60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Smells Like Teen Spirit”—Nirvana with Courtney Love

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

Rob is back and ready to share his inner-most thoughts on Batman movies, hearing Nirvana for the first time, and more as he looks back at quite possibly the most inescapable song of the '90s, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” (4:00) Later he is joined by rockstar, lead singer of Hole, and wife of Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love to discuss her relationship with Kurt, Kurt’s beef with Pearl Jam, the original lyrics of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and much more (1:12:00). Preorder Rob’s new book, ‘Songs That Explain the ‘90s' here. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Courtney Love Producers: Jonathan Kermah and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Yossi Salick, and I'm the host of Bansplain, a show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists by going deep into their histories and discographies. We're back with a brand new season at our brand new home, the Ringer podcast network, tackling a whole new batch of artists, from grunge gods to power pop pioneers to new metal legends and many, many more. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, only on Spotify. How you doing? A few announcements before this week. episode. The first announcement is, as you may have surmised, that Courtney Love got a hold of me a while back. A mutual friend had passed along the doll parts, the whole episode, and Courtney reached out, we chatted a little bit, and early on, I emailed her like, of course, we'd love to have you on the show to talk about anything you wanted. And the initial word I got back,

our mutual friend told me, Courtney doesn't do podcasts. And I was like, that makes sense. But then a little while later, Courtney herself brought up possibly doing the Nirvana episode. Smells like Teen Spirit, which to be honest with you, I would not have asked her to do that in a billion years. I figured that was way too personal, et cetera. But we talked a little, and she was into doing it, and we did it. We talked for like two hours. I think the edit is a little under 90 minutes. It is, as you might imagine, a sprawling conversation.

And it was great. I had a great time. I want to say up front that I am tremendously grateful to Courtney for her time. If you are unfamiliar with the format of this show, the format of this show is that I talk about a song for quite a while and then I interview someone about it. It's wild to say that out loud, but that's a show. I do believe that in the episode description this time, however, you're listening to this, there'll be the timestamp of when my conversation with Courtney starts. It's like crazy rude if you skip me, honestly, but it's fine. You know, it's fine.

The second announcement, and I want anyone thinking of skipping me to hear this, is that I am writing a book. I guess I wrote it already. A companion to the podcast featuring excerpts from the scripts from now the 91 episodes we've done so far, plus tons of new material and rad illustrations from Territ Jacoby, an old Gawker Media colleague of mine whose work I really love. It's not just a book of all the full scripts verbatim because a book of that type would consist of 562,465 words. That is not a joke number. That is the actual word count of all the scripts so far. And this book will be shorter.

And I believe it will just be called songs that explain the 90s, as there will be way more than 60 songs in it, and I hope you will like it. And this book will be published on November 7th of this year, 2023. And it is available for pre-order now. I would be delighted if you checked it out. Perhaps there'll be a link to the pre-order in the episode description, or you can find me on the internet on Twitter. It's just Harvilla, H-A-R-V-I-L-A. Okay. This episode is like twice to three times as long as our usual episodes. I feel like my colleagues, editors, superiors would like me to tell you that. And they'd very much like these episodes to be much shorter going forward. Okay. Okay. Thank you for listening. It's great to be back. Talk soon. So first he fought the

Joker, right? The first Joker fight of my lifetime. He fought the Joker during a Prince concert, basically. Then he hooked up with Catwoman and he fought the penguin. I saw that one with my old family, including my younger brother. He was nine at the time. And when the penguin bit the dude's nose, the, at least my nose was in gushing blood scene. My dad jumped up, grabbed my nine-year-old brother and hustled him out of the theater within like 10 seconds. They just bounced. Forget it. They bounced and snuck into another theater and watched Sister Act instead. It's great fallback option. That's a true story. Then he fought. both the riddler and Two-Face, who teamed up, sort of, although Two-Face couldn't sanction the Riddler's buffoonery. The second best soundtrack after Prince, come for seal, stay for you, too. I'll leave it at that. Then he fought Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy. Nobody enjoyed that. Let us never speak of that again. A little time passed. Then he fought in quick succession. He fought the Scarecrow in Raz Al-Gul. Then he fought the Joker again and Two-Face again. And then he hooked up with a catwoman again and fought Bain, but this time he fought them all like

prestigiously. This time the Joker won an Oscar. Then he fought Superman. He beat Superman. I'm sorry. Spoiler alert. It happened like seven years ago. Fuck out of here.

He beat Superman. No way. Don't talk to me about kryptonite. I realize IRL does not apply to the situation, but no way he beats Superman. IRL. This rad guy, Albert, who I was working with at the time, he wrote that actually, in a one-on-one fight, Superman would have, quote, punted his nuts into the roof of his mouth, end quote, a splendid phrase, I took the liberty of committing to memory. Then it gets weird, right? It gets untenable. Now there are multiple versions of him and multiple cuts of one of those

versions and in the less complicated version he fights the riddler again after hooking up with catwoman yet again while the penguin again just sort of observes semi-prostegiously it was too dark really to get any sense of what anyone was doing this time the riddler makes evil cappuccino's and takes shrill vertical selfie videos it's terrifying that whole fight was kind of trash if you want the truth i gave that fight one star on a letterboxed i was in no mood and that about brings us up to date. Those are his highest profile exploits during my lifetime. He's won every fight.

Every fight except one. Batman got on my nerves. He was running me a moke. He ridiculed me calling me a bum. Wesley Willis. Singer, songwriter, visual artist, Chicago Institution, and Batman's worthiest adversary.

I think everyone should go through a Wesley Willis phase at some point. ideally between the ages of 18 and 22. Any younger is too young. Any older is too old maturity-wise. Hypothetically. At say 19, though, you're in the ideal mind state to appreciate Wesley's concision here. I remember almost no lines of dialogue from the 10 to 15 to 20 to 85 Batman movies I've watched in my lifetime.

But I will never forget. Batman got on my nerves. the economy of language. It's like a line from the old man in the sea. See if you can guess what this song is called. I whoop Batman's ass. I whoop. I whoop.

It's called I whoop Batman's ass. Wesley Willister, these beautiful, hyper-detailed Chicago cityscapes, down to the license plate numbers of the cars, and he sold them on the street. He loved public transport. He loved buses. He heard voices.

He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1989. Visual art was calming, was therapeutic for him. Music, too, he made like 50 albums total. The vast majority of his songs have a very similar structure. Let's say, most of them start do do do do do do do do do do do do do do. And then he says something profane and surrealist and hilarious. Batman thought he was bad. He was a fucking asshole in the first place.

He got knocked to the floor. What a perfect and delightful and yes concise characterization of Batman. Batman thought he was bad. He was a fucking asshole in the first place. There's your origin story. So there's me. A 19-year-old knucklehead college radio DJ blasting this song out to the whole campus because I think it's the funniest shit I've ever heard in my whole life.

Nobody was listening in my college radio DJ. years for both technical and aesthetic reasons. And that's a small mercy, but oh goodness, was I ever pleased with myself? As I queued up, I whooped Batman's ass at two in the morning. Because if I recall correctly, our station's personal rule was that you could only swear from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m. because millions of impressionable schoolchildren started listening to me on college radio starting at 701 a.m. They can't handle the truth. Batman beat the hell out of me and knocked me to the floor. I got back up and knocked him to the floor.

He was being such a jagoff. Listen, I barely remember the plots of the 85 Batman movies I've watched in my lifetime, but this I remember. Classic three-act structure, Batman beat the hell out of me and knocked me to the floor. I got back up and knocked him to the floor. He was being such a jack-off, and this is complicated, right? maybe, hopefully. I do think everyone should go through a

Wesley Willis phase at 19 or so because for me at 19 somewhere in my dimwit subconscious hopefully at some point I at least accidentally considered some very important questions about empathy, about audience empathy, about the divide between an artist's

intent and the audiences' intent. The old thorny divide between laughing with someone and laughing at someone. By the mid-90s, Wesley Willis is a cult favorite, an outsider artist. He puts out records on the label, alternative tentacles run by Jello Biafra from the Dead Kennedys. Henry Rollins is a Wesley Willis fan. So is Mike D. Eddie Vedder, Dave Grohl. Wesley built a fan base. He loved playing music. He toured. He opened a bunch of shows for Sublime. That makes sense. He greeted his fans. He greeted everyone, apparently,

with an affectionate headbutt, which is why Wesley had a very prominent scar on his forehead, from all the headbutting. And as symbolism goes, that's unsubtle, the friendly headbutting scar on his forehead. Wesley's also doing some press here in the mid-90s, and it's striking the divide between Wesley and Print and Wesley on record. He's talking about hearing voices. He's talking about music as therapy, as relief.

And he's using the imagery, the lexicon, that animates this delightful, silly music that everyone loves, but it's not a joke to him. Did I say surrealist? A lot of this shit isn't surrealist to him at all. It's his reality. The Los Angeles Times interviews him in 1996 and he says, the demon got me on a treacherous hell ride I don't want to be on. I'm keeping busy. I'm just doing well. I'm not going to be warded off the joy music bus. I want to go on the trail ride instead of the hell ride. The demon makes my life terrible. He shoot the whole rock set down. End quote. A Wesley Willis phase can last anywhere from 72 hours to 30 years. Maybe you just listen to Rock and Roll McDonald's a few times. Maybe one day you're in Chicago and you take a whole ass pilgrimage to the Rock and Roll McDonald's in Wesley's honor. My personal Wesley Willis phase was shockingly brief, but it was long enough for me to identify my second favorite song of his.

Number one is I whoop Batman's ass, no question. I considered Chris Cringle as a car thief, but no, for sure. Number two is vampire bat. The Lake of Fire tore his ass up. He was running to the Chris. He was cast to the Lake of Burning Flame. Vampire Bad! The Lake of Fire tore his ass up.

It's like a line from Dante's Inferno. I would have read Dante's Inferno in college if it was all like this. Wesley Willis's Dante's Inferno, and I'm still doing it, right? Right now I'm doing it. I am clumsily navigating that empathy divide. I am taking this music less seriously than he took it. Or at least we have very different definitions of the term taking this seriously. This isn't about scolding myself or scolding anyone drawn to music like this. The delight, the fascination, the affection, Wesley stirs up in his biggest fans. That's genuine. That's intentional. I am enjoying myself because Wesley Willis wants me to enjoy myself. I am returning his affectionate headbutt.

It's just that I owe it to him to consider the scar that he gave himself with all that headbutting. In 1995, alternative tentacles put out Wesley Willis' greatest hits, Volume 1 of 3, going by streams now the most popular song is Rock and Roll McDonald's, and then I Whoop Batman's Ass, and then a song called Chronic Schizophrenia. My mind plays tricks on me every time I say something. It brings evil voices out of my head and talks to me vulgar. Then suddenly I started raving. Just because Wesley is Batman's toughest adversary,

doesn't mean that Batman is Wesley's toughest adversary. Crying schizophrenia. Crying schizophrenia. Crying schizophrenia. Wesley Willis died in 2003 of leukemia. He was 40 years old. He made a lot of people very happy. And that, in turn, made him very happy.

Because ideally, that's the way art works, as naive as I might sound, saying that. Most of his songs also ended the same way. And chronic schizophrenia was no exception. Rock over London, rock on Chicago, Pontiac. We build excitement. Different ad slogan in every song.

hilarious. It's complicated. Even when Wesley's at his silliest, the laughs catch in your throat a little bit. Maybe, hopefully. The delight has an edge to it. The dissonance between your delight and his delight. The dissonance between his reality and what you only think you know about his reality. Same deal with this guy. Daniel Johnston. Singer, songwriter, visual artist. Born in Sacramento, lived in West Virginia for a while, but in his 20s, he became an Austin, Texas institution. Daniel's banging on a chord organ here. The physicality, the immediacy here is central to the delight. Reportedly, he's recording onto a cassette tape in a $59-Boombox. This song is called Speeding Motorcycle from his 1983 tape Yip

Jump Music, incredible, joyous, delightful song. Daniel's already a veteran at this point. He's put out a bunch of other tapes, two of which are named Songs of Pain and More Songs of Pain. And we don't want to wreck, but we can do a lot of tricks. We don't have to break our neck to get our kicks speeding motorcycle. The road is our... And the pain, past tense and present tense, is also central to the delight. You like to imagine anyway that you're feeling the delight. You're feeling the relief that he's feeling.

even if he's only feeling it for as long as the song lasts. Daniel Johnson was diagnosed of schizophrenia as well as bipolar disorder. He spent time in mental institutions. He saw demons. He fought demons. In 1988 during a manic episode, he thought the devil had gotten into a 68-year-old woman, a stranger, and he chased her around her apartment until she jumped out a window to get away from him and broke her ankles.

In 1990, flying home from the Austin Music Awards and a small plane with, his pilot father. They're the only two people in this tiny plane. Daniel becomes convinced that he was Captain America. He loved Captain America and Casper the friendly ghost and he drew them both constantly. And he tried to rip the flight controls out of his father's hands and the plane crashed, though incredibly both he and his father survived. Also in 1990, on an album called 1990 that was probably not recorded on a $59-Boon box, Daniel Johnson released one of his most moving and beloved songs called True love will find you in the end. But don't give up until. True love will find you in the end. And by the mid-90s, Daniel 2 is a huge cult favorite, justifiably hailed as a genius songwriter. He's got famous fans like Sonic Youth and the Butthole Surfers and Yola Tango and somebody else,

somebody important. It'll come to me. He gets signed to a major label. though famously he refused to sign with Elektra records because Metallica is on Electra, and he believed that Metallica were in league with Satan. But that, of course, only adds to his mystique. He's got such a striking melodic sensibility and such a disarming vulnerability, and he makes people happy.

And you certainly like to imagine that makes him happy, and his joy is sometimes so palpable in his voice, but so are his struggles, his demons, his pain. I think about these lines a lot. I don't know if any other lines in any other song by anyone upset me quite the way these do. You can listen to these songs, have a good time and walk away. This song is called Peekaboo from Daniel Johnston's 1982 tape called The What of Whom? Apparently Phoebe Bridgers covered this song a couple years back.

