Live Nirvana | Interview Archive | 1992 | January 10–11, 1992

1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 Updates Contact

Interviewer(s): Kurt St. Thomas
Interviewee(s): Kurt Cobain; Krist Novoselic; Dave Grohl

Medium	Publisher	Date of Issue	Title	Transcript
Audio	DGC	04/XX/1992	Nevermind: It's An Interview	Yes
Print	The Boston Phoenix	03/11-17/1994	State of Nirvana: A conversation with Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic.	Yes
Audio	KurtStThomas Instagram	04/04/2024	KURT COBAIN INTERVIEW Kurt St Thomas Nevermind It's An Interview Outtake 01/12/1992	Yes
Audio	KurtStThomas Instagram	04/05/2024	KURT COBAIN INTERVIEW Kurt St Thomas Nevermind It's An Interview Outtake 01/12/1992	Yes

Dave Grohl: "Here, say hi really loud, ready on three, ready go"

Lisa Grohl: "Ahhhhh" (through telephone)

Dave: "That's my sister (laughs) um, that was being recorded for this interview CD"

Kurt Cobain: "I punctured every speaker in the cabinets, and there were, um, 12 speakers to puncture. Really, I can't think of anything better to do than to puncture speakers, that's my favorite piece of equipment to destroy, it's a lot of fun."

[snippet of Aneurysm]

Dave: "I had Kurt's guitar cabinet, like, I was smashing it, picking it , these things are heavy, smashing it onto my bass drum, trying just to completely crack and destroy the bass drum, and it wouldn't do it. I was wailing on it with guitars, I was throwing it off the risers as high as I could. Drums are hard to break!"

[snippet of Stay Away]

Kurt: "Well, first I wanted to be in a rock band when I was really young, and I decided in about, 3rd grade that I wanted to be a stunt man, so um, oh heck yeah, Evel Knievel was a big influence on that. I'd jump my bikes, and I took all my bedding and pillows out of our house and put it on the deck, and got up on top of the roof and would jump off. And I took a thin piece of metal one time, and duct-taped it to my chest, and put a bunch of firecrackers on it and lit em' on fire."

[snippet of School]

Krist Novoselic: "Buzz Osborne guitar player from the Melvins, he like discovered punk rock, and uh, he was turning people on to it. I heard it, and uh, it sounded live to me, and then um I borrowed the record Generic Flipper, and I listened to it, and it just, it was like a revelation. It was like 'wow!', it was just heavy, it was art, I was affected, and I've never been the same since. It was like a breakthrough."

[snippet of Mr. Moustache]

Kurt: "I was um, 15, when I got my first guitar. My mother had just gotten married and this was in the first year of her marriage. My stepfather went out on her, and uh, she got so irate that she took all my stepfathers guns, uh various guns, pistols, rifles and stuff, and walked down to the river, and threw them in. And then I hired this kid to fish a couple of them out, and I sold them, and then I got my first guitar with the money."

[snippet of Sifting]

Kurt: "Uh, yeah, I took lessons for a week, I learned how to play Back in Black by AC/DC, and it's pretty much the Louie Louie chords, so that's all I needed to know. I never did pay the guitar teacher for that week either I still owe him money. But that's it, I just started writing songs on my own. Once you know the power chord, you don't need to know anything else."

[snippet of In Bloom]

Krist: "Aberdeen's basically just small town America, It's about 100 miles South West of Seattle, it's on the Pacific Ocean, it's main industry is logging, and forest products, there's really no roads going through there, it's kinda just off the beaten path, off the beaten track, and uh, things just kinda, change comes slowly to Aberdeen. Everything revolves around the logging industry there, it's all logging if the logging stopped that'd be a ghost town."

St. Thomas: Aberdeen, Washington, 1987, Nirvana was formed between singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain, and bassist Krist Novoselic. Krist explains the birth of the band...

Krist: "A little social group came together, and we just kinda hung out, and y'know, talked about things, and then one thing led to another, and Kurt did a tape with um Dale Crover from the Melvins, and one of the songs on it was Spank Thru, and he turned me on to it, and I really liked it, kinda got me excited, so I go 'Hey man, let's start a band!' We scrounged up a drummer and we started practicing. Took it very seriously too."

[snippet of Spank Thru]

St. Thomas: The band recorded their first demo tape with Dale Crover of the Melvins.

Krist: "He played on our first demo, and a couple of those songs made it over to the Bleach LP, Floyd the Barber, and Paper Cuts. We jammed for about a week, put some songs together, and made this tape."

[snippet of Floyd The Barber]

St. Thomas: Kurt and Krist then enrolled Chad Channing to become Nirvana's first full-time drummer.

Krist: "Chad wanted to express himself in a way that really didn't gel with the band. Chad really compromised his style to suit the band. I don't think he was happy doing that and, uh, it was a good departure, y'know, it worked well for everyone."

[snippet of Scoff]

[Love Buzz original intro from the 7"]

St. Thomas: In December of 1988 - Sub Pop Records released a limited 1000 copies of Nirvana's first single Love Buzz - a Shocking Blue cover, with the B-side, Big Cheese. Months later, in June of 89 the first Nirvana album Bleach was released. Kurt, Krist, and Chad recorded the album for $600, with Producer Jack Endino. Jason Everman is also listed on guitar, but he didn't actually appear on the album, only on the tour. Kurt on Bleach..."

Kurt: "Bleach just seemed to be really one-dimensional. It just has the same format, all the songs are slow, and grungy, and they're tuned down to really low notes, and I screamed a lot, and, but at the same time that we were recording Bleach, we had a lot more songs like About a Girl, in fact Polly was written at that same time too. It's just that we chose to put the more abrasive songs on the Bleach album, so, it really wasn't a matter of evolving within just a year, y'know, we've always liked pop music and have always had a few songs like that."

[Live version of About A Girl]

St. Thomas: That's About A Girl recorded live Halloween night 1991, in the city where Nirvana now calls home Seattle, Washington. After the release of Bleach, the band went on it's first national tour, and they were gearing up to record their second album. Krist explains.

Krist: "We went to Madison, Wisconsin to record a record with Butch Vig in the Spring of 1990. We laid down about 6-7 songs, which was like Lithium, In Bloom, uh…"

St. Thomas: Polly?

Krist: "Polly, oh Dive, B-side of Sliver made it out, uh Stay Away. Anyway we went there in the Spring to record a record, right? Right after we finished recording the record we went on this about 8 week tour of the US starting in Madison. We got as far as New York, and everything was geared up to y'know, put out this 2nd Nirvana record, and we were gonna record maybe a few more songs in Seattle."

St. Thomas: This was gonna be on Sub Pop?

Krist: "This was gonna be Sub Pop, This was gonna be our second record right, it was was supposed to come out probably September of 1990, and well once we got off that tour, that's when we lost Chad, so there's uncertainty with that, we didn't want to release it, if we wanted to to anything we wanted to do it with a new drummer. Sub Pop was doing some wheeling and dealing, they were going to sign a licensing deal with a big label and that kinda um scared us, and there were so many variables to consider, that it wasn't wise to put out a record at all. We went and we toured the UK, and uh, we went and uh, toured uh, Western Canada, and uh next thing y'know, we were talking to labels ourselves, so that was just like, canned."

