I Found My Friends (42 page)

YOURI LENQUETTE:
Like most people who take drugs, at some point they lie to you because they know what you're going to say … It was obvious, I could see what was going on, I had proof of what was going on, but it was difficult to have a real discussion because he'd never tell me the reality of things. In 1994 he lied about having an addiction when, at that time, he really was addicted … You couldn't have a real discussion—he really was in denial. It's hard dealing with people when they just don't want to tell you. If I asked him he didn't even try to deny it but it was always the same: “Yeah, well, but just these last three days.” He would tell you he was doing good in some sense even when you knew that wasn't the case—it's a key symptom in a way, someone trying to tell you not to worry and that they know what they're doing.

As Cobain's last weeks disintegrated, only fleeting contacts remained.

YOURI LENQUETTE:
He called me once from Germany—Munich—early one morning, maybe nine o'clock. He said he wasn't feeling good there and asked me if I wanted to come join them on the tour. I had to say no, I was really busy, I told him I couldn't just up and go to Germany. It showed me things were getting worse while he was there. That last phone call was very brief, I heard no more news from him. After that I just got it like everybody else, Rome, then that final news.

LISA SMITH:
The last time I saw him he was trying to get in my apartment building to see if Courtney was at Eric Erlandson's apartment. I went downstairs to let him in the building—he looked like shit. Apparently they were having one of their many tiffs.

ERIC ERLANDSON:
It seemed like he wanted to play with other people and just have fun. No pressure. I believe he was working on ideas for something, who knows what, but he was not really in the head space to accomplish much of anything at that point.

PAUL LEARY:
Shorty before Kurt's death, Gibby [Haynes] called me from rehab and told me that Kurt had checked in and was assigned to be Gibby's roommate. Kurt refused to be his roommate, and declared he wanted to escape over the back wall. Gibby told him that all he needed to do was walk out the front door, but Kurt insisted on going over the wall.

That was Friday, April 1.

On Tuesday, April 5, Mazzy Star—one of Cobain's favorite acts—played Seattle's Moore Theater. Cobain didn't make it, but Krist Novoselic did.

JOHN PURKEY:
I ran into Krist at the show and with all the bad news going around I asked him straight whether it was all true. He just told me, “John, don't believe anything you hear right now. Kurt is fine.” Krist seemed like he honestly felt like Kurt was fine.

Just nine weeks had passed since Cobain had stepped off the plane in Europe.

YOURI LENQUETTE:
I was trying to call him because he'd said this Cambodia thing with enough certainty that I thought I needed to know yes or no because I couldn't put a two-week trip to Cambodia in the middle of my schedule without organizing. I was trying to call his home, he gave me a number, his home number, I called … There was no answer. I told my girlfriend, “Look, I don't know what's going on with this Cambodia trip with Kurt, I can't speak to him…” She called me on the Friday night to tell me, “You've got your answer if he's going to come or not. The news just broke. He was found dead at his house…”

PAUL LEARY:
Dark days that I do not miss … I remember the day I heard on the news that Kurt had died. I was with Daniel Johnston [founder of K Records] in the living room of his parents' house watching the news. When it was announced, I said, “Oh my God.” Daniel's mother asked who that was, and Daniel said, “That's the guy who wore my [
HI, HOW ARE YOU
] T-shirt.”

STEVE DIGGLE:
We were brothers for those weeks. When I got back and saw the news that he was gone—I couldn't believe it. You don't expect it. Seeing him on the TV all I could think is he was still alive, that it was just days ago I'd seen him.

The long-form video that emerged under the sneering title
Live! Tonight! Sold Out!
was the final project executed under Cobain's guidance.

