1991 CLASS REUNION: Kurt Cobain & Nirvana
Sep 27, 2011
This week marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Nevermind. In April, our writer traveled from Aberdeen to Seattle journey for a series of Nirvana festivities.
BY GILLIAN G. GAAR
In Michael Azerrad's Come As You Are: The Story Of Nirvana, the author recounts Dave Grohl's arrival at Sea-Tac Airport on September 21, 1990 to audition for Nirvana, noting how Grohl attempted to break the ice with his prospective bandmate, Kurt Cobain, by offering him an apple. "No thanks," Cobain replied. "It'll make my teeth bleed."
It's an innocuous enough anecdote. But for some reason writers can't resist changing it in the retelling. In Mojo Classic's 2006 special "Nirvana & The Story Of Grunge," the meeting is said to have taken place at "Seattle Sea-Tac," with Cobain "cryptically" responding, "It will make my teeth bleed" to Grohl's offer (notice also the absence of the contraction). In the version of the story that appears in the 2007 Foo Fighters edition of Kerrang! Legends, the meeting now takes place at "Seattle's Sea-Tac Club," and, more dramatically, has Cobain "sneering" his response.
Aside from the lack of basic fact checking (there is no Sea-Tac club in Seattle; Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is commonly abbreviated as "Sea-Tac"), it's surprising that the original story was changed at all, as it's reported very straight forwardly in Azerrad's book. This is how myths are created, by changing a story little by little over the years, until its relation to the truth is negligible. Once writing replaced oral tradition, you could actually track the changes as they happened, and the arrival of mass communication only speeded up the process. Nowadays I'm no longer surprised at the wealth in inaccuracies in stories. I'm more surprised that they get anything right at all.
And when dealing with a major act like Nirvana, the temptation to mythologize, and thus stamp a little bit of yourself into the story, is irresistible. And then it's only a small step to start grafting on elements that weren't there to begin with, in order to take the story in the direction the writer wants it to go. When Rolling Stone wrote that Cobain sang "Pain" in the chorus of the last recorded Nirvana song, "You Know You're Right," it neatly tied in to the view of him as the doomed, tortured artist. But in fact, as the isolated vocal track used in the game Guitar Hero shows, he wasn't making such a grandiose statement at all. He was simply singing "Hey."
Nirvana's story is a constantly evolving one, with writers adding to and broadening it, first in articles, then in books. And as the Nirvana era recedes further and further into the past, retelling the story remains the only way to attach yourself to it. Perhaps that's the real reason for non-fiction writing; it's a chance to make a grab for a little reflected glory while hopefully creating some glory of your own.
And 2011 is set to be a big year for Nirvana stories, not least because it's the 20th anniversary of the release of Nevermind. This past April 5, the 17th anniversary of Cobain's death, a commemorative statue was unveiled in his hometown of Aberdeen, an acknowledgement that the town is slowly coming to terms with its connection to Cobain. And on April 16, the retrospective exhibit Nirvana: Taking Punk To The Masses opened at Seattle's Experience Music Project museum, endeavoring to cut through the myth and simply tell the Nirvana story through a wealth of artifacts and oral histories.
"Everybody knows that rock star mythologized story of Nirvana, and that certainly has a big presence in the exhibit," says Jacob McMurray, the senior curator at EMP who put together the Nirvana exhibit (and edited the accompanying book, Taking Punk To The Masses: From Nowhere To Nevermind, just published by Fantagraphics). "I mean, there are giant beautiful mythologized Charles Peterson murals and broken guitars and stuff like that. But on the other side, there's lots of really candid shots of them goofing around. I feel like for a lot of the Nirvana story, it's become something that has been distilled down into tragedy and sadness and drug addiction. And certainly that was a part of it, but what was exciting for me was finding all of these examples where they're just being goofballs. My goal for the exhibition wasn't to tell Kurt's story, it was to tell the story of the band. Of which Kurt was a part, but also to tell that Nirvana story within this wider context, of the broad evolution of punk rock."