Yeah, no. I love both those people, but that's what. way too intense a combination. You're going to have to give me a couple years to gird myself emotionally to go listen to that. But for me, it's not that easy. I have to live these songs forever. This song upsets me. The song upsets me because this idea, you can listen to these songs, have a good time, and walk away. But for me, it's not that easy. I have to live these songs forever. This idea doesn't just apply to Daniel Johnston or to Wesley Willis or to outsider artists,

however you define that somewhat vexing term. It applies to anyone who writes a song, especially any song that resonates with any sort of sizable audience, because that dissonance is there, always. The singer's experience versus the listener's experience. The singer's catharsis versus what might be the audience's catharsis, but might also just be the audience's amusement. What the singer feels versus what you think you know about what they're feeling. Who's laughing at whom or with whom and why? What you're taking from these songs and these songwriters, when you have a good time and then walk away. Daniel Johnson died of a heart attack in 2019. He was 58. I saw him live once in 2003 at a music festival called All Tomorrow's

parties in L.A. curated by Matt Grainig, the Simpsons guy. Daniel's visual art is cartoons, his barbed childlike vibe, all those Casper's and Captain Americas. That pretty obviously feeds directly into The Simpsons. So this festival, you got Iggy and the studios, Sonic Youth, modest mouse, cat power, built a spill, the shins, a tribute to Elliot Smith, because Elliot was scheduled to perform, but he died by suicide just a month prior. And Daniel Johnston played two at the Simpsons Guy's behest. Daniel Johnson played in the Queen Mary, the ship, the retired British ocean liner, docked in Long Beach. I have no concrete memories of this show. No idea what he played, what he said, what he sounded like any of it. What I do have, though, is such a strong, pervasive memory

of how eerie this show felt, like architecturally, just this vague image of a tiny Daniel Johnston and on stage, playing a tinny little guitar or an organ, singing in this quiet little voice, and just physically overwhelmed by the towering gargantuan literal cruise ship he is sitting inside, like Jonah in the whale, encased in this steel monolith, the eeriness of it, the frailty of it, the loneliness. I don't know what Daniel's feeling or thinking in this moment. Of course I don't. I'm projecting here big time.

I am never not projecting. I am flattering myself than I know what he was feeling, whether he's at all cowed by his surroundings. I got no idea what I was feeling or thinking. But I can guess. It's not a nice guess or a flattering to me guess. But if you asked me, if you made me try to fill in this Daniel Johnston

in a giant cruise ship memory at all, the first thing I'd do is I'd add a little thought bubble over my head. And in the thought bubble, it'd just say, here we are now. My name is Rob Harvilla and this is the 91st episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s. It's fall 1991.

I'm 13 years old. I'm hanging out with my buddy Matt. We'd ride bikes. We'd watch dopey pre-teen Nickelodeon shows like hey dude and salute your shorts and welcome freshmen. We eat icing sandwiches which is where you spread a ton of cake icing between

two gram crackers. We'd play vaguely goth video game. on this computer. You know this game's Shadow of the Beast? Let's not get into it, but let me just say that this soundtrack whips ass. Sorry, we'd play video games sometimes. More often, we'd

discuss the junior high girls. We had hopeless unrequited crushes on. And the whole time, we'd be dorks, kids. Boy is pretending to be men. We're just normal men. We're just innocent men. And then one day in fall 1991, I'm sitting in in Matt's computer chair in his bedroom.

him and he says, dude, you got to hear this. I don't remember what he said. I added the dude because I'm 44 now, and that's how I imagine a 13-year-old in 1991 would talk. And also, I still talk like that now. But no, dude, that's totally what he said, dude, you got to hear this. And then Matt walked over to the stereo and put in the CD and cranked the volume all the way up and spun around just so he could watch me hear it. I cannot convey to you how loud, how comically, crushingly, terrifyingly loud this song was the very first time I heard it.

I swear to you now that this song in this moment is, to this day, the loudest music I have ever heard in my entire life. I accept the fact that you think I'm exaggerating for melodramatic effect. And technically you are correct. But no, no, dude, seriously. I've gone to probably a thousand concerts and spent like decades of my life with rattling car stereos screaming into my ears and noise-canceling headphones

screaming even more directly into my ears. And meanwhile, my screaming chaotic inner monologue with which you are now familiar is drowning out all of it. But no, dude, for sure, I am telling you that at first contact on pure volume alone, his voice to me in this moment is the obliterating voice of God, the creator and destroyer of worlds. He destroyed the 80s of my childhood and created the 90s of my adolescence.

I am a dork, a child, and innocent. I am woefully unprepared for this. I have no emotional vocabulary to describe him or his effect on me or who I am now. because of him, what the world is now because of him. I have no context. I don't know where he's from. I think he's from Seattle. He's not from Seattle. I don't know the words he's screaming. A few months from now, another enraptured kid in my junior high lunchroom will insist that this song ends with the words, Bloody Night Out, Bloody Night Out, Bloody Night Out, Bloody Night Out. And I will believe this. That's not what he says. I don't know how you make electric guitar sounds.

like this. So gargantuan, so inhuman, so viciously alluring, so deaf leopard, but also totally, totally, totally not deaf leopard. Is this punk rock? No, is this the future? Is this my future? Yes, it is. Will I even survive hearing this song this first time, or will I die right here in my buddy Matt's computer chair as Matt sadistically grins down at me? And Kirk Cobain's voice, tears my head apart from the inside, or will just the innocent, childlike part of me die? How convenient for me that I have such a vivid, detailed recollection of the first time I heard the single most important rock and roll song released in my lifetime. Such melodrama. Such exaggeration. Dude. No, seriously, dude, but I remember this. I do. My shock, my terror,

my bewilderment, my incomprehension, my near certainty that I'm going to go deaf before this song's over, my absolute certainty that any second now, Matt's mom is going to bust down his bedroom door with a fire axe and scream at us to turn down that racket. The threat of Matt's mom is vital here. We need an element of suspense, uncertainty, parental disapproval, generational transgression, melodrama. Lean into the melodrama. Amazes me. the will of instinct. Wump, wump, lump, wump, over the terrifying colossal inhuman, transgressive, not-at-all punk rock racket of Nirvana's smells like teen spirits. I can hear the plummeting bodies of the feathered 80s hair metal gods who flew too close to the sun and still didn't die, but then Kirk Cobain tortured voice of a generation, incinerated their wings with one contemptuous breath and sent them spiraling down to earth. Their body is now crashing with a sickening, mangled thud onto Matt's roof because hair metal is over.

Winger, jackal, poison, slaughter. Bloody night out, bloody night out, bloody night out. I heard all that, too. I totally did. I didn't. Of course I didn't. But I can remember this however I want. You can't stop me.

So how long did I sit there in Matt's computer chair? Physically and psychologically obliterated by Nirvana's second album. Nevermind, released in September 1991, until Matt's mom scraped me out of Matt's computer chair. How far into the record did we get? Smells Like Teen Spirit is track one, if I recall correctly. We got to In Bloom, certainly. That's track two. You want to know in all seriousness my favorite 10 seconds of Nirvana.

Not the guitar chords here. the thrashing, gouging, exhilarating screeches between the cords here. This is the whole shit for me, right here. That's the rest of my life. Those screeches right there between the cords, that's the rest of my life. Come on, let us keep going. Matt's mom hasn't busted in the room yet. Let's try and get through the whole record.

You know the moment I knew, it was within a couple months and never mind blowing up. You know the moment I knew Nirvana was the band, the gold standard, the impossible. ideal, the 90s, as we'd all remember, the 90s, the moment I knew they'd be my classic rock. I was listening to WMMS, Cleveland Rock Radio Station, The Buzzard, 100.7. In the early 90s, WMMS, they're still playing dependable 70s shit, ACDC, Pink Floyd, Ozzie, whatever. Alternative Rock is a fad to the buzzard. They're unconvinced. They're sticking with the classics.

So I'm listening to WMMS. the dead of night. It's like 8.30 in the evening. Sorry, I'm driving home from my grandma's house. My mom is driving us home for my grandma's house. I'm still 13. What do you want for me? We're on the highway. It's pitch black. And WMMS is playing what? Crazy Train, Thunderstruck, Danzig's mother, the superior live version of mother where Danzig goes, thank you at the end, whatever. Whatever that song is, that song ends. Then a split second of silence and then the next song starts and that's when I know that's when I know subconsciously that's when I know consciously I'm 13 I'm not conscious at all but I

remember this I do I remember the car I remember the highway I remember the darkness I remember the classic rock I remember the classic rock skepticism about alternative rock I remember the split second of silence between the last song WMMS played and I remember the Come As You Are riff, how cool it sounded and how right it sounded. It belonged. This is the band. This guy's voice is the voice. This is my classic rock. This is the rest of my life. For those of us invested in rock and roll with scare quotes or without, this band is the rest of our lives. Come as you are encourages us to canonize this band as you're listening to them. Anyway, that's track three.

I never mind. Let us get to track four. Let's get to Breed. I love Breed. The seething wounded animal velocity of breed. The Shadow of the Beast. That's my favorite Nirvana song, if you get me in the right mood. It's the grer for sure.

Oh, man, you really got to let us get to territorial pissings. Though, track seven. Ooh, that's a swear word. Kind of. Keep Matt's mom out of here. My childlike terror peaks on territorial pissings. Picture yourself as a 13-year-old icing sandwich-eating death leopard fan, and Nirvana's bass player starts warbling this shit at you.

I'm only vaguely aware in this moment of the classic rock song that Nirvana's bass player is a mass occurring on purpose here. But I get the larger point, which is that I know that he knows, that I know that he knows that this shit, I barely know, sucks. Do these sound like guitars to you? Like guitars played by a human being? Do these sound like drums played by a human being? They don't.

Do they? They don't sound human. None of this sounds human. Here is the precise moment where my terror peaks. This was scarier to me than any scary movie I watched as a teenager. Yeah, that shit scared the shit out of me. I don't mind telling you. So obviously I spend a goodly amount

of the months and years and decades to come just sitting around listening to Nirvana and reading Nirvana magazine interviews and watching Nirvana videos and Nirvana interviews on MTV. And I infer at some point that Kirk Cobain's favorite song on Nevermind is Drain You.

Or Kirk Cobain at some point just wanted to draw a little attention away from Smells Like Teen Spirit and toward literally any other song in the record. So he shrewdly implied that Drain You is his favorite song. And regardless of his intent, I then try to convince myself that Drain You is my favorite song on Nevermind. And I don't know if I ever convinced myself. My favorite song on Nevermind might be lounge act and it's way funnier to me if you don't remember

that one at all. But I will say that in retrospect, this is the funniest line in a Nirvana song. That's funny. Come on. Let's concede that that's funny. You know another funny Nirvana song? on a plane. Holy shit, we're almost through the whole record. We might as well finish the record, but I don't want to. See, right now I'm still 13. I'm still sitting at my buddy Matt's computer chair.

I'm still listening to Nevermind for the first time, Nirvana for the first time, Kirk Cobain's voice for the first time. And see, if we finish the record, then I have to leave. Then I'm done and I have to go home. But see, if I leave Matt's room, I get older.

I get like older than Matt's mom. Older. And so does Matt and so does everybody. And so does Kurt until Kurt doesn't anymore. The only way to protect Kurt is to never leave this from. Never find out where he's really from. Never find out the words he's really singing or screaming. Never find out what he loves, what he hates, what he wants,

what he needs, what his favorite song is, what his least favorite song is. What keeps him alive and what kills him? No. None of that ever happened. I refuse to leave this. from. You can't make me. We can't finish the record. We have to finish the record. Okay, let's finish the record. Do you know a Nirvana song that ain't funny at all? Batman got on my nerves. Ah yes, I neglected to mention that the most recent Batman, the 2022 Robert Pattinson, sulky, too dark to see anything. Why is the penguin in this movie

evil cappuccino batman that one-star ass film experience makes extensive use of something in the way the last song on never mind if you don't count the seven minute a tonal freak out hidden track endless nameless which always struck me as a half-hearted last-ditch attempt to sabotage the record that came way too late so let's not count it let's say that the last batman movie makes extensive use of the last song On never mind. Starting with the trailer, really think about this for 10 seconds. First of all,

Nirvana's something in the way as the soundtrack to the trailer to a Batman movie. We've come an awful long way from fighting the Joker during a Prince concert. Get a load of this Batman. Robert Pattinson looking all glum

and handsome, but that only makes him glummer. He's brooding. He's brooding harder than a superhero ever brooding. beaten down by the weight of all that responsibility, all that expectation, all that public criticism and or adulation.

Think about this for 30 seconds. The point of that Batman trailer is to get you to think that this time, Batman is just Kirk Cobain. Kirk Cobain in 2022 is an archetype, a myth, another costume to slip on, another superhero. He's Batman now. He's Captain America.

He's Casper the Friendly Ghost, and he walked away, but we have to live these songs forever. Something in the way is a song about how, for a time, as a teenager, in his hometown, in his birthplace of Aberdeen, Washington. Kirk Cobain was homeless and unwanted, and he lived underneath the Young Street Bridge, which he didn't. He probably didn't live under the bridge. In interviews, he talked about how he used to live under that bridge. and pretty soon there was tons of Kirk graffiti, Nirvana graffiti under that bridge. But the Kirk-Hobain biography called Heavyer Than Heaven, written by the great Charles R. Cross, first published in 2001. The whole deal with the bridge is discussed at length in this book.

And I don't want to say it's debunked exactly. That feels a little melodramatic, but yeah. Here's Nirvana bassist Chris Novoselic. Quote, he never lived under that. bridge. He hung out there, but you couldn't live on those muddy banks with the tides coming up and down. That was his own revisionism. And quote, here's Kurt's younger sister, Kim, in the book. Quote, he did not ever live under the bridge. It was a hangout where all the neighborhood kids would go to smoke pot, but that's all. And then Charles R. Cross himself writes, quote, there is significance,

though, to the bridge story. If only because Chris, Kurt emphatically told the tale so many times. At a point, he must have begun to believe it himself. End quote. There are, to my mind, three archetypal Kirk Cobain origin story myths that he told about himself, that he propagated himself. There's the bridge. The bridge is the big one.

