It sounds smug to say it with the benefit of hindsight, but Nirvana really were the band everyone had been waiting for – a thin, better looking than Black Francis singer armed with a quiet loud formula which made them compelling and explosive. My rock family tree roots to Nirvana, Kurt and Courtney are pretty weird and wild; in late 1992, Kurt Cobain left life threatening messages on my then girlfriend’s answering tape machine.
I had been lucky enough to defect from America and the horrors of the Reagan/Bush era and had decided to seek out a life in music by moving to the United Kingdom in 1987. Bizarrely, my first link to Kurt was through a Boston singer-songwriter named Mary Lou Lord, whom I had shared a house with for six months in North London. She was a pretty, blonde, cool girl who taught me how to play my first acoustic guitar. Mary Lou later had a short-lived relationship with Kurt before Courtney appeared on the scene and pushed her aside just as Nirvana were shooting up the charts in September 1991.
I first saw Nirvana (with their original drummer) at Sub Pop’s Lame Fest showcase at The London Astoria with their label mates Tad and Mudhoney on December 3rd 1989. Mudhoney headlined, but Nirvana stole the show with Krist Novoselic using his bass to bat away the guitar Kurt had pitched to him. It was a smash home run. There was a real purity to their performance that made everyone believe they were destined for great things. I was very fortunate to see the band play five classic shows and their first Reading Festival slot where they previewed unheard future hit “Teen Spirit”. I distinctly remember screaming out loud, “Fucking hell they’ve ripped off the Pixies! They are gonna be gigantic!”
Backstage, I met a young Courtney Love. My first band called Some Have Fins had a Melody Maker introducing feature which was on the opposite page to a piece on her new band Hole. Both our band pics had been photographed by Charles Peterson, who was well known for his work with Nirvana and other Sub Pop artists. Courtney and I had got on really well and we arranged a date the following week at infamous Oxford Street club Syndrome. I know a lot of people slag off Courtney, but at the time I have to say she was friendly, super intelligent and sexy with it. She was a well read feminist and I used to feel guilty salivating at the sight of her panty crotch every time she put her foot up on the monitors to rock her guitar.
A few months later, I met Kurt after Nirvana’s Kilburn National gig at the same club, which had now been labeled by the music press as “the scene that celebrates itself“. Every week well known indie/shoegazing bands would all party and dance together. I remember head banging to Sonic Youth’s “Kool Thing” with Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl. At kicking out time I went up to Kurt and thanked him. I told him my band had just signed a Polygram publishing deal because of his band exploding on the scene. He smiled and said “there was plenty of room in the playground for new kids!” How fucking cool. We ended up sitting on Oxford Street with two girls from a Camden grunge band. I spoke to Kurt about our shared love of Devo and Danny Elfman’s Oingo Boingo. He was more interested in flirting with the girls; I said my good-byes. I later heard he had a manage a trois that night.
The next time Nirvana played Reading Festival – in 1992 – was the most thrilling time in my life. Nirvana headlined and my band played earlier on the same bill along with L7, The Melvins, Smashing Pumpkins, Ride, Cardiacs, and Levitation, who I would later join as a vocalist and have an album produced by Gang Of Four’s Andy Gill, who was a favourite of Kurt’s. I even co-wrote a couple of tunes with Kurt’s song writer pal The Vaselines frontman Eugene Kelly many years later for Island records goth pop artist Betty Curse.
It was a really romantic time – England had long hot summers, a buzzing music scene, and London was the most exciting place on Earth. I had convinced my then girlfriend Britt Collins (owner of Lime Lizard music magazine) to write the first ever book about the rise of our favourite band Nirvana. Along with her close friend Victoria Clarke (Shane MacGowan’s girlfriend), they both got a book deal and headed to Seattle to start interviewing family, friends, and bands for the story. Their troubles started soon after Vanity Fair’s Lynn Hirschberg wrote an explosive cover story about Courtney Love’s supposed drug use whilst carrying a baby. It featured the infamous photograph showing a naked and heavily pregnant Courtney with a cigarette in her hand – which was airbrushed out. It went global before the internet and was impossible to ignore. Suddenly my girlfriend and her writing partner were put on a Kurt and Courtney shit list and banned from any further interviews with the band even though they had done nothing wrong nor set out to write a trashy book. Paranoia became the norm. Their publisher was threatened with law suits should the book be released. It got so bad even I was receiving menacing late night phone calls from Courtney and Kurt asking how I could have dated such a bitch journalist and would I help them in court if need be.
One night Kurt left message after message on the girl’s answering machine, threatening to have them “snuffed out” if anything came out in the book that hurt his wife. I kept the cassette recording because I thought it was pretty funny and extremely intense. Kurt is not thought of as a comedian but the guy was a real riot. A few months after they successfully sunk my girlfriend’s Nirvana book, Courtney appeared on the cover of Melody Maker with the headline “One thing this terrible year has proved: If you lie about us, I will hit you, Kurt will shoot you and we will sue you.” Oh the gun themes…not one more!
After Kurt’s gun shot wound, the world changed for the worse with sports metal and Canadian Christian grunge. A couple weeks after his death, I was offered €50,600 by a tabloid who wanted to play Kurt’s death threats via a costly phone line. Like a real Connecticut punk I never gave it a second thought and hid the cassette in my attic. Some 22 years later I decided to listen to the cassette again. This year on the 20th anniversary of his death, I set up a video camera and played the tape at 3:33 am to see if anything “interesting” would happen. Using a ouija board and hemp scented candles, I began to feel as if I were possessed by the grunge king and started mouthing his words. I had no control of my body and with eyes rolling white began writing a message to the world as Nirvana 45’s and upside down crosses spun around the room. Could it be that it was actually Kurt’s spirit trying to warn us of 21st century dangers or just a mind fuck from my reptilian brain?
Everything I captured on video that night needs to be seen and heard. Yes – it’s real scary and the end message is truly shocking, but also extremely wise. Can you handle the blood splattered 27 club truth? Or will you just vomit in the face of heaven? Long live Nirvana.
Here is that video.
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