Gigantic.23
Before the Storm
Interview went for a variety of my ideas, including my favorite, about space garbage.
I interviewed an Air Force Major at US Space Command. They were tracking 6,675 objects orbiting the Earth at the time (compared with 35,000 today plus millions of un-trackable ones, but that’s another story.)
There were also bands besides Agit Pop I wanted to write about, Interview didn’t go for any of them. Until one day Stephen called me at work.
“That band you like from Seattle, they just got signed to Geffen, so you can go for it.”
I called Nirvana’s manager to tell him the good news. My first clue should’ve been that he lived in LA, not Seattle. He instructed me like I was one of his lackeys.
“I can’t let you talk to them now,” he said, “then you won’t write about them six months from now, which is when I need you to do it.”
I called Stephen back, told him what the LA manager said.
“We’ll see about that,” Stephen said.
He called the manager himself. The article runs now or not at all.
The manager called me back with the contact info.
For phone interviews, I used that little Radio Shack suction cup microphone, the kind you stuck to the handset. It actually worked. I talked with Chris Novoselic first, then Dave Grohl who had just joined the band. When I’d seen Nirvana back in Seattle, their drummer had still been Chad Channing.
What transcription survives from Chris and Dave’s interviews has mostly to do with Nirvana leaving Sub Pop, how the label hadn’t so much created the scene but had been in the right place at the right time.
It took a few more days to get ahold of Kurt. When I did, he had a two-minute coughing fit, which seemed like a performance piece, I didn’t mention it in the article but it seems funny now.
We talked about AM radio, an early influence on both of us, instilling the absolute necessity of a pop hook.
When he was in 4th grade, his dad got conned into one of those Columbia House Record Club schemes—three for a penny, then overpriced records for the rest of your natural life. There were unopened rock albums lying all over their house.
“Some stoner guys lived in our trailer park, they’d come over to my house and steal ashtrays and eat my food,” he told me. “They said, Whoa, you got Aerosmith Rocks, you should listen to this!”
That started him on rock music. A few years later he got a guitar. Probably Kurt told some version of this story to a few people.
The more distinctive part of our discussion had to do with the first Iraq War, which kicked off for real within days of our conversation. This was the first all-out war scenario since Viet Nam, no one knew where this was going. We were both of draft-able age.
“You know Elvis did some time in the U.S. Army,” I half-joked, “I think he was a better man for it.”
“Didn’t he have a desk job?”
“Maybe you boys should just bite the bullet.”
“No, we’ve decided that we have some friends in England who may marry us,” he said, “so we’ll just go over there and get married and live there for a while.”
I admitted to him that I had friends in England and I was thinking of heading over there too.
None of this, of course, went into the article.
The piece in Interview, now considered to be the first national article about Nirvana, was only 350 words long, and barely took up a third of the page.
Desert Storm, it turned out, lasted barely a month. Nirvana never had to move to England and get married.
Nine months after our interview, Nevermind came out, and the 90s were born.
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You are officially responsible for Nirvana, that's the facts
Fascinating. Perhaps you could post the unprinted bits of the interview? Also, the space garbage article – would love to read it.