HAIR SWINGING NEANDERTHALS

Phil West | February 25, 1989 | Daily (US)

I had the great fortune to be covering music for the Daily (the University of Washington's student newspaper) when Sub Pop was beginning its campaign to put Seattle on the map. I'd met Nirvana once before the interview, one evening having gone over to the apartment of a woman named Tamera who seemed to be helping manage them. Kurt, Chris, and Chad were sitting cross-legged around a turntable in the middle of her living room, transfixed by Black Sabbath's "Into the Void." I relayed that story to a Daily writer on the tenth anniversary of Cobain's death, but the writer misheard and reported they'd been sitting on stairs, which isn't as good a story.

I did the interview at Sub Pop's offices in February 1989 — back when the label was in an eleventh-floor office in an art deco building in Belltown. Tamera had given me their early demo tape a few weeks before the interview, and it was getting heavy rotation on my Walkman. The interview was with Kurt and Jason Everman, who'd just joined the band and would be included on the live photo on the cover of Bleach — released just over three months after the interview — even though he didn't play on the record. We did the interview in a side room of the office that was being used for storage. No chairs; we just sat on the floor.

Kurt (who was spelling it Kurdt at the time) didn't say much throughout the interview, but what he did say was funny, to the point, and quotable in the context of how Sub Pop was packaging itself, and I ended up using pretty much everything he said in the article. I could tell he was sort of bemused that someone was interested enough in the band to interview them. Jason talked most of the time, but I only used a couple of his quotes at the very end of the interview; as it turns out, Jason would eventually have the distinction of being kicked out of both Nirvana and Soundgarden. — Phil West

Nirvana transcends all the pretensions that go along with being rock stars. They come across as the type of earthy psycho scums you wished you could beat up in high school. They view music as a trend, think the SubPop movement is sincere but "the ultimate rehash" and "the last wave of rock music," and singer/guitarist/group founder Kurdt Kobain, on the average, listens to three records a month. They started out in ultimate hick-town Aberdeen, and their current Olympia base hardly qualifies them for urban art hipness.

Although Nirvana looks like nothing special in this context, they could be the greatest contribution that Seattle's grunge-oriented SubPop Records makes to society. Kurdt originated the Nirvana sound during high school days in Aberdeen.

"I wasn't thriving socially, so I stayed in my room and played guitar all the time," he said. "At the time, I thought I was inventing a new sound that would change the whole outlook of music. I've discovered in the last few years that it was just the Seattle SubPop sound."

The core of their sound is based in primal Black Sabbath and Stooges punk/metal riffing, but it carries a dark, raw, earthy, grungy tone that separates them from their labelmates. Kurdt, after a long pause, decided their music has a "gloomy, vengeful element based on hatred."

A lot of this is rooted in his adolescent small-town experiences."In Aberdeen, I hated my best friends with a passion, because they were idiots. A lot of that hatred is still leaking through."

It's not all hatred though. Their debut album, Bleach, contains two straight-ahead, blow-pop tunes that attest to Kurdt's feeling that things are going his way. This newfound positivity has led to a "gay pop songs phase that will eventually die," yet they'll probably write more of them on the next album.

Most of Bleach contains the style which made SubPop seek the band out, after a demo that Kurdt and bassist Chris Novoselic did with the drummer from Aberdeen's SubPop predecessors, the Melvins. The album, like their initial demos, is a full mix of heavy dirge songs, which new guitarist Jason Everman has the most fun with, upbeat power grunge, guttural lyrics, scream-singing and to-the-point titles like "Swap Meet" and "Negative Creep."

Lyrics range from simple repetition about rural hick-jerks to detailed narratives of horror-torture. The end effect, epitomized in their live shows, channels Kurdt's subversive intellect into an aggressive release, while they purge themselves in search of the great exalted god riff. Even during shows like a recent Annex Theater show marred by failing equipment and an overzealous crowd slamming into the broken monitors, they lock into a larger-than-life sound on every song.

Although a national tour is planned and a wave of positive press is following them, they remain mostly unaffected. Chris and drummer Chad Channing still work as dishwashers, Jason is living off savings from four years of "commercial fishing hell," and Kurdt lives off his "nice, sweet, and wonderful" girlfriend.

"I'd like to live off the band," Kurdt said, "but if not, I'll just retire to Mexico or Yugoslavia with a few hundred dollars, grow potatoes, and learn the history of rock through back issues of Creem magazine."

But if Nirvana does become part of the last wave of rock, what will replace them? "I don't think we'll have to worry," Jason said.

Kurdt's a little more nihilistic. "If it was up to me, I'd get more oil tanker drivers drunk," he said. "I don't value music much. I like the Beatles, but I hate Paul McCartney. I like Led Zeppelin, but I hate Robert Plant. I like the Who, but I hate Roger Daltrey."

ON THE SUBS BENCH: NIRVANA

John Robb | March 1989 | Sounds (UK)

In early 1989, John Robb — then of Sounds — initiated the first contact between the bands of the Sub Pop scene and the UK music media, who would prove to be their most fervent supporters and boosters in those early days. The article is precisely what one would expect to find in relation to a band barely out of the starting gates — short, to-the-point, direct. Funnily enough, it was originally published on the same day that the next interview took place. Robb's latest endeavor is the Louder Than War online magazine, where some of the footage of this very early encounter between the press and Cobain can be seen. — Ed.

THE POTENTIAL trump card in Sub Pop's pack, Nirvana have created one primed to thrill single so far.

The grubby pop delights of their guitar maelstrom 7-inch,...