I Found My Friends (32 page)

Cobain forgot nothing; having last seen the Buzzcocks in February 1992 the call came in late 1993 to tour in 1994.

His artistic drive was aimed in directions other than playing with Nirvana; in 1992 Cobain worked with director Kevin Kerslake on four music videos then posited a lengthier endeavor.

KEVIN KERSLAKE:
We talked a bit about it in L.A., then I went up to Seattle and spent a week at Kurt's house just going over tapes every day—that was also when we shot “Sliver.” But that wasn't the first session we'd done—we'd gone over tapes in L.A. too. I can't remember if I pressed them to shoot the “Sliver” video or it was scheduled … but it may just have been convenient to shoot it while I was up there. I had a Super 8 camera with me and all three guys were around so we ended up shooting it in Kurt's basement … As the band started to recover from
Nevermind
, and started setting their sights on the future, a lot of different things came into our conversations. Obviously there were a lot of B-sides and various singles that were going to find their way onto an album, and they'd started doing
In Utero
, but we started talking about the film … We never got into real deep detail about what the film was going to be because when you're going to do a long form like that and there's a lot of different material, you just start by gathering things, putting things together. You don't say, “I know exactly what this will look like in the end.” Kurt probably appreciated this more than anybody—definitely more than any record executive—that when you're making music, when you're making films or doing anything like that, it's a process. You go into a studio and start putting chords together—you don't preconceive what chords you're going to put together until you pick up the guitar and you do it. In the same way, for a film, you just start gathering all this material and you start putting it together.

Nirvana met up in June ready for ten of the biggest shows they would ever play.

GERALD LOVE:
The shows were either arenas or festivals … I would have imagined that their appearances at the festivals would have been in front of 30,000-plus on average. Maybe more. The arena shows were in Ireland, France, and Spain … I would guess the average attendances at being around 10,000 per night. There was the palpable sense of the band breaking through on a massive scale. We had already played at the Reading Festival the previous year and had done a few supports in big rooms, so we were accustomed to the different experience of playing a large stage in front of a sea of people, sometimes in broad daylight … The first few shows with Nirvana, in Dublin, Belfast, and Paris, were indoor and with the four walls and the roof they were all loud and powerful affairs. At times the sound of the room can overwhelm the stage in big cavernous halls, so at the beginning I found it difficult to hear what was happening on the stage, especially vocals. We were playing pretty loud at this time and our original setup was to be pretty far apart on larger stages. We soon learned that it was better to set up close and to turn down just a little. At outdoor festivals, the sound escapes into the air and it can give you the feeling of being weak and exposed, as if nothing is coming out of the PA. With the experience you learn to get on with it, to do your best, and have faith that the sound man is doing his stuff. The buzz is definitely dispersed at a larger gig, and it can feel nonexistent at a festival in daylight, but a great band can make it happen anywhere and Nirvana were at the top of their game … Kurt seemed to be with Courtney most of the time on the tour, which was completely natural as they were a young couple expecting their first baby, and Dave and Krist mostly hung around within the general entourage. I remember Krist's partner, Shelli, being aboard for a section of the tour … A few of their crew were Scots and this probably had the effect of making their touring party feel a lot closer and familiar to us. Nirvana had obviously made a quantum leap in popularity so security between band and audience was naturally tighter, but that's the way it goes with success. Backstage, as I remember it, was an ego-free zone, very friendly, efficient, and calm … The first time I met them [in 1991] … I spent most of the time we spent together chatting with Kurt, and what struck me most was how unlike he was of the image I had in my mind of the stereotypical North American. His physical size and his demeanor felt more Glaswegian to me, more European; he was small-framed and wiry. I remember him as being warm and friendly; the chat was mostly about our respective home lives. During the tour [in 1992], it was obvious that something had changed; he was more distant but still friendly whenever he engaged. On the tour, Krist was super-friendly, wisecracking, and alert, Dave, from what I remember, was a little quieter than Krist but smiled a lot and liked to joke around with the crew … They were a great team, the band and the crew, and there appeared to be no hierarchy.