KEVIN KERSLAKE:
The team that finished the film was the same team that started it … With a lot of the videos that I did with Nirvana, you could say that stream of consciousness played a role … We wanted something that just washed over you rather than simply taking you on some sort of narrative ride. Even the stuff that we were going to shoot for it was supposed to have that sense that you were stuck in a bubble—but it wasn't supposed to just be the one bubble it ended up being. It was supposed to be a few different takes on the experience of being him, of being in the band … This was just the stuff that was under his bed, on his shelves and on the floor throughout the house. We hadn't yet gone on a big hunt for other footage that existed. We were just sort of forming the “base coat,” if you will, for the movie that was going to be painted over with many different brushstrokes. It ended up being, to me personally, something that still feels just like a base layer … because the appearance and likeness rights hadn't yet been obtained for various people who were in certain shots or scenes—because those people couldn't be found or didn't want to be in the movie—we ended up cutting a lot.

Nothing was left but archival footage and latter-day sainthood.

Cobain's death was not just a Hollywood spectacular, a morality tale of rise and fall. A high school dropout from an isolated corner of the United States had, less than eight years after leaving Aberdeen, connected with people the world over. His death was all the more powerful because he died as one of the rare souls to win fame and great fortune only to declare celebrity to be null and void; something to despise and to leave behind.

YOURI LENQUETTE:
What I think of is not Kurt as the big rock star. It's just Kurt, this really young guy I knew, this very talented young kid, who lost his life and all the promise he had.

Grief at his death bonded his band mates, his family, and his friends with teenagers and fans in every country of the world. This was a man, however, who had little beyond disdain for what came with the spotlight—he would have been dismayed to learn that death itself served to elevate him even further above his community. In a book about that community, it seems only right to remember the many who were lost alongside him.

DAVID YAMMER:
Many friends, colleagues, and acquaintances have passed away in the last twenty-some-odd years … What I do like to dwell on is the many more people from the scene who survived, straightened up a bit, or even kicked real danger out of their lives altogether. I am very proud of my scene. We were family and still are: Northside punx rule!!

GLEN LOGAN:
Faces of folks no longer with us come to mind. These thoughts make me smile a bit, then a wave of loss follows. It makes me once again appreciate the human side of all this. To many, grunge is a big musical movement or genre. To me it is more about the diverse and incredible folks that sought an emotional outlet in the form of the music they created and the lifestyle they lived. Some of these folks didn't make it through but they are not forgotten, even the ones who may not be the big names that many outside Seattle have come to know.

There are sadnesses scattered throughout the bands interviewed in this work. Kai Davidson of the Joyriders also took his own life:

MURDO M
AC
LEOD:
[Kai] was a good example in most things. Hardworking, compassionate, funny, wild, very smart, very loving, and an enthusiast … That's been my experience of people in bands over a long time—those are the sort of people they are, in general, and I'm friends with many of them to this day. They've enriched my life. They enrich everyone's life.

Colin Allin of Skin Barn was shot dead while being robbed for his laptop in Nicaragua; Sean McDonnell of Surgery sank into a coma after an asthmatic attack.

JOHN LEAMY:
[Sean] was one of the funniest, driest guys, who could also wash up real nice and meet your parents and charm the pants off of them. And then he would write a song about some unmentionable whore or something. I miss that fucker.

Jeff Wood of Forgotten Apostles was taken by brain cancer; Scott F. Eakin of Knife Dance, brother of Tom Dark, died of a heart attack at age thirty-eight, while drummer David N. Araca was taken by a brain aneurysm at twenty-six; Ian McKinnon of Lush overdosed in 1990.

SLIM MOON:
We all still miss [Ian]; he was a really cool funny guy—very, very popular in Olympia.

Drugs killed Rich Rosemus and Dale Moore of Oily Bloodmen; Slater Awn of Lonely Moans died a month prior to Kurt Cobain's demise.

J. M. DOBIE:
Slater's attraction to heroin was similar to Kurt's in that he also suffered from a great deal of physical pain—he was fixing a friend's car and got crushed underneath it. When his doctor suddenly cut off his prescription pain meds, he turned to street drugs to numb his pain.

This book serves as a celebration of Nirvana, but it is as much about the many musicians who made the underground into the home that the superstars never wished to leave. This book is a tribute to what was created and to the people who are still making it what it is.