[snippet of Dive]

St. Thomas: With Chad leaving the band, Kurt and Krist then enrolled friend, and Mudhoney drummer Dan Peters, but Dan only lasted one gig.

Krist: "Well yeah, it was a great gig too, it was at the Motor Sports Garage in Seattle, there was about 1500 people there… or no, there was a lot more people there. There was a lot of people there, and uh, we just recorded the Sliver single with him, a couple of weeks before, and he looked like he was gonna be in our band, and that was just another case of compromising his style for our band, y'know, he was gonna go out and buy a bigger drum set and y'know you can really hear his style, it's just Mudhoney, y'know, those snare rolls and well you know that's when the future of uh Mudhoney was uncertain, Steve wanted to go to school, and there was all this… it was just like 'are Mudhoney gonna break up?' and Dan saw opportunity to join our band, it was a certain thing, so like yeah, we love Dan as a person and we love his drumming. Well it just goes back to - it was uncertain, and if Dan were to join our band, it would've been certain that Mudhoney was finished, and we didn't want to be responsible for that."

[snippet of Sliver]

St. Thomas: Enter Dave Grohl, not just another drummer.

Kurt: "He's the most well adjusted boy I've ever met. He's totally easy to get along with, everyone loves him, he plays drums better than any drummer I've ever heard. I mean he blows away Jon Bonham, if I had, If y'know if I had the choice of like, bringing Jon Bonham back to life, or to choose of any drummer of any band I could even think of, they wouldn't be better than Dave. He's great."

Krist: "He's great, yeah, he's the backbone of the band."

St. Thomas: Dave was playing in the Washington DC band Scream, when things fell apart, Dave explains…

Dave: "In 1990, we were on tour, doing a tour of America, and we were halfway through the tour in Los Angeles."

Krist: "Their tour made it as far as Los Angeles, and their bass player flew the coup."

"We got stranded there, there wasn't really much to do, and I called my friend Buzz Osbourne, who um, is the singer for The Melvins, and, we'd known each other for awhile"

St. Thomas: Mutual friend of Kurt and Krist…

Dave: "Yeah… he's actually the one who introduced them to each other, and he ended up introducing me to the band. And he just said that, um, they were looking for a drummer, and that they saw Scream play in San Francisco, and they thought I was really good, blah blah blah, no romantic story"

Krist: "We were just blown away by the whole, whole band, especially the drummer, the drummer was really good"

Dave: "I called them up"

Krist: "When he called up we're like, 'Yeah man! Come on up!'"

Dave: "The strangest thing about it was moving up to the North West with no money, and nothing, I didn't, I still only have like, a bag of clothes and my drums. I've bought a bed a couple of months ago, so I have a room with this futon on the floor, but I mean I don't have anything, so I didn't really have to move, and uh, just y'know, moving up leaving your best friends in the world."

Kurt: "Yeah, it was weirder for him probably cause' he's kinda homesick, y'know."

Dave: "I mean I didn't know Krist or Kurt, and I ended up living on Kurt's couch for 8 months."

Kurt: "He just packed up his stuff and came to Washington state."

Dave: "I had every misconception that everyone else had you know?"

St. Thomas: "Sure"

Dave: "Y'know, all I thought Seattle was, was like, flannel shirts and blurry Charles Petersen photos y'know… Wheesssshttt"

Kurt: "We were living in this little cracker box hell hole of an apartment, and I'm quite a slob as you can see."

Dave: "If you had someone you did not know come and move into your apartment, and you were sorta like you felt this responsibility to like, 'OK, we must get along'".

Kurt: "It was kinda hard for two people to live in this really small apartment with one bedroom, and just garbage all over the floor, a lot of corn dog sticks laying around"

Dave: "Whatever, like a month or two, we were out in the backyard shooting stuff with BB guns, and breaking windows at the lottery building across the street. It was fun, it was great, that apartment was great."

Kurt: "It was nice because Dave turns out to be just as much of a slob as me."

[Aneurysm Live]

St. Thomas: That's Aneurysm, the b-side of Smells Like Teen Spirit recorded live, We'll be back with more of Nevermind It's an Interview right after this.

St. Thomas: Welcome back to Nevermind It's An Interview. With Nirvana's line up now set. Kurt, Krist and Dave began rehearsing.

Dave: "We'd been, um, practicing in this really weird practice space. This man built a studio in this like barn in his backyard, but it wasn't a barn, it was this thing that had a studio in it, and then upstairs his brother lived up there, and he was in this really bad like Howard Johnson's lounge band. Everything is carpeted with this like brown shag carpet, and he even had stage lights in there and he had a massive PA that he just did not know how to use, and he'd turn it on, and 'SHHHHHHHHH' there's just this huge hiss, and we were practicing a lot and we were writing a lot of material. We'd write them, they were great for like 2 weeks, 'Oh my God, this is the best song ever' and we'd forget them, and so then we decided 'OK, well we'll start putting them on cassette' so we started recording them onto these boom box things, and we'd lose the cassettes y'know, so I mean we wrote so much material, that we just like, forgot about and every once in a while we'll just like, pull one out and turn it around."

St. Thomas: While the band was writing and rehearsing, the major labels started taking interest.

Krist: "They were wining and dining us, and there were some labels that we were impressed by them, but uh, we thought uh DGC would be the best for us."

St. Thomas: Was one of the main reasons because of Sonic Youth?

Krist: "Yeah, we knew Sonic Youth were happy on there, and we've always loved and respected Sonic Youth, so and there's like all these rumors, that we got like a million dollars, or 700, it was actually, even in Spin Magazine it was printed that, that we got $750, 000, and we didn't even get a quarter of that. What we did was instead of going for the big dough we went for the strong contract."

St. Thomas: Which enables you like more freedom and…

Krist: "More freedom, uh, more percentage points on the record, and there's a lot of clauses in there that are in our favor. Now if our record would've bombed, we woulda kicked ourselves in the butt and said 'Maaan, we should've took the cash!', but were not in it for the money, we were in it for y'know, let's put out a record and let's do this thing right"

[snippet of Lithium]

Kurt: "I really don't know what the definition of selling out is anymore, I guess I really don't care. We haven't compromised, our record label let's us do anything we want we think on the same level, there's nothing that we've done, that could be considered a sell out at all, at least not in my eyes. A lot of people were calling us sell out, they forget that y'know, the Ramones, and the Sex Pistols were on major labels, so was the Clash, and they all, all those bands were trying to become big stars they didn't even deny it. Crap, the Ramones even had a movie out after them, y'know, to help support them."

Krist: "Y'know I think that if you make money and you start voting Republican because you'll get tax breaks, and they're the party of the rich, I mean - that's sold out."

St. Thomas: In early 1991 Nirvana entered the studio with producer Butch Vig.

