I Found My Friends (27 page)

SLIM MOON:
I called them up and they immediately contributed. It was part of a two-day whirlwind in which Calvin and I were calling a lot of bands. We put together the lineup to that album in less than forty-eight hours. Nirvana were initially scheduled to play the IPU but changed plans later to play Reading. At the time that they gave me the track, we all believed they'd be playing the fest.

“Beeswax” was the first Nirvana original since the previous September. There had been over eight silent months between the
Blew
EP and the song “Mexican Seafood” on a C/Z compilation then for the year after that, just one single and three unremarkable cover songs; Nirvana's rep had built despite almost no new music.

Nirvana would never play Olympia again. They had to cancel their festival slot to support Sonic Youth. Having performed 160 shows since the start of 1989, the band hammered out a further 76 between August and December 1991, their heaviest spell of touring ever.

DON FLEMING:
The three of them all had an intense vibe, serious. Dave, super-serious, Kurt serious in a sadder way—more of a deer-in-the-headlights look at times with Kurt. But at least at that moment they were genuinely wanting to be a great band; that's what was fun about catching them at that moment. A band enjoying playing with each other, enjoying the friendships they were making. I think it meant a lot to them to have Sonic Youth being their mentor and a champion at that time, I think it gave them a lot of confidence that wouldn't have happened as much otherwise, not getting that record deal—maybe that wasn't a good thing actually … Backstage we were sharing a dressing room, I remember mainly that there was one bottle of whiskey and we were fighting over it. During their set Krist had taken it out and had it onstage and one of us, maybe me, snuck behind him and got it from behind the amp, brought it back to the dressing room. I loved them, a great band—Kurt was a great songwriter; it was fun to play with them. But at the time they weren't
Nirvana
yet, they were just a cool band I was psyched to see and play with.

However, armed with their new songs Nirvana was making a genuine impact.

DON FLEMING:
I do remember being on tour in Europe at that time and going to places Nirvana had played and listening to [people] talk about having seen them. And the thing that was very distinct to me at the time was that the people who were mostly raving about them were women, girls—they loved the band and that was something I didn't usually see. It was usually guys—“Hey, did you check Tad? He's so fucking amazing!” Or Dinosaur Jr. or … It was very unusual to me, striking, to hear women raving about the band. That was something that was different and did give them more mass appeal. Kurt was a James Dean to a lot of females—he had that dark look, songs, bad-boy-but-take-care-of-me thing. Appealing. And the crowds that I saw that were really talking about them, it was one of the things that was really apparent to me. Usually you didn't hear girls talking as much, especially with punk or grunge sort of bands, it was more a guys' game, but this opened it up and that seems key to their mainstream success.

LISA SMITH:
What always stood out was
Kurt
! Krist was fun to watch because he had so much energy, but all eyes were usually on Kurt. All of us girls would joke about not ever having babies with the exception of having
his
!

JOHN LEAMY:
We met some girls in Sweden who were annoyingly obsessed with
Bleach
. That was the real rumblings in the distance for me. I was trying to get laid, and these girls wouldn't stop talking about that record. So, I listened to it. Ad nauseam for a
long
weekend.

Nirvana now had a timely first taste of festival crowds—just as the fruits of their summer labors were starting to leak, they were to be seen by tens of thousands.

ERIC “DANNO” JEEVERS,
Paradogs:
Paradogs were one of the very few Dutch bands on the Ein Abend In Wien showcase festival, we were very much the critics' sweethearts—fair is fair, we weren't too bad, either!… In most of the publicity, I think Paradogs had a big color photo and Nirvana a small black-and-white one. That doesn't mean we were superstars though—hell no—but Nirvana was an up-and-coming band like many others. By the time the festival was on, there was a buzz that they were the band you should go and see, because “Teen Spirit” was getting a lot of airplay and all that. I think by then we realized they should have had the color photo!

JB MEIJERS,
Charmin' Children:
I clearly remembered that those were the guys from the
Bleach
album and wondered where the fourth guy was. I have never told this to anyone. I really dug that record. I was a member of the Sub Pop singles club and therefore received every single Sub Pop release … I thought of them as the best thing ever, but I saw Dinosaur Jr. as the band that should've knocked Michael Jackson from the throne … Who would have guessed … Nirvana? Really?

With the Rotterdam festival marking the tour's end, Nirvana celebrated by making drunken fools of themselves.

JB MEIJERS:
They wrecked the backline, including my Marshall. I was not cool with that … We shared a dressing room—we were an obnoxious bunch but I remember them pushing that a bit further … There was an accordion door that split the room right in two. After someone in the Nirvana camp threw a banana to us, John, our singer, closed that door.

ERIC JEEVERS:
I missed the whole equipment-smashing bit, although backstage the security's portophones were buzzing and we heard what was going on. Personally, I don't get a kick from seeing someone wrecking guitars, so I went to see some other band—and later on ran into Mr. Grohl … Dave tried to nick our six-packs of beer. He was dead drunk, and we told him to cut it out. Like, “If you want a beer, here, you have one, but don't take a whole six-pack OK?” Then he started making masturbation gestures with the beer, and I put a friendly arm around him [and said], “Know what, let's see if there's any cool bands to check out.” He agreed, but in the corridor, he slipped over some spilled beer, thought I had pushed him or whatever, and he attacked me. It was pretty easy to dodge his blows and I didn't feel like hitting him back—I mean, he had trouble standing up as it was! So, anyway, security saw what happened [and were like] “Ah, another of those Nirvana guys…” and they had a little chat I think …

September 23, 1991—Boston. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had been out for two weeks. But local pride had muted the release of
Nevermind;
it was just one more good album at the time.