For me, looking back on Nirvana's history also means reliving much of my own. Nirvana wasn't just part of my life, they were part of my work as well. Covering them was part of my job as a staff member at Seattle music magazine The Rocket during the years that saw the rise and fall of "grunge" (a word I first used in my review of Bleach for The Rocket's July 1989 issue, and which I now can't write without putting in quotes as a gesture of irony). I've since written articles about the band for numerous magazines, authored various books about them, and - full disclosure - served as "Project Consultant" on the 2004 box set With The Lights Out. (A platinum record award hangs on the wall for my efforts.)
So the story has a strong personal resonance for me. I've been involved with this band for half of my life, watching as my own version of the story gets disseminated and rewritten. And out of all the writing I've done, perhaps my most valuable contributions to Nirvana's history were purely factual: listing the songs recorded at the band's first professional demo session in 1988 in their proper order; presenting the correct setlists for the 1993 MTV "Live And Loud" show and Nirvana's final show on March 1, 1994; covering all the songs recorded at the band's last recording session in January 1994. You can debate the merits of one Nirvana history over another, but a verifiable fact stands for all time.
And I'm still drawn back to the story, still looking for ways to go over it again (on April 8, 1994, I was writing a Cobain memorial piece for The Rocket; on this same day 17 years later, I'm still writing about him). Which was how I found myself in heading to Aberdeen on April 5 to witness the statue unveiling in the company of Aaron Burckhard, Nirvana's first drummer.
***
When the idea of a commemorative statue to Cobain was first mooted in the wake of his death, there were mutterings of discontent from Aberdeen's residents, skeptical about any effort to honor an admitted drug user, not to mention their resentment at Cobain's occasional disparaging comments about the place. And even those close to Cobain felt uncomfortable; the band's bassist, Krist Novoselic, has always expressed discomfort with the "idolatry" aspect of his friend's death, writing, "The deity part is not my concern; that's for people who need the mystique" in his memoir From Grunge To Government: Let's Fix This Broken Democracy!.
But enough time has passed, and enough tourists have trickled in to Aberdeen in search of Cobain, that such rigid feelings are beginning to soften.
The "Welcome To Aberdeen" sign at the town's east entrance has been embellished with a second sign reading "Come As You Are" in reference to the Nirvana song on Nevermind (though a TV interview shown on April 5 revealed that not all of Aberdeen's residents were aware of the connection). [Ed. note: view our Aberdeen and related images photo gallery here.] Once they arrive, fans often head first to the Young Street Bridge, a site that provided the inspiration for the song "Something In The Way." Typically, the nature of that hangout has become a subject for debate, due to the fact that Cobain originally told Azerrad, for a Rolling Stone story, that he "lived" under the bridge. Though he scaled that story back to merely sleeping under the bridge "sometimes" in Come As You Are, some insist Cobain couldn't have slept there at all because the tide rises too high. It doesn't; you can see by the water line on the bridge supports that there would still be plenty of dry ground left at high tide. A sign claiming that some of Cobain's ashes were scattered here will also surely become a subject for debate. But all accounts do agree it was one of his hangouts, and given that both his childhood home, and the house where he first jammed with the band that would become Nirvana are within a few blocks of the site, he no doubt passed over and under the bridge dozens of times.
When I first went underneath the bridge in 1994, it was a lot less accessible; you had to skitter down a narrow path on the side, hoping you wouldn't tumble into the murky water of the Wishkah River. Up where the bridge supports meet the ground, visitors leave graffiti, while the less respectful leave trash (beer cans are especially prevalent). The area immediately adjacent to the bridge was rightly called an "eyesore" by Tori Kovach, who lives next door. "I just couldn't bear to keep looking at this pile of crap over here, which it was," says Kovach. "Brambles this tall, and it was strewn with garbage from decades of abuse. And I just made up my mind one day that I was going to start working on it. That was five, six years ago."
Once the area was cleared of brambles and trash, further refurbishments were made, a result of Kovach's curiosity about the number of people he saw trekking to the bridge. "As I worked on this site, it became apparent to me that something was special here," he says. "I'd never heard of Kurt. Never heard of his music. But I'd seen the graffiti under the bridge and I wondered, ‘Who was this guy?' I didn't really like his music, not until I heard his Unplugged album. And that turned me on to who he was. And then as I studied the man and learned about his family life, learned more about him, I just figured, why not make a park dedicated to him? That'll be my mission."
