LIVE NIRVANA INTERVIEW ARCHIVE June 26, 1992 - Roskilde, DK
Personnel
- Interviewer(s)
- Kenan Seeberg
- Interviewee(s)
- Kurt Cobain
- Krist Novoselic
- Dave Grohl
Sources
| Publisher | Title | Transcript |
|---|---|---|
| Danmarks Radio | TBC | Yes |
| SVT Malmö | Roskilde Festivalen 1992 | Yes |
Transcript
Dave Grohl: Good morning.
Kurt Cobain: Good morning.
Grohl: Good morning to you.
Kenan Seeberg: Is it morning for you now? Hello, my name is Kenan.
Cobain: Hi Kenan, I'm Kurt.
Seeberg: Hello. Hi Kurt. I hardly recognized you, because you had a haircut since I've seen you last.
Cobain: Yeah.
Seeberg: Yeah.
Cobain: Yeah, it's summertime. I like to shed my skin in the summer.
Seeberg: Why don't you shave it all then?
Cobain: I don't know. I really don't know. I'm not into sculpting my head, like a, like a hedge.
Grohl: Right Said Fred.
Cobain: Right Said Fred.
Seeberg: [Laughing] So you've been sleeping until now?
Cobain: I've slept all day. Yeah, I was, I was up very late last night, with my friend Roddy Buttom from Faith No More. He was showing me some new keyboard maneuvers.
[Lithium]
Cobain: Yeah, most people don't usually sit down and have a discussion on how their band should be before they start playing. They usually get together with what, whatever equipment they can muster up and, eh, play. And whatever comes out, comes out, you know. You can't, ehm, decide on exactly what you want to be before you play. It's just really a natural thing.
Seeberg: So when you, when you write a song. Do you write a song on an acoustic guitar or a piano, or do you meet in the, eh, eh, rehearsal room?
Cobain: Sometimes we write it on an acoustic guitar, sometimes we write it on a flute or an electric guitar. It doesn't really matter. Any instrument that's laying around.
Seeberg: So do you do it together or separate?
Cobain: Ehm, I come up with, eh, the basic idea of the song usually. You know, the guitar part and then we get together and, eh, play it over and over again. Decide on how long it should be played and all that stuff. Yeah.
Seeberg: And what about the lyrics then?
Cobain: I usually come up with all the lyrics.
Seeberg: Do you do that before or after the music?
Cobain: What?
Seeberg: Do you do it before or after the music?
Cobain: Usually after.
Seeberg: After the music?
Cobain: Yeah.
[On A Plain]
Cobain: We were the chosen rejects. We, we chose not to be part of the popular crowd. I mean, I, I can remember, ehm, a lot of times the more popular people, the jock-type of people, who were into sports and, ehm, staying clean and brushing their teeth all the time, and doing what their parents were su…, you know, asking them to do. Eh, they always asked me if I wanted to join their little club tonight – I decided not to, you know. I would rather hang out with the people who didn't get picked for the baseball team, you know, and who smoked cigarettes and, ehm, listened to rock 'n' roll music, you know?
Chris Novoselic: Skip class, you know?
Cobain: Yeah.
Seeberg: Why did you go to school anyway, at, at, at the first time?
Cobain: Because…
Novoselic: We had to.
Grohl: For lunch.
Cobain: Yeah, the hot lunch.
[Sliver]
Novoselic: … Just kinda a little scene. Just a, all the people who just kinda didn't fit in, and liked punk rock music, kinda congregated. And we just have our parties, and we wore, like, thrift store clothes and, and, and we were just doing our own thing, and that's when we discovered punk rock, and, and that's when I discovered that, there's, like, nothing wrong with me. It was the majority of the people in town, there's something wrong with them. They were, like, really close-minded. And, and, and I just did, just did not, could not get along with them, you know? They were just so rigid in their perspective and just had, just totally close minds. It was stuffy. Suffocate.
Seeberg: So all three of you. All three of you are, are the ones who, eh, the other kids don't want, didn't want to play with?
Novoselic: I donapost… Yeah, that's, that's, well…
Seeberg: Or it's forbidden by the parents, or…
Cobain: Well, we didn't want to play with those kids either. You know?
Novoselic: Yeah.