Krist: "Yeah, we worked with him in the spring time, when we, when we did that demo, that I mentioned earlier. He was just easy to work with laid back, and um, really attentive to what's going on. He works hard, but he doesn't work the band hard."

Dave: "It was about time that the band recorded something, finally, it had been so long."

Kurt: "It was called Sound City, and the board and the room were really old, the board was from the early 70's"

Krist: "All the dinosaurs have recorded there, uh, Fleetwood Mac, uh, Cheap Trick"

Kurt: "There's nothing more disgusting, than the late 80's or early 90's slick sound, y'know, you just can't escape it, no matter how retro and old you try to be, or what kind of old equipment you use, you still can't help but sound new."

Krist: "We got a warm sound outta that place"

Dave: "It'd been two years since Bleach, it'd been awhile, since the band had gone in and recorded a full LP, so it was more of like, 'wow, ok, we're in the studio, let's just get this done! Let's just do it!'"

Krist: "We made the record we wanted to make, we didn't have any, we didn't wanna make the number one record, we didn't want to make some big hit record, it's, y'know that's, it woulda been the same record if it was on Sub Pop."

[Live version of Drain You]

St. Thomas: That's Drain You recorded live. Kurt and Dave talk about writing songs…

Kurt: "It's usually done on an acoustic guitar sitting around in my underwear, just picking out riffs, pieces of songs."

Dave: "Maybe Kurt'll come in with a melody, a guitar riff, and um, show it to us."

Kurt: "We go to practice and then we play the song over, and over and over again."

Dave: "We just jam! There's no real formula."

Kurt: "Krist and Dave have a big part in deciding on how long a song should be, and how many parts it should have, so, I don't like to be considered as the whole song writer, but I do come up with the basis of it. I come up with the singing style during practice and then I write the lyrics usually minutes before we record."

(Referring to Something In The Way)

Kurt: "That song really wasn't even written until a week before we went into the studio. And uh, I knew I wanted cello on it, but after all the music was recorded for it, we'd kinda forgotten about putting a cello on it, and we had one more day in the studio, and we decided 'Oh, geez, we should try to hire a cellist' y'know, and put something in, and we were at a party, and we were asking some of our friends if they had any friends who play cello, and it just so happened that one of our best friends in LA, plays cello, so we took him into the studio on the last day and said 'here, play something', and he came up with something right away, it just fell like dominoes, it was really easy."

[snippet of Something In The Way]

(Referring to Come As You Are)

Kurt: "The lines in the song are really contradictory, y'know, one after another, they're kind of a rebuttal, to each line, and they're just kinda confusing I guess. It's just about people, and uh, what they're expected to act like."

[snippet of Come As You Are]

(Referring to Polly)

Kurt: "Just because I say 'I' in a song doesn't necessarily mean it's me. A lot of people have a problem with that. It's just the way I write usually, take on someone else's personality or character. I'd rather just use someone else's example, because I dunno, my life is kinda boring, and so y'know, I just take stories from things I've read, and off the television, and in stories I've heard, maybe even some friends."

[snippet of Polly]

(Referring to In Bloom)

Kurt: "Obviously I don't like rednecks, I don't like macho men. You know I don't like abusive people, and I guess that's what that song is about it's an attack on them."

[snippet of In Bloom]

(Referring to Smells Like Teen Spirit)

Kurt: "This friend of mine and I were goofing around in my house one night, and we were kinda drunk, and we were writing graffiti all over the walls of my house, and she wrote 'Kurt smells like teen spirit'. And earlier on, we were kinda having this discussion on revolution, and teen revolution and stuff like that, and I took that as a compliment, I thought that she was saying that I was a person who, who could inspire. I just thought that was a nice little title. And it turns out she just meant that I smelt like the deodorant. I didn't even know that deodorant existed, until after the song was written."

Dave: "My father said this to me 'I know why you guys've sold so many records... the video shows a buncha kids trashing a gymnasium!' and I mean that sorta works. Like uh, 'Nirvana! Spokesmen of the lost generation! They're telling you to go out and destroy your local gymnasium!' I don't really, I don't see it that way, I mean, like, I don't want to hold a responsibility of being a spokesman for anything! You know I can barely hold my own! I guess it's flattering, and I guess it's great that it acts like sorta, gives people a feeling of sorta like breaking out, and telling um, anyone and anything just to fuck off!"

[snippet of Smells Like Teen Spirit]

[Live version of On A Plain]

St. Thomas: That's On A Plain recorded live. Kurt talks about the artwork on Nevermind.

Kurt: "One day, Dave and I were sitting around watching a documentary on babies being born underwater .and um, I thought that was a really neat image, so we thought, 'Let's put that on the album cover', and then when we got back a picture of a baby underwater, we thought, I thought it would look nice for a fish hook with a dollar bill on it and so, the image was born."

[snippet of Stay Away]

(Referring to photograph on the back of the Nevermind album cover)

Kurt: "It's just a rubber monkey, that I've had for years, and I took that picture. It was in a Bohemian photography stage y'know, taking a bunch of weird, arty pictures, and that's one of them"

Kurt: "It's a collage that I made many years ago. I, I got these pictures of beef, from a supermarket poster, and cut them out, and made a mountain of beef and then put Dante's people being thrown into hell climbing all over it, and um, that's pretty much, yeah, there's also, if you look real close, there's a picture of Kiss, in the back standing on a slab of beef"

Krist live on-stage: "Since It's Halloween, We thought we'd play the secret song"

St. Thomas: "13 minutes, and 51 seconds after the beginning of track 12, the band put a secret song on the Nevermind CD. This mystery song didn't make the first pressing though. Dave explains…"

Dave: "When we got our first CD, and popped it in, we listened to it, 'Oh, Oh! Let's check to see if that track is there!', and it wasn't there. The reason for it, I think the original reason was because, Something In The Way is sorta like your slower, whatever song it's the last song on the record, most likely to be listened to by like someone who would have a carousel CD player, and so okay, why not like 'screw up their little carousel deal!!!!' I was talking to a friend who works in a record store, and he said uh, a person came in with the CD, and said 'Y'know , this thing's screwed up. After the last song, there's like, this 10 minutes of dead space, then this total noise song' He wanted his money back! And the person at that store said, 'Well, I think maybe it was like a joke of the band, y'know, put it on after,' and he goes 'Well I don't think it's very funny y'know!', and he wanted his money back! It was just like"

[snippet of Endless Nameless]

St. Thomas: In a moment we'll find out what's next for Nirvana, when Nevermind It's An Interview continues.

St. Thomas: Welcome back to Nevermind It's An Interview. Inspiration comes in many forms, and for Nirvana, it came in the form of an obscure Scottish band called the Vaselines.

Krist: "Kurt and I were totally into the Vaselines, I mean they were my favorite band, they still are one of my favorite bands."

Kurt: "Definitely our number one favorite band."

Krist: "We finally got to play with them, they reformed to play with us, when we played Edinburgh, Scotland, in ah, early winter of 1990… So we met Eugene, and kinda kept a rap going with them then we heard Captain America the band, we heard the tape, we were totally blown away."