And so, visitors now find green grass instead of brambles, a table and benches, and a gravel path leading under the bridge; on the bridge supports, a sign reading "In Memorium: From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah" has been posted, in reference to the live Nirvana album of the same name. There have been a few hiccups; a plaque embedded in the ground with Cobain quotes drew complaints regarding his observation that drugs will "fuck you up." The "uck" has since been removed. And the new statue, Kovach says proudly, will be the "pièce de résistance" of the park.
On our way to the ceremony, we stop at the home of Leland Cobain, Kurt's grandfather. As usual, Leland is entertaining Nirvana fans, who routinely arrive on his doorstep, and send him letters and presents (when I examine a package of coffee from Kaua'i that he's been sent, he urges me to take it, saying, "I only use instant!"). Today, a young man named Nicklas Makinen has turned up, in the company of his father. Makinen, an artist/actor based in LA, is making his first pilgrimage to the area, and admits to being "Blown away. I feel like I'm flying!" by everything he's seen. Makinen became interested in Cobain following the release of Gus Van Sant's 2004 film Last Days (loosely based on Cobain's life). "Everybody kept talking about how I looked like Kurt and all this stuff," he explains, reasonably enough, given his blue eyes, blonde hair, and slight beard. The 2006 film Kurt Cobain: About A Son made him a passionate devotee. "I got it right as it came out, and started watching it, day in and day out and became really fascinated with the story," he says. "And since then I've been studying him, thinking about him, talking about him, reading about him. And I realized that Kurt is way more than just a rock star. He was an icon, he was a messenger, he was a prophet, you know?"
Though it's rained off and on throughout the day, there's a welcome break for the statue unveiling. Instead of a bust, the statue is a Jag-Stang guitar, a melding of a Jaguar and Mustang that Cobain created shortly before his death. The concrete, steel-reinforced statue was made by Lora and Kim Malakoff, a husband and wife team who once lived in Aberdeen. "We chose the medium that we did because and we wanted to keep it more relaxed and real," says Lora, who saw Nirvana when she lived in Seattle. "Because that was the way Kurt was. No polished shiny yuppie - there was no such thing as that for him. He was real. And I spent a long time trying to decide how to make it more of a memorial than just a big guitar. So I started going through his lyrics and going through his lyrics, and I came up with the one from ‘On A Plain.' And I thought, ‘That is so beautiful, the words are just so beautiful. That's what it needs to be.'" The lines from the song - "One more special message to go/Then I'm done and I can go home" - spiral up in a ribbon alongside the guitar.
A crowd of around 50 or so turn up for the event, the reporters busying themselves by interviewing Leland Cobain, Aaron Burckhard, and Aberdeen's mayor Bill Simpson before the unveiling (though not overly familiar with Nirvana's songs - "Some of the words I couldn't understand, you know" - Simpson diplomatically adds "I enjoy Kurt's ability to play and make music"). Burckhard is especially pleased by the attention he's receiving. "Most of the reporters ask me, what would I think Kurt would think about this?" he tells me. "And I said I think he'd just laugh. He'd giggle. He'd just think it was a kick. He'd tell everybody, ‘Do you believe this? They put a park there?'"
Afterwards we make our way to the site of the first Cobain statue to be made in the area, designed by Randi Hubbard soon after Cobain's death. Hubbard had hoped a place for her five-foot-six, 600 pound statue of a seated Unplugged-era Cobain might be found in a local park. But due to public resistance, the statue was left in a corner of her husband's business, Hubb's Muffler Shop. No one pays attention to us as we troop in, and lift a black sheet covering the corner where the statue sits in a kind of purgatory.