Then there's the guns in the river. All right. Kurt's born in Aberdeen, in rural, hardscrabble, western Washington State. when he's nine years old, his parents, Don and Wendy divorce. And Kurt is devastated. The phrase Charles R. Cross uses his emotional holocaust. And maybe in some fundamental sense, Kurt never recovers from his parents' divorce. And he grows up with no stability bouncing between his parents and sometimes living with other family members or friends. And his relationship with his father is awful. And his relationship with his mother is often not much better. And all of that is the truth that the very probable

fiction of the bridge story is meant to illuminate. But so now, Curse 17, and his mother, Wendy, is in a relationship with his hard-ass longshoreman named Pat, and Pat owns three guns. He's fighting with Wendy all the time, and he's in fact cheating on Wendy, and Wendy finds out, and is enraged, and is worried that she's going to shoot Pat with one of his own guns, and so she dumps Pat's guns in a bag and throws the bag in the Wischka River. But then later, Kirk goes to the river and finds out exactly where she'd thrown in the guns and he fishes the bag of guns out of the Wichka River and pawns them and uses the money to buy his first guitar. But Kurt had gotten his first guitar years ago when he was 14. Charles Cross writes, Kurt was never one to let the truth

get in the way of a good story. The tale that he'd pawned his stepfather's guns for his first guitar was simply too good for the storyteller in him to resist. In this one story were all the elements of how he wished to be perceived as an artist, someone who turned redneck swords into punk rock plowshares. In truth, he did pawn the guns, but used the proceeds to acquire a Fender Deluxe amp. Okay, an amp. Not as cool as his first guitar. Still a cool story, though. The third Kirk Cobain myth is super minor but super amusing to me. In interviews, Kurt always said that the first concert he ever saw was Black Flag, which is the coolest, meanest, scariest first concert ever for a young, cool, mean, scary punk rocker such

as himself, that wasn't his first concert. Kirk Cobain's first concert, when he was 16 years old, he saw Sammy Hagar and quarter flash. Not very punk rock, but still a pretty rad double bill in my. opinion. That's Quarter Flash. And this is motherfucking Sammy Hagar. Come on. That's amazing. 16-year-old Kirk Cobain pumping his fist in the air right at 55. Amazing. Double nickels on the dime. 20-something ultra-famous rock star Kirkobain not telling anybody that his first concert was Sammy Hagar also amazing. Oh, it's Black Flag.

Sammy Hagar could write TV party, but Black Flag couldn't write I can't drive 55. It's all I'm saying. I'm getting worried now that I can't drive 55 wasn't out yet when this show happens, so let's move on. All right. If you're like me and you enjoy principally two things, you enjoy blind, naive, believe everything they tell you, rock star hero worship, and you enjoy,

giant lists of albums. If you're like me, then perhaps you are familiar with Kirk Cobain's handwritten list of his top 50 albums. Top 50 by Nirvana is the heading, actually, published in his journals, posthumously. Let's not get bogged down, let's try to sketch out this person's musical interests. Yeah, Sammy Hagar ain't on this list.

For a billion dollars, right now I will give you a billion dollars if you can tell me the name of the Sammy Hagar. album with I Can't Drive 55 on it. You have two seconds. V-O-A. That's what it's called. V-O-A. All right. There's some classic rocks, some classics on the top 50 of my Nirvana, Aerosmith's Rocks, The Beatles, Meet the Beatles. The Stoge's Raw Powers, the first record he wrote down, the NAC, the Power Pop band, the My Shorona band. Get the NAC by the NAC is on here. And I listened to all 50 of these records and tried to imagine Kirk Cobain listening to them. This is my job.

And I got to tell you, I enjoyed listening to the knack while imagining Kirk Cobain listening to the knack the most. But yeah, mostly this list is super punk rock, right? Canonical punk. Couple black flag albums, the sex pistols, gang of four, the first three wipers records, The Clash, but Combat Rock, not the punkist clash album, notably. A lot of hardcore, bad brains, the void, faith split, millions of dead cops, but a lot of way gnarlier punk, noisier, uglier, the butthole surfers, flipper, fear, scratch acid, but also lots of softer, popier, more melodic, more childlike stuff,

indie pop, tweed. Punk rock and spirit, and what's so cool and defiant about it is the softness, the melodicism, the minimalism, young marble giants out of Wales, the Vaseline's out of Scotland, the raincoats out of London. Way, way, way closer to home. Beat happening from Olympia, Washington, where Young Kurt moves once he finally gets out of Aberdeen. College town, fewer longshoremen. Not so much in Aerosmith environment.

Riot Girl is happening. Young Kurt's being musically and politically radicalized, but beat happening led by Calvin Johnson, who sounds like he's joking, but usually he's not. Ultra-minimalist, ultra-punkkin spirit. They're doing cakewalks and shit. they're both progressing and regressing at the same time. This stuff's important, too.

You know what's not on this top 50 list, even though Kirkomain talked about them constantly, the Melvins from Montessano, Washington, near Aberdeen, led by Buzz Osborne, early grunge, sludge, sludge, call the shit, whatever you like. But if we're talking about amount of time spent with them as a roadie and a cling-on, as Melvin's superfans were known,

Kurt loved the Melvins most of all, and the Melvins ain't doing no fucking cakewalks. That song's called grinding process. Love grinding process. I'm dwelling on all this because when Kurt Cobain gets famous, and in fact when he becomes the most famous rock star of his generation, Kurt's taste gets famous to the music he likes, the bands, the albums, the whole music scenes,

the aesthetics, the ugliest punk shit, and the most playful and subversive pop shit. Everything he likes gets a little famous just because he likes it, or a little more famous. The pixies, the breeders, the shags, half Japanese, Shonen, Knife. If you bought into this guy hard enough, Kirk Cobain might have curated the 90s for you.

Maybe Kirk got you into this guy. Do you remember when Nirvana played the MTV Video Music Awards in 1992, and they did lithium. And at the end, Chris Nova Seleck did the old bass toss. He just tossed his bass straight up in the air and tried to catch it. But instead, it clonked him on the head and knocked him flat on his ass. It's one of the funniest things I've ever seen on television. Just d-Ding.

Chris Novoselik is clonking himself in the head with his own bass at this exact moment in the song. I think you can tell even if you can't hear it. Anyway, Kirk Cobain's wearing a Daniel Johnston T-T-shirt while that transpires. While he plays lithium at the VMAs and his bass player gives himself a concussion. Kurt wore that Daniel Johnson shirt a bunch with a hi, How Are You Guy, Jeremiah the Innocent Frog with a long, googly eyes. Like 17 years later in 2009, they put out a Daniel Johnston themed iPhone game called Hi,

How Are You, where you control Jeremiah the innocent frog and basically play Frogger while Daniel Johnson saw us play in the background. I played that game on the New York City subway for a couple weeks. I just thought I mentioned it. Kirk Cobain constantly wearing a Daniel Johnston t-shirt was a big deal in 1992. Anything you read about Daniel Johnston to this day is likely to mention the fact that Kirk Cobain liked him within like three paragraphs. Kurt's taste is news.

And it all started when he saw a black flag. I mean Sammy Hagar and Quarterflash. Sorry, that was his first concert. Young Kurt's got a guitar. Not a Guns in the River guitar, no, but nonetheless. He's left-handed, and that's cooler because left-handed guitars are way less common, and sometimes you've got to just flip over a right-handed guitar and get on with it. You've got to want it more when you're a lefty.

You've got to have that dog in you. Kurt 17, when he meets Chris Nova Seleck, they bond instantly. He's got a bass player for life, but the drummer takes way longer. A lot of drummers, Bob, Aaron, Dale from the Melvins, he's rab, he's taken, and then Chad. Chad Canning sticks for a while. The band considers a few different names at first, including, including Ted Ed Fred and Pen Cap Choo, and this is funny, Skid Row.

But they settle on Nirvana. Nirvana hook up with Seattle's subpop records. And in November 1988, they released their debut seven-inch single Love Buzz. Here's a thought experiment. Simple thought experiment. Pretend this is Green Day. That's it. Pretend this is Green Day.

Here we go. You can buy the Love Buzz single on Discogs. com right now for the low low price of $2,443.75. There's one on eBay, too, but that's $12,000. Don't do that. Does this sound like Green Day to you at all? It's the funny voice, I guess. The clipped, wispy aspect of just ain't the way it seems to, I don't know. It was just a thought. Love Buzz is a cover of a 1969 psych rock song by a Dutch band called The Shocking Blue. And I don't know that Nirvana's version changed anyone's life the first time they heard it, but anything's possible, right? Yeah, forget it. That's not Green Day. Nirvana's first album comes out on subpop in June 1989. It's called Bleach. And one thing Bleach has going for it is that this dude can semi-melotically scream his ass off. That song's called Negative Creep. We're going to be talking to Courtney Love in a little while. Courtney Love from Hull,

Courtney Love who married Kirk Cobain in 1992. They had a daughter, Francis Bean. That Courtney Love, it's fine if you don't believe me. I hardly believe it myself. Courtney will tell you that on bleach, Kurt had to sandbag himself and suppress his pop instincts, his Beatles impulses, and concentrate on the screaming,

the thrashing, the punk shit, because that's what was expected of him at the time. I'm paraphrasing. Put it this way. I don't hear a lot of the knack on bleach. This song's called Floyd the Barber. Don't go see Floyd the Barber. I am drawn to the screaming on bleach.

Yes, I am drawn to the screaming because that's when Kirk Cobain sounds the most like himself on this record. Sorry, I mean, the screaming is when he sounds the most like the Kirk Cobain that I've made up in my head. That's an important distinction. The vast majority of the people who've heard Bleach heard it after Nevermind, right?

Nevermind comes out in September 1991, but doesn't hit number one until January 92 when it beats out Michael Jackson's dangerous. And that's when the 90s begin. That's when Nirvana becomes the 90s band and Kirk Cobain becomes the 90s rock star. And Bleach sold about 40,000 copies before Nevermind came out and sold 1.9 million copies after Nevermind came out,

which means that Nirvana got so famous that their fame dislodged their debut album from the flow of the linear time. So if you come to Bleach looking for more, nevermind, you're going to be bummed. The guitars on Bleach sound like they were played by a human being. So do the drums.

It's the screaming that sounds a little superhuman. That song's called scoff. Bleach is fine if you like screaming and scabrousness and grudging tunefulness and guys who really like the Melvins. But there's only one song where Kirk Cobain truly

flexes his full potential, his inner Lenin and McCartney, his inner future rock star. Only one bleat song makes the greatest hits album, or more importantly, unplugged. About a girl, it's all about the harmonies there. I do. It's not complicated. It's not ultra melodic. It's not the sweetest, stickiest hook you ever heard in your life, but it's enough. It's enough to elevate the song, and therefore the record, and therefore the band, and therefore the band leader. and songwriter. About a Girl is your first real indication of what Kirkoban's capable of and what he's heading toward, what he's after. Punk rock alone cannot contain or satisfy him. About a Girl is the first very good Nirvana song, but it's not the first truly great one.

Sliverman Dad went to a show It dropped me off the Grand Joe's I kicked and screams So please Sliver A single from 1990 But It too is dislodged

From linear time Most people didn't hear it until after Nevermind In December 92 When Nirvana put out the B-Sides record in Cesticide Sliver is the song for me This is where Kirk Cobain is

going This is the place Kirk Cobain can never leave. Can I tell you that initially I misheard this as never take me home and not the quite obvious and discernible actual line, Grandma, take me home? Don't ask me how I manage to mishearer and therefore misinterpret that line so completely. It's impressive, really. I'm impressed with myself.

We're building up to the most cathartic and thrilling and upsetting scream in the Kirk Cobain catalog, but first we got to listen to him, sing the line, mashed potatoes and stuff like that. Dan Peters from Mudhoney on drums on Sliver, and really only on Sliver. Chad Canning got bounced after Bleach and a Bleach-era touring second guitarist

named Jason Everman didn't last either. So this is one of your last Nirvana moments before Dave Grohl takes over on drums and Nirvana becomes Nirvana. But truly, truly, truly, mashed potatoes and stuff like that is the line. my friends, the line and the line delivery. Kirk Cobain sings the words,

Mashed Potatoes like a little kid. He sings the words, Go outside and ride your bike like a screaming adult who won't ever forget the pain of being a little kid. That's great news for him as a songwriter and less great news for him as a person. A brief list of topics that don't interest me today would include heroin,

Kurt's chronic awful stomach pain, Vanity Fair The struggles and compromises and curses of legit voice of a generation, rock stardom. Kurt's various beaves with the likes of Axel Rose and Eddie Vedder, though Courtney's got some legit Eddie Intel coming soon.

And that day in April 1994, when I was on the bus in front of my old junior high at the corner of East Union and North Harmony when the radio told us that Kirk Cobain was gone. None of that much interests me. I don't like to think about it, mostly I don't. I talk about songs and events from 30-plus years ago in the present tense as much as I possibly can, partly for my own protection, partly to avoid reminding myself that I am indeed now older than my parents were.

When I was a teenager, that topic doesn't interest me either, but I want to keep all the people I'm talking about present tense as well. And that goes double for those people who are no longer with us. But Kurt Cobain singing, I woke up in my mother's arms on Sliver. This is as terrifyingly present tense as the past gets. Then Nirvana signed to a major label, DGC, with a little help from their cool friends in Sonic Youth, and they hook up with affable Midwestern producer Butch Vig, and here comes 1991, which is indeed the year punk broke. It also made me the year that broke punk and smells like teen spirit.

If I'm honest, possibly doesn't make my top 20 Nirvana songs. And yet I know in my heart that it's the song and deserves to be the song. It is in fact the only Nirvana song that could have possibly been the song. But what I don't quite know is why. Dave Grohl is one reason why. I suppose Dave Grohl's drums of the least human, of the myriad sublimely inhuman aspects. It smells like teen spirit. As far as the video goes, I get that the anarchy cheerleaders and the Mosh pit antics and the grudging, blurry, super-handsomeness

of Kirk Cobain are all more important, like, historically, generationally, but my eyes are always drawn to Dave headbanging back there. It might be the total rad incongruousness of Kurt rhyming, mulatto, albino, mosquito, and libido within like eight seconds. Truly a baffling an iconic way to announce to the universe that you're horny. It might be the bloody night out type uncertainty as to what exactly Kurt is saying, and certainly what he means by whatever he's saying. Insofar, it smells like teen spirit defines my generation and explicitly defines my generation against, say, my parents' generation.

Can I tell you about the time I was sitting there watching MTV and my mom was in the room and the video for the Weird Al-Yankovic teen spirit parody smells like Nirvana was on. Can I tell you what happened when Weird Al hit this line? What happened is that Weird Al started actually spitting marbles out of his mouth, and my mom, now sitting next to me, just busted out laughing. And I may have blushed ever so slightly at my mom laughing at Weird Al, mocking the unintelligible, ultra-mumbliness of what by then I'd fully internalized as the voice of my generation.