All was well, given that one key issue wasn't in plain sight, thanks to a little careful management.

GERARD LOVE:
There was a doctor in the touring party, and Kurt had been taken to hospital with a suspected overdose in the hours after the Belfast show, so everyone was aware of the situation early on. On a social level, we didn't see Kurt around a whole lot on the tour, but he did make the effort to hang out a couple of times. When you're aware of the reality of someone's condition it's easy to spot the symptoms but if I hadn't known that Kurt had a drug problem I don't know if I would have spotted anything particularly unusual, especially in the performances where he seemed completely engaged.

The band took another six-week breather before the now-legendary Reading performance.

GERARD LOVE:
It was a stormy night and Reading was dark and muddy …

ROD STEPHEN,
Björn Again:
We were doing a concert in Melbourne and Nirvana were playing down the road. They were looking for something to do afterward and stumbled upon our gig. We didn't know they were there; we were onstage. Then after, our guy who was selling the T-shirts—I don't know how many we had, twenty-five or something—and the guys from Nirvana bought the whole lot and told him how much they loved the gig before they left. Our guy ran upstairs saying, “You'll never believe who just bought all our T-shirts!” … Next thing we know, there's a phone call through promoters and agents saying we've been asked to play at the Reading Festival. We knew the nature of it and though Björn Again had always had this Spi
n
al Tap–meets–ABBA vibe in some regards, we were nervous if we were right for the festival. Ultimately, though, we understood it was more or less on Kurt Cobain's insistence that we were being asked, so we thought, Let's do it!… I positioned “Smells Like Teen Spirit” at about the twenty-minute mark just to establish Björn Again and our identity … I thought we needed something to nail the last ten minutes of the show and that guitar riff was the perfect thing. We launched into it and the crowd moshed like you wouldn't believe—going mental. Absolute candy … Prior to the gig I'd spoken to Dave Grohl about us doing our version … Ordinarily you wouldn't dream of doing a song when the main act is going to do it later on. He said, “No, no! You've got to do it! It'll be great!” So we went ahead and it really capped off the performance. Krist was down in the pit with his camera, people could see him taking photos of us. In context, it was great light and shade for the day … the crowd made the connection to the three guys from Nirvana who, by the end, were almost onstage with us showing it was all right and they were having fun here. I was pleased to see Kurt doing that because before the gig when I went up to talk to them it was noticeable that Kurt was in the dressing room but there was this sense that he didn't want to talk—nothing was said, but I didn't wade on in there. Dave and Krist came out and I think they were kind of putting a bit of a protective layer between anyone else and Kurt. They were chatty, told us they wanted us to be there, but it wasn't Kurt bouncing out. I didn't ask about it, but I got that feeling things were going on. To me it felt like shyness. I know that he wanted Björn Again to be there but maybe he would have felt a bit uncomfortable chatting. He must have been bombarded with people just wanting to talk, people wanting information. Maybe part of the problem, he felt he had to be on full form to deal with people at all hours of the day … Kurt mentioned us on the liner notes of
Incesticide
; he says something about how he realized he'd reached “wunderkind” status when he had the power to bring Björn Again to Reading.

Hurt by the UK media's intrusive speculation on his drug problem, Cobain choreographed Nirvana's show as a parody of his supposed frailty.

ROD STEPHEN:
Kurt was wheeled out in the wheelchair with the blond wig—I've always speculated what the wig was about, part of me thinks it was about the blond singer in ABBA—wearing the wig … it made sense, “the blond singer in the band.” Iconically, Agnetha is the standout in ABBA with her blond hair. Kurt is perhaps usurping that; that blond wig is a statement, what else was it meant to be?

He moaned a riff of “The Rose”—the title theme of a film about a star self-destructing under the impact of fame—before mock-collapsing. Most journalists sang praise for the festival performance without seeing that Cobain had made a sarcastic attack on their negative coverage of his personal life. Meanwhile, some observers saw nothing special.

