Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg reflects on Kurt Cobain [extended interview]

so I've read the book obviously and although I knew this it really impressed upon me when I read it it's kind of crazy how much occurred in Kurt Cobain's life in such a short period of time like literally less than three years yeah the three albums including unplugged meeting Courtney having a baby and then you know the tragic end it's like such a it's so unfathomable to me to think about how it all happened in such a short period of time and you were there for all of it yeah so I guess my first question to you would be just your impressions about their sort of a mythology that he was a casualty of sudden fame and couldn't handle it and all that and I wonder if that's how you see the story of Kurt Cobain well there's no question he became famous very quickly the the song smells like teen spirit just exploded globally so quickly in in in 1991 and you know Nirvana went from a band that it sold thirty thirty five thousand albums on an indie label and was respected in the subculture of college radio in fanzines and could fill clubs of two or three hundred people to being the biggest rock band in the world within the matter of a couple of months buy the album Nevermind came out I think was the end of September in 91 and and by New Year's it was number one having displace the Michael Jackson album and no band from the punk rock world had ever come anywhere close to that kind of success so it was also the period when MTV was ascendant in the US and music videos worldwide were a big connector between audiences and artists and so there was some added level of intensity about that smells like teen spirit video and that these faces of these guys who were sleeping on people's floors like a year earlier were now recognized everywhere and so on so there's no question that it was incredibly fast I think that the Kurt certainly didn't anticipate exactly how that was going to feel and there were things about being recognized and the level of scrutiny that he later had to deal with from the media he didn't like but he became famous on purpose it was no accident he had for years thought about the persona that he actually created he not his core influences culturally was that well I guess that's the ungrammatical his core influence creatively was the the the American punk rock scene of the 80's bands like Black Flag Dead Kennedys flipper Fugazi and and he was influenced by the right girl scene in Olympia he live in Olympia before he moved to Seattle and and and all that but but he also loved pop music you know the members of Nirvana all were Beatles fans and they knew it was a little bit on cool in the funk world so they used to coyly call it the B word but current listened to over and over again to Beatles records he loved ABBA he also loved certain heavy metal music like Black Sabbath or ac/dc he didn't like the misogyny of the lyrics and he didn't want to be a heavy metal artist in that lane but there were things about that music that that he also understood and he fused pop punk and heavy metal into Nirvana consciously if you look at his journals he was always making these lists of his 50 favorite albums and they always included some pop albums and some metal albums as well as as well as a lot of the punk indie stuff that he talked about more publicly and he he was completely engaged in every detail of of building a career they came to Los Angeles to get management I didn't go chasing them down in Seattle at a partner a younger partner named John Silva who understood the punk culture better than I did I was 40 years old and more of a product of the hippie generation we had artists like Bonnie Raitt and the Allman Brothers but I knew that there was this new generation coming up so I brought in a younger person we had signed Sonic Youth Sonic Youth turned us on to Nirvana and when Kurt and christened Dave came to office they wanted to be on a major label and they wanted to have a management company that was going to connect them to the music business writ large but they also wanted to make sure that the people who work with them honored their values the culture that the that formed them and so that was the job was to protect their integrity to give Kurt complete artistic control I say Kurt because he was the guy in the band creatively who made all the decisions it's no disrespect to Dave was an amazing drummer and has had an extraordinary career with the Foo Fighters or Crist who was one of Kurt's oldest friends and who shared his values and there wouldn't have been Nirvana without those guys but Kurt wrote all the songs the music and the lyrics he wrote he storyboarded all the music videos he was the lead singer and the lead guitarist everything Jimmy Page and Robert Plant did example and Kurt did by himself and in the in Nirvana he even designed the t-shirts he he made every decision and they they were fine with that they knew who he was he was one of those once-in-a-generation geniuses and he he thought a lot about the press he complained about the press sometimes but he did hundreds of interviews and writing the book I I went back and read hundreds of them around the world then I was amazed at how rarely he repeated himself it's so hard when you are a public figure not to repeat yourself it becomes like a theater piece even when you're promoting a book you know but he understood each journalist each TV radio interviewer and and and who their audience was and and how he wanted to express himself when he was going to be photographed he would change his hair color he was conscious of what t-shirt he was wearing all the guys in Nirvana were always using their visibility to market culture they cared about they'd wear t-shirts of relatively obscure