in a paperback. An hour and a half into the flight, the turbulence
starts. It's bad. She's white-knuckling it. In an attempt to take her mind off
the frantic bouncing around, I engage her in small talk. She's a 24-year-old
mother of three, going to Seattle to visit her father, whom she hasn't seen in
five years. A devout Catholic, she's worried that if the plane crashes, her
kids won't be raised Catholic. She, in turn, asks me questions. I'm going to
Seattle to interview a band, I tell her.
She asks about rock writing politely,
almost disinterestedly. Finally, she asks which band.
"They're called Nirvana,"
I say.
"Oh my gawwwwd!" she
screams in a 15-year-old's ecstatic falsetto.
"No way! How awesome!"
She looks at me hard for a second, and then in a conspiratorial tone, whispers,
"Do they know you're coming?"
From out of nowhere, 25-year-old
singer-songwriter-guitarist Kurt Cobain, 27-year-old bassist Chris Novoselic,
and 23-year-old drummer Dave Grohl breezed in to 1992 and turned the music
world upside down and inside out, transforming "alternative" music
into a bona fide big-bug category, and Seattle into a modern-day music mecca.
Nirvana made grinding, slush-toned guitars, hoarse-voiced wailing, and
alienated lyrics into something that anyone could hum or relate to: It's hard
enough for metal heads, and sensitive enough for popsters. The lyrics and voice
may belong solely to Cobain, but the sentiments are universally felt; sadness,
frustration, alienation, and confusion. What dysfunctionally raised, co-dependent,
recovering whatever, growing up while there's a hole in the ozone layer,
couldn't get into it?
In 1987, Nirvana was formed by
Novoselic and Cobain, who lived his own private version of Twin Peaks with his
cocktail waitress mother in an Aberdeen, Washington, trailer park. They played
with a series of drummers, gigged locally, wrote songs, and without much hoopla
eventually made their first album, Bleach, in 1988, recorded in three days for
$600. The band toured and became fairly hip in some circles (mainly college
radio and among members of other bands). In 1990, they added Grohl, formerly of
the D.C. punk band Scream. Eventually Nirvana signed a deal with DGC, recorded
Nevermind, toured Europe with Sonic Youth, and then, kaboom, the Nirvana bomb exploded. "Smells Like Teen
Spirit" became a huge hit: MTV wouldn't leave the video alone, and you
could turn on practically any radio station in the U.S. and hear Nirvana.
"Teen Spirit" is the sort
of megahit that will earmark 1992 in kids' lives. Ten Years down the line,
they'll hear that song and their adolescence will come back to them in a neat
little parcel. It's the sort of megahit that spawns parodies ("We were the
foundation of 'Weird Al' Yankovic's comeback," says Cobain, with a dubious
look on his face). It's the sort of hit that catapulted Nirvana so deep into
the limelight so quickly, that their heads are still spinning, with nary the
chance to turn into jaded, decadent rock stars. While most success stories are
struggling to retain credibility, Nirvana hasn't even had a chance to lose it
yet.
"I get recognized every day,
every day," says Novoselic, shaking his head. "I just kind of get
used to it."
"I'll never get used to
it," mumbles Cobain.
Western Washington University:
Nirvana has made the two-hour trek north from Seattle to Bellingham to do a
secret opening spot for its pals Mudhoney, which is playing in the sizable
gymnasium. The crowd goes insane when Nirvana saunters onstage and plugs in.
The band barrages the audience with a string of old songs-some off its
first-ever demo tape, a few of which will soon be released on a DGC album called
Incesticide that will also feature live BBC recordings. Though the audience has
never heard the songs before, the entire stage-front is a whirlpool mosh pit,
and the stage is covered with four or five single shoes, T-shirts, baseball
caps, even a dead pigeon. Courtney Love, Cobain's wife and lead singer for
Hole, is standing on the side of the stage, well out of danger. She stands out
as a black-velvet and perodide-haired beacon, her eyes focused intently on her
husband.
"Most of these songs are so
old," she says with a giggle, "that Kurt can't even remember with
words! He's just standing there going, 'blah blah blah.'"