Kurt: "Yeah, that's his new band, Captain America, they're really good."

Krist: "Eugene's a great songwriter, so, yeah! Captain America's gotta go on tour with us!"

[segment of Molly's Lips]

Krist: "Since our record has done so well, we can open up doors for other bands, from where we come from, like Sonic Youth or Mudhoney, or the Melvins, or L7, or Dinosaur Jr… I can just go on and on and on and on"

Kurt: "I guess the best part would be, being in the position to take other bands, whom you like a lot, on tour with you. It's definitely a nice thing to be able to do. We took Shonen Knife, a three piece all girl Japanese band on tour with us in England, and they've been a favorite of ours for years, and no one really knows who they are in England, or anywhere in Europe. And we've taken the Melvins on tour with us, and in the future, we hope to take Hole, and Jesus Lizard, and a bunch of other bands who we like."

[segment of Stain]

Kurt: "But nothing really exciting happens on tour. People think that the 'rock star life' is so exciting and it's, y'know you play a show, you usually get into the town by the time it's dark, and you sound check, and you don't get to see the city, you play the show and then you leave the next morning. Y'know, you go to the hotel room, and you leave, and do the same thing over and over again. It's kinda boring in a way, I mean still I can't think of anything else I'd rather do, but it's not as exciting as everyone thinks. But it's getting harder for me to jump out of the audience now, because the crowds are bigger and some of the people don't realize that. I don't know what they realize actually, because they're putting their hands in my pockets and trying to steal my money and my wallet, and they're they're hitting me really hard and scratching me, so it's. I dunno, after a while I'm probably not going to be able to do that anymore. And that's too bad, cause' it's a fun little bonding thing to do with the audience."

[live version of School]

St. Thomas: "That's School from the album Bleach recorded live. Nirvana says their next album will be different, perhaps even more like Bleach"

Krist: "Well our next record's gonna be different, it's gonna be way different."

Dave: "Well I wouldn't want to put out two of the same record"

Kurt: "We'd like to record every song differently"

Krist: "These are just ideas that we have. Y'know, I know, I know it's gonna be a, a record of extremities."

Dave: "I think we had our shot at doing the ah, big studio, high-tech Hollywood thing, whatever y'know I mean, that studio to us, was like, pretty like, techno. I dunno, maybe we'll do the next record on 8-track."

Kurt: "That will be recorded on 8-track"

Dave: "You can get more low end frequencies out of an 8-track"

Kurt: "Go back to the Bleach sound"

Dave: "Back to that sorta, more along the lines of Bleach"

Kurt: "Cause' I really liked the production of Bleach, and I, I dunno, I felt kinda weird straying so far away from it"

Dave: "We've got this far, with this record"

Kurt: "There's definitely going to be some more abrasive songs on our next record."

Dave: "Y'know, we're gonna do something, just totally test the limits"

Krist: "Really raw and abrasive, to very uh, pretty and candyish."

Dave: "All the radio listeners, or the MTV watchers, or whoever, just like, really test them, and shove something totally aggro, in their face, and, and see if they can handle that."

[segment of Big Cheese]

Kurt: "Almost anything that's musical, is pop music, as far as I'm concerned. As long as it's good, and it's catchy, it's pop. And y'know, a lot of punk rock is pop. I think the only time that punk rock strayed away from pop, was when hardcore came around, y'know, and there was a lot, y'know, real dirgy stuff also, like the crossover metal thing… and I really can't consider a lot of that music."

Dave: "Y'know, maybe one percent, of the people who are listening to Nevermind, that ever bought Nevermind, maybe not one percent, but I'm just saying that this, um, a small minority of people who are listening to our record now, know about punk rock. A lot of people don't know about punk rock… they think about punk rock and they think of like that Quincy episode where the guy threw the brick off the building, and…"

Kurt: "I guess, I dunno, I just don't agree with old punk rock ethos, of like, you have to starve to be a real artist. It's bullshit."

[segment of Been A Son]

Kurt: "We don't like to think of ourselves as a political band, because y'know, you tend to become too anal, and it becomes ridiculous, If you shove it down people's throats y'know, we just ask people to be aware a little bit, .and I think the songs kinda reflect that."

Krist: "It's just another issue, another topic, like we could talk about racism, we could talk about feminism, nationalism, I don't really subscribe to that way of thought, at all."

Kurt: "There's just so much corruption going on with the government, and the Reagan years have definitely set us back, to where the average teenager feels kinda lost, and there isn't much hope. They're still at least, aware of the mistakes that our parent's generation has made… and I just think that it'll take a little bit of time for kids to start doing the duties that they're supposed to do, which is challenge things, like corruption."

Dave: "The way American's money is budgeted by our government, it leaves nothing to the education system. Teachers are dealing with the future, y'know, teachers are dealing with kids growing up, who are gonna take care of me or you, someday. Just the education system in general, in a lot of places, is really screwed."

Krist: "Y'know, it's great to get information like that, so you can um, form your own ideas. It'd be neat, if like y'know, the 60's had a like, Abby Hoffman, or ah, John Sinclair y'know, Timothy Leary to an extent. And they were spokes people, and they were shaking things up, and nowadays, there's not really anybody."

[album version of Territorial Pissings]

St. Thomas: "Territorial Pissings from the multi platinum release Nevermind. Since it's release, the album has topped the billboard charts, and the first single Smells Like Teen Spirit has become a top-ten hit. The success of Nevermind has taken a lot of people by surprise including the band."

Kurt: "I'll never get over the shock and that's kinda good."

Dave: "It was, um, sort of a really, whatever, organic thing, there wasn't any massive hype"

Kurt: "I mean there is definitely no big million dollar investment, in, in promotion behind this record at all, it's totally organic, and it just happened."

Krist: "Y'know, whatever's happened, is, was surely out of our control, and I'm glad it's happened y'know it's nice to sell that many records, it's nice to turn on people to something different. People tellin' me 'Oh yeah you guy's record. I think you guys are gonna go platinum' and we're like 'Oh man, c'mon, y'know, if we get a gold record outta this, that'll be amazing.'"

Kurt: "It's not my fault. I never wanted the fame involved. That's, That's a totally different story. I think Paul Stanley (of Kiss) once said something' like "Only thing that money gives you is relief of not having to worry about money". Only thing I'd really like to do with it, is to invest in some bands that I like, I, I don't wanna start my own record label cause God, I know I couldn't do that. But I'd like to give some money to some labels who're putting out great music, help in that way. And um, probably gonna buy a house. Hopefully we can have a recording studio too a little 8-track recording studio, so we can make good demos. And those are pretty much the plans and just get some new shoes."

[album version of Smells Like Teen Spirit]

Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain's near-lethal mixture of champagne and tranquilizers last week nearly put him in the dubious pantheon of rock-and-roll fatalities. Fortunately, Cobain emerged from a coma and is, reportedly, expected to recover fully. Fan reaction was immediate, especially at college and "alternative" radio stations, where Nirvana's music had first been championed. WFNX program director Kurt St. Thomas reports that after airing the news from its AP wire, 'FNX was flooded with concerned, often fearful phone calls.

