Entertain Us

Gillian G. Gaar

Description

Nirvana are one of the most influential bands in rock history, and even now, nearly 20 years after Kurt Cobain’s death, the reverence in which they are held is undiminished.

Books have been written about Nirvana before, but they tend to concentrate on the band’s superstar period and Kurt Cobain’s demise, while skating over the early years. In Entertain Us, Gillian Gaar redresses the balance by examining in forensic detail the band’s rise to fame, and their first album, Bleach.

Seattle native Gaar was one of the first journalists to write about Nirvana, and she covered the band’s career closely, offering her a unique perspective to write this book. Drawing on extensive interviews with the key characters in the story—including bassist Krist Novoselic, drummer Chad Channing, and producers Jack Endino and Butch Vig—the book charts the band’s formation and early years as well as their role at the center of the grunge gold rush.

By critiquing every song the band recorded in this period, tracing influences and unpicking complex relationships between band members, associates, and record labels, Gaar gets to the heart of a compelling story.

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Music
• Musician
• Individual Composer

Informations

• Publié par: Jawbone Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781906002909
• Langue: English

Extrait

Entertain Us
The Rise Of Nirvana
Gillian G. Gaar
A Jawbone book
First edition 2012
Published in the UK and the USA by
Jawbone Press
2a Union Court,
20–22 Union Road,
London SW4 6JP,
England
www.jawbonepress.com
Editor: Tom Seabrook
Jacket photograph: Kevin Estrada
Volume copyright © 2012 Outline Press Ltd. Text copyright © Gillian G. Gaar. All rights reserved. No part of this book covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or copied in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews where the source should be made clear. For more information contact the publishers.

Contents
Prologue: Here We Are Now
Chapter 1: In The Pines
Chapter 2: First Steps
Chapter 3: Bright Lights, Big City
Chapter 4: Underground Attitude
Chapter 5: Happening Olympia Combo
Chapter 6: The Distant Roar
Chapter 7: Instinct And Reaction
Chapter 8: Lost In America
Photographs
Chapter 9: A Matter Of Will
Chapter 10: Innocents Abroad
Chapter 11: A Full Phenomenon
Chapter 12: On The Road Again
Chapter 13: The Turning Point
Chapter 14: True Hardcore Drummer
Chapter 15: The Crest Of The Wave
Chapter 16: Nirvana In Its Afterlife
Endnotes
Bibliography
Selected Discography
Selected Live Performances 1984–90
Acknowledgements



Prologue: Here We Are Now
“I just thought that was a nice little title.”
Kurt on ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ 1992
One day in the spring of 1991 – early April, perhaps, or maybe March – Kurt Cobain brought in a new riff to a Nirvana rehearsal, a riff that Spin magazine would later call “the most culturally important nine seconds of the 90s.” Nirvana’s rehearsals often began with lengthy jams (“A big part of the rehearsal experience was working on different things and experimenting,” says Krist Novoselic), and the band jammed on this particular riff for some time – “the better part of an hour,” according to one account.
“That song came out of nowhere,” Krist says. “He just had that four-note riff.” Neither Krist nor Dave Grohl regarded the song as anything special; Kurt later recalled that when he first played the riff to his bandmates, Krist had remarked: “That is so ridiculous.” And Nirvana frequently jammed on riffs that were catchy enough during rehearsal and then forgotten forever. But this riff stuck, and the band found themselves returning to it again and again. “The simple guitar lines were so memorable,” Dave later explained. Eventually, it began to evolve into a song.
“We were playing it for a while, and then we just stopped,” Krist says. “And either I or Dave went: why don’t we do this part slow? So we started playing it slow. And Kurt started to experiment a little bit and he did a verse melody; what he was doing before was pretty much the big chorus. And then we just put it together. It was that dynamic – like loud, quiet, loud, quiet. There was a little bridge, and a solo. It came together pretty fast.”
Although the lyrics were not yet finalized, Kurt had just the title for the new song. It was a phrase his friend Kathleen Hanna, from the riot grrrl band Bikini Kill, had scrawled on his bedroom wall the previous August. The two had spent a particularly memorable evening together in Olympia, Washington, where they both lived, drinking and spray-painting graffiti on a local ‘teen pregnancy center’ that purported to offer non-judgmental advice to pregnant teens but in fact sternly counseled its clients against abortion (according to Kathleen, she’d sprayed ‘fake abortion clinic’ on the building, while Kurt had opted for ‘God is gay’). They went to a bar and continued drinking, then ended up back at Kurt’s apartment. Eventually, Kathleen picked up a Sharpie marker and wrote all over the wall before passing out, pen still in hand. Six months later, Kurt called her up with a surprising request.
“There’s this thing you wrote on my wall and it was actually kind of cool,” he said. “And I want to use it as a lyric in one of my songs.” Kathleen agreed, even as she wondered: “How the fuck is he going to use ‘Kurt smells like teen spirit’ as a lyric?”
To Kurt, the phrase reflected the discussions he’d been having with Kathleen that night about teen revolution. “I thought she was saying that I was a person who could inspire,” he said. But there was another underlying meaning to what Kathleen had written, something that was meant as a bit of a tease: Kurt’s girlfriend at the time was Kathleen’s bandmate in Bikini Kill, Tobi Vail, and the deodorant she used was named Teen Spirit. (Kurt always claimed not to have known of the deodorant’s existence – using deodorant wasn’t very punk rock.) In any event, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ wasn’t used as a lyric, but as the song’s title.
Even before the lyrics were completed, Nirvana debuted the song live, at a show on April 17 1991 (a Wednesday) at Seattle’s OK Hotel. This wasn’t unusual. Throughout the band’s history, they performed songs before Kurt had finished tinkering with them; sometimes a lyric wasn’t completed until minutes before a song was recorded. An ad in The Rocket , Seattle’s music monthly, has the bands Leviathan, Deadly Effect, and Outrage originally booked to play that night. But that show was apparently cancelled, and a more alt-rock bill put together in its place, including not only Nirvana as the headliner, but also Bikini Kill and another Olympia band, Fitz Of Depression.
Stories of how the show came together are contradictory. One account has it that the show was arranged so Nirvana could earn enough money to buy gas for their upcoming trip to Los Angeles, where they were scheduled to record their major-label debut the next month. Another version says the show was set up as a benefit for Fitz singer Mikey Dees (aka Mikey Nelson), who had a number of outstanding traffic tickets, although Dees denies this. (Perhaps the confusion comes from Krist saying during Nirvana’s set that Fitz had been pulled over on their way to the gig for driving a van with expired license tags and hit with a hefty fine.) Rich Jensen, who’d seen Nirvana from their early days in Olympia and was now working for their former label, Sub Pop, also describes the show as “unannounced”: “We only heard about it that afternoon,” he says. The fact that there’s a poster advertising the gig – depicting a woman scrubbing out a sink with great industriousness – shows that there was at least some advance word, although Dave’s comment during the band’s set – “Thanks for coming out at such short notice” – suggests it was something of a last-minute show.
By the spring of 1991, Nirvana was a big draw, and the small club was filled to capacity; on being told the show was sold out, Rich had to bribe a bouncer to get inside. Another reason the show was packed was undoubtedly because Nirvana hadn’t played in Seattle for five months, having devoted most of their time of late to woodshedding in preparation for recording their album. Nirvana was one of an increasing number of Pacific Northwest bands to have been picked up by the majors in recent years. In 1989, Soundgarden, another former Sub Pop act, released Louder Than Love on A&M; Alice In Chains debuted on Columbia with 1990’s Facelift ; Screaming Trees, who’d also recorded for Sub Pop, had recently released their major-label debut, Uncle Anesthesia , on Epic.
“Record companies are flocking to the Great Northwest, signing bands like crazy and hoping to find the Next Big Thing,” Rolling Stone had written in 1990, although the article had gone on to note: “One has to wonder whether such key [Sub Pop] artists as Mudhoney or Nirvana could cross over into the Nineties mainstream without seriously compromising their sound.” Nirvana was going to get the chance to find out when they left for LA to record their album for DGC, a subsidiary of Geffen Records. Kurt acknowledged this at the start of the show, wryly telling the audience: “Hello. We’re major label corporate rock sellouts.” The crowd whooped in response.
The 20-song set included such longtime Nirvana staples as ‘Love Buzz,’ ‘Floyd The Barber,’ and ‘School’; newer material like ‘Sliver,’ their most recent single; a few covers (Devo’s ‘Turnaround,’ The Wipers’ ‘D-7,’ and an improvised ‘Wild Thing’); and ‘Verse Chorus Verse,’ a melancholy pop song they’d never play live again. Fortuitously, the show was captured for posterity, as so many key moments in the band’s career had been (remarkably, recordings exist of the band’s very first and very last shows), as there were a number of cameras in attendance. Alan Pruzan was part of a three-camera crew, shooting from one side of the stage, with another camera on the other side, and one at the rear, and he also noted two women, not with his crew, shooting from the stage. “I shot as well as I could,” he says. “It was pretty difficult. There was a lot of moving around. The thing that was funniest to me is that nobody bothered to adjust the stage lights, so they were primarily focused on the row of bouncer guys that were hired to keep people off the stage. So they were very well lit, but the band-members weren’t so well lit.”
Footage of the show that has since surfaced reveals a packed house with a crowd-surfer seen nearly every time a camera pans over the audience; the audience’s constant heaving back and forth jostles the cameras as well. “There was already a frat boy kind of aspect to a Seattle grunge-rock show,” Alan says. “There was a period where that wasn’t happening at all, but then there’d be the guy that would jump up on stage and be like: Nirrrvannaa! Fuck yeah! and all that kind of stuff. And that was happening a little bit at that show. You could certainly see it on the tape.” After ‘Neg