Cobain’s intensity is startling, practically electric, like the hum from overhead power lines. A sign above the counter says all roads lead to the dog house. “You know how Tabitha Soren’s delivery is usually kind of flat and calm? I’ve noticed whenever she reports anything on us, she really gets into it - her eyebrows raise, and she gets this venom in her voice.” Cobain says this as we settle into a booth with Novoselic at the Dog House Restaurant, a diner in Seattle that’s been open since 1934. “You can tell when he’s upset, and it ends up bothering all of us.” “It’s a load of s**t on Kurt’s mind that he doesn’t deserve,” Grohl says. It’s creepy.”īoth agree that while stardom is sometimes hard for them, it’s hell for Cobain. “There’s a guy in New York City that goes into this record store every single Sunday and claims he’s my father. Though he’s never been stopped on the street, something he recently heard did freak him out. “If you introduce yourself they say, ‘I know who you are.’ And if you don’t they think you’re arrogant.”ĭave Grohl, Nirvana’s drummer, figures the reason he’s seldom recognized is because people can’t really see him behind his drums and his long hair. He says he makes himself available so often he’s gotten over any phobia, but he admits to awkwardness when meeting people. Notoriety doesn’t really bother bassist Krist Novoselic. “I could live with that, Kurt Loder saying, ‘There was a half gallon of semen found in Kurt Cobain’s stomach.’ That at least is funny.” “It’s like the Rod Stewart semen story,” I tell him. The story continues with the cabby driving around for hours not knowing there was a baby in the car. He’s horrified about rumors that have been circulating concerning a recent trip to New York City, where he and Love were supposedly so high they were puking in the back of a cab, and when they got out they left little Frances Bean behind in the backseat. His outrage borders on a persecution complex, but the press has left him feeling terminally unprotected, his day-to-day life and love compromised in ways he never imagined. They have the power to eliminate anything that threatens them.”Īlso Read 30 Signature Guitars for Modern ArtistsĬobain tends to go to extremes when discussing the abuse he’s taken from the mainstream media. Cobain refers to Condé Nast, which publishes the magazine, as “a bunch of right-wing, high-fashion, Christian Satanists. The article quoted her as saying, among other things, that she used heroin while pregnant with their now one-year-old (and healthy) daughter, Frances Bean, which she later denied. Last September, Vanity Fair ran a much-publicized piece on Love. But erasing the lunacy of the months gone by may require more than a bracing blast of punk rock. With the follow-up to Nevermind, In Utero, due on September 14, the Seattle-based trio hopes to trade in its celebrity status for the more comfortable role of rock band.
The terrain has been dotted with obstacles: some mere potholes, some treacherous landmines. They’ve struggled coming to terms with their gargantuan stardom, straining to get their footing on the unfamiliar and sometimes brutal landscape of fame. I just started screaming.”Īs it would with anyone, the past 18 months have taken a fierce toll on Nirvana and the Cobains. “As soon as she made her appearance someone kicked her down the stairs. She waddled like this…” Cobain sways back and forth like Charlie Chaplin. “I had to make an entrance from the top of the stairs, and because of the way people think of Courtney, she happened to be this two-foot-tall black midget with huge feet. Lots of stars went there.” Cobain glances up at the small plastic doll in a nun’s outfit propped up on the mantel, one of the hundreds of dolls that he and his wife, Courtney Love, leader of the band Hole, have collected. It didn’t have chains on the walls, just beautiful flowers. In one part of the dream I was being honored for something and the ceremony was at an S/M club, but it was a really nice one. “So I went down to where the oppressed people were starving on the streets, killing each other for a quarter. I was completely disgusted by the idea of living next to these people.” Cobain speaks in a lilting Pacific-Northwestern drawl, like a grungy Quentin Crisp. Courtney and I were in the Hollywood Hills, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was my neighbor. “The last dream I had like this was two nights ago. “In my dreams, there’s always this apocalyptic war going on between the right and the left wing,” he says, sitting on the plush burgundy couch in his Seattle living room. But for Kurt Cobain, our collective obsession seems like a car’s stark headlights, freezing its unassuming victim in the glare. It lifts and floats the celebrity into our most private venue: dreams.