The reaction underlined the fact that from the beginning, Nirvana's connection with their audience has had an emotional depth that goes beyond catchy hooks and noisy guitars. That connection has been personified in the sound of singer/ songwriter Cobain's voice - capable of frayed, melodic murmurs and blood-curdling screams. Like the band's music, Cobain's voice is at once vulnerable and invincible, infinitely tender and pitilessly corrosive.

St. Thomas catches some of the band's ineffable appeal when he recalls first seeing them, at Man Ray, in 1988. "I had been enjoying their Sub Pop album. Bleach, and then the Man Ray show blew me away. It was really loud, and in-your-face, and with all that guitar-smashing it was like punk rock again. For some reason, it was what I needed in my life at that time."

From that moment on, St. Thomas has been a true fan, and he recalls meeting the band backstage for the first time at that Man Ray show: "Krist [then Chris] Novoselic, the bassist, was nice to me, and Kurt was arrogant and not friendly at all. Basically, the feeling seemed to be that I worked at a commercial radio station and therefore he didn't want anything to do with me."

That didn't deter St. Thomas from playing Bleach obsessively. "I had the cassette, and it stayed in my car cassette deck forever. I couldn't get it out. And then there was that long waiting period for the next album."

The "next album" proved to be 1991's Nevermind, the first "platinum punk" disc. WFNX world-premiered the album's lead single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," in August. By the time the band played the station's eighth -birthday-party concert at Axis, in September, it was the top-requested song. The album hit the stores the day of the 'FNX party. In January, the band played Saturday Night Live.

At the 'FNX gig, St. Thomas forged a relationship with the band ("ever since then, Kurt has always been very gracious to me"). By the time of the SNL show, he was "begging" the band's record company, Geffen, to allow him to make a promotional interview CD with the band. Over the course of two days in January, in which the band taped performances for MTV as well as SNL, St. Thomas interviewed all three band members - Cobain, Dave Grohl, and Krist Novoselic. It was eventually released to radio by DGC as Nevermind It's an Interview.

What follows are never-before-published outtakes from those interviews. It comes from a time when the extent of Nirvana's influence on rock and roll and the music industry was just beginning to be realized. Today, Cobain's reflections on drinking, gun violence, and punk rock seem almost quaint, given the band's ensuing superstardom and Cobain and wife Courtney Love's play in the international press as the First Couple of Rock (second only to John and Yoko).

From the interview, one also senses a harmony among the three, rather than merely the voice of Kurt Cobain. St. Thomas points out, "When I looked at the transcript later, what amazed me was how consistent their answers were. I would ask each of them the same question, and they would all answer the same way. I couldn't believe how much on the same wavelength they were."

St. Thomas: So, obviously, you guys are going to make some real money now. But it doesn't seem like you've changed since the last time I saw you.

Kurt Cobain: Yeah, we haven't even changed our clothes.

St. Thomas: Isn't it expensive to keep smashing your guitars?

Cobain: Normally only the neck will break, so I'm able to keep the body for a few more times. We just put necks on the bodies.

St. Thomas: But you never smash any Fender Mustangs, do you?

Cobain: Yes I do. Not on purpose though. I've smashed three Mustangs. They're my favorite guitars, I love them, and they're kind of hard to find, especially in the left-handed version. The last one I broke was in Dallas, and I'm not even going to elaborate on what happened that night. It's too embarrassing. Let's just say alcohol and I don't agree with each other. But I definitely regret breaking that guitar. I tried to baby it as long as I could, but it didn't work.

St. Thomas: So what happens? Something inside makes you feel like this is the moment, and you've got to smash it?

Cobain: Yeah. For the first couple of years that we started smashing our equipment it was out of frustration. because I felt that we weren't playing very good. So I'd get mad and throw a rock-star temper tantrum. Just break things to cool myself off. It's really not a very wise form of rehabilitation, but it worked. Now it's just kind of an excuse to not do an encore. I don't know. It's just kind of a climax. People expect it. Give the kids what they want - plus I have an endorsement now.

St. Thomas: You do? With Fender?

Cobain: Yeah, with Fender. So I can buy guitars at half-price. I can buy $300 guitars now, and that's really nice.

St. Thomas: So that means you can smash even more.

Cobain: Yeah, but it's getting kind of old. So I probably won't do it as much.

St. Thomas: How do you feel after playing Saturday Night Live?

Cobain: I kind of feel like we accomplished something. It was really neat to see how the show is actually put together. We played pretty abrasively tonight. Wrecked our equipment as usual, and I have goofy-colored hair. It was just something that isn't normally on television, so I guess it was kind of an accomplishment.

St. Thomas: Did it feel good to smash your guitar on the SNL stage?

Cobain: Actually it did. It wasn't as sterile as it has been within the last year or two.

St. Thomas: When did you first know you wanted to play this music?

Chris Novoselic: Buzz Osbourne - guitar player for the Melvins - was turning people on to it. I heard it, and it sounded live to me, and then I borrowed the record Generic Flipper. It was like a revelation. It was heavy, it was art. I was affected, and I've never been the same since.

Cobain: I was 15 when I got my first guitar. My mother had just gotten married. This was in the first year of her marriage. My stepfather ran out on her, and she got so irate she took all of my stepfather's guns, various pistols and rifles and stuff, walked down to the river, and threw them in. And then I hired this kid to fish a couple of them out, and I sold them. I got my first guitar with the money. I took lessons for a week, I learned how to play "Back in Black" by AC/DC. It's pretty much the "Louie, Louie" chords, so that's all I needed to know. I never did pay the guitar teacher for that week, either. I still owe him money. But that's it, I just started writing songs on my own. Once you know the power chord, you don't need to know anything else.

St. Thomas: Tell me about Aberdeen and how you started the band.

Novoselic: Aberdeen's basically just small-town America, it's about a hundred miles southwest of Seattle. It's on the Pacific Ocean. Everything revolves around the logging industry there. If the logging stopped, it would be a ghost town.

A little social group came together, and we just kinda hung out and talked about things, and one thing led to another. Kurt did a tape with Dale Crover, from the Melvins, and one of the songs on it was "Spank Through." He turned me on to it, so we scrounged up a drummer and started practicing. We took it very seriously, too. He [Dale Crover] played on our first demo, and a couple of those songs made it over to the Bleach LP: "Floyd the Barber" and "Paper Cuts." We jammed for about a week, put some songs together, and made this tape.

St. Thomas: Why did Chad leave?

Novoselic: Chad Channing wanted to express himself in a way that really didn't gel with the band. Chad really compromised his style to suit the band. I don't think he was happy doing that. It was a good departure. It worked well for everybody.

St. Thomas: Bleach was recorded quickly wasn't it?

Cobain: We had a few hours every night for about six days. There were a few guitar overdubs, but that's about it. Bleach just seemed to be really one-dimensional. All the songs are slow and grungy, and they're tuned down to really low notes. And I screamed a lot. But at the same time that we were recording Bleach, we had a lot more songs, like 'About a Girl." In fact, "Polly" was written at that same time too - it's just that we chose to put the more abrasive songs on the Bleach album. So it really wasn't a matter of evolving within just a year. We've always liked pop music, and always had a few songs like that.