The rest of the day is spent chasing ghosts, as we take Makinen to see a few more sites around town ("This is a billion times better than Vegas!" he enthuses). The "Kurt Cobain" star in front of the former site of Rosevear's Music Center, another of the town's recent nods to Cobain. The library where Cobain spent much of his spare time reading. The alley where he once spray-painted graffiti (since removed). The former site of Maria's Hair Design, the beauty parlor owned by Novoselic's mother, also used by a nascent Nirvana as a practice space. The former YMCA where Cobain briefly worked. It's not the same town Cobain grew up in - there weren't as many empty storefronts on the main streets for one thing. But Cobain spent the majority of his life here, and the fans continue to be drawn to both pay tribute and try and gain a sense of how growing up in this small, remote community influenced him.
And we wind up, unexpectedly, in Olympia, where Cobain moved in 1987, and where he lived until the release of Nevermind. During the day, we've met up with the owners of the apartment building where Cobain lived, and we're invited to see the tiny studio apartment he lived in. We're then allowed into the garage, used as a storage space, and now something of a mini-museum, with posters, artifacts, and musical instruments. Burckhard immediately picks up a guitar and starts banging away, oblivious to the guitar's being out of tune, and is soon joined by Makinen, and Anthony Smith, a Nirvana fan who's traveled across the state to attend the statue unveiling, carrying a guitar he won at a show by the Nirvana tribute band "Nevermind" (which he has Burckhard autograph).
As the three jam together, Makinen's father turns to me and says, "My son is in heaven right now. I assure you, he is in heaven."
***
Ten days after our Aberdeen and Olympia sojourns we reconvene in Seattle for the Member Preview of EMP's Nirvana exhibit on April 15 (opening to the general public the following day). Burckhard is again on hand, as well as the founders of the Nirvana websites nirvanaguide.com, which offers a wealth of detail about every live Nirvana show, and livenirvana.com, the most comprehensive Nirvana site on the web. We meet at The Crocodile, where Nirvana played a secret show opening for Mudhoney in 1992, though the club's since been extensively remodeled (and is now co-owned by Alice In Chains' Sean Kinney). A huge Charles Peterson photograph of Cobain looks down on us as we consume pizza and beer.
The Croc is also within walking distance of EMP, and as we head over, we pass numerous sites with Nirvana connections for me, adding to the nostalgic feeling of the evening: one of the Rocket offices; Bad Animals Studio, where work on With The Lights Out was done; the apartment where Novoselic lived, where we repeatedly spent an evening listening to Cobain's demo of one of his last songs, "Do Re Mi," over and over again; the site of the former Sub Pop offices where the label first relocated after the grunge windfall; The Funhouse, a club where Novoselic performed with Flipper (a show I reviewed for Blurt). EMP is on the grounds of the Seattle Center, where Nirvana performed their biggest-ever Seattle show at the Coliseum (now Key Arena) in 1992, and their final US shows at the Arena (now Mercer Arena) in 1994. In between EMP and the Arena is the Memorial Stadium, built in memory of the Seattle high school graduates who died during World War II, and most commonly used for high school football games. Its dedication now has a new poignancy as I arrive at the Nirvana event: "Youth hold high your torch of truth, justice and tolerance, lest their sacrifice be forgotten."
A VIP function kicks off the night at 6 pm, with the less VIP members allowed in at 7 pm. In contrast to other openings, which have featured live bands, this event will only have a few speakers and guest DJs. "I wanted to keep it low-key," EMP senior curator Jacob McMurray explains. "Obviously it would be bizarre to have a cover band or anything like that. The focus is on checking out the exhibition and having fun, and having drinks, hanging out with your friends." We're all giddy with anticipation as we approach EMP, pausing to have our picture taken by a sign directing which door to use, giggling like school kids.
After checking in, you ascend the stairs to EMP's galleries. A Charles Peterson shot of Cobain crowd surfing at a March 8, 1991 show in Canada fills the wall beside the stairs, accompanied by a quote from Peterson: "It's when the band and audience are melded into one that the true nature of what they were trying to accomplish - the cathartic release of pent up angst and rebellion - reached its chaotic fruition. I feel fortunate to have been there to capture that."