Cobain: Really. We could have if we wanted to. If we wanted to, you know, stay well-groomed, but…
Novoselic: But it was impossible. It was impossible, because we had a different perspective than them. And a lot of times we would meet somebody, and, like, try to turn them on to, like, ‘hey man, here's, this is the Dead Kennedys’, or ‘this is Black Flag.’ And they were just like, ‘ew, you're weird.’ Or they, they were so close-minded, they… we were just dismissed as freaks, you know?
[Lithium]
© Kenan Seeberg, 1992
Transcript
Dave Grohl: Good morning.
Kurt Cobain: Good morning.
Grohl: Good morning to you.
Kenan Seeberg: Is it morning for you now? Hello, my name is Kenan.
Cobain: Hi Kenan, I'm Kurt.
Seeberg: Hello. Hi Kurt. I hardly recognized you, because you had a haircut since I've seen you last.
Cobain: Yeah.
Seeberg: Yeah.
Cobain: Yeah, it's summertime. I like to shed my skin in the summer.
Seeberg: It's a rumor in- in Europe that Kurt from Nirvana is dead.
Cobain: Yep! I am… again. Dead, pregnant, on- on heroin… I'm a hermaphrodite, as well.
Seeberg: [Laughs] What about the heroin rumor? You mentioned it yourself, Kurt.
Cobain: No, thank you. I'd rather have Bayer aspirin.
Seeberg: Aspirin?
Cobain: Yeah.
Seeberg: You prefer aspirin?
Cobain: Yes.
Seeberg: OK.
Cobain: Aspirin and Evian water.
Man on-stage addressing the audience: [Shouts] 2-0!
Audience: [Cheers]
Seeberg: There's some noise…
Grohl: What is that guy…?
Seeberg: I don't know, it's the next band going on to play.
Grohl: That would be us.
Cobain: Oh, would it?
Seeberg: That'll be you?
Grohl: Yeah.
Seeberg: I have to tell the audience in Danish.
Grohl: OK.
Seeberg: Øhh, det her interview bliver faktisk lavet lige efter, vi har vundet Europamesterskabet i fodbold, og det…det er jo fantastisk, men øhh, og det er sikkert derfor, folk jubler derude, for øhm, Nirvana er det næste band, der skal spille på den store scene, og jeg forsøger at gennemføre et interview med Nirvana, der ikke er særlig meget på fodbold, men det må jeg indrømme, det er jeg. Alligevel, så…
Seeberg: I'd like to ask you, how is it to be like the next- the- "the next big thing"? You've been hailed like, "the saving of- of rock 'n' roll" and all that…
Cobain: Woo!
Seeberg: I mean, you must have noticed that?
Grohl: Not really. I mean, we don't consider ourselves any big deal, or any big threat.
Cobain: We're no better than Extreme. That was a band that played on the bill today.
Grohl: There you go!
Seeberg: What do you think about Heavy Metal music? You've- you've done…
Grohl: Well, I think what you were saying about how some people, uh, consider our music – like, we have Heavy Metal aspects, as well as Pop and- and Punk. I think that- that our interpretation of Heavy Metal is just sort of like sexist, macho, um… shitty, just Cock-Rock.
Novoselic: The guitar sound is…
Cobain: Yeah, it's too clean.
Novoselic: Kinda strutting, "gank gank gank gank" guitar sound, I don't really like that.
Seeberg: When you started out playing, were you thinking consciously about what kind of music you were playing?
Cobain: No, no.
Novoselic: I don't know if we could play any other kind of music.
Grohl: I don't know.
Seeberg: You're playing very loud and very noisy and very aggressive, in a Punk vein, but did you think about "we have to play loud, we have to be aggressive" or- I mean…
Novoselic: It kind of came naturally, really. There was no other way to play.
Cobain: Yeah, most people don't usually sit down and have a discussion on how their band should be before they start playing. They usually get together with what- whatever equipment they can muster up and, uh, play. And whatever comes out, comes out, you know? You can't, um, decide on exactly what you want to be before you play. It's just really a natural thing.
Seeberg: You were- you were the bad guys in High School, or the rejects, or…?
Cobain: We were the chosen rejects. We- we chose not to be part of the popular crowd. I mean, I- I can remember, um, a lot of times the more popular people, the jock-type of people, who were into sports and, um, staying clean and brushing their teeth all the time, and doing what their parents were su-, you know, asking them to do. Uh, they always asked me if I wanted to join their little club tonight – I decided not to, you know. I would rather hang out with the people who didn't get picked for the baseball team, you know, and who smoked cigarettes and, um, listened to rock 'n' roll music, you know?
© Kenan Seeberg, 1992