St. Thomas: Why such a delay before Nevermind?

Novoselic: We went to Madison, Wisconsin, to make a record with Butch Vig in the spring of 1990. We laid down about six, seven songs - "Lithium," "In Bloom," "Polly," "Dive," "Stay Away." Right after we finished recording, we went on this eight-week tour of the US starting in Madison. We got as far as New York, and everything was geared up to put out this second Nirvana record. Well, once we got off of that tour, that's when we lost Chad, so there was uncertainty with that. We didn't want to release it. If we wanted to do anything, we wanted to do it with a new drummer. Sub Pop was doing some wheeling and dealing. They were going to sign a licensing deal with a big label, and there were so many variables to consider that it wasn't wise to put out a record at all. We toured the UK, we toured western Canada, and next thing you know, we were talking to labels ourselves.

St. Thomas: What about Dave?

Cobain: Dave Grohl is the most well-adjusted boy I've ever met. Totally easy to get along with. Everyone loves him. He plays drums better than any drummer I've ever heard. He's great.

Novoselic: Yeah, he's great. He's the backbone of the band.

St. Thomas: When did Dave join the band?

Grohl: In 1990 we [Scream] were on tour, doing a tour of America. and we were halfway through the tour in Los Angeles -

Novoselic: Their tour made it as far as Los Angeles and their bass player flew the coop.

Grohl: We got stranded there, and there wasn't really much to do. So I called up my friend Buzz Osbourne - we've known each other for a while. He's actually the one that introduced [Kurt and Chris] to each other, and he ended up introducing me to the band. And he just said that they were looking for a drummer and that they had seen Scream play in San Francisco and thought that I was really good.

Novoselic: We were just blown away by the whole band, especially the drummer. The drummer was really good.

Grohl: The strangest thing about it was moving up to the Northwest with no money - nothing. I mean I still only have a bag of clothes and my drums. I bought a bed a couple months ago, so I have a room with this futon on the floor. But I don't have anything, so I didn't really have to move. Just moving up, leaving your best friends in the entire world. I mean, I didn't know Chris or Kurt, and I ended up living on Kurt's couch for eight months. I had every misconception that everyone else had. I thought Seattle was just flannel shirts and blurry Charles Peterson photos.

Cobain: I lived in his little crackerbox hell-hole of an apartment - and I'm quite a slob, as you can see. It was kind of hard for two people to live in this really small apartment with one bedroom and garbage all over the floor, a lot of corn-dog sticks laying around.

Grohl: In a month or two, we were out in the backyard shooting stuff with BB guns and breaking windows at the Lottery , building across the street. It was fun. That apartment was really great.

Cobain: It was nice, because Dave turns out to be just as much of a slob as me.

Grohl: We had been practicing in this really weird practice space. This man built a studio in his barn in his backyard. He was in this really bad, like, Howard Johnson's lounge band. Everything was carpeted with this brown shag carpet he even had stage lights in there - and he had this massive PA that he just did not know how to use. You'd turn it on, and there'd be this huge hiss. We were practicing a lot; we were writing a lot of material. We'd write songs, they were great for two weeks - "Oh my God, this is the best song ever" - and we'd forget them. So then we said, "Okay, we'll put them on cassette." So we started recording them on this boom-box thing, and we'd lose the cassettes. I mean we wrote so much material that we just forgot about it, and once in a while we'd pull one out and turn it around.

Novoselic: There were some labels we were impressed by, but we thought DGC would be the best for us.

St. Thomas: Was one of the main reasons because of Sonic Youth?

Novoselic: Yeah, we knew Sonic Youth were happy on there, and we always loved and respected Sonic Youth. And there were all these rumors. Even in Spin magazine, it was printed that we got $750,000, and we didn't even get a quarter of that. Instead of going for the big dough, we went for the strong contract. More freedom, more percentage points on the record. There're a lot of clauses that are on there that are in our favor. Now if our record had bombed, we would have kicked ourselves in the butt and said, "Man, we should have took the cash." But we were not in it for the money.

St. Thomas: How did the Nevermind cover come about?

Cobain: One day Dave and I were sitting around watching a documentary about babies being born underwater, and we thought that was a really neat image. Then when we got a picture of a baby underwater, I thought it would look nice with a fish hook and a dollar bill on it. So the image was born.

St. Thomas: What about the back?

It's just a rubber monkey I've had for years, and I took that picture. It's a collage I made many years ago. I got these pictures of beef from a supermarket poster and cut them out and made a mountain of beef. And then put Dante's people being thrown into Hell climbing all over it. That's pretty much it. If you look real close, there's a picture of Kiss in the back, standing on a slab of beef. If Courtney and I have a child, we're thinking of naming it Dante. Dante Conjunctivitis Cobain.

St. Thomas: Why did you pick Butch to produce?

Novoselic: We worked with Butch Vig in the springtime of 1990 when we did that demo I mentioned earlier. He was just easy to work with, laid back, really attentive to what's going on. He works hard, but he doesn't work the band hard.

Grohl: It was about time that the band recorded something.

Cobain: The studio was called Sound City, the board and the room were really old. The board was from the early '70s.

Novoselic: All the dinosaurs have recorded there. Fleetwood Mac, Cheap Trick ....

Cobain: There's nothing more disgusting than the late '80s/early '90s slick sound. You just can't escape it, no matter how retro and old you try to be, no matter what kind of equipment you use, you still can't help but sound new.

Novoselic: We got a warm sound out that place. It had been two years since Bleach. It had been a while since the band had gone in and recorded a full LP, so was more like "Wow, okay, we're in the studio. Let's just get this done, let's just do it." We made the record we wanted to make. We didn't want to make the number one record. We didn't want to make a hit record. It would have been the same record if it was on Sub Pop. It probably wouldn't have sounded as slick. But I hear the song on the radio, next to some other total mainstream music, and it sounds a lot rawer. That's what we wanted to do. It was like a fine line. It's a major-label release, but make it raw enough to where we didn't totally compromise.

Grohl: There wasn't really any massive analyzing. It was like, let's put down the drums and bass, and then put down the guitar, and then eventually get to the vocals. Just that kind of approach. Like, okay, let's just get it done. We didn't spend six months and five million dollars on it. We tried to hash it out as quickly as possible.

St. Thomas: There are a lot of gun references on Nevermind. I'm thinking of "Come as You Are," "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and "In Bloom."

Cobain: I went shooting with my friend Dylan a few months ago. God, it was weird because I'd never shot a gun before, and it reminded me of how totally violent those things are. They could rip right through you. I guess I'm opposed to guns, just because they're a violent tool. But then, so are butter knives. I'm not one of those anti-NRA people. Obviously, I don't like rednecks. I don't like macho men. I don't like abusive people. I guess that's what that song ["In Bloom"] is about. It's an attack on them.

St. Thomas: What about "Smells Like Teen Spirit"?