The Nirvana exhibit [see our photo gallery here] is in a somewhat narrow space that used to house EMP's "Northwest Passage" exhibit. The low key lighting and ambient soundtrack created by Steve Fisk (who produced a Nirvana session in 1989) give the space a dark, organic feel. The cases for the exhibit are fashioned from a century-old elm tree that was felled in a wind storm in front of the Grays River Grange, where Novoselic serves as Grange Master. "So it connects the exhibition to the environment, but it also has this tangential connection to Nirvana itself," McMurray explains. "We've really tried throughout the exhibition to have subtle reference to the Northwest environment, so that the wood in the casework, some parts are smooth, but some are kept rough - it has that sort of wooded feeling to it. From grange to grunge!"
Hanging from the ceiling throughout the gallery is a white mobile, using elements also seen in the logo on the Member Preview invitation, as well the cover of the Taking Punk To The Masses book. It neatly encapsulates Nirvana's story: a microphone at the top, above a speaker flanked by a bass and guitar, above a cloud, above a pair of drumsticks, above two arrows pointing outwards, above a skull hanging upside that's dripping with what could raindrops, tears, or blood, depending on your interpretation.
"It can be as symbolic as you want, or it can just look cool," explains Jacob Covey, who designed the logo. "Like Kurt's lyrics - some people think they're utterly nonsensical, some see larger narratives. It was risky to do something that doesn't rely on the visual stereotypes of either grunge or punk, but when I came up with the idea of icons building up the logo, Jacob [McMurray] and I both felt like we'd found the look that we wanted. The skull is just a totem of ROCK with all the baggage that symbol is loaded with. Really, it's just a stand-in for the human element. I tend to view that ‘blood' as sweat, for what it's worth. More a nod to sweaty crowds or maybe flying off Cobain as he spins on his head in that iconic Charles Peterson shot." Even the type used in ads for the exhibit, and the cover of the Taking Punk To The Masses book, is Nirvana-influenced, the same typeface as the band's original logo: Onyx. (At least according to some sources: In yet another sign of how the tiniest detail in the Nirvana story is worthy of being scrutinized, Grant Alden, The Rocket's managing editor and chief typesetter, who did the typesetting for Nirvana's Bleach album, insists it's Bodoni Extra Bold Condensed, as Onyx wasn't available on his machine.)
Fisk's music fills the gallery, a spooky drone that surrounds you both above and below. "The music's deliberately supposed to not rock," says Fisk. "And it's not supposed to mimic or sound like anything coming off the screens," he adds, referring to the numerous screens and kiosks throughout the gallery that have film and interview clips. "Notice, this is in E, this is good old classic E," he says, pointing to a screen showing a clip of The Ramones chugging through one of their songs. "And my music's in D. The idea was that punk rock or grunge or whatever would be playing in the space [via the film clips] would hopefully blend better if it was all tuned to one chord. And the majority of the grunge music was all dropped-D [tuning], which kind of works with E, kind of works with A. And there's no melody. There's almost no melody in an hour's worth of music." There's also a subtler narrative at work in Fisk's soundtrack. "At the top of the hour there's this guitar that hits and kind of resonates along the way," he says, a reference to both Nirvana's sudden end, and their lingering influence. "It's 2011 and you can still hear it. And it's still echoing and it's still bouncing around space."
On first entering the exhibit, you see the instruments from the classic line up of the band: Cobain's Mosrite Gospel guitar (which he was playing when the band first performed "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in public, at Seattle's OK Hotel); Novoselic's black Gibson Ripper bass, and Grohl's Tama Rockstar-Pro kit. It sets the stage for what's to come, but they're also the kind of obvious artifacts you'd find in any exhibit of a major band. The real meat of the show is further in, and is largely due to the connections McMurray was able to make with the local community. "When I started out with the exhibit, I wasn't really thinking that we were necessarily going to have the involvement of the bands," he says. "I was thinking, worst comes to worst, I would entirely draw from the material that we had in our collection. Which was pretty good to begin with. But Krist and I got to know each other, and he was really interested in helping out and I was able to go through his archives. And then also go through the archives of Shelly Hyrkas [Novoselic's first wife] and various other people. And it became such a different exhibit, because all those people had just really amazing candid photographs, and other documents, letters and things like that, going as far back as 1983. And so, to me, it changed the whole focus of the exhibition."