It felt like a personal attack on me somehow. But maybe I was taking it all too seriously. I was for sure taking it all too seriously. I think the harder question to answer, at least at the time, was, is Kurt Cobain taking this seriously? In the years, in the decades to come, every interview he did,

every book written about him, it will be drilled into my head that Kirk Cobain resented his stardom. All the attention, adulation and none of it mattered to him and smells like teen spirit was just a rip-off of either the pixies or boston's more than a feeling or both and he hated us for loving it and therefore i was supposed to take the epic shrug of oh well whatever never mind literally not to mention personally he is mocking me in the last lines or the last verse in the song for constructing

my entire teenage identity around the song how embarrassing for me. But I'm more embarrassed now that it never occurred to me that Kirk Cobain might have actually loved more than a feeling. It also never occurred to me that Kurt taught so much about resenting stardom because he was a little ashamed of how much he'd wanted stardom. Charles R. Cross in that book, heavier than heaven.

He writes, quote, What is interviewers, and the fans who read these stories never knew was that almost every word he uttered had been rehearsed in his head with band driving around in the van or in many instances actually written out in his journals. This wasn't simply craftiness on his part or a desire to put forth the most marketable and attractive image. Though, despite all the punk ideals he spouted, he, like any other human being, was intrinsically guilty of this. But much of his forethought occurred instinctually.

He had imagined these moments. Since he began retreating from the outside world after his parents' divorce, spending all that time in his room, writing in notebooks. When the world tapped him on the shoulder and said, Mr. Cobain, we are ready for your close-up, he had planned how he'd walk toward the cameras, going so far as to even rehearse the way he would shrug his shoulders, as if to give the impression he had only grudgingly acquiesced. End quote. Also in the years to come, I'll read all about how Kurt has all but renounced the commercial slick of Nevermind. In Michael Azarad's

1993 biography, Come as You Are, the story of Nirvana, Kurt says, Looking back on the production of Nevermind, I'm embarrassed by it. It sounds closer to a Motley

crew record than it is to a punk rock album, end quote. As a consequence, in my convoluted little teenage brain, I will hear Nirvana's next album, 1993's in utero,

as an album length denunciation of the commercial slickness of never mind. I will take the ultra-narliness of the guitars on heart-shaped box and very specifically their gnarliness on the word advice as an explicit renunciation of nevermind. But you want to know in all seriousness my second favorite 10 seconds of Nirvana, the explicit renunciation of everyone and everything in this one line from the song, Francis Farmer will have her revenge on Seattle

and very specifically the gnarliness on the word ash. And then he was gone. I found out on the bus. Then six months later, so the unplugged CD comes out. Remember how mad you were when you first saw the unplugged track list?

There was no teen spirits, no lithium, no heart-shaped, box, three songs from the meat puppets? Those guys, those guys I once saw open for the Stone Temple pilots. Remember when you realize unplug was probably the best thing Nirvana ever did? And the meat puppets were a crucial part of that? The Lake of Fire tore his ass up. Those three meat puppet songs in a row.

Plateau, oh me, and Lake of Fire are my favorite 10 minutes of Nirvana, because you can hear how much Kurt loves that band and loves these songs. You can hear them the way he heard them. And he sounds like such a fan singing these meat puppet songs. He sounds so unburdened, so serene, so human. It's a lovely feeling that 10 minutes. You wish everything could just stay that way forever. Let's just stay here forever.

We can't finish the record. We have to finish the record. Okay, let's finish the record. The record ends with where did you sleep last night. Leadbelly, the blue singer, also makes the top 50 by Nirvana. It's so tempting to over-dramatize this moment. The ragged breath, Kirk Cobain just took, because I've been over-dramatizing this moment for like 30 years. Over-dramatizing this moment is my job.

It's my identity. It's my whole life. But I still have this vague image of a tiny Kirkobain on stage in his cardigan and his ripped jeans, surrounded by the candles and the stargazer lilies because he wanted the unplug set to look like a funeral and he's singing and these bellowing shredded voice and he's just physically overwhelmed and beaten down by the weight of all that responsibility all that expectation all that public criticism and or adulation like jonah and the whale i know better than to bind to the whole overwhelmed by fame thing but i still do it anyway because i still hear it the eeriness of it the frailty of it the loneliness. My impulse is to stop the song here so the song doesn't end. The record doesn't end. But by the time I hear this song for the first time, he's already gone. It's not my decision

anyway. So we got to let him take another breath. No one just listened to this song, had a good time, and walked away. Millions of us will live this song forever, too. But the kindest thing we can do for him is to let him walk away. Our guest today is Courtney Love, who needs no introduction. I think, Courtney, it is awesome and it is also wild as hell to talk to you. I am honored and I really appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you so much, Rob. You've really earned my trust. I live in England and somebody sent me a fucking podcast about doll parts. Why the hell would I listen to an American in dull parts. It's a good question.

Well, I don't have any current clout, and I haven't been able to make a record for a really long time that was super great. So now I'm old and no one's done that. There's no clout out there in the world. So there's three records that penetrated. And I don't expect anybody to give me anything other than that, other than my own confidence that at my age is so weird

to be the first person of any gender, anybody really knows of this, that's doing like, career best work. So I had like so much confidence about that, that I'm really peaceful and serene about these things. And then your podcast blew me away. And then this is the order that I went because I'm 10 years older than you. So I first, because I'm a San Francisco girl, I had third eye blind because I beat with that guy too. You know, I know with all these rich SF guys. I mean, Beverly's got slumming at an SF. Even did. Jay did check through.

I really needed to know about the beef because he beefed with everybody. And I'm a beef for two. I've been beating since day one. I just shows you my first, the first appearance of Lottie Da in 82. You did. And he's gaped me and gas lit up me or he's

gate kept being, he's told the person at the punk rock gossip column that my name was Ms. Love. And I was really fighting with Pat that it should be loveless. So I sent that to my oldest friend, Joe Mama,

And he said that and all my comments like that are beefy like I puked cherries on him. I fucked him. I fucked him. And she's fat. That's 82. That's like, 1988 is when Flea gives me the next key to the pepper's rehearsal space, which nobody would be,

nobody would be wagering on that one. That would be a huge honor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Love you Wild Thing. Forever, man.

Like, make stuff for the singer. Can't. Yeah, got nothing to say there, right? Sure. Okay. Zero wager bet on that one. Like, zero wager bet. I just started chanting and he was like, hey, court, you want the key?

Yeah, I'll take that fucking key. So that's an 88. And I started to listen to, then I listened. The one I haven't because I have no relationship to Sunny Day Religious Estate. Like, I literally have never heard them. Okay. So I did look at that. But then because the next one is Bitter's Recy Symphony, I mean, you go.

dead genius on that. Like, you go, like, he is literally telling Rolling Stone while he's writing the song, what the song is going to be about the torment of Richard Ashcroft's life, which is, I'm like, okay, I'm kind of in this now. And then I went, Oasis because of over here. I wanted to see how the brothers here would do it. And then what else did the other way and did?

I did Jim Blossoms because, you know, the kind of short goodness of the industry. And then I did, I did Liz Phyllis Ferry. which was pretty hard for me. You know, she had to carry that whole thing by herself. She didn't have a band. You know, the content, like the desire, it's this the thing I'm having with the Hall of Fame right now.

Yes. That we just want parody. Do you know what? We just want parity. We don't want better. We don't want more. We just want like a fair shot. And Empowers also went into bands playing.

I was texting with Corgan while you and Yasu were like going off on Oh, no. Don't... I didn't tell him. I was like, you know, he's so... Billy's so,

like, angry and wired in particular. I got enough problems. Yeah. Well, me and Ophamar still really love William. And, you know,

I sing him a song, which by way, blew a... Blue But she sits away. And he goes, yeah. What you're doing is credible. It's like,

credible. You change the key and come to Chicago. I'm like, yeah, that's not happy. But disarm was on, because the Spotify one that Yasi does, like,

I only did two. I did three hours of Anne and Yalsi on Polly Jane. That's a great one. That's my favorite of theirs. Yes. Well, you know, my,

one of my oldest friends is here. She's writing my book. I call her Boris Pasternak, making me Stalin, making her my hostage. And I'm like, I fucking love Anne. And I'm like,

we love Anne. But like, I did Ann and PJ, part one, so that you don't have to. Like, it was a lot of triggering going on.

Like, just don't, like, I'm from San Francisco. Like, like, just say it about me. Don't say it about Polly. Like, get a fucking freak around, man. Like, don't. I know what Anne say. What Anna say, and this is really what's going to start the girls, against boys, beef off right here perfectly.

When I was in sixth grade, I had a friend named Susan Schlauter in Portland, Oregon. I didn't even know I knew somebody as fancy Susan Schlaughter, and she had, like, three hot brothers, like Pooka shells, 70s, before you were born, six. Scott. Scott Kibben and Steve Schlauter. And somehow, like somehow in sixth grade, I'm well-adjusted enough for like a minute, hot minute.

So you go in their RVs, like Monville, Oregon or some place like that, and Barracudas on the radio. And Scott Slater, the hottest of the brothers, like 1976. He goes, and this is stay with me and cringed with me. And I'm with Cube on this. I'm going to steal his line because Scott Schlaeder goes, I hate it when chicks sing like this. I'm sixth grade, right?

And like, formative. It's a formative memory. Rose just hate it. Like, bros just fucking hate it. Like, when Q's says, I'm singing this for my people.

And if you're white, you're eavesdropping, I'm like, okay, I'm singing this for chicks, but we beefs so fucking much. I don't even know who I'm singing it for now.

So basically the airways are clean and nobody's singing for me now. So we're going back that. And then I started listening to your, because I knew Tupac's mother. I knew DM. pretty well. I listened to your rap ones and they were

heartbreaking and really, really revelatory and awoke in me and understanding of that kind of black fury and black brave. You had that guy van on. And when you had van on. Van Lason. The great band, Nathan. That guy

had so much soul and I was like, fuck this. Like, I'm not having Charlie speak for me. I was in the damn room for this song and it's not about me. It was pre-courtney. So I just did that really gross thing famous people do and like slap me if I do it again. If I refer to myself in the third person one more time. I think you've earned the right, Courtney.

When somebody's a famous person and they throw the person themselves, like that is a garner moment. It's a bad sign ordinarily. But I think in this case, we'll. Yeah, let's see own it. Yeah. You have been sending me, you have a ton of handwritten lyrics to smells like teen spirit, some of which have been published, some of which have not. Am I right in saying that your favorite lines from this song didn't actually make

this song. There's a whole alternate version. Yeah. In fact, so Charlie sent me these and you know. Charlie Cross, who wrote the bio. Charles Crosse, yeah. Perchcars is like a, he's like a, he's like a, he's a family member. He really watches out for Grances for me, for the whole Northwest, you know,

dyad, which I would say I'm not from Portland. I did time in Portland. Like very much did time there. Couldn't the fuck wait to get the fuck out. And I'm born in San Francisco. So, you know, when I tour, there's often reviews like, native-born Minneapolis. Like, I get them, it's hilarious. Native-born Manhattan.

I'm like, really? Okay. And then you guys are too young to know my part about Dublin, 81, Liverpool, 82, which is super formative. But for me, then I came in knowing stuff that Kurt did not. And so we were talking earlier today about Kurt having like three formative. schools, his own weird sense of humor. Yes.

His own growing up in that kind of, we used to be called underprivileged white children. Like, you know, and also you are buying, and sometimes I feel like that he was from Seattle. Like, we could not have been further, me and Kurt did also live in Seattle because we needed to run away from L.A. and I remember juvenile law, there was a thing called Interstate Compact And we're supposed to be living in Seattle, according to the magazines. Let's just go there. And they went to talk with our kid. And they didn't.

But we never left our house. That was the end. That was the end. I think I told you, when Silva told Grohl and Chris and Kurt and me and whoever else was in the room in Salem, Oregon, where I'd been incarcerated for two years. So I already had issues with this weird market. I think it was the album was number one. And day. In January 92. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Eat Michael Jackson. Yeah, they beat bad. It was big thing. Right. And Grohl, you know, was like happy. And by the way, this is a good thing. Me and Dave were really good friends back then.

He had a really healthy attitude towards success. He'd been in punk bands. But he was really, you know, isn't this the point? Right. And then Kurt and me who'd been dodging and darting and now hustling in our different schools, really, our different areas. But with the same bullshit, the same sellout. generation bullshit.

I mean, we started straight, right, and not even with each other. You knew it was a bad thing. You knew hitting number one, this was going to be a curse. It was not what was on the menu,

because it was like the first, the monoculture then pushed this narrative that I love you guys questioning, which is, did this moment kill butt rock? And in no way shape, form did it. Like, it didn't.

It just looked like it did. Like, did not kill butt car. We were told that winger, like, spontaneously combusted right that second. Yeah. So it's good to know that's not true. A few did, you know, like guys getting the stylus that we're doing. Sure. You know, I think JD had a few hair metal bands that he was in my manager. He had, you had, your manager, yeah, yeah. The great JD, who's actually, was like, who is my Steve Jobs and I'm the walls. Like, should I do this today? It's a good dynamic. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great dynamic.

But like, when you're talking about Allison Chains, like, I knew they were sleighs. I knew that they'd gone out with fucking stupid. I need that. I play with Cantrell. I think he's a fucking gentleman, a really good songwriter who wrote a riff, a song of mine from nobody's daughter, and I didn't use it.

We didn't, you know, whatever. But I love Cantrell. I think he's great. Also, the Allison Chain's unplugged is Flex, also one of my favorites. So other than my own bands and Nirvana's, I think the Allison Jane's unplugged. I think the Allison Chain unplug for me condenses

all the darkness of Lane and Jerry meet the fucking lane thing, man, so sad. Yeah, I agree. I agree completely. That one's just the killer. It's Nirvana and Allison Chains

and everything else, unplucked wise. Those two are twained in my mind. Yeah, it's also, though, you know, there's only one book on the opiate crisis that even addresses the Black Char epidemic. It's by Sam Kimosa. It's called Dreamland. And he, you know, he takes the sacklers

to town, but Oxycontin was in the eastern in the seaborn. We had, and Kim also wrote another book just now called Fentanyl, the least of us, the fentanyl and meth, it's called the least of us. They're genius, right, right the way. And like, when Taylor passed, I said this to growl, like I sent to Navarre, or since anyone of us that survived that I'm still talking to, plea, and I was like, pass this shit around, because when you find out that like Portland and Seattle had the highest death per capita from Blacktar, overdoses and that black tar was a major epidemic, it kind of liberates you.