Cobain: This friend of mine and I were goofing around in my house one night. We were kinda drunk, and we were writing graffiti all over the walls of my house. She wrote, "Kurt smells like Teen Spirit." And earlier on we were kinda having this discussion on teen revolution and stuff like that. So I took that as a compliment. I thought she was saying I was a person who could inspire. I thought it was a nice little title. And it turns out she just meant that I smelled like the deodorant. I didn't even know that deodorant existed until after the song was written.

Grohl: My father says this to me: "I know why you guys have sold so many records. The video shows a bunch of kids trashing a gymnasium." And I mean, that sort of works. "Nirvana: spokesmen of the Lost Generation. They're telling you to go out and destroy your local gymnasium." I don't see it that way. I don't want the responsibility of being a spokesman for anything. I can barely hold my own. I guess it's flattering. And I guess it's great that it actually gives people a feeling of breaking out and telling anyone and anything just to fuck off.

St. Thomas: What about "Come as You Are"?

Cobain: The lines in the song are really contradictory. One after another, they're kind of a rebuttal of each line. It's kind of confusing, I guess. It's just about people and what they're expected to act like.

St. Thomas: And "Something in the Way"?

Cobain: That song wasn't even written until a week before we went into the studio. And I knew I wanted cello on it, but after all the music was recorded for it we had kind of forgotten about putting cello on it. We had one more day in the studio and we decided, "Oh geez, we should try to hire a cellist, and put something in." We were at a party, and we were asking some of our friends if they had any friends who played cello. And it just so happened one of our best friends in LA plays cello. He came up with something right away. It just fell like dominoes. He couldn't play the notes perfectly, so we had to run it through the computer and bend the notes, the pitch of it, to make it sound okay.

St. Thomas: Where did the so-called hidden track “Endless, Nameless" come from?

Grohl: There were songs on the record, and then we had this eight-minute-long noise thing.

St. Thomas: But it wasn't on the first pressing.

Grohl: No, because it kinda got screwed up, but we made sure it was on the rest of the pressings.

St. Thomas: Did you do it on purpose?

Grohl: No! Everyone gets into this anal collector trip. When we got our first CD and popped it in, we listened to it, and the track wasn't there. The reason for it, the original reason, was because "Something in the Way" is sort of the slower song, the last song on the record, most likely to be listened to by someone who would have a carousel CD player. So, why not screw up their little carousel deal? I was talking to a friend who works in a record store, and he said someone came in with the CD and said, "This CD is screwed up. After the last song, there's like 10 minutes of dead space, and then this total noise song." And he wanted his money back. And the person at the store said, "I think maybe it was the joke of the band." And the guy said, "Well I don't think it's very funny!" And he wanted his money back! [Laughs.] "This CD's busted!" It's a bonus track, dude!

Novoselic: Our next record's gonna be different, it's gonna be way different.

Grohl: Well, I wouldn't want to put out two of the same record.

Cobain: We'd like to record every song differently.

Novoselic: These are just ideas that we have. I know it's gonna be a record of extremities.

Grohl: I think we had our shot at doing the big-studio, high-tech, Hollywood thing. That studio, to us, was pretty techno. Maybe we'll do the next record on eight-track. You can get more low-end frequencies out of an eight-track.

Cobain: We could go back to the Bleach sound. I really liked the production of Bleach, and I felt weird straying so far away from it. There's definitely gonna be some more-abrasive songs on the next record.

Grohl: We're gonna do something just to totally test the limits. For all the radio listeners or the MTV watchers, just like really test them and shove something totally aggro in their faces and see if they can handle that.

St. Thomas: How about the album title, Nevermind?

Cobain: I really don't know. There's really no story behind it, I just kinda thought it had a nice ring to it. Just like the name of the band, too, there's no amazing story behind that either. It just sort of sounded nice.

Novoselic: There's various definitions, there's the textbook, Buddhist definition: freedom from pain and suffering and the external world. The way I see it, Nirvana is just a name, a name for our band.

St. Thomas: A lot of people say you've sold out by going to a major lobe!. How do you feel about that?

Cobain: I really don't know what the definition of selling out is anymore. I guess I really don't care. We haven't compromised - our record label lets us do anything we want. We think on the same level. There's nothing we've done that could be considered a sellout at all. At least not in my eyes. A lot of people who are calling us sellouts are forgetting that the Ramones and the Sex Pistols were on major labels. So were the Clash. And all those bands were trying to become big stars. They didn't even deny it. Crap, the Ramones had a movie out after them, to help support them.

Novoselic: I think if you make money and you start voting Republican because you'll get tax breaks and they're the party of the rich, I mean that's sold out.

St. Thomas: Let's talk about the war, because I know that's an important topic with you.

Cobain: We don't like to think of ourselves as a political band, because you tend to become too anal and it becomes ridiculous if you shove it down people's throats. We just ask people to be aware a little bit, and I think the songs kind of reflect that.

Novoselic: It's just another issue, another topic. I mean, we could talk about racism, we could talk about feminism.

Cobain: There's just so much corruption going on with the government. And the Reagan years have definitely set us back to where the average teenager feels kind of lost. There isn't much hope.

Grohl: The way American's money is budgeted by our government, it leaves nothing to the education system. Teachers are dealing with the future, teachers are dealing with kids growing up who are gonna take care of me, or you, someday. Just the education system in general in a lot of places is really screwed.

Novoselic: The '60s had, like, Abby Hoffman or John Sinclair, Timothy Leary to a certain extent. And they were spokespeople, they were shaking things up. Nowadays there's not really anybody.

St. Thomas: Did you ever think the record would be this big?

Grohl: Nobody did, man. Nobody did. Like nobody.

Cobain: Absolutely not. No. Of course not. I'll never get over the shock. And that's kinda good.

Grohl: It was sort of a really organic thing. There wasn't any massive hype.

Cobain: There was definitely no big million-dollar investment in promotion behind this record at all. It's totally organic. It just happened.

Novoselic: Whatever happened was surely out of our control. And I'm glad it's happened. It's nice to sell that many records.

Cobain: It's not my fault. I never wanted the fame involved. That's a totally different story. I think Paul Stanley said something like, "The only thing money gives you is relief from not having to worry about money." The only thing I'd really like to do with it is invest in some bands that I like. I don't want to start my own record label. 'cause God, I know I couldn't do that. But I'd like to give some money to some labels that are putting out great music, help in that way. Probably gonna buy a house. Hopefully we can have a recording studio, too, a little eight-track recording studio, so we can make good demos. Those are pretty much the plans. I'm gonna get some new shoes.

St. Thomas: You combine punk and pop elements in your songwriting.

Cobain: Almost anything that's musical is pop music, as far as I'm concerned. As long as it's good and it's catchy, it's pop. A lot of punk rock is pop. I think the only time punk rock strayed from pop was when hardcore came around, and there was some dirge-y stuff also, like the crossover metal thing.

Grohl: Maybe one percent of the people who listened to Nevermind, or who bought Nevermind, a small minority of the people who are listening to our record now, know about punk rock. A lot of people don't know about punk rock. They think of punk rock and they think of that Quincy episode where the guy threw that brick off the building.