As a result, like the use of the elm tree for the cases and Fisk's soundtrack, the show that has a very personal touch. And it's a show that couldn't have been done with such sensitivity anywhere else but Seattle. You see the pink suitcase Cobain used as a drum on his first known demo, with the early band names "Skid Row" and "Pen Cap Chew" scrawled on the front. A 1986 letter from Buzz Osborne to Novoselic, lauding another Cobain demo: "Some of his songs are real killer! ... I think he could have some kind of future in music if he keeps at it." Numerous candid shots of the band members - in t-shirts and jeans, loading up the van for yet another tour; drummer Chad Channing lounging against one of the lions in London's Trafalgar Square; the band members sharing backstage desserts with Sonic Youth. A display documenting a Halloween 1988 show, where Cobain is believed to have smashed his first guitar, showing two pieces of the guitar, snapshots by Cobain's girlfriend of the show, a letter from a fan who attended the show and grabbed one of the guitar shards, and interview and audio clips, including the moment at the end of the show where you can hear the guitar being smashed. The long-sleeved Sounds magazine t-shirt Cobain is seen wearing in many 1991 photos. A photo strip taken in the instant photo booth at Seattle's Re-bar club on the night of Nevermind's record release party, the band members all crammed into the booth, pulling faces, looking excited, happy, and very young.
The interview clips alone would take hours to go through; you hear from Novoselic, Channing, Dan Peters (the Mudhoney drummer who played one memorable show with Nirvana and recorded the song "Sliver" with them), Dale Crover (the Melvins drummer who also played on Nirvana's first professional demo); producers Fisk, Jack Endino, Butch Vig, Barrett Jones, and Steve Albini; Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman from Sub Pop; crew members Earnie Bailey and Craig Montgomery. And that's just the people with direct connections to the band; others interviewees discuss the Northwest music scene and the alternative rock scene that developed across the country in the ‘80s. One display features 20 albums from Novoselic's collection that he considers to be especially influential, from Led Zeppelin to the Stooges, Flipper to The Smithereens, with interview clips discussing each one. And there are also wonderfully playful moments, as in the display where Fisk talks about the music scenes in Northwest cities from Bellingham, Washington to Eugene, Oregon, at one point singing a jingle written for an Aberdeen Federal Savings & Loan radio ad: "See those trees against the sky/Northwest breezes blowing by/Life's so full of good things/Life's so good!"
At the end, you can sit in a small theater space where live clips of Nirvana run continuously. In a little booth off to the side, you can record you own memory of Nirvana, with the clip then slotted in to play between the live footage. In a corner is a pedestal with Cobain's collection of canned meat: Prairie Belt Smoked Sausages, Gerber Chicken Sticks, and Armour's appetizingly named "Potted Meat Food Product." It's a nice humorous touch to find at the end of the story.
But on this night, it's difficult to get through the exhibit as the gallery quickly fills up. Servers walk around with drinks and not enough food. Others pass out bars of the official chocolate for the event, Theo organic and fair trade 70% dark chocolate in a wrapper featuring yet another of Peterson's photographs (greedy collectors snatch up ten bars at a time). I manage to snag a limited edition bottle of "Thoughtfully Made" Gimbal Gin made especially for this event by Seattle's Westland Distillery; it's called "In Bloom."
There are too many friends to catch up with, and not enough time; "It's like a bizarre high school reunion," says McMurray at one point. As I walk around, I see Jack Endino talking to Aaron Burckhard and Dave Foster (yet another Nirvana drummer); Sub Pop co-founder Bruce Pavitt; Duff McKagan; former Sounds journalist Keith Cameron, covering the event for The Guardian; Nirvana guitar tech Earnie Bailey; Soundgarden's Kim Thayil; Soundgarden/Alice In Chains manager Susan Silver; Rocket editor Charles Cross; photographer Alice Wheeler (who shot the pictures on the cover of the "Love Buzz" single); Screaming Trees drummer Mark Pickerel. Cobain's mother Wendy (in attendance with his sister Kim) is seen talking to her sister Mari (at whose home Cobain recorded his early demos) for the first time in 17 years.