PAUL KIMBALL:
There are so few artists of any sort that you can talk about a time pre- and post- and have it be meaningful. Nirvana was one, and they were just some guys up the street at one point. That someone from our midst went on to make this massive global and cultural impact is a crazy thing, but it's not
the
thing. It felt, at times, after Nirvana reached the levels they did, like the rest of us from the Olympia music scene were standing next to a massive explosion that shook everything around us, took some of us out, launched some of us to new places, and then re-formed the landscape completely afterward. But after the noise recedes and the smoke clears, you look at the smoldering crater for a while, scratch your head, and then go about your business.

 

TIMELINE

Over the course of
my research for this work in 2013–2014, I interviewed members of 170 bands who performed alongside Nirvana at a full 275 of the approximately 380 shows that Nirvana performed. The timeline that follows is intended to allow you, the reader, to see the shows at which the witnesses in this book performed and where they were able to provide insight.

In order to provide greater visibility of the rhythm of Nirvana's career, its major peaks and troughs, this data has been combined with information on when/where the band performed on TV or on the radio, when/where they were engaged in major studio recording work, or where Nirvana material was being released (US dates only unless a release was only released in another region of the world). Dates listed in italics refer to occasions at which no witness within this work performed (even if someone interviewed for this book could confirm that they were physically present as an audience member or fellow party attendee).

Crucially, I would like to salute the extraordinary work of both the Nirvana Live Guide (and of Mike Ziegler and Kris Sproul, specifically) and of the LiveNirvana fan community. The hard work and deep wisdom of the individuals concerned with these two resources made this book possible. In among the wide mix of resources and personal testimonies used to construct this book and chronology I wanted to acknowledge them. For deeper information on the events in the timeline below I recommend that you visit either of these two resources.

1987

March, Raymond, WA (Nirvana play without yet possessing a definite name. Ryan Aigner: “I actually don't recall that they or myself referred to them as any particular name at that show…” Tony Poukkula: “They were running through different ideas for names at the time.”)—Black Ice

March/April—Skid Row plays one undated house party in Aberdeen, WA

April 18, Tacoma, WA (as Skid Row)—Nisqually Delta Podunk Nightmare, Soylent Green and Yellow Snow

May 1, Olympia, WA (as Skid Row)—Dangermouse, Lansdat Blister, Nisqually Delta Podunk Nightmare

May 6, Olympia, WA (as Skid Row)—Nirvana's first radio session takes place at KAOS Radio

May 27, Tacoma, WA (as Pen Cap Chew)—Hell's Kitchen, Soylent Green

August 9, Tacoma, WA (as Bliss)—Inspector Luv and the Ride Me Babies, Sons of Ishmael

1988

January 23—Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic joined by Dale Crover on drums for their first recording session with Jack Endino at Reciprocal Recording in Seattle, WA

January 23, Tacoma, WA (as Ted Ed Fred)—Moral Crux

January 24—Nirvana records a first video at the Radio Shack store in Aberdeen, WA

March—Dave Foster plays the Caddyshack house in Olympia, WA, as the band's drummer

March 19, Tacoma, WA (as Nirvana)—Lush, Vampire Lezbos

March/April—One show at the Witch House, Olympia, WA, plus Nirvana's first Seattle show

April 24, Seattle, WA—Blood Circus

May 14, Olympia, WA—Nirvana plays Gilly Ann Hanner's birthday party at the Glass House with Lansdat Blister and Sister Skelter

May 21, Olympia, WA, K Dorm at the Evergreen State College—Herd of Turtles, Lansdat Blister

May 28, Olympia, WA—Nirvana plays Chris Quinn's birthday party at the Glass House with Sister Skelter

May—In time for an undated Seattle show Chad Channing joins on drums

June 2, Seattle, WA—Chemistry Set

June 11—Nirvana enters Reciprocal Recording to start recording for their first single