Cobain: I don't really agree with the punk-rock ethos of, like, you have to starve to be a real artist. It's bullshit. I really don't have much sympathy for people who would buy the record - buy anyone's record - just because it's popular and they think that they should be hip and cool. Those kind of people I could do without.

St. Thomas: How do you write songs?

Cobain: It's usually done on an acoustic guitar sitting around in my underwear picking out riffs, pieces of songs.

Grohl: Maybe Kurt will come in with a melody, a guitar riff, and show it to us.

Cobain: We go to practice, and then we play the song over and over and over again.

Grohl: We just jam, there's no real formula.

Cobain: Chris and Dave have a big part in deciding how long a song should be and how many parts it should have. I don't like to be thought of as the whole songwriter, but I do come up with the basis of it. I come up with the singing style during practice, and then I write the lyrics usually minutes before we record.

Grohl: I'm comfortable with what Kurt does, and I'm comfortable with what Chris does, and I think everybody is comfortable with what everybody else is doing, so we just sort of do it. And it happens.

Novoselic: Kurt and I were totally into the Vaselines. They were my favorite band, they're still one of my favorite bands.

Cobain: Definitely our number-one favorite band.

Novoselic: We finally got to play with them, they reformed to play with us when we played Edinburgh, Scotland, in early winter of 1990. So we met Eugene Kelly and kind of kept a rap going with him. Then we heard Captain America [the band that eventually became Eugenius]. We heard the tape, and we were totally blown away.

Cobain: That's his new band, Captain America. They're really good.

Novoselic: Eugene is a great songwriter. So it was kinda cool. Since our record has done so well, we can open up doors for other bands from where we come from - like Sonic Youth or Mudhoney or the Melvins or L7 or Dinosaur Jr. I could just go on and on.

St. Thomas: What do you enjoy most about success?

Cobain: I guess the best part would be being in the position to take other bands who you like a lot on tour with you. It's definitely a nice thing to be able to do. We took Shonen Knife, a three-piece all-girl Japanese band, on tour with us in England. They've been favorites of ours for years, and no one really knows who they are in England or anywhere in Europe. And we've taken the Melvins on tour with us, and in the future we hope to take Hole and Jesus Lizard and a bunch of other bands we like.

COBAIN SPEAKS

The night Nirvana first played Saturday Night Live, Kurt Cobain, the driving force behind Nirvana. also spoke with WFNX's Kurt St. Thomas alone - about fame, youth, and Leave It to Beaver.

• On Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Andy Warhol, and her Scum Manifesto:

It's an amusing little book. I laughed really hard when I read it. It's really cool. I was almost embarrassed to realize that I agree with a lot of it. Basically, it's just women taking over the world. And men agreeing to go out with a bow of grace. They should all be assassinated, and those who agree with the ideals of this little manifesto should be in concentration camps and fed bread and water. Whatever. I don't remember the specifics. She's willing to let the men who agree with it survive but then just die out like the dinosaurs. The book kind of inspired "Territorial Pissings." That song's about. . . I guess you could call it an ode to women. My love and respect for them - and how they're mistreated.

• On autographs:

Autographs are really annoying. I've never understood why anyone would want an autograph. There are a lot of people whom I admire, you know? Look up to, respect, and all that. But I never wanted their autograph. If I ever wanted to say anything to them, I thought I'd just walk up and say hi. And if I didn't have anything interesting to say. I wouldn't say anything to them. But I've just never had any desire to have an autograph by anybody.

• On Evl Knievel:

Like when I was a kid, Evel Knievel was a real big thing for me, but I never really wanted his autograph. So I just don't understand it. That was the first thing that I wanted to be when I was a kid - a stunt man. I took all the bedding out of our house and put it on the deck. I'd get up on top of the roof and would jump off. I took a thin piece of metal one time and duct-taped it to my chest. Then I put a bunch of firecrackers on it and lit them on fire.

• On his favorite bands:

The Pixies, the Breeders, the Melvins, Teenage Fan Club, Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, Dinosaur Jr., Bikini Kill, Witchiepoo - I know I'm forgetting some. Captain America, Shonen Knife, Jad Fair, lots of stuff. I mean, there's still a good handful of bands that are great. I hope we can help out in some way, exploiting them. [Laughs.] Exposing them. That's the problem with independent music. You can't find it half the time. That's why we decided to go to a major. We got tired of kids coming up to us at concerts saying, "We can't find your record anywhere."

• On Hollywood:

I'd like to get into movies. That would be fun. It's not too easy for a musician to become an actor. I don't want to be like Rick Springfield. I like movies. Paris, Texas, Rear Window, the Hitchcock movie. I used to like them a lot better when I was young. I can't think of any more movies that I like. I'm usually disappointed by them. I can't wait to see Naked Lunch. Yeah there's a lot of TV I like, too. Not now, not new TV, except for the A&E channel and documentaries and stuff. Oh. The Simpsons are good. I didn't really get into Twin Peaks. I can't think of anything new, but old, dorky sitcoms like The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. I like Andy Griffith, Leave it to Beaver. Leave It to Beaver is probably the most classic TV show ever. There's just something so wholesome about it.

• On kids today:

I think that teenagers have evolved a bit. I think the average 15-year-old is more intelligent than a 15-year-old 10 years ago. It just seems like it. I don't have any proof, and I don't really have any reason for that. I just sense it. I guess if I could say something really clichéd and punk-rock to kids, I'd say start a band. Especially girls - they should start bands. There aren't enough girl musicians.

Kurt St. Thomas: How do you feel after playing Saturday Night Live tonight?

Kurt Cobain: Hmm, I don't know. It kind of felt like we accomplished something. It was really neat to see how the show is actually put together and how stressful it is for live television to be put together. And we played pretty abrasively tonight, you know, wrecked our equipment as usual and I have goofy colored hair and it was just something that isn't normally on television. So I guess it was, you know, I think of it as kind of an accomplishment.

KST: Did it feel good to smash your guitar on stage tonight?

KC: Actually, it did. It wasn't as sterile as it has been for the last year or two.

Kurt Cobain: Yeah, there's a lot of TV I like. Not now, not new TV. I can't think of anything, except for the A&E channel- Arts and Entertainment channel, you know, documentaries and stuff. But, oh, The Simpsons are good. I didn't really get into Twin Peaks. But, um, I can't think of anything new. But, you know, old dorky sitcoms like The Brady Bunch and Partridge Family, they're classics! Um, I like Leave It to Beaver, I like Andy Griffith. Leave It to Beaver is probably the most classic TV show ever. There's just something so wholesome about it; it's just, it's a well-written show, it's really good.

Kurt St. Thomas: We're just about out of tape. Anything you want to mention?

KC: No, not really. Um, I guess I could say something really cliché in punk rock to kids.

KST: Go for it.

KC: Uh, start a band! Especially girls - they should start bands. There aren't enough girl musicians.

LIVE NIRVANA INTERVIEW ARCHIVE January 10–11, 1992 - New York, NY, US

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