Guest DJs for the night include Peterson and Pickerel, among others. But you don't hear Nirvana blaring through the common areas, instead, it's a great mix of cult favorites ("Ça Plane Pour Moi") and local acts (pre-grunge stars The U-Men). It is a night for hanging out, having drinks, enjoying being with your friends. The VIP crowd was treated to brief remarks, but longer speeches are saved for later in the evening. The night's most rock ‘n' roll moment comes when EMP CEO and director Christina Orr-Cahall, thanks us for attending and then begins thanking the sponsors. Standing in front of a large screen displaying not only the Nirvana exhibit logo but also logos of sponsors like Qwest, Boeing and Wells Fargo, she's suddenly interrupted when Burckhard boldly ascends the stage and shouts, "Corporate America still sucks!" Orr-Cahall is momentarily non-plussed, but Novoselic neatly defuses the moment with a jocular "Shut up, Aaron!" and Burckhard good-naturedly leaves.
King County Executive Dow Constantine also speaks, with a credibility few other politicians could manage. For while Constantine has worked with Novoselic on various political issues, he also has bonafide rock roots, having been a DJ at local college radio station KCMU, where his longtime girlfriend, Shirley Carlson, was the first to play a Nirvana song on the radio ("Because it's in a book, I'm going to assume it's true," he jokes). So Nirvana was part of his growing up as well, and he recalls falling in love with the band as he listened to an advance tape of Bleach "while driving in my parents' hand-me-down Buick" and realizing "Holy smokes! Those doofuses that hung around The Melvins were good!" It's another sign of the close knit feel of the Seattle community; it's hard to think of many other public officials who'd even know who The Melvins are.
The most heartfelt remarks come from Novoselic, wearing a brightly patterned shirt made by his wife. After thanking those in attendance, he gives credit to his bandmates. "I love Dave," he says of Grohl. "He released a new record this week. [Wasting Light] And it rocks! And he's out there and he works hard; he's never lost focus. He's carrying the torch, and he's out there, packing the arenas, speaking to people."
And then he speaks of Cobain, and to a greater extent than he usually does publicly; perhaps a sign of how comfortable he feels here. "Kurt Cobain. Here was a man who - he would never clean his kitchen or take out the garbage, or do those kind of chores. But Kurt Cobain was not a lazy person. He was a compelled artist. He excelled in any form that he wanted to do. Kurt, as you've seen in the exhibit, was an excellent painter. He did cartoons. He was a sculptor. I have a little sculpture of this writhing, weird spirit man [he did] ... He had a natural talent, and that's what compelled him to share so many things with so many people. I walk down the street and even tonight, people walked up to me and said, ‘Nirvana changed my life.' And I think that's a testament to Kurt Cobain's vision ... I owe him so much, I can't even start. And so many people owe Kurt Cobain."
And that's why we've all gathered here tonight. Nirvana's work touched us all, and it still does. In his remarks, Constantine expressed the hope that the exhibit would help people to put the tragedy of Nirvana behind them, and appreciate their music and their influence anew. But tragedy is the reason Nirvana's story has such resonance. It's the reason it gets inside your emotions, digs in, and hangs on. Nirvana's sad end is as much a part of the tale as their hopeful, hardscrabble beginnings.
And it's the acceptance of the tragedy that truly allows you to get past it. The same way that a scar always remains a part of you, but it gradually stops hurting. It makes Nirvana: Taking Punk To The Masses both a celebration and a redemption. "People that are my age that experienced everything, it's time to say, ‘Okay, let's look at this,'" says Steve Fisk. "This is a cool thing. The crazy stuff's out of the way, and the band and the music continues to get influential." Kurt Cobain's last guitar chord is still ringing out, the echo reverberating for many years to come.
[This article was originally published at Blurt-online in April. Check out official images from the EMP display here.]
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