Nirvana chat with Charles Cross
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Most nonfiction books are the result of conversations between authors, agents, and editors, and this one was no different. My editor at Harper Collins asked me if there was anything else to say about Kurt Cobain, and at first I said no, because my previous biography had been complete. But as we began to talk about the impact he had on various aspects of culture, it seemed there was more to say. And in this instance, telling it in the first person allowed me to address points I couldn’t in the previous biography. I looked at several different ways he impacted culture, including music, fashion, addiction, suicide, and how Seattle and Aberdeen think of themselves.
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I love that idea, the background for the book. And since you and I lived through the "grunge era" here in Seattle, I wonder if in hindsight you have some sense of what it was about the Northwest cultural scene in the late '80s that nurtured or encouraged a band like Nirvana.
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I think people forget that Nirvana, and "Grunge" was more of a reaction, than a "movement." We had a horrible music scene here in the mid-80s with few places for bands to play. Consequently they started to imagine a world outside of the club scene here, which was mostly cover bands. They made records. The truth is that is was because we had such a lame club scene, that many of the Sub Pop bands started to make their own style, in weird locales, like the Ditto Tavern, which held 60 people and had five manual typewriters for poets. That's where Grunge was born (or at least one of the places).
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Yes, that makes perfect sense. The scene was pretty lame. Looking back, it feels like Nirvana and the whole scene that erupted was like a fulcrum between Old Seattle and New Seattle. Corporations like Microsoft and Starbucks were ushering in an era when Seattle would no longer be invisible to the rest of the country, but that sense of isolation that would soon disappear seemed to help nurture the bands here. Does that make sense to you?
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Bosnian Rape Victim's Benefit at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. I drove all the way down there just to see that. It was when Kurt was falling apart in a way and yet still came on and did these tremendously powerful songs that felt so alive. I wasn't even officially on the list or anything; bought a scalped ticket outside the hall since I'd only decided to go early that morning.
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Nirvana - Where did you sleep last night - Unplugged in new york
by Brian Gallagher via YouTube 4/4/2014 7:15:22 PM -
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Mudhoney in the early days were also a much better live band. Also Mudhoney had the pedigree that Nirvana never had -- the connections with other bands that had gotten attention in Seattle. Nirvana were considered hicks in contrast (and they were).
Finally, "Touch Me I'm Sick" is just a monster song. -
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This morning John Richards followed the Beatles' "If I Fell" with Nirvana's "Come As You Are," which I thought was brilliant, just in terms of the timbre of the voices. But it made me wonder, will Nirvana's songs live as long as the Beatles songbook? They' endured more than 20 years, are they for all time?
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I was talking to a colleague yesterday about an early Nirvana show. It was a bar gig Nirvana did in Fairhaven/Bellingham, in which Kurt got really drunk, played really, really loud. The bar owner (a friend of my colleague) eventually pulled the plug on the band, kicked them out and didn't pay them. Have you heard that story Mr Cross?
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