punk groups before Saturday Night Live there was a big discussion of who should wear which t-shirt and one was Black Flag and you know one was flipper and that sort of a thing because so he had an incredibly sophisticated understanding of all the different aspects of rock stardom aspired to it and achieved it having said that there were things about it that bummed him out but I don't leave that he was a casualty of that I think it was a casualty of demons that existed long before he had done heroin long before he was famous he was prone to depression long before his famous you know people I spoke to for the book had memories of that it's not a biography of Kurt I just wrote about the three and a half years during which I knew him the last three and a half years of his life but still I had to get a little bit of background and so I think that fame is very disorienting for anyone who achieves it quickly I think it affected him too but I don't buy into that idea that if he had just stayed unsuccessful and in sort of a niche subculture he would have somehow been happier he was driven to accomplish what he accomplished from inside no one made him do it he controlled every single decision and he was a complicated guy and a genius a lovely lovely caring generous person and and doomed by demons that that ultimately he couldn't control now you mentioned riot girl and you also mentioned him being having issues with misogyny and lyrics and one thing that I always thought was so wonderful about Kurt was he was the biggest rock star in the world and had all walks of life of fans and he really used his platform to espouse women's rights and also to b2q rights yes yes I'd love to talk with you about that because I remember in the incest decide liner notes he said something to the effect of if you're a homophobe or you you hate if you're a sexist or whatever like don't buy our music buy your tickets which is a very hard line to take and a lot of artists even now won't do that I don't know any other artists who on an album cover told people not to buy their records if they had certain views I as far as I know he's the only one who ever did that mm-hmm so let's talk a little bit about that because he you know as his audience got bigger sometimes you know his audience wasn't always people who shared his views right right no that was the real thing how did he struggle with that or deal with that or did you ever see it you have any stories about when he you actually saw that he shifted the culture change people yeah yeah well he went through different phases of his this of how he wanted to relate to political issues as a as a rock-and-roll artist lead singer and ultimately star he when nevermind first came out he had this conversation with me right after their first Los Angeles show after never mind kind of was already kind of the zeitgeist thing and it was a big a big deal in the music world in LA everybody a lot of rock stars came and people from the median actors and fans and he took me aside and and was worried that the press was too political because in the press kit I get through her references to the anti-rape song Polly that was on nevermind and and he said look I I loved Fugazi in the Dead Kennedys who were to more overtly political bands but I don't want Nirvana to be one of those bands I want people to know we have a sense of humor and balance the value so when nevermind first came out he consciously toned down he never walked away from any of his beliefs but he didn't want to put them front and center because he had this understanding of the different languages involved in communicating with an audience but by by by nine or ten months later once they became more successful he wanted to be more used his fame more to advocate his his beliefs which as you say he was a feminist the band had done a pro-choice show around nevermind so it's not like they didn't do anything it's called rock for choice it was one of the it was right after him and Courtney had gotten together and whole was also on the bill but and after that for about a year there was kind of no talk about politics and then as about a year went by and he then wanted to shift course and the director Gus Van Zandt had approached me about Nirvana doing a benefit who opposed a homophobic ballot initiative in the state of Oregon called proposition 9 and it would have made it like illegal for gays to get jobs as schoolteachers like insane reactionary thing and although Oregon generally has a liberal reputation their so-called blue state valid initiatives are weird because a lot of people don't turn out for them and there had been a right wing anti-gay initiative just a few years earlier that had passed an Oregon and the and and the community was really nervous that that would happen again and so Nirvana did the benefit it was a big deal the the people that were involved with opposing the initiative when I spoke to them for the book said it was a turning point in the campaign and they ended up defeating it by 15 points and then he did something for free speech in Washington State which which Kris was a particular advocate of and he he made sure to when he was coming back on interviews he still did a long interview for The Advocate he wrote those liner notes that you referred to and really made it clear that that he was subverting the macho archetype of rock and roll and replacing it with somebody with with with values that respected women and gays and that respected sensitivity and at the same time could rock better than anyone else and could and and and and could appeal musically to heavy-metal audiences so yeah when they were doing stadium shows him and Kris would both talk about how sometimes the they were worried that some of the fans they were the kind of people that kicked their asses