Okay, we weren't just brats. It was pretty geopolitical. Like that book opens with the guy in Haliscoe, Mexico and his uncle in Rancho Cucamonga. And I said to Navarro, I'm like, do you remember when we used to go to Rancho Cucamonga? Like, this is like the flashpoint. Like, we weren't just brats. Like, this shit was falling off the trees.

And like, yeah, we all got real addicted to it. But like, my God. It is geopolitical too. And that feels really liberating in a way. And that we made it. Those of us who have made it through. You survived. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that's a, yeah, the hero died and the fool survived. And you're just going to have to make the fool's account because I was in the fucking room. So there was no moment where you're like, he's like, we hit number one. You know, I did it. You know, he knew immediately this was a bad thing. No, the Minneapolis thing was the main. I love that story.

So I fly, I talk to this guy, Tom Intentio, can he has New Order or something. It takes me to like Muso and Franks. And I just want to go fuck Billy. Like, whatever. Like, I had really honest to God, no clue that Nirvana was playing the Metro that night. Like, none. I say to Tom and Sensio, he buys me martini and something fancy at Muso and Frank.

which you may not know, but if you remember the last Quentin movie, it's where the scene opens with Brad and Leo and Pacino. And Pacino, that's in there. Okay. Yeah, that's the first scene in Once in a Fun Time in Hollywood. It opens it Muson for quite fancy. And I say to Atoncio, Jill, my old bass,

there was a, this guy had a cell phone and a pool and a Porsche, and, you know, clearly was a player. I had something with New Order. I said, get me a tickets to Chicago. I will come back with a Nirvana tour. I don't even know. the guy did it. It's another person handing me some keys, right?

Okay. I got on this plane to Chicago, and I've been flirting with Kurt for a while. I've been flirting with Kurt since it, like, lands on me, bleaker Bob's Melrose, and I hear sliver. Sliver. It's a great first one to hear. It wasn't the first one I heard because I saw them at Sacherica on it,

that they sucked. So the following day, I would have one then. No, I kind of like this narrative because, because why Kurt told me later that they covered Lovebuzz, I think his parent is, it's important, which is, you know,

it's Chris's mom that's letting them, you know, play there. Nobody else will play with Kurt. Like, really, Chris's mom. Kurt just had to do the really hard work

of kicking out Chad. This is how, never mind gets born. He gets, he gets the best drummer he's seen. And he had names going around like, Jay Maskis.

I don't know. He was obsessed with Jay Maskes is drumming. Dale, who he wouldn't dare to. school one, which is Buzz. You guys accused Kurt of liking the Jesus lizard. I'm like, yeah, that would be a buzz thing.

Like, I like the frogs. He loves scratch acid. Like, there were things like that on Buzz that he loved. But where am I? I'm in Buzz School and then Tracy and then they moved to Olympia. And then he's around these revolutionary, gorgeous Marxist girls. And they're doing Revolution Girl style now. It's outrageous.

And they're talking and they're speaking. It's like, what is this? 88. And they're speaking, you know, white male oppression. And they're speaking like they're, you know, he's like getting, it's amazing. Right. And these girls are fucking something. The problem with their musical taste, because I lived with one of them who I think changed

the course of rock history by just spitefully calling her band Courtney Love two years ahead the other girls, and then they would just talk about me all the time. I don't know if Krusty gets into this chat. If so, you bring it up. Custy is a genre that Grunge could have been called quite as it. It's a digression. We'll see. We'll see.

Okay. So Lois, I get the Krusty Pack as of Zodiac Mind War two years before from a guy in London. And Lois is like my roommate, Lois is giving the stink guy. Like, how does Courtney know somebody that signs people to have major labor auxiliary? I don't know. I'm running around saying, I'm going to be a rock star all over the West Coast. Nobody likes that. They like it with Andrew Wood.

They don't like it with me. It's fine. Whatever. I'm over the beat. But, you know, I am sort of all they talk about, like, which is weird because I'm not even famous yet. So, like, if they're still being that one, they threw him at me. But I see Love Buzz.

No, I go see Nirvana at Satiricon. And people debate this hotly. I've got photos. There's receipts. I do know this band called the Dharma Bums is playing. I do know this is the... They were opening. Right, right.

Yeah. No, I don't think so. I don't know. You have to check. Okay. Nirvana was opening, I thought. Maybe that's wrong. You were there. I think Nirvana was opening because Darma bones were kind of bigger in Portland. But at that point, you know, this weird image of Chris Cornell wrapped in the beautiful Charles Peterson hair wrapped in a mic court. That had been in all the fan scenes. And so it was like to me a populist image, but it was also like a man's beauty, a Diennese. almost Jim Morrison, young life.

That was a rock star in your flesh magazine. What the fuck is that doing now? Right. And just so you have some history on what subpop really was, it was a fan scene that I used to get in Portland. Bruce Pavett really loved things like the residents, right, and throbbing gristlebox set. So, like, we're going way into the early 80s.

And then they form into a formidable, as we know, coming up now. But their first big flex, was the Chris Cornell ad, really, that was in like flipside and Thrasher and was rude to the eyes of the SST crew. It wasn't rude to me. I love a rock star, but like it was rude. Like, people were offended and maybe confused. He is rudely handsome. I would agree with that. Yeah, it's kind of offensive to me personally. An image like that really hadn't appeared in that context. I was down because I like a rock star, but I was openly down, right? So what Kurt

did, because he had access to Seattle, was like, oh, maybe I'll identify with that place. I can't even, I've only been to Tacoma, right? And when I saw them, they had a guy named Jason Everman, and I watched Kurt go and unplug him. He fucking unplugged him. Like, he had the hair. He was beautiful. He looked like Chris Cornell. And because Chris is so fucking tall. Kurt looked outrageously small. Like my name for

was pixie meat. I would call him pixie meat. Because on stage, Kurt, it was 5, 5, 8, like I'm 510, right?

He's not that short. But on stage, Chris is, like 6-7, right. So, like, Chris will end up

them physically. But Everman was like, I saw right through that shit. I'm like, oh, yeah, you're trying. And if,

you know, I had a vow with myself that if I didn't make it by 25, I'm out. Like, I'm done. Like, fulfill my potential. Like, dude, with my life. Not in the capitalist sense.

Like, I say the word, make it. And it just feeds into this rotten old American narrative about me and about ambition and women and all the bullshit. It was more like, I made a vow when I was five. And I saw Tadamonia win an Oscar. I'm like, I need to be there in that room with those. And then I heard like, I think I heard L.A. woman. And I'm like, I need to be down there. And the only thing that any of my parental figures could agree upon is no one goes to L.A.

We stay at San Francisco, no more, no more South, right? It's not bad advice. But no one knew that music like this could ever hit number one at this point. It is not until it happens that anyone even imagines it could ever happen. So, yeah. So I fly to, I tell him it seems to buys me a ticket. It's fucking crazy. My hustle must have been great.

And I just wanted to go, fuck Billy. And then have sex with Billy. And then I get there and Billy had a girlfriend, which, by the way, we're writing these letters to each other that are intense. One of the things in my letters was the killer in me is the killer in you. And I was on a date with one rich boyfriend that I was the only other person I would have married, actually. But he has a tin ear. And he's a plutocrat, what a poet, except he has a tenure.

And we were at the oyster bar on Mercer Street. And I go, this is the line that I wrote this guy I dated because disarm was in the background with the Orestra. He goes, that is such a 23-year-old unrequited love line. I'm like, you know, this is why we're not going to get married. Or a 15-year-old. Yeah. It works for all ages below 30, really, yeah.

I don't know that Corgan would credit me. Yeah, he would. He'd be honest about that thing. Yeah, it was in my ladder. So, whatever, the killer amies. So, yeah, he would. He'd be fair about that. In any event

You know We are our romance It was not very physical It was more cerebral And more letters A lot of letters But I wanted to go there physically And I did

And there was a girlfriend Who actually married I think the name was Chris I don't remember her face or anything But she threw things at me And I just had Maybe I called Maybe I didn't

This could be another case Where I stole the key From the guy Or the guy gave me the key I can't remember Sometimes Sometimes you got to steal the key, I think. You know what?

If you got to steal the key to make the myth steal the fucking key. If the dude gives you the wizard gives the key, take the key. Plea definitively gave me the key. That could happen. Let's be clear on that. Okay. And I think another thing is that the market forces of sexism have raged for a very long time so that people are, unlike, say, Andrew Wood, whereas they would be proud of that if I was a dude.

Do you mean? Absolutely. I know what you mean. Yes. So anyway, Corkin goes, your boyfriend's playing at the Metro. Okay, so I don't know Chicago for shit. I've only been up there for many,

during my, I was in Minneapolis when the replacements were in Bloom with Kat, B.L.N. from Babes and Toiland. Mm-hmm. We had gone to Lounge, X, earlier that year. And LoungeX had the, the Bucch Vig smart sessions. And in Bloom came on.

And I looked at cat, I was fucking furious. I was red in my face. And I was like, if you and Finch had used my Japanese connection and we had gone to Japan and they'd fucking hostess bars and done the Beaville's covers, this could be us right now. You could be playing in bloom. It was our hamburg and we blew it. Like, all we are is untight bands, right?

Yeah. I'm like, furious. Like, this is four months before. And also I'm seeing in Hollywood along with poison stickers on these boys, nylon guitar cases, Nirvana stickers are happening during bleach. The fuck is that about

the font? It's a good font. More proof that Grunge didn't kill hair metal, though. Hair metal. I mean, I'm not actually Pavett

and Ponomin, the subpop guys with the great street team, like, seemed like a really organic thing popping off. Yo, do you know school?

I mean, like, these kids didn't know shit, right? They didn't. So deep cuts, yeah. Deep cuts.

shit. So I go, I have to walk from Corgan's apartment to the back of Wicker Park, right? You're a Midwestern guy. You tell me it's 1991, never much just come out, and that's a scary walk. It's probably fucking cold also, yeah, but yes, that's a scary walk. We always have to remember that this thing could come out to winter, and like people forget that, and that there was a whole kind of four-month period where, like, Janet from Caroline, was singing in Bloom more to me on the phone. People were singing in Bloom to each other.

That was definitely happened. But if people were singing in Bloom, they weren't so much singing, smells like Teen Spirit. You told me that might have been the first single off Nevermind in Bloom instead of Teen Spirit. And I cannot picture that. I cannot make that happen. There's a whole move.

I had no influence and sway in the camp. And even when I did, I didn't really flex it much. Like, oh, here's a great Corgan story. Actually, cut to Corgan won't pay. This is pre-Chicago. Corgan won't pay for my playing right back from a pukeal pop or something. The festival is played with Nirvana. So I go on the ferry with Nirvana.

And so, yeah, Salem has to be the album because this is teen spirit now. And Alex, they're Scottish roadmanor. They're always Scottish roadmanters. He tells them, I'm on the. And it goes, you guys are getting like, I think it's 80, 80 place drive time on K Rock. And they all of them look at me and like, what does that mean? I've never heard that number. Like I know that K Rock made Jepesh mode able to play Yankee Stadium, but you know what I mean?

I, Dodger Stadium, but I've never heard that number. That is a huge drive time number. Like I know kind of stats and weird things. Like, I know things about the bids, right? not fucking everything. That is for sure. But I know I have a, I'm coming with, I've been to Europe, I've been to New York, I'm coming with sort of a sophisticated, I've lived in L.A., like a sophistication that is definitely not,

Kurt doesn't have. You know more than them. You don't know everything, but you know more than them. I knew a lot of shit. Not enough, but a lot. And then I walked through Wicker Park. I don't get a cab because I don't have any money. It's impossible that I got to.

cab. And I just do like it really scary. And I get to the metro. So Chicagoans are going to fucking, you know, troll me so hard right now that wherever I walked, it was long, it was dark, it was scary. And we'll look it up on Google Maps later. It's fine. Yeah, it'll be fine. This is the walk between from portal, from portal to portal. Now we're going. Right. Yeah. This is an existential thing, I think. They're all, even free with that key, baby. They're all, even Julian Cope, like, you can go live in my apartment, fuck trying to make. the Irish like you. Like they're all portal to portal to portal.

Interestingly, not a lot of women have handed me those keys. It's usually been the males going to say that. Although certainly Melissa Oftamar and Jennifer Finch and there's been several, but not so many. But I think maybe that's going to change. But in any event, I watch it and I get to the Metro and Nirvana have just come off stage. The stage is that we've been flirting for like a year, right? because the following day from the Dharma Bums,

I bought the cat butt single. I'm like, I'm not buying, I know that. I love 60s bump. I am not buying a Love Buzz cover. And Kurt tells me later, at Love Bus thing, it had, you know,

all these intricate baselines on it that were like Arabic and Chris wanted to flex his bass playing, and I had to let him. It's a good baseline, yeah. I think Bleach was $600, so they had $200 to make Love Bus. What's the B side of Love Bus? I want to say big cheese.

Okay. So, yeah. I mean, there it is, right? You know, I'm going to say something about gatekeeping here and now. Thurston lives, Thurston Moore and his lovely wife, Ava, lived here in London with me. And they came over for the Oscars last year. He came for the Oscars last year. The slap, my friend Chris got slapped, whatever.

It's ridiculous. Oh, yeah. And they were, it didn't come on here until like 1 a.m. And, you know, I'm not missing an Oscar ever in my entire life. I never have. We're here at three hours and Thurston's downstairs and

we're talking about it. It's like, yeah, it just freaks me out that like people were so scared of me and Kim and writers come up to me and, you know, I'm like, are you dim? You were the gate, man. He's like, no, I just want to jazz. And then I got mad.

I love Thurston. He's like a sun bear. He's like a wonderful sunbear. that I slammed my kitchen table really hard. And I went, let's talk about bleach because that shit dies with me. You know, about hiding our light under a bushel. About, in my case, knowing I could write the killing moon. In Kurt's case, you say he trolled more than I'm feeling, fuck off. We were, Northwest was a tertiary market.