No one in the
crowd seems to notice. The set ends when Mudhoney bassist Matt Lukin brings two
kids, no more than eight years old, onto the stage. Novoselic relinquishes his
bass to one of them, who looks simultaneously delighted and completely
terrified. He bangs away at it, his left arm raised in a metal salute. As
Cobain and Lukin put Cobain's guitar around the other kid's shoulders and cameras
click away, the crowd begins chanting, "Smash it! Smash it!" so after
a moment's hesitation, the kid with the bass gleefully complies. It's a moment
he'll never forget, but probably won't realize the significance of until years
later. Eight years old, and he's done something millions of fans and aspiring
musicians would kill to do-jam with Nirvana in front of thousands of people.
Later on backstage, everyone's
enjoying a good laugh over the tots' brush with fame. Grohl is shoving slices
of deli-tray meat into football players' lockers, while Novoselic politely
chats with two fans, explaining why he doesn't want to give autographs. It's
about as far from a star-studded, trendy backstage scene as you can get, and
that's part of the beauty of Nirvana. It made it the old-fashioned way-with
virtually no record-company hype, through word-of-mouth street talk, on its
own.
"I've never seen anything like
it," says Mark Kates, Geffen's director of alternative music.
"It was
an amazing thing, unbelievable to be part of. No one even anticipated what
happened." He thinks a moment, and then rephrases:
"Anyone who
thought that a thing like this could even happen was full of shit."
"It's great," enthuses
L7's Jennifer Finch. "It's about time we can walk into a 7-Eleven and hear
something cool. It's about time we don't have to listen to crap on the radio
anymore. And we're happy for their success because now Nirvana has made it
possible for bands like us to have constant bags under our eyes from all the
hectic touring. We love them for that."
"I went home, went to bed, and
suddenly they were No. 1," says Rodney Bingenheimer, a DJ at KROQ in Los
Angeles and an early Nirvana supporter. "Now, all the bands that were
hairdo metal bands have Maynard G. Krebs goatees, flat hair, and flannel
shirts, all because of Nirvana."
As with all situations of an
underground band or artist coming up with an across-the-board crowd-pleaser, a
backlash seems inevitable. Hip kids are already dissing the entire grunge
scene, snickering about sellouts. Record companies are in a feeding frenzy for
the next Nirvana. The pressure is on.
"Everything happened so
quickly," says Grohl. "I don't think anyone knows what's gonna happen
next."
"Everytime somebody says the
word 'Seattle,' you have to say 'Nirvana.' People are sick of us," sighs
Novoselic. "More people probably hate us in Seattle than anywhere else in
the country."
Through Novoselic still tools around
Seattle in his battered Volkswagen van, and the band still practices in a
weathered, unfinished warehouse space where, until recently, squatters were
hydroponically growing marijuana in the basement, Nirvana can feel its own fame
breathing down its neck. Though Grohl still dresses like an outdoorsy
ragamuffin-hunting caps and saggy-assed long johns-he admits to giving Madonna
prank calls from Europe. Now, that's budding rock star decadence at its finest.
"It's not that great being on
MTV 20 times a day," Cobain says, not in a bratty way, but earnestly,
"It's great for record sales, but I wish there was some kind of contract
you could draw up where there was only a certain amount of time they could play
you in a week."
"And when people write about
you, everything gets screwed up," Novoselic says.
"I don't believe anything
that's written about anyone anymore," Grohl adds. "You just have to
read it and form your own perspective."
"It's amazing the shit people
can get away with," Cobain says. "I don't understand. If I had known
about all this crap, I would've thought twice about putting myself in the
public eye so much. I had no idea people could abuse you so much.
"I don't even care about the
band as much as I used to. I know that sounds shitty, but the band used to be
the only thing that was important to me in my life, and now, I have a wife and
a child. I still love the band, but it isn't the only thing I'm living
for."
But the fact remains that for
millions of people, Nirvana's music is something that makes a difference, something
that takes them higher. Realizing their position, do the guys still manage to
have fun?
"Yes!" the trio
emphatically exclaims, without even a second thought.
**
**
If you'd like to find out more about my writing, books of mine that have been published and my rock'n'roll history, please visit my website:
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