and in high school a massive pop success attracts not only people who understand the music but people who just want to kind of be in with the in-crowd and and and he tried to honor his core fans and you know I'm sure there were some people that were bothered by some of those positions but it didn't seem to affect their popularity and he wouldn't have it any other way he was not somebody that was ever gonna compromise about his core beliefs and he also unlike some of the kind of anarchist people that were in the punk world had no qualms about making electoral choices him and Courtney called me proudly after they both donated a hundred bucks to Jerry Brown's primary campaign in 92 and then when Bill Clinton got the nomination he told a couple of let's see didn't make a big deal about it but he told the Advocate and he told the journalist and I think was Latin America you know that he voted for Clinton and you know he was not at all shy about saying what he believed but he didn't want to be overly preachy either he didn't want to be one of those people where people came to the shows and were preached at he wanted to be faithful to his values but also honor the fact that there were a lot of other things about being an artist besides what your political beliefs are and entertainment and and compassion and talking about inner issues was was was the core relationship that he had with his fans so I thought he achieved the balance in an extraordinary way and it was really one of the ways that I got to help facilitate some of those things meant the most to me you know and working with him because he was so sophisticated about how he balanced these things out so you've mentioned Courtney a couple times yes I'm a fan and I thought it was interesting and and I was pleased that she's painted in a mostly favorable light in your book because you know she's gotten a lot of crap basically there's a lot of Mythology surrounding this her and the relationship she had with Kurt and sometimes blame yeah sometimes outright more than blame like conspiracy theories about you know her being involved in his death none of which I believe I've always liked her and it sort aizen of the feminist stuff you were talking yeah yeah definitely so what do you think like in terms of their relationship is the biggest myth or misunderstanding about their dynamic and and her role in his life you know I don't know how to characterize misunderstandings exactly but I'll tell you how I view the relationship and it was made very clear to me very early on because Kurt just told me how much in love with her he was and he was really upset when they were first together that there were some people around the band that didn't honor that and thought that it was some fly-by-night rock-and-roll fling and you know I I liked Courtney right away and I but more to the point being older gave me a little bit of an advantage was it disadvantage in terms of really on standing the the the influences and the culture that they grown up in and it was a disadvantage just just you know I had a little bit of a even though I then as now wore blue jeans and sweaters I was a little bit of a suit compared to the younger people that were contemporaries of the band but it gave me a little advantage in recognizing the relationship I just I knew it I knew these were people that were in love whether they were not conventional people they were artists and they came from damaged backgrounds and they both developed drug problems but they were in love so that was the core thing about it is that he loved her no one made him love her she didn't control him he was incredibly willful you couldn't get Kurt to do anything he didn't want to do he had no problem saying no to her but he also learned certain things from her Courtney had a level of sophistication about certain things that Kurt didn't have she was certainly savvy er about the business and she was extraordinary lyricist in her own right and and I think song like pennyroyal tea you can feel some of Courtney's influence in explaining certain things to him about what she had been through and obviously musically he was a great inspiration to everybody that was around them including Courtney and Eric and the other members of Hall but it was a it was a create it was a it was a marriage of two artists and uh you know people who didn't get it I thought were foolish now they both had drug problems which have been widely publicized I am someone who despises the effect that heroin has on people I did then and I do now and they could do stupid things when they were stoned and Courtney could do stupid things more loudly because she's more loud Kurtz was more quiet and I'm not claiming that she's perfect or a saint or anything like that neither by the way am i but you know I like her I think she's a great artist I think the let her legacy is speaks for itself I think holls lived through this at the end of 94 was voted the album of the year by Rolling Stone and spin and I think there's many many hundreds of women who were inspired to become artists because they saw the Courtney could rock in a way that very few women I mean you can count on the fingers of your hands the women had been able to compete at that level in rock and roll and you know I liked her and there were people that didn't and some of the divisions and hurt feelings still linger even decades later but I'm very clear about that from the very beginning I I liked her I still like her I don't there been years at a time when we were out of touch she did graciously cooperate and talk to me a couple of times for the book which meant a lot to me but I can't wait to read her memoir I think it's gonna be out in the next couple of years and she's one of the smartest people I've ever met no question about that and what I just tried to do though was paint a portrait as accurately as I could of those three and a half years and she was certainly part of it and I was prone to be on her side most of the time because I I was an advocate for Kurt and Kurt was on her side and I also was the manager of whole when they first made their record deal business things changed in my life and and I was but you know I went to work for a record company in the middle of this and ended up just being kind of a only involved with Kurt outside of my record company jobs but I always liked Courtney I liked her to this day and I think she's a very significant artist I don't think she's quite as significant as Kurt is as an artist few are once you can write Kurt's a once-in-a-generation genius but she is a major creative force in her own right one thing that stood out to me when I was reading your book was apparently Kurt's last words to her worse whatever happens you made a good album referring to lips I think he said no obviously I was not there this is but I think the quote that I'm told is that whatever happens you made a great album yeah and that was through this and it is a great album it's kind of crazy that it came out particularly with the title that had I'm a week after Curtis III I mean it's so Baroque and crazy and so many of the things that happened over those years were so dramatic that if a screenwriter wrote them you would say they were not believable and that's one of them but that's what happened the one last question a couple more questions about their relationship there's this myth that a lot I don't know I don't believe it that Kurt wrote lived through this or somehow had a huge influence on it mainly I guess because it sounded so different from pretty on the inside no no I I that's absolutely not true first of all Kurt was very covetous of good songs and he was competitive in that way it was a little update that Courtney at some point did an acoustic show at the Cafe Largo I think was Cafe Largo was the smaller cafe Largo in Hollywood and she did pennyroyal tea this before in utero came out and it's an incredible song and she certainly could sing that can I say done this she could sing this and the next day Kurt called me and said listen you know Courtney is thinking of recording pennyroyal tea and don't encourage that that's a Nirvana song I'm not giving her that song you know so first of all if it would he wanted to keep all the best songs that he wrote for Nirvana he recognized that great songs were as rare as hen's teeth secondly Courtney wrote a lot of great songs after Kurt died she's she's an extremely talented person and there's absolutely no truth whatsoever that Kurt was around when they rehearsing a lot their rehearsal tapes I spoke to her girl listen for the book whose guitar player from hole and was very also very close friends with Kurt and you know he would sometimes rehearse would them play bass he recommended Scott led to mix lived through this because he was so happy with what Scott had done on on the remix in the single son in utero and and you know they were married and played their music for each other but how Courtney were heard those songs Courtney wrote doll parts yeah if Kurt had written doll parts he wouldn't have liked Courtney before last question you were there when they first met right in Chicago oh it's not when they first met but it was the first night they slept together okay they had met over the years in the couple of years before that but but when when when never mind came out the first few weeks Silva my partner at the time and the booking agency was Don Muller I forget what agency whose would then I think it was Regency maybe but whatever it was correctly wanted the band to play clubs the first time around the same clubs that they had played when bleach the punk earlier in the album was out they kind of just show the fans and the community that they weren't like abandoning them and they respected their roots and of course it's always great having hundreds of people not being able to get in when you're trying to create a buzz and so one of those shows was in Chicago at a club called the Metro that hold about 500 people and you know again there were as many people on the street that couldn't get in as it were in there and it's one of the shows that I went to and then and then Courtney came backstage was the first time I met her I'd heard about her but but she and she introduced herself to me and was in town because she was there to visit and Billy Corgan yeah this is one of those things where there were different stories told at different times but when I did this did come up when I spoke to her for the book and she she said that the truth is that she did go there to see Billy Corrigan she had had romance with Billy Corrigan on and off in the months prior to that you know the singer from the Smashing Pumpkins and he he then when she got there was with some some other woman and so she knew Nirvana was in town and as she said she and Kurt had been kind of flirting with each other from a distance over the last year or two and I remember being in the dressing room after she said hi to me and then like five minutes later she was in the back of the dressing room sitting on Kurt's laughs and Kourtney is a few inches taller than Kurt but it was a little bit of an unusual visual but they both had this look on their face like the proverbial cat that swallowed the canary they they were quite each quite pleased with themselves for being in that position and they were together from that night onward for the rest of Kurt's life so you mentioned we we start out this interview sore talking about the downside of when the fame and the press so we do have to talk about the Vanity Fair debacle yeah yeah I feel you may disagree but I feel