LEX LIANOS,
Cliffs of Dooneen:
Boston had its own thing going on and the feeling was that Seattle was trying to take over Boston's mantle as a cool music town. Honestly, at the time I wasn't a big Nirvana fan. I liked “Smells Like Teen Spirit” a bit but didn't really get it until much later … The bigger deal was that the local station had chosen us to open this night that the entire industry was buzzing about. The guy that essentially discovered us and gave us a shot on the radio was Kurt St. Thomas. He was the program director of WFNX and this was their show. He was probably Nirvana's biggest supporter at the time and was among the first to play their record … they were fine. Nothing earth-shattering. Kind of garage-bandy. Our stage and light show was much more big-venue-oriented. Probably overshooting where we were at in our career (medium clubs), but we wanted to be playing arenas and approached it that way. They just kind of got up there and played. I got zero feeling they were the next big thing and that everyone would flip out … Eric Sean Murphy and I were most interested in meeting the Pumpkins. But when we introduced ourselves to Billy Corgan, who I think was chatting with their drummer Jimmy Chamberlain (who I think is incredible), they were so rude it was a bummer. We said hi, that we were playing before them and we thought their band was amazing. Billy says, “Yeah, we know” and turned his back on us. Probably one of the biggest arses I've met in the industry.

FLYNN,
Cliffs of Dooneen:
We were so focused on what we were doing in Boston at the time. We were very aware of Nirvana and the Seattle sound but felt we had our own “sound” brewing in our hometown … outside the Paradise Rock Club in Boston, sitting in the band van and one of our songs had just played on WFNX 101.7, then “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came on shortly after. I remember thinking, This will be huge … Cliffs were on the rise in Boston. We were so into what we were doing that we did not pay too much attention to everything else. At least, I didn't. We won an award that night as well, I believe … like a people's choice award that was presented after we played. I remember MTV interviewing us and all the bands that night. It was one fantastic night that went by way too quickly! I also remember Smashing Pumpkins on the bill and there was a great buzz about them also. I don't remember a media frenzy about Nirvana that night …

The impact of MTV was immeasurable to bands at the time. Nirvana had the right video, sound, and song.

GILLY ANN HANNER:
When I first heard “Teen Spirit” we were in Seattle putting together artwork for our album. We went into Kinko's to copy the artwork and lay it out—it was on the radio. Everyone thought, This is awesome, what is this? It sounded so different to how they played it live. All of a sudden all of us collectively went, “Oh my God, it's Nirvana! This is their new record? They're going to be huge!” Goosebumps, that moment when we could just tell that. From then we saw their video on MTV and it was all surreal.

LINDSEY THRASHER:
One weekend we went to San Francisco to play a show and somewhere I heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Then on the way home, we stopped at a gas station and heard it again. It seemed like we heard it five times that day and it didn't let up …

ALAN BISHOP:
I was at work in an office that always had MTV going on the TV with the volume turned off, and I looked up and saw this band playing. They looked familiar but I couldn't place them … I watched the rest of the video and when the band name and song title appeared at the bottom of the screen … it became crystal clear: it was those Nirvana guys …

JOHN PURKEY:
It's when I went into the shop and I'm looking at all the magazines and they're on the cover of almost every single magazine, not just the music magazines, and I just thought: Wow … that's when I really knew something was happening to my friends.

DON FLEMING:
The label thought it was cool, but they didn't see it coming at all. There was only one guy there who was really working it personally to really push it, which was John Rosenfelder; he was the college music rep, so he would push records to college radio … the rest of the label didn't even realize the record was out and were caught happily surprised when the record did break. There could have been other people pushing it, but John is the one I knew and with him it was like once things started rolling it gave him even more to work with. But he was in from the get-go, before it took off.

GLEN LOGAN:
My impression of Nirvana pre-
Nevermind
was that they were a cool band among the so many other incredible and cool bands in the area. They did not, however, stick out head and shoulders above other bands in the area to me. That is not taking anything away from them; it is more a statement of how strong so many other bands were. From my perspective I think they found a bit of a new voice on
Nevermind
in a way that positively did separate them from everyone else. I know some folks who perceive
Nevermind
as a sell-out. I, however, think it was the opposite and actually a braver thing to do.

RICK SIMS,
The Didjits:
Nirvana was just another band from Seattle until
Nevermind
in terms of popularity. I know they were well liked and drew bigger crowds than us, but they weren't massive. There were certainly other bands that were “bigger,” like Fugazi, but they operated on a different plane. There was an atmosphere of promotion and commercialism that revolved around Nirvana. Fugazi had an anti-promotion vibe and more of a cultlike grassroots following … My personal opinion is that it wasn't how well they played live that got them so wildly popular. They exuded a cool in songwriting that hit just at the right time. Couple that with a bazillion-dollar PR budget and the bubbling up of the so-called grunge movement and they hit at just the right time.

KEVIN ROSE:
There was a strong current of anticommercial “alternative” feeling at the time just before Nirvana became worldwide; college radio seemed to favor SST bands with leanings toward Jane's Addiction and reverence for the Bad Brains.

MIKE HARD:
The industry did not know what to do with bands like us, and of course wanted nothing to do with some of us. Rock 'n' roll reached entropy and the music of the '80s was a backlash. And of course we had Ronald Reagan saying there is a definite need for
greed
. There was still a need from the music industry to exploit this, minus the politics, but they could not figure it out, of course. So they tried using their past formula for success on the alternative scene. Alas, a cute, young, highly photogenic, twenty-four-year-old with blond hair and blue eyes becomes a poster child for grunge. Kurt Cobain fit the “Johnny Bravo” suit … I am sure the industry thought Nirvana seemed very safe and exploitable at first. Unintelligible lyrics, familiar chord progressions ripped from the best classic rock tunes, blond and blue-eyed front man. No apparent political motivations. Just another recycling job for the industry.