We got Nugent. We got Hagar. We got, you know, special. we didn't get the cool bands like you Midwesterners got. We weren't on that circuit, right? We got shit. So, you know, troll or no troll, like you hear the pixies, you hear hope. And I'm going back to those riot girls, their taste was, you know, Lois's taste in the Krusty apartment on South West Salmon in Portland was, hey, I was just an R.

I was doing the full spectrum when I got the Zodiac Mind War fucking EP that pissed her off that starts this whole thing in motion, right? but her taste was television personalities which like Kurt loved forever. Tweed, Scottish Tweed, Talula Gosh. Vaseline's. Yeah. Yes.

All of that very, you know, low-fi, yes, all of the lo-fi stuff. And, you know, I was swinging for the fences and I didn't mind that stuff. I thought it was cute. But I was something like Mortal Coil and 4-A-D shit. This is not like Courtney's in here playing, you know, toys in the fucking attic,

although I can fuck with that too but not in that house that was all girls you know I'm not gonna fly you know how you scare the English girls out of a photo shoot you just put on arrowsmith and they're like out

that's good information if you're like ever shooting with British people just like Arrow Smith they won't fucking clear the room they'll just they'll just it's like a physical force expelling them

wow okay but when I'm like done I just put on like freaking rocks. Rocks. They're like, get common people. Get them.

Oh, God. The basically is actually past the waves. He did. Steve. Yeah. Yeah, Steve, Mackie. I'm going to that funeral, and this is the third funeral I've ever been to.

I don't do well at them. I'm bad at a funeral, but I'm going to do go. Very charming, wonderful man. In any event, so I go backstage, two things are happening in my head right now. A, day from Satyri Khan. I am not

amused by Nirvana at all. It grows on me. I mean, Kurt are hurting at festivals. We're doing things on the side. He's, you know, he's broken up with Toby who he feels like everything is just too capitalist for her.

Like, Davy's too capitalists, too populace. And also this leads to my slamming on the kitchen table with Thurston about bleach. Like, we had just, like, literally like, I didn't, fuck the gatekeeping. I just wrote Kim Gordon, like the most ass-kissing letter of all time. I went to the gate because there was no one to do those two.

And I don't think Thurston had as much a part of it as Kim. And I'm not here to be with Kim, but like, you know, it was definitely like if you weren't educated, not good looking, not show, like populism was not for us, right? And we were underprivileged white people. We were not college goers. We did not understand that. we were both Kurt and I, other people, Finch, I can think of,

we were musicians, and we wanted to pursue music as a vocation. I can't remember not wanting to do that. That's the age of five. You know, Tatum may be getting the Oscar, but I thought she was getting the Oscar for being a rock star. Like, I was born for my job. You know, I don't know about everybody else.

And so I just didn't hide my bushel. Although, on what's my first album called? on the inside. I said Eric do riffs. You know? Yeah. These tattoos is a huge tattoo parlor through like 30 years of it. And like everybody came here in London.

I was just amused. I'm like, I'm not even trying. On bleach. Kurt's not even trying. He flexes one in there, which is about a girl. Which is about a girl. And the recess and the chorus to school. No recess.

Right? You can hear it's there, but he's got to hide it still. So he wants to write pop songs, but he knows he can't because he won't be accepted. So Bleach for You is an album where he sort of suppresses what he really wants to do. We're doing the exact same thing. Right. And we're manipulating the exact same thing. And he hasn't studied rock critics like I have, but he's studied enough of them, you know,

buzzed steady rock critics and pass that info onto Kurt. And then, you know, Revolution Girl Style Now, which is like the most intriguing. Like, if I'm a dude, like, and those girls are around, they're the sexiest things I've ever seen. Who could blame him, right? And contrary to popular belief in, you know, just my mother implied and or lied that the Equal Rights Amendment had passed. And I grew up in a household where Mother Jones and Ms. were the only media allowed. And so I thought, you know, feminism won in the 70s, as it sensibly should have, that me and me and Kathleen and me and Toby, we're writing really great pen pal letters to each other.

I'm not falling out with them over a dude. Are you kidding? Over a boy. Like, this is not what we do, right? So anyway, that's going on. I buy the cat butt single. I go on with my life. I keep seeing like Nirvana with poison.

And then I go into bleaker bobs. And then I hear sliver. So I'm sorry, I'm a big tangentially. You're going to have a hard time editing me. They hear sliver. My head is churned. It's a 12-inch. It's a fantastic song.

Don't like the art. I don't like the art. I don't like the art. I understand the art more now that I know about Kurt's physical issues more. But then I have them turn it over. And I love Dive and Kurt hated to dive. Really? So whenever you're like a Nirvana boot where Dive is being played at Pete Nirvana,

I'm there. Please play Dive. For me. Why did he hate it? I don't know. I have a song that everybody likes right now. One guy was like, even like this sounds like a bond theme. I hate it. I just don't like it. Like sometimes you write, like, think about those guys filter or what about those people with like one hits? You know what I mean? Like you start really hate the song that everybody likes or whatever.

Of course. But dive, you know, people like dive. But, you know, I had always heard as a teenager growing up, it was drilled into me that he hated teen spirit. There's just songs that. Okay. Do you what I mean? Like, whatever. He didn't like dive. I like dive. And I like the sexuality of dive. But you know, it got me was, I fell into my mother's arms. It's an incredible line. The tenderness.

That's the one. That's the Beatles. He pops it up. It goes, Grandma take me home. Grandma take me home. Grandma. Standing in there. And the bolt just hit me.

The ball. I got to have him. I got to have it. That's my guy. Yeah. That's it. So anyway, that isn't happening in that moment at Blake or Bobbott's and Melrose. And Corgitt's like throws me out.

Oh, your boyfriend's playing at the Metro. So I walk this walk that you're going to check. Existential walk, I'll check it. Yeah. Existential what, that's right. The portal. And I know it's long because I'm really worried that they'll have vanned off. And I don't want to have a rock.

Because I'm friendly with guys. Like me and Grohl go to, he's dating Jennifer Finch. the time, we go to a guitar center. He's telling him about Kurt, like, building, like, uh, gerbil have a trail at the door, wherever the place that Dave did his documentary about and then bought all their equipment, that sound studio. Sounds, yeah, sound city.

Yeah, yeah. Right. So Kurt's like in there, micing things. And I'm on Dave's motorcycle. We're like bros, like we're pals. Um, we did do one activity together, uh, pre-romance. I think me, Dave, oh, this is funny. me Dave Finch, Kurt, and Eric Erlinson from Hull, we went to see Truth or Dare at Beverly Center.

And we get out and a girl turns and he whips around me. He goes, that was you. And I'm like, no, that was you. So it was Madonna's, you know, truth or dare. Oh, my God. That's a lot to process. Just you eating popcorn and watching, wow. We were like really friendly.

Like, I really, it was a good vibe back then. There was none of this legal, whatever, the stuff that we have to go through in life. But yeah, so I get there, I get to the metro. Nirvana's off stage. That was the end of it. Boom. You know, that was the end of it. And I'd go to Germany in two days.

And we go to Minneapolis. I go in and a school, too. I mean, I'm educated. Kurt's educated, though. Got buzz, all that Sabbath, all that scratch. acid, don't accuse him of Jesus lizard again. I won't. All that.

It's Trump. Yeah, and that's the shit that we grew up on. That's the homegrown Oregon shit, the clear room of Britswood. But the shit that buzz gave him was transgressive, right? You know, very transgressive, Flipper, right? Which in San Francisco, a solid and scary fact of my life, right? When Francis got into her spooky phase about G.G. Allen and Flipper, I'm like, oh, man, Francis, you know, living it.

face. And the way you kids are glorifying it with your... Just watch that on YouTube rather than try to recreate it, I think, yeah. Because Mommy remembers rolling around in the beer, right? Like the crushed beer bottles. That was a hellscape. That punked San Francisco early 80s. That was a fucking hellscape.

Anyway, it was nihilistic. It was SST. It was terrifying. It was Gigi Allen before Poo-Poo. That happened in Boston. But it was G.G. Allen in 83. the scum fucks and flipper, flipper, flipper.

So buzzed down with that shit. And then the revolutionary girl style power fucking Marxist girls were like all about, you know, a little hook with a lo-fi. The Vaseline's are really good, I think, I think we can all agree on it here is great, right? Sure. Yeah, we can all agree on that.

Like I have issue maybe with some of the 45s that they like, but who doesn't like the Vaseline? So, you know, that's what he was in here. It was this like tweet pop that gave him his, permission to go Beatles, right? Right, right. That's the bridge. Right, right. And it gives Minneapolis Sturgis. It's pretty great. So we go in and we walk into Nirvana, are playing a record store.

Now, I have to leave in the morning for Germany or there's no hole. So I've got to go do my job. Yeah. That night, I have to leave in the morning. And there's this place called the Omni North Star. And it's in down, it's very cold. And it is very cold. And it is very cold because I very specifically remember the Chicago Walk. I don't remember this was cold. Minneapolis is even colder. Yeah, and downtown Minneapolis is very silent at night.

It's like the skyways that the replacements think about, right? Of course, of course. The venue, the famous venue, First Avenue, was getting out. And me and Kurt were in bed and we hear the verses of teen spirit. Like they're drunk kids and they've heard the song three times and they know the motherfucking verses, an albino and mulatto that's coming into our room. And he was delighted. I looked at him.

This is so crazy. It was magic. That was magic. That was joy. That was not about complicated commerce or selling out anything. Contagent and beautiful and joyous. And what really loomed me away is in that moment, if it had been me and it had been my song, I would have wanted the solitude

and said he reached for me and pulled me closer to him. That kind of put me in a position of like, this is a lot. They're like, this is going to be weird, right? I'm going to get judged against you.

And I mean, you're lefty and I'm pretty much outclass and said a lot of ways with your riffs and shit, you know, but I love him so much. And, you know, there were only two days into like a physical romance but we have been flirting about a year.

But like, it's just done. Like the minute we meet at the Metro backstage, the rest is over, right? I'm so glad he got that moment. I'm so glad he got a moment of uncomplicated delight. But the uncomplicated is the thing that would have been so much better. The way the role received this uncomplicated.

You know, we kicked Michael Jackson off. I am so jealous of Dave in that moment, right? Did your hostel? You're from Virginia, your dad worked at Merrill Lynch, your mom's great. This is the point, right, guys? This is the point. Right. But, man, it's just going to suck a bad.

Well, I want to talk about these alternate lyrics, which you seem to like a whole lot. I want you to tell me your opinion on In Bloom going first. I think things that have gone a lot better. You think things would have been better? I can't picture it. Nothing about my life or the world I live in makes sense if team. Teen Spirit doesn't lead. Anger Chains Springs here again.

Reproductive plans. And he's the one. Come on. That would have been a song. I prefer that song to Teen Spirit, honestly. But Teen Spirit has to be first. It just does. Absolutely.

You think there's a world where in Bloom could be the song. Totally. I mean, look, when I was pregnant with Francis, I was forbidden from listening to Jeremy. And so I have to cop Jeremy. I'm sorry, what? Yeah, we had a Jeremy band. We had the full...

I love Jeremy. And Kurt was like you can't. This is the Pearl Jam song, just to clarify. You were not allowed to listen to the Pearl Jam song, Jeremy, while pregnant. I loved Jeremy. Fucking love Jeremy. But I still love Jeremy. And I finally got it out of my system.

I did it, which I had a fairly good guitar player, not a good band, I'm a good guitar player. You're covered it. One time in Seattle. And I have a full, I watched the YouTube. I have a full spiritual, hold down, hallucinatory experience, singing Jeremy. It's incredible. 75 people.

No one, and I see the YouTube and you can't tell him having this experience, but I remember it. I see Kurt on the Space Needle while I'm singing Jeremy is fucking the full catharsis. Like, sorry, you can't see it on the YouTube, but I am. I will never forget doing, I'm just like, Michael, we're got to do Jeremy. We're just doing, we're learning Jeremy, we're going to play Jeremy, we're dropping, we're only playing it once.

I want to play it here in Seattle, and I'm going to resolve this grief thing, which, by the way, that never happens. But, you know, small steps, small steps, right? Why were you banned from listening to this song? He just, he disliked it and them that much? I'm not here to beat his beep, but you get his beep. I know,

Yossi showed you the thing that we aren't going to talk about. Like, that's his beef. And I don't want to make beef. She did. Okay. All right. You said, you said love not beef. You did.

What is it about these original lyrics to teen spirit that speak to you? That I didn't know them for 33 years, except a few of them until two nights ago when I said I would do this, that I've been zealiging and beefing and beefing and zeliging and wrestling with big themes and being feminized and not being able. I'm going to quote the great Cush Jumbo, the actress who played a massive sold-out hamlet. I'm obsessed with Hamlet. I'm obsessed with women playing Hamlet. I think it was written for her women.

She was the first of women, women, the women were allowed back on the stage, Charles I second, but there was just like not a lot about Hamlet. I don't know. And so I went to see her Hamlet three times in her sold-out London Hamlet. She was a woman of color.

She actually chose to play it as a man. But it was a great thing she said that, you know, when she was at the Royal Shakespeare Academy, she got to, she got to use some how do you like it, which plays with gender. She also got to play some of the male roles. And I'm quoting Cush Jumbo right now on BBC Women's Hour, which is my favorite thing ever to listen to, where she says, you know, you can declare war, you can declare peace. Wait, you can declare war, you can declare peace, and you can play, and you can wrestle with the big themes. and no one calls you crazy when you're in the male roles. Let that land.

Yeah. You can declare war, you can declare peace, and you can wrestle with the big themes, and no one calls you crazy when you're in the male Shakespearean roles. I mean, so beefing aside,

protecting Kurt's legacy aside, being called all the words and the things, and the, you know, the mortification of not being able to protect my daughter from financial assault aside. My own pride, which is mighty, aside, the pride is probably the hardest part to get out of my own way and fight Kurt's corner, you know? Like, that's, I'm doing this with you.

That, you know, my own gender, both, all of that, you know, like, when I was singing this earlier today. We're going to sing it in a crappy way. But if you have a karaoke machine, it might make it easier because there's this one lyric where I was like,

I'd never read this lyric before. The lyric is, we merge ahead this special day, this day, giving amnesty to sacrilege. And it's like, dude, you know what? When you're out class,

you're out class. Like, I'm sorry, Kurt. You're giving him that one. Fuck yeah. Like, It's a good line. He wrote dumb in Amsterdam in 20 minutes in front of me, and I was furious. I was so jealous.

And because he was a lefty and poor, he just took my guitar. Right. Flip it over. Yeah. Poor changes that I was doing. I'm not like them, but I can't. He's like fucking so mad. I was so jealous.

Showing off. No, I mean, it was a flex, 20 minutes wrote that song. But I went to the back. then they had record stores. You could buy big poetry sections. In Holland, in Amsterdam, there was an HMB, and it went a Leonard Cohen lyric book. And I remember back to the river,

I'm like, you need to up your game, buddy. The letter to come up. But these lyrics without my interference. Yes. Yeah, actually. So I sang you one version where I cleaned up Kurt. I'm like, no, let's not do that. This is pre-Cortney Kurt.

Like, let's let's let Kurt speak. I guess through the fool, the hero died, the fool survived, and yeah, I'm here. So should we look at these lyrics? Absolutely. So Charlie had these. Some of these were in, like, his journals, and then some of them were unpublished. And I was going to sing it crappy. So then I don't know what.

So these are them. Okay. Charlie put these down from the storage space. And I think that these are published. And then this, which. of them, but not all of them. Some are in books, some aren't. I said to Charlie, like, what's that?

He was like, well, that's Kurt's inner. You know, that's Kurt working the rhymes out. I can't see them now. And I don't know that we want to do that. I think that we should do the more platonic version of what Kurt originally wrote, right? So if you can abide my email and 58-year-old and a little worse-for-ware voice with no guitar,

do you have a guitar? Do you know Teen Spirit? Can you play it? I have acrylics on, man. I have a guitar, but like... In a perfect universe, I would pull out a guitar and do that, but that's just not going to fucking happen. I'm sorry.

Live, you're that guy. Come on. I am not that guy. I do not have a karaoke machine. I am... All right. I was going to do it, Rob. Then, Acapella...

I'm sorry. Acapella is the way to go here. Thank you for the offer. Curson ain't the word. It starts with that. And then it smells like teen spirit. Okay. Okay.

Okay. So then there's a combo of how I have to do this. Okay. Come out and play. Make up the rules. I know I hope to buy the truth. Who will be the king and queen of all the outcasted teens? And then he goes,

We're so lazy and so stupid. blame our parents and the cupids a deposit for a bottle. Stick it inside. No role model. That's role model. Then we go, come out and play, make up the rules, have lots of fun. We know we'll lose. Our little group has always been and always will until the end. And then it goes something, something I bought and don't deserve. He goes to know, oh no, a dirty words. And then he goes, load up on guns and bring your friends. I know, I know. It's wrong to offend.

Take off your clothes. I'll see you in court. Oh, guys, tell him the future. And then something about abort. And then this is the talk I can't find. We merge ahead this special day giving amnesty to sacrilege. It's not the right. Okay, and then the chorus, we go.

It goes, a denial And from strangers, our revival And from favors, here we are now, We're so famous, here we are now. Entertain us. And there's another bit. I'll come out and play and make up the rules I know I hope to buy the truth.

Who will be the king and queen Of all the outcasted teens? And then he goes, we're so lazy and so stupid and from Vegas. Here we are now. Entertain us. And then there's one more. I'll take a slide. I'll be over here.

A sustain a pride from a bored scare. Good humor of them, a relaxing dose. Oh, God. To have a child is a selfish roast. Yeah. Whoa. Okay. Okay, Kurt. Wow. Yeah, never even seen the shit. What do you think?

Holy shit. How much different would it have been if the opening lyric could literally bend? Come out and play. Right. Who will be the king and queen of all of the outcasted teens? So there's like five lines that make the song in the end. You know, most of that is gone. Not all of it. Yeah, because you missed that because you bought into it. But like I like this world breaking, world breaking, world building, world shattering. Like what would it have been like alternate freaking times continuum?

Is that a different song? No, this is Teen Spirit. Yeah. Yes, because it's got who will be the king and queen of all the outcasted teens. It also goes, we're so famous, entertain us. And we're from Vegas is a guy that's not. never been there, right? The only

consistency that it retains is the load up on guns and a little group has always been, that's it. Like literally, build up on Bruns and brings your friends, and then our little group has always been and always well into the end. There is no more.

There's no other lyrics from Smells and Teen Spirit. I mean, you're going to listen to the end of the thing, but I tend to not. But that But, listen, okay, load up on guns and bring your friends. I know, I know it's wrong to offend. Take off your clothes.

I'll see you in court. Then he says, I don't know what he's crossed out here. Something to stop abort. We merge ahead. This is, I'll figure it out, I'm like a fool later when I find the pocket. But we merge ahead, special day, this day giving amnesty to sacrilege. Where's that sacrilege fitting? Yeah, it's clunky, but, you.

Yeah. It could have worked. I sang it. I left your voice known of it earlier and I found the pocket when I was chanting and I fucked up.

Bad lyric, I would say we're so lazy and so stupid blame our parents and the cupids. The cupids we could do with that. Like that's... Probably. That in Vegas.

Yeah. Some of these are good cuts. It's never even bad. That's at this point. But I like this. A deposit for a bottle, stick it inside. No role model.

Right. Yeah. I did that a lot. Of course I did. who will be the king and queen of all the outcasted teens because that would have helped my life a little bit better taking on some of this shit that me and my daughter have.

But here's a really deep one that I didn't even know about. I'll take a side, I'll be over here. Sustained a pride from a boring scare. Good humor them, a relaxing dose. Wow. To have a child is a selfish roast. I mean, yeah. Yeah.

Oh, what's the thing me and him did? You know, like, let's make a baby. Let's make a baby. I'll do that for you. I'll move the girl. This is, by the way, why you see a lot of seahorses in, in Kurt's stuff. Because the male seahors is the only creature that carries the baby. That's right.

Yes. I really want to do the baby carrying. I'm really maternal. But the baby carrying was just like, ah, what? I'll do it. I'll do it. Is this typical of his process? like to have this many discarded lyrics

or is he working a little harder and longer on this song because he has an idea of what it's capable of? I don't know. I think that's a Charlie thing. That's why I think maybe you have to expand this a little like once we earn Charlie's trust that he's okay.

Charlie is like great worry. Well, you know, we need a Charlie. Like Charlie's a worry ward. Like he's like, you don't the trolls. I'm like, I live in England. There are no fucking trolls. Like, we're fine. We're good.

You guys have too many damage. controls over there, but like, for instance and me, do not give that oxygen and have it for a very long time. I'm glad to hear that. In terms of his Kurt's lyricism, at this point, because we got much heavier into lyricism. I mean, I'm coming from a Leonard Cohen Stan. You are. I've been trained by the best by the bunny men.

I'm like, I'm lyric girl, right? Nick Cave, like, I am Mrs. Lyrics. And so there's these two, we were also a lot of heroin. And there's these two, which is a beautiful place to be, actually. I mean, all ends very tragically. But, you know, when you're in a heroin bubble and just nothing can get in and you're just floating around and you're sharing these diaries as we did, there's two of them that a lot of in utero and a lot of lip-to-this are written in these two diaries because we shared everything. We had, you know, that young love when you're really in it together. And the forces that bind you are literally everything because everything outside your door is war.

And I feel like from that moment that Silva gives the boys the news about Michael Jackson. Number one. Yeah. You're going to have to ask Dave or Chris or Charlie or whoever, like how many more Nirvana rehearsals there are because I think there's four. Like, it's, there's shows that in the writing of a newtro, things are just getting worse and worse and worse. And, you know, by attacking me with the bourgeois sort of mainstream press, that was horrifying for me, but it really emasculated him. And I have a friend who was the Condonast editor for 20 years. And he said, you know what?

You can, that is real. He goes, people have killed themselves on my watch. and I don't know whether they were train wrecks and I sent a person that was good with train wrecks to sell magazines

and I think about those people you know so you aren't wrong Courtney in that part with my memoir I can't write 92 to 94 it's a hellscape I can't do it

and then my friend was very stoic and very good guidance like first of all for the sake of history you must because this is when you need to I'm back, like what I'm doing with you right now from your bullshit. And you need to let Kurt fight his corner.

And that's hard sometimes. You know, the ego is a big monster. But he didn't cross out and I'm going to cut him. Cupid, he would never have kept him. He didn't have left in Cupid. I don't see an albino and mosquito my libido in here at all. Right. But there's like three of these.

So I don't even know. Again, I says Charlie, which number this one? I think this was number one. Okay. You told me, you said, Mr. Cobain was one of the most wildly ambitious people to ever walk this earth. And the whole thing about him not wanting to be a rock star is bullshit.

You said he had more ambition than 80s Madonna. 1880 Madonna, I would put Kurt in 1980. He was canny. He was savvy. Jason Everman. I mean, give me a break. I want to look like Soundgarden, but I just don't want to put it with a guy I can't play.

Like, he was jabbing always, but he had to hide it more than me. And, oh, God, like, one of the ways that I fell out with the whole bikini kill manifesto wasn't actually personalities. It was principals. It was, I think it was either Toby's fan scene jigsaw or Kathleen's bikini kill. these things are all, of course, in the Smithsonian now. And, you know, I have a real issue with people not taking music as a career,

but academia seriously, right? All them up in Seattle, they're all in the Hall of Fame and you girls didn't even talk. Right. You're in the Smithsonian and you're all professors now or whatever, right? And so I would say that there was one thing in the manifesto, one of them, where it was like we will not learn instruments the instruments or the tools of the patriarchy and I'm like yeah that's bullshit

I'm fucking learning sweet emotion like right now what the fuck? It's like after you know painted black what are you guys talking about? You know, Curt and we did not have the time that say Corgan had to sit in our basements and learn things. So really Kirk got by it with like not being a shredder

like we didn't want to be. shredding was not really part of Kim Thale was a shredder. He was, yeah. Dale was a shredder. But I would do whole rehearsals where like Eric would change the tempo. Like, no, no, no. Actually, my band's that pop single of the month thing. There's a half decent song,

all turpentine that starts with a good dirgy, grungy thing, that then Eric made it speed up and did a whole Kim Thail thing. And then I forbade any more Kim Thail tempo change. It's like, done with that. you know, I think, I think never mind they just, you know, Kurt just straight went for it, like straight, like not hiding my light under a bushel anymore. Fuck that. We've been granted your permission.

All systems go, I'm going to live my full potential. And yeah, it just gets very complex. But then he said, you know, he would go on to say, at least the production, he was embarrassed by it. He said it sounded like a motley crew record, never mind did. And he said, in utero was the closest he'd ever gotten to the sound in his head. We all said a lot of things. Lying to the press is one of the great sports in life.

You know, Jennifer Boddy, by the way, just because of her name, I fucking made a song after that. When she did that hoax on the New York Times about hanging on the flippity plop, this was genius thing ever. I think it was Megan Jasper. That was the wax, lax, yeah.

Yeah, right. Lainstain, all that shit. Yes. My favorite, and I did this, man, this is the, in the front of my book, we're going to put a few quotes.

But one of them is that, you know, the New York Times and the L.A. Times have big fact checkers. And so, I knew how Robert Hilburn at the L.A. Times thought. And what I love about

howlburn is a Democratic, you can look at an Elvis review, a Beatles review, you know, a Yola Changa review, a Pepper's review. He uses the, the same fairness. Consistent.

He's not a beefing, Esther Banks. Gentlemen, Robert Lburn, like he, I want, once my band could get, you know,

I could key, like, when I was in faith the more, I keyed them on to like, get the British press first, throw a TV out of window,

make a splash. That's how you do that. Yeah. That is going to do that. Then you get back, and then you get like an LA or New York Times. And this is the process back then. And,

you know, Euro presses, English press in particular. Like, I really keyed him in on that with his ambition thing. And then, you know, for me with Hilburn, like, I took a bus down to the LA Times and I just stuck my lyrics in his pigeonhole. And swear to God, like that Friday, we played at fucking hair metal, no bozo jam at the

whiskey go-go or the coconut milk, whiskey a go-go. We had a 20-minute set between like eight hair metal bands. And Friday, Hilburn gave my band the California. Challenger section, like the whole fucking thing. And now we were in. So I get this call, and you'll cut that out, and you should. But I get this call from the L.A. Times, where does the name H.O.C. And I said, why Euripides-Media, of course.

So this goes back to Minneapolis debate when swamp pussy was on the table for Bates and Toiland. And I think Barbaro goes, well, what if we make it, right? It's a good question. Well, fair enough. But I was being cat beeped on that. And then she picked up her guitar in a hard case. I'll have you know. No, a feat.

No, I can't have you. And we fought out with a big fight. And like, I'm not even in the fucking band, but I'm like, I care about the name. And Lori's like, what if we make it? And I have nothing to do with the ensuing name. She goes, I guess we know, this is cat me. I guess we know who's John and who's Paul. I'm like, I'm good.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I said, there's no helter, skilter, there's no neon, young, there's no Sonic youth. I'm okay with Paul. There's no hate you. Justice for Paul. You take your fucking door.

Justice for Paul, right? Okay. So, anyway, so, anyway, so, yeah, I got through the L.A. Times call back, and they were like, we can't find it in Euripides, Medea. And on a dot... It's a different translation. Yeah. I said, I did. I said...

I slept with enough college boys that I knew this. I said, look in the Norton anthology. Like, they published it anyway. I've been lied to all these years. Oh, yeah. So the beginning of my memoir, we're going to like, but, you know, there is a hole that goes right through me, European media, and they was just going to have Harper Collins, like, cross it out.

Actually, it was me. We lied. We like Humboldbergs. We lied. It's like Jack White. You know, I'm the 11th son of the 11th son. Yeah, yeah. You know, the big question, I think that I was, yeah,

that I was given by a great man who managed the echo in the body, and chewed up explodes and did all the, there was Tony in Manchester doing all the house. He understaff and there was the great build drum. And he also had the KLF and burned a million quid. Like, he's a goddamn, he also signed Blur. But the question that was always in the air was, is it heroic? Is it heroic?

Is it heroic? Heroic. And that has always got to be the question. It has to be the question. Is it heroic? What I am doing here with you today, what you are doing here with me, are we being heroic? Are we being, and now in recovery of service to others? Others get from this something.

Will what we've done here today be valuable? But I want to talk more about Kurt's ambition because it's incredibly undervalued and yet, you know, what I'm sick of, is this kind of eunuch, canonized. Listen, the guy could fuck. He was wonderful in bed. He had some red pill issues. He loved guns. He had, you know, maybe these days we don't even know where he'd be on the spectrum politically.

Like, he was just coming out of learning all this incredible weaponized language about the white male oppressor and Marxism and blah, blah. This language was incredible for him. Plus all the transcripts stuff he got from Buzz. But, you know, I always thought, and we didn't really discuss that much being heard, but that he might have gotten an art scholarship, that this was a reality. Not in Aberdeen, no. Of course not. And you know what else?

He didn't know he was cute? And that was really freaky. Like when you're born with that much beauty, physical beauty, like, man, if I had to be like, he didn't really know that he was handsome. And that's because where he was from, Grace Harbor, Montecado, Aberdeen, a stocky guy built like Buzz Osborne could be a longshoreman.

And so, herts very beautiful features, they didn't even, nobody noticed them. And I like, once he realized it, and I convinced him of it, and he started to photograph something,

that's when he did the red hair, that's when you did the wacky glass, and tried to ugly, so that was going on. And then, once Pat joined the band Pat had such a glam history

and you know then I was like Pat pleased with the eyeliner and the boas and like this shit like would you guys stop like whatever but I couldn't stop

Kurt from doing shit there's the whole idea that I could the one thing I wanted to stop him doing actually didn't stop and it was more of a discussion was on unplug right I didn't attend to unplug

but one thing he was going to play those meat puppet songs and I was like What? You're not a fan. Yeah. Brothers me. They're so good.

And then he played like a fire and he played, you know, what are the three? Like, where do bad folks go and that guy? Like a fire. Oh, me. And plateau. Yeah. I said this on Mark Maron,

but he could spill birch shit. Like, fun gold. Like he took a song, I had never landed on my ear. And he turned it into, you know, freaking Quentin.

Like, it was like, yeah. Wow. You know, you've got a great ear, buddy. I mean, he couldn't take that.

Jesus lives a deep cut like made a fucking great. Like, he had that knack. I wanted to ask you, if you were open to it, I wanted to ask about live through this

in doll parts. And my thought on it was that, like, that record and that song were recorded, you know, written in one universe

and released into another universe. right? Like everyone... Yeah, they were a song called in utero. I've heard an album called in utero. So just FYI. Like...

Right. And then the reason it goes to this is like, I too pussy, I can't fake deal with that, right? After one of it accused of it. Right. I'm like, fine. Live now that you fuck! It's a good title.

It's a good title. So one very big difference in our upbringing is I'm very class neutral. Like, my mother was very wealthy. but I've also been on food stamps, all the things. So if you have an Edinburgh brogue, right, from Scotland in this country, you're considered class neutral. No one knows what class you are. I have class neutral as an Edinburgh brogue.

Like I literally have been all the things, right? And, you know, my mother was extraordinarily wealthy San Francisco heiress. I hopped out of that family of origin. I've been, you know, awarded the state, all the things. But one thing we never had was gun culture, none. Like Eugene, New Zealand, San Francisco, Marin County. You know, even I never touched a gun. I didn't know what a gun was.

I would never, ever. Just guns were not part of the chat. And then when Kurt and it's husband Dylan Carlson and Buzz where they grew up, you know, they'd go shoot guns. I mean, you'll have to ask Charlie because. Kurt wouldn't tell me that it was different than this. Charlie says it's a bit of a myth lie, but I love the myth lie of it.

So Kurt's mom, Wendy, had a longshoreman boyfriend who wasn't very nice to her, and he had guns, and Wendy threw the lake, and the myth goes. I think Charlie deconstructs us, so you have to check with him, but he never told me differently. It's nothing we had to hold come to Jesus.

Hey, let's go out, let's go tell all the lies that we tell the press. We were more like goading each other on to tell those lies to the press. I think Kurt, the only really honest interview he ever gave was to a guy here named John Savage who still hasn't released like two-thirds of it, you know? And he came back to then I was like, I trusted that guy with the truth, like everything, you know. The England's dreaming guy, the punk rock?

Yeah. Yeah, okay, okay. He's a fucking national treasure man. He's great. Of course. Yeah, but like, As the Rats book, like that was his deep emotional beefing. He was just fucking making shit up.

Like, you know, We did it all the time, Rob, and we all lied. But, you know, and rock and roll back in the day, I don't know now. I think the lie is different. The way you have to lie is different. You have to, the whole person's saying has to be a lie. But you could just lie about your fucking history. And for me, it was very convenient just to say I came from the trailers.

You know, like that's an easy name. Nobody is a non-working class person anyway, like in rock. It's not. So, yeah, with Kurt, he definitely. did come from the trailers, though. Did he fish out Wendy's guns that she threw from the lungs?

The kids and buy that guitar for the my favorite photo of Kurt that I sent you? Maybe not. I don't know, and I like to, I prefer to believe otherwise. In conclusion, I've been lied to this whole time, and it's fine. It's fine.

A lot of rock stars telling you. I forgive all of you. Not a dummy. As I said to J.D. today, I was like, lunch. Like, he gets it. That's tremendous. You've been to lie to by all of us.

We've done none of us tell the truth. Maybe Eddie. You think Eddie tells the truth. I don't trust anybody. Are you lying now? Just to clarify, you're not lying now. Okay. As I know it, Kurt and Andy's feet, so simple. So a guy named CJ Farley is doing a time cover, newsweek or time. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

And media blackout. Learn that for the riot girls. Wonderful word. I'm on a media blackout now and you are just so good. You've come into my media blackout. But I'm on a media blackout. Sure. And, okay, so Kurt's on a media blackout.

Well, we've gotten really fucked and abused and he's gotten emasculated. I've gotten destroyed. Like our daughter was taken away. It was taken away horrible things, right? And not because I'm stupid. You know, these women that were handling nirvana's affairs and men were idiots. and young and not expecting this vast amount of rocket fuel and many of them used to make themselves incredibly wealthy.

And, you know, there was malevolence in there. There was like somebody buzzing around me on pretty on the inside going, do you want to do vanity pair? I'm like, I'll get 30 vanity pair covers. I'm not, why would they want me now? It's the thing to do with my band. The least favorite thing, I'm graceful about it now, but when people go to me, I really love Nirvana, I'm like,

I wasn't in that band. Okay, so did I. Yeah, yeah. But I'm more graceful about it now. But my point being that these women just like incessantly, you may not get this chance again, and I had this weird,

I want to say middle class, which is what middle class is I've never been, I had a middle class moment of doubt. You know that thing imposter syndrome? Yeah. I've never had one day of it. It's not in my world. I don't have megalomania and too big of an ego, 100%.

Imposter syndrome, nope. Don't doubt myself. But in that moment when I don't jatter, Rosam's like, you'll never get this chance again. I'm like, okay, fine. And this woman that lobbied and sent these letters and stupidly, I did the thing out of the door, fucking. And I blame the end on that, as well as the physical illness that was gripping him more and more.

But also back then, nobody knew a damn thing about colon's disease. You know, he had several ulcers in his stomach, several ulcers in his colon. And we thought, you know, mac and cheese and milkshake. And this was Cedar Sinai. Like, we need to get him to the Mayo Clinic. I didn't know what that was. I just knew that that was a bougie place. That's just what you say in that.

circumstance. You know, like, we need to get him. And Cedars is a damn respectable medical joint. You know, the head of gastrointestinology now at Cedar. Yeah. I have some health shit of my own. Like, he's like, yeah, we knew nothing in 1991. Like, nothing about Crohn's disease, nothing.

You know, so he's talking about four or five ulcers in his stomach and like six in his colon. And like, he's a king all the fucking time. And then he's escalation. happens and then there's guns and then there's heroin and there's more heroin and there's way more heroin than I'll ever want right like Lane and Kurt had been common Park arm back of the day too but Lannigan they were pigs they went to it was non-stop going to blue and nobody would give us back then what's called an arcane which you had all I just read something I didn't

really engaged in it was like Mark arm overdosed in our hotel room and I didn't bother to call 911. You didn't call 911 because you would get arrested. So the rule was we don't call 911 to the person's blue for a long time. And Mark's fine. He's working at the subpop warehouse. He'll be okay. Right. I mean, I slapped. I knew the drill. But in order to get an arcane back then, you had to like get in an ambulance and steal it. the EMTs. And Finch did that. I did that once,

Nickley. It sounds hard to do, yeah. In an ambulance, Shriver, just to get an arcane now. Like, she actually did that for all of us. Like, she did that for the community. Wow. Anyway, Jen and for Finch,

she's been clean and sober since before L7 started. So although she was like a little heroin terror when she was in her teens, and my first time, before all of this, she's had 35 years in recovery. Jennifer Pitch, like, hello.

So she was doing those black flag pits and pretend we're dead and shitless, like, you know, sober, which is pretty salt. Anyway, yeah, the overdosing was hardcore and also separated us. Like, I started to feel like I was more mom and or nurse in a way that like inclined feeling.

And that went down and I just, yeah, I didn't expect, you know, the illness was bad. The heroin was bad. Just the gun part, you know, he'd bring gun home. That starts at the end. So who was around Kurt at the end? Pat, won't speak on it. Eric, Roddy Bottom and Arnani and Kelly.

Those were the four people around. Patty Shammell, Patty Shammell was around a lot. Patty Shammell, these are the character. I was ex-examel. I was exhausted. Callie, Patty Shammell, Bill Hopper was somewhere right in the back. She was like 16.

But mainly Pat, Eric Feldman, Eric, I'm sorry, Eric Philan. Eric Erlinson, Pat Smir, and Roddy Bottom, who would have been my keyboard player and actually my boyfriend in Faithmore. They take him a bunch of care of him. And then, you know, Pat won't have never spoken on it,

but I did ask him once. I mean, he was my first best friend. And I did ask him once, what the fuck? And it's like, man, we just got tired. I was up 72 hours watching him. You know, like we were doing 72 hours shifts and, you know, Stipe trying to send a car.

It was all, there was a really bad intervention, which was on, that's on me. Like, I got to live with that every day. Like, I did that. You know, like, that sucks. Interventions are so fucking stupid. And like the way that they were done back then was, remember that show?

Yeah, I tried to avoid it, but yeah. But like I participated in a fucking intervention in creating an intervention. And like, you know, that was like, then they separated us. And then I was in a facility called Ross somewhere in the Bay Area. Then I left. And then I went to like the Hotel Harvey did all his bad shit out. It was called the Palisades. And there's one thing I want to get on the record, or you can use it or not.

then I know I first of all fuck Harvey he used the palisades for all that that he never got away with that shit at the chateau but I have never been back in the palisades hotel again because of this one thing which just nobody knew where the fuck he was for five days Charlie does like Charlie's thing is like they don't want you to know who they are they're mostly dead and or they're back in the country of origin like okay like whatever right but there's like five lost days and um I'm like freaking out and I'm telling that I think he's in town. So he's, he's, Givian is in Exodus with him. And Gibby says that he said hopped offense. I called Exodus and they said he was getting a lung x-ray. I'm like, yeah, no, that's not true.

And then I just start straight panicking. He's called CLS. He's called a car. I guess McCagan was on the airplane home with him. They were sitting together. So that happened. And then he vanishes. And I called down the hotel like every 20 minutes.

And I'm like, if anyone call, I had them under a fake name. Because like I'm being just assaulted by the world, this moment. Everybody needs to know where Curtis and nobody does. And he tried to call me. Tried to call me. They would not put the call through. And I cannot forget that hotel for that. Like that it's such a colossal fuck up.

But you know what? Yeah, man. I just won't go there. Don't go to the Peninsula Hotel. Do you not. Like, I can't forgive them for that. But, you know, it's not a thing that, I don't know, do we live there? Do we dwell here?

You know, like taking your life like that is such a massive, you know, thing. And it's, man, you know, it has something else to do with oneness and that we're all interconnected and love and forgiveness. and again, the hero died and the fool survived. And here I am. And here you are. Entertain me. Entertain us. Well, this ended exactly where I didn't want it to end, but I think that's a lovely place to end it.

Oh, one more thing. You might want to edit this later. The Eddie and Kurt B. No, please. That's right. That's right. There we go. That's where I want to end it.

I just want to get it all out. Yeah, so CJ Farley was writing, and Kurt was like, we're not talking to him. And Pearl Jones, we're like, we're not talking to him. And then Eddie broke. Oh. And Kurt never could forget. Oh, my God. Eddie broke.

Eddie did the interview. I was told Eddie was a reluctant rock star, but he lied to me, too. He's like, Eddie's so fucking him big. Thank God. He was like, yeah. PA and MTV, whatever. All good. In Jeremy the wicked.

Oh, this world. Jeremy's spoken class today. Nobody's going to sit around listening for my, hey, hey, but man, that sounds good. Also, you did a really great pod on PJ

where you go through Eddie's restrained fox, and I just think he was too polite. I just said the fucks. But you're right. You got to say the fucks. Live, you got to say the fucks. Oh, we at least you're lying.

I might listen to that song to pick what's up and this bummer. I don't think it's that big a bummer. Like, you know, this is, Rob. I am so grateful for your time. This has been wonderful, and I really appreciate you talking. Me too. Thank you so much. I don't know these lyrics.

So, you know, I hope that. listening to them through a woman's voice, you know, 30 years after the fact, who literally didn't know most of them other than being queen on Casas. I knew, I knew stupid in Las Vegas. It's about it. Yeah. You know, this is my, this is my husband, you know, like, I've never married again, close once, but no, I never have and never really wanted to. And, you know, he died at 27. I'm 29 when he dies. So, you know, that was a very young kind of that love, that was, that great twin-flame thing that you're not going to get a lifetime. You don't get that after 30.

Get more of a solid, wonderful partnership if you're lucky or a fulfilling freaking life or whatever, that that mad, just kind of wonderful, cozy world. And Francis, you know, like, you know, we had. So thank you, Lois Mafio, or Krusty getting mad at it. In conclusion, thank you, Lewis. I got the best kid in the world. Thank you, Courtney.

Thank you, Rob. Thanks so much to our guest this week. Courtney Love. Yauza, I am extremely grateful to Courtney for her time and for her insight. Thanks to our producers, Justin Sales and Jonathan Kerma. Extra special thanks to Kerm. Holy shit. For hanging in with a very, very long episode.

Kerm is the best. Thanks as always to Chloe Clark for production help. and thanks to you for listening. I encourage you now to go listen to Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana. We'll see you next week.