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The punk rock culture of the seventies in New York and the one that revolved around the Sex Pistols in London were only of peripheral interest to Kurt. He and Krist were galvanized in high school by a subsequent iteration of punk and other indie rock that flowered in America in the 1980s. Although that movement was commercially limited, it took on the role of a secular religion to its fans, the center of which was a group of artists that the mainstream music business largely ignored.
SST bands couldn’t get booked in clubs that relied on mainstream rock-and-roll audiences because they didn’t have visibility in the conventional rock media that influenced talent buyers. Thus, SST and other indie labels like the Dead Kennedys’ Alternative Tentacles had to find different venues, including VFW halls that hadn’t previously featured live music. Young promoters emerged and created an alternative touring circuit that cultivated the subculture that Nirvana would later enter.
However, Krist told me they did not mean to impugn the ideals of the song but were bitterly commenting on the abandonment of those ideals by the majority of baby boomers as they got older and more influential. The most complete answer Kurt gave in public about “Get Together” was in an interview in Brazil’s O Globo: “The song speaks of people who join together to be cool and try something new, the ideal contrast to the macho men I’m portraying in ‘Territorial Pissings.’ We didn’t want to be offensive to the guy who wrote it. The idea of being positive and causing change in society and the world
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“The preening cock-rock god of the dominant music culture had been replaced by a new face of virility that was not afraid to cry.”
Nirvana’s initial Sub Pop release was a cover of “Love Buzz” by the Dutch band Shocking Blue. “Love Buzz” became the first single in the Sub Pop Singles Club, a brilliant scheme to help the label’s cash flow. Members initially paid $35 a year and were mailed one single per month. The price was raised to $40 a year in 1990, by which time they had two thousand subscribers. The early Nirvana singles got enough attention that an album was soon scheduled.
There are not that many rock-and-roll chords. Every lyricist has access to the same dictionary. Everyone can listen to the same canon. Some elements of the craftsmanship of pop songwriting can be taught, but not the art of getting listeners in touch with their deepest feelings in an instantly memorable way.
“To play at that level you have to be touched by—whatever.”
Record producers play different roles for different artists. For many pop, country, R & B, commercial pop, and rock records, producers pick the material and the arrangements, often making an artistic contribution that is almost equal to that of the artist. However, on recordings by rock auteurs who write their own material, such as R.E.M., U2, and Nirvana, producers play a more limited role but they are nonetheless crucial supporting characters in the creation of an album. They are responsible for the sound, and the best producers also help artists make creative choices. Some, like Vig, are
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“A band was in a situation where it was expected to fight in a revolutionary sense against the major corporate machine and I just thought—how dare you put that kind of pressure on me? It’s really stupid.”
The overall budget for the album that became Nevermind was $280,000.
In the subsequent decade Vig would develop a brilliant career both as a producer and as a member of the band Garbage, but he is the first to admit that his career is divided into “before Nevermind and after Nevermind,” an album for which he also acknowledges the band came into the studio with a fully developed vision.
The tracks for the album were recorded in sixteen days at Sound City in Van Nuys, a legendary studio where framed gold records by artists such as Neil Young, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Fleetwood Mac lined the walls. (Years later Dave would purchase the Neve Electronics 8028 console from Studio A where Nevermind was recorded and produce a documentary about the studio.)
Kurt was pushing the band to do something new, combining elements of metal, punk, and pop in a unique way while maintaining intimacy.
“His voice was so fragile and vulnerable. If you took fifty other singers doing those songs the records wouldn’t have that emotion. His voice had a totally unique character—rage and vulnerability and fear and anger and confusion, sometimes all in one line of a song.”
“It was hard for me to read that it was way too slick. Compared to anything else that was on the radio? It was a raw fresh breath! The record is really simple. Sometimes Kurt doubled the guitar or Dave would sing a harmony but that’s it. There are no electronic tricks on it. I didn’t use more than sixteen of the twenty-four tracks we had available. If anything, it’s underproduced.”
In January, when Nevermind would go to number one on the Billboard album chart, Geffen president Eddie Rosenblatt was asked by the New York Times to describe the label’s marketing strategy and he modestly answered, “Get out of the way and duck.” It was indisputably true that “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had so much magic that it made everyone’s job a lot easier, and there is no question that the song would have been huge no matter who was or wasn’t involved with it. Nevertheless, the band and DGC did spend a lot of time and energy launching Nirvana’s major-label career in a particular way.
“Later, when the internet became so popular, people would talk about the difference between culture that was ‘pushed’ by marketing and that was ‘pulled’ by people discovering it for themselves. We were pulled.”
“Wouldn’t any man be upset if people disrespected the woman he loved?”
I was expecting a few signs of debauchery and hedonism and was met with calm erudition.”
Now in his late thirties, Ben vividly remembers being introduced to his hero outside of Nirvana’s dressing room. “Kurt had dyed magenta hair and a black-and-white Alice in Wonderland dress on. At some point I said, ‘It’s up to you to bring back punk.’ He looked me dead in the face with those cold blue eyes, and he said, ‘No. It’s up to you to bring back punk.’ He left and came back with a black, long-sleeve Nirvana shirt. He said, ‘I want you to have this shirt. This isn’t for sale. Only the band and crew have these.’ I was stoked! I was thirteen years old and the singer of the biggest band in
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As this book is being written, the news media is filled with reports of a new “opioid crisis,” but in the realm of the arts, and especially among musicians, there has been a heroin crisis for as long as anyone alive can remember. There are various theories about why the rate of drug abuse is so high among artists and performers. One factor is that much of a performer’s professional life revolves around late nights in clubs and concert halls, at which there is no “boss” like a conventional employer. An artist who is on the road endures long, boring drives and an uneven sleep schedule, and there
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I have long felt that one of the worst aspects of heroin is the deadening effect it has on a user’s spirit. The specter of death is always close at hand.
Just as the Beatles had made long hair sexy and David Bowie had done so with androgyny, Kurt embodied the idea that a cool guy could be snarling and powerful and also compassionate and sensitive.
In Utero was released on September 21, 1993, two years after Nevermind. Domestically, 180,000 copies were sold in the first week, making it number 1 on the Billboard sales chart—and this was without Walmart and Kmart. (Because of the lead time required for manufacturing album jackets, the version with the “censored” cover wouldn’t be available for sale by those mass merchants for two more months.) Although it would never be as big as Nevermind, In Utero eventually sold more than five million albums in the U.S. and another five million in the rest of the world. In 2011, the Guardian conducted a
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It ranks among the greatest single rock performances of all time. All night, Cobain, while never quite able to hide his anxiety—sniping at band mates, grimacing and grasping at half smoked cigarettes—has remained definitely present and in control. That is, until the very end, when he briefly loses it. For the final line, “I would shiver the whole night through,” Cobain jumps up an octave, forcing him to strain so far he screams and cracks. He hits the word “shiver” so hard that the band stops, as if a fight broke out at a sitcom wedding. Next he howls the word “whole” and then does something
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Krist agrees with me that such theories are absurd. He feels that his friend was never the same after the OD in Rome and that “something affected his brain.” He sees a lot of forethought in Kurt’s final days, even including his choice of a small-gauge shotgun. “It wasn’t the kind of gun you’d get to protect yourself, it’s what you should use for killing birds. He didn’t want to make a big mess.” Using a phrase he had employed previously to describe Kurt relative to his art, Krist concluded bitterly, “Kurt was a planner.”
“I know what the next Nirvana recording was gonna sound like. It was gonna be very quiet and acoustic with lots of stringed instruments. He and I were gonna record a trial run of the album—a demo tape. It was all set up. He had a plane ticket. He had a car picking him up. And at the last minute he called and said, ‘I can’t come.’”
In 2016, there were 44,965 recorded suicides in the United States. More than three-quarters of them were men, and half of them killed themselves with guns. Suicide is also a global phenomenon. More than 800,000 people killed themselves around the world in 2015.
A. J. Schnack’s 2006 film Kurt Cobain: About a Son, which revolves around audio interviews Michael Azerrad did with Kurt.
“I used to be really angsty when I was younger. I wanted revenge because I was bullied my whole life, never seen as a person, only a joke. I was depressed and suicidal and pissed off basically, and Kurt was the one person who made me feel safe, someone who would never hurt me, but was always there to listen to my problems by relating to me through his lyrics. He made me feel like everything is ok, even when I was on the verge of going insane.”
“People think of life as being so sacred and they feel like this is their only chance and they have to do something with their life and make an impact. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a pit-stop for an afterlife. It’s just a little test to see how you can handle reality.”
“No True Talent is fully organic, yet the obviously superior talented have, not only control of study, but that extra special little gift at birth, fueled by passion. A built in totally unexplainable, New Age, fucking cosmic energy bursting love.”