IAN PROWSE,
Pele:
When you're actually near someone, though, you realize how prosaic it all is. Unfortunately when stuff is filtered through the lens of the gutter media it takes on a certain sick glamour that isn't actually there. When you see them walking across a muddy field backstage they are simply Walking. Through. A. Muddy. Field. It's so dull … Our show was a bit of a nightmare too; the bad weather curtailed our gig so we didn't manage to explode … I watched them for thirty minutes, yes. They were truly awful … Our roadie Nick Leech was a notoriously bad-tempered drunk (we called him Killer as a nickname). He went straight up to Kurt after the show and told him they were rubbish before being bundled off out of the enclosure.

Nirvana broke again from the corporate plan, canceling their November US tour. Instead, they were motivated to make their first mainland US appearances since the New Year by their opposition to an anti-gay-rights ballot measure in Oregon and to the Erotic Music Law in Washington. Neither was a topic that endeared them to mainstream audiences, but Nirvana saw fame as valuable only if it stood for something.

JON GINOLI:
The only communication we had with Nirvana at the time was through Jello Biafra, who was a fan of ours. He was at the No On 9 benefit that Nirvana played in Portland against an anti-gay measure on the Oregon state ballot. I thought, Wow, how cool! Guns N' Roses would never do that—a popular rock band had never taken such a pro-gay stand at that point in time. Jello told us he was going to emcee the show, and I asked him to ask Nirvana if they minded us doing a gay version of their song as “Smells Like Queer Spirit.” He said he spoke with all three of them together, and said they were cool with it … We did the song the way we did it for several reasons.
Nevermind
did not come with a lyric sheet; we couldn't tell what half the lyrics were. We thought, what if the lyrics were slurred and indecipherable because they were all about being gay? That's when I came up with the title “Smells Like Queer Spirit” … One reason we wanted to do the song was that even though we
loved
it, it was so ubiquitous that we were getting sick of it.

Cobain spoke of the Pansy Division cover as a real pleasure; his band had been baiting homophobes all year.

JELLO BIAFRA:
Jon wasn't sure they were going to release that song because they were afraid of being sued by Nirvana—or, more likely, Nirvana's management or record company … The bill was set and they added me as emcee and “rantologist”—for all the bands involved it was a very important issue, but Nirvana knew full well that they were such a huge band and so many of their fans were jocks by then that it was a great opportunity to wake people up and educate them about tolerance and gay rights, against this kind of attempt at backdoor coups by religious-right bigots. I heard grumbling in the crowd throughout that they had no idea this was a “pro-faggot” concert, but I'm really glad that those people may have woken up a few months later realizing we were right. I mean, a lot of the pre-hardcore punk bands in San Francisco, L.A., and New York, among other places—there were many of them, many people in them, who were gay and out and people didn't bat an eye. It was just people we knew … Finally I'm introduced to Kurt and I could tell he seemed shell-shocked, very. Not knowing when the next shoe was going to drop … I couldn't resist anyway asking him why he didn't name his baby after me—I used to use that as a joke way of congratulating people on their family, but he couldn't tell I was joking. He may be the only person I've ever asked who thought I was serious—it was real evidence that he was just in shock at the position he'd gotten himself in. Later on he warmed up; all of a sudden he lit up like a Christmas tree telling me about this photo he had of a Republican headquarters in Southern California on fire—we had a good laugh about that and I chased for ages wanting it for an album cover until I realized they'd used it as part of the collage inside
In Utero
 …

Cobain and Nirvana made repeated statements, whether subtle or otherwise, regarding the issue of gay rights; Cobain appeared on MTV in a ballroom gown, Novoselic French-kissed him on
Saturday Night Live
, the “In Bloom” video dissolved into cross-dressing hilarity, and Cobain accused Axl Rose of sexism, homophobia, and racism … Nirvana helped to bring a downplayed strand of the underground to the fore.