D (28:20)
Before Courtney, there was Tracy. Before stardom and four star hotels, there was a one room apartment in the college town of Olympia, Washington. Kurt moved there from Aberdeen to live with Tracy in a studio apartment. The place stunk and wasn't as tidy as Tracy would have liked, but it was home, their home. Together. Tracy worked and made enough for them to get by. Barely. Mostly, Kurt didn't work. He slept until noon and spent his days playing guitar, sometimes strumming in front of the tv, sometimes journaling or making art. Tracy shrugged off Kurt's clutter, his weird drawings, his apparent inability to wash a dish, and his neediness. She loved him and so she took care of him, made sure he ate at least one meal a day, didn't sleep too much, that sort of thing. As for Kurt, he'd said it more than once. Tracy was the perfect girlfriend, and he only missed Wendy, his mom, a little. As perfect as Tracy may have been, Kurt left her back at the apartment on an April Sunday in 1988 and, along with Krist Novoselic and Dave Foster, Nirvana's third drummer, loaded their gear out of their practice space, packed up a borrowed Econoline van, and drove 60 miles north to Seattle so that his new band could play a legit rock show in a real club with a real pa. Kurt was quiet, trying to ignore his clenching gut. He told himself things were good, things would be fine. Just a couple of months ago they'd recorded their demo, and since then Kurt had worked hard to get the tape into the hands of local tastemakers in the punk scene. Who could help him. Not that he'd admit it. He'd asked for friends help in circulating the demo and getting college radio airplay, and in doing so managed to snag the interest of a partner at the newly formed record label Sub Pop. An excited Jonathan Pohlman shared the demo with his less than enthusiastic partner, the more business minded of the two, Bruce Pavitt, the enterprising duo discussed whether to finance a single by the scrawny kid who they thought might, on his best day, someday maybe approach the coolness of their label's BMOC mark arm of Mudhoney. So they invited Nirvana to play one of their Sub Pop Sunday shows at the Vogue in Seattle, where Kurt was told they'd have an audience of music executives and representatives. Pullman wanted the reaction of local tastemakers, their positive reaction in order to justify signing the band. On the other end of the phone, Kurt imagined an adoring crowd, the faces of the members of Tad and other bands he loved shining up at him on stage. He cleared his throat and in his calmest, whatever voice that he could muster, said, sure, Cool. Chris gave the wheel a sharp turn and pulled into a lot beside the Vogue. It was late afternoon. Kurt Hopped out to stretch in to check out the building that had hosted New Wave acts and other bands, bands that were better than Nirvana, bands that knew what they were doing. What if he sucked? He felt the nerves in his stomach, felt the bile burn his esophagus. He ripped off his jean jacket, held back his hair, and vomited onto the pavement. Then he sat head in hands, trying to control his breathing. His bandmates stood back and waited for him to pull his shit together. The show itself was kind of a haze. Kurt couldn't shake his nerves. After soundcheck, they went backstage, assuming the club would fill up as Porn had promised. But when they got up to play, they saw their audience consisted of maybe 10 people, among whom were friends of friends and maybe one industry person, a dj. What the hell? Kirk got shaky again. Shaky and angry, deflated, nauseous. And while the rhythm section held their own through the set, powering through technical glitches, Kurt hung on by a thread. He strummed and mumbled lyrics without intensity and with zero connection to the future people standing in front of the stage who he occasionally peered at from under the fringe of his hair. And there was little clapping. There was no encore, and it was embarrassing. Off stage and with a camera pointed at him, Kurt screamed, we sucked. They drove straight home in the van. It was quiet. A loop of the night's disaster played over in Kurt's brain. He told himself they'd practice more, at least five times a week, as any real band should, and that he'd write better songs, great songs, and that they would improve and rule the world. And if it wasn't with Sub Pop, it would be with some other label, a better label, without some PT Barnum wannabe in a flannel shirt at the helm. After the gig, Kurt committed himself to himself. He drafted a new band bio. Greetings. We realized that there was once a 60s band called Nirvana. But don't get us confused with them because they totally suck big fucking dick. Nirvana sounds like Black Sabbath playing the knack, Black Flag, Led Zeppelin and the Stooges with a pinch of Bay City Rollers. He rehearsed his answers to future interview questions. Hi, I'm the moody bohemian member of the group Blonde frontman, the sensitive type. I like pasta, turtles, girls with weird eyes, writing, reading, keeping my mouth shut, cake decorating, horseback riding, gun cleaning, Sally Sterler's impersonating pina coladas and getting caught in the rain. Butt fucking acupuncture, painting friends, cats, goats, mohair sweaters, cultivating a fine army of facial blemishes scarification, blah blah blah. And he wrote letters to his friends and heroes whom he hoped to befriend. Mark Whoa, Polly Peregrine is my favorite song of this decade. I've been soaking up the sounds of the Screaming Trees for a few months and I think it's way better than most. Although in the pop genre I like Pixies and Smithereens a bit better, but Polly Peregrine Jesus God, what a complete masterpiece. He walked around the apartment unconsciously crafting his nonchalant slouch. His blue eyed rock God shrugged toward oblivion. His jeans ripped, his shirt flannel, his shoes chucks and his hair dirty. He calculated to look uncalculated. He cared, but didn't want to seem to care. He imagined his next time on stage he'd get it right. Then the phone rang. It was Pullman. The single with Sub Pop was on. No, Kurt thought to himself. Of course Pullman and Pavit love the show and so did the quote unquote industry execs and the DJ from kcmu and of course whoever was in the crowd that night that passed his scenesters in a good mood, the best mood he'd been in in a long time. Kurt wrote to his friend Dale Crover, drummer for the Melvins, to ask for advice, drop a humble brag that his band had signed with Subpar. It was a big deal. He casually mentioned and oh yeah, by the way, our final name is Nirvana. Tour the Road this is where it all happens. The sex, the drugs, the rock and roll, the making of your myth. For a touring musician, the road offers plenty, but the reality is that no matter how many adoring fans you meet or a pure adolescent release you feel on stage, being away from home at some point really starts to suck. Your clothes stink in ways you didn't imagine possible. You can't find a decent healthy meal. You're sick and tired of every last one of your bandmates. You haven't shit right in weeks. You get poor to no sleep and you crave intimacy. Real intimacy, the kind that only a significant other, someone who truly cares for you, can give. This is what most musicians feel at some point on the road, no matter how experienced or successful. But as a new band making little or no money, you're driving from gig to gig, playing to small to sometimes non existent crowds. Sometimes you've played as just the doorman and the bartender. But it's all good because you're paying your dues. Just like Black Flag, you tell yourself. You try to keep it Together, keeping enough energy in reserve to stay sane, to remember who you are in civilian life back home. Now imagine that sense of loneliness with the added shit situation of not having a real home to go back to once tour has ended up. That's how it felt for Kurt Cobain on the road. On stage, he had a hard time controlling his mood when things went wrong, when there were technical problems, when the sound on stage didn't match the sound in his head, he'd get frustrated, angry. He'd let it affect his performance. Added to that, he missed his girlfriend and his stomach was a chronic mess that he tried drinking into a truce with Strawberry Nestle quick. He wanted connection and attention but had little. All of this took a toll on him as he toured in 1989 to support Nirvana's debut album, Bleach. Their European tour with the band Tad was brutal. 37 shows in 42 days. When there was enough money to stop in a hotel, Kurt would often share a room with Tad drummer Kurt Danielson. And with the lamps low, they'd shoot the shit. One night, an exhausted Kurt lay back on the soft white comforter, letting two fluffy white pillows cradle his head inside. Fuck, it was good to lie down on a real bed. He and Danielson talked as they often did late into the night, the pauses between their words getting longer as they drifted towards sleep. Kurt's mind was on Tracy, how she was losing patience with the money situation. His thoughts then shifted to his mother, Wendy. He remembered when he'd proudly played Nirvana's Love Buzz single for her on Christmas Eve. She'd been unimpressed and hoped he had a backup plan. He only let that hurt a little. She loved him, right? She had to. He thought he was 22 years old, but in some ways he was still just a boy. A boy who was about to go from total obscurity to super fame. You know, he said to Danielson, I've wanted to go home since the first week of this tour. I could go to my mom's right now, if she'd let me. She'd wire me the money. There was a pause. The pain he felt now wasn't in his gut, but farther up, a tightness in his chest and throat. She'd have me, he insisted. She'd have me, you know? Danielson didn't know. He couldn't tell if Kurt was talking to him or talking to himself, whether he was shooting straight or bullshitting. There are world class bullshitters out there who are easily recognizable and repellent. The types of people you don't want to waste your time with. Then there are different types of bullshitters, the type who spin lies not to hurt or impress you, but to weave you into the alternate reality they've created for themselves, usually because their reality is too big of a drag to accept. Kurt Cobain was this type of bullshitter. You wanted to believe his bullshit as strongly as he did, but you could seldom tell what was real and what was myth. With Kurt, nowhere was this more obvious than within his lyrics, particularly throughout the songs on Nirvana's second album, Nevermind. The success of Nevermind, Nirvana's first for the major label dgc, was staggering. In four short months, Nirvana went from releasing a record their label predicted would have only modest success to number one on the Billboard charts by January 1992. The record was propelled by its first single, Smells Like Teen Spirit, a song which Kurt said was a direct rip off of his favorite band, the Pixies. Kurt was being somewhat disingenuous. In total truth, the song had turned out to be exactly what he had set out to write, the ultimate pop song. And Nirvana weren't only bringing fame to themselves. The success of Nevermind shone a light on the feedback laden, flanneled Seattle scene where they'd come from, and suddenly all flights west were jammed with A and R Men. Bands like Mudhoney and Pearl Jam signed to major labels on Nirvana's coattails. Hollywood got in on the action too, with movies like Cameron Crowe's highly stylized singles that romanticized Generation X in the context of Seattle with its coffee shops and quote unquote, grunge musicians, including Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and a host of other disenfranchised characters dressed in cargo shorts and long johns as they looked for love. Kurt clutched his gut as things got sillier when grunge music meshed with mainstream celebrity and fashion first. Bands like Soundgarden and Alice in Chains went mainstream, and the Lemonheads dreamy Evandando emerged as a grunge heartthrob. On the runways and in the fashion mags, designers hawked grunge inspired styles. Flannel layers, cardigans and ironic T shirts, slip dresses, baby dolls and ripped tights. It was all androgyny and heroin chic as gaunt, ethereal models slouched, imposed and scowled like rock stars or drug addicts. Kurt's anti fashion had become fashion. The idea that Kurt Cobain, 5 foot 9 inches of him, 130 pounds with his ripped jeans and duct tape sneakers, had become a fashion icon was ridiculous. The ridiculousness didn't stop there. Kurt's image was blasted across countless magazine covers. His voice rang out in regular rotation all over the airwaves. Tickets for his concerts were in high demand. He was in high demand. DJs, journalists, tastemakers hung on his every word. He was wanted by everyone. It was a feeling he could not get used to. Fame has a way of opening up the world. But for Kurt, it seemed that for every door that opened, another two would close. Old familiar rituals were no longer possible. Kurt couldn't just pop into a record store. Hell, he couldn't even pop into the local 711 for a pack of smokes. He'd be recognized, accosted. He didn't mind the real fans, but it was the new legion of Fly By Night fans, the Meatheads and Johnny Come Latelys who didn't know the Melvins from the Munsters. That bothered him. Kirk could see one now, no, two, outside the window of the 711 he was currently wandering around in. He was looking for Strawberry Quick and they were looking through the window at what the magazines called the new voice of a generation and hoping for an autograph. Or worse, Kurt thought, conversation. They were big Northwestern lumberjack types. As they approached, Kurt seemed to recognize one of them. He was older and of the two had the fuller mustache. His hair parted in the middle, feathered on the sides, screamed 1981 in a way that his Red Hot Chili Peppers T shirt did not. Kurt turned on the heels of his Chuck Taylors and walked straight for the magazine rack. He picked up the first mag he could reach, People magazine, the one with Nick Nolte, the so called Sexiest Man Alive on the COVID and buried his face in its pages to throw the Meatheads off the scent. Or at least give them the impression that Kurt didn't want to talk. And he began reading the article on Nolte. Supposedly Nick was the strong, sensitive type, a man's man, the kind that women couldn't resist. Kurt Cobain was at least one of those things. Sensitive the sight of the dude was. The feathered hair jarred his memory and brought back to him again the details from his arrest in aberdeen back in 1986. Sensitive as he was, the pain of that night, more specifically the shame of it, coupled with the embarrassment of being recognized in the moment, had his stomach in knots. The feathered hair and the mustache. That was it. The cop, the arresting officer. More memories bashed his heart up into his throat. The feeling of the cuffs on his wrists, the ache in his cheekbone from having his face Slammed onto the hood of the cruiser. The smell of spray paint for the can of Krylon. Mr. Feathered hair seemed bigger then. Maybe the uniform had something to do with it. It was for sure more authoritative than the Red Hot Chili Pepper shirt he was wearing now. Big or not, Kurt couldn't help but remember how mean the dude was. He had no tolerance for Kurt's kind. And the look in his eyes said that he'd rather be beating the tar out of Kurt than reading him his rights. The cop couldn't have been a couple years older than Kurt, but he clearly hated him. And Kurt hated him right back. They both had their reasons. For Kurt, it was self preservation. For the cop it was disrespect. Something Kurt had in spades. Disrespect for authority, for society and for his elders. Why should he respect them? They were never there for him. He was alone, on his own. The only thing that ever showed up for Kurt Cobain was music. More specifically, punk rock. But what was more punk than spray painting God is gay on a public wall? But Kurt was caught red handed and it was off to jail, where at the time he thought he'd rot away forever without anyone to call to come bail him out. Mr. Feathered hair snapped Kurt out of it. Hey, you're Nirvana. Hey look, it's Nirvana. Hey, Nirvana. Sign my pack of smokes. Kurt recognized the voice. At least he thought he did. Aberdeen meatheads all kind of looked the same. Maybe it was his imagination that made the connection. This so called fan in the here and now. Was it possible that he was the same cop that locked him up six years ago? The irony was too much for Kurt. He turned his stomach. He grabbed the pen, ripped off the cellophane from the pack of Marlboro Reds, signed Mr. Feather Hare's box of Smokes with an illegible scribble and walked fast out the door. Kurt had what he wanted. Success. But it was not what he expected. With the help of MTV and the strength of the surreal and captivating video for Smells Like Teen Spirit, his band had become so popular, so mainstream, that now the same log headed mustachioed rednecks who beat him up and ridiculed him back in Aberdeen. To Kurt, all different versions of his mother's ex boyfriends were now card carrying members of the Nirvana fan club. What the fuck? You spend your life as an outsider, thoroughly unwanted by almost everyone. Your parents don't want you, your school doesn't want you, you have few friends, you don't fit in and you're ridiculed, so you turn inward. But there's always music. It's inside of you and outside of you. It's possible punk rock and it's freedom. You hole up in your room or at your friend's house where you're crashing, consuming culture that is cast off by most kids. You read Burrows and Bukowski. You listen to Bad Brains and Black Flag and the Beatles and Black Sabbath. And somehow you feel yourself reflected back. There are others like you, other punks who live music, a loose knit crew of outsiders. So maybe you're not so alone. You have kin and you find freedom and connection. Find a path for yourself, a way out. Music. You immerse yourself so fully in it, in everything else that you love. Horror movies, cartoons, comics. You love it all because it's dependable, stable. It can't kick you out. You find a couple of kids you think you're cool enough to play music with and you jam. Then you play some shows and suddenly, through the powers of repetition, osmosis and just fucking doing it, everything you've ingested, all, all the seven inches in comic books and classic rock cassettes and horror movies, all of it comes out in a semi form voice that is uniquely you. Your music starts to get out into the world and you wake up one day and you learn that you aren't the only one. There are millions of other disaffected kids who feel the same as you. And you've given them a voice. You've set it to a beat that is almost by accident, unique. You've become the zeitgeist. Everyone is picking up what you you're putting down. Even the people who you despise, who drove you into your corner to create what you created in the first place. The jocks, the squares, the Mr. Mustaches and Tree Fuck Johnsons. All of them are into you and they like to sing along, but they know not what it means. They've given you everything but what you really need. Someone. Someone to let you collapse into, who will listen, who will protect you. Someone to love who will love you back. You need somewhere to go to lay your heavy head. You need a home and someone to make it with. Otherwise, look out oblivion, because here you come. Foreign. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com if you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to Disgraceland podcast.com membership members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free. Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month. Weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelandpod.com membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook Disgracelandpod and on YouTube@YouTube.com Disgracelandpod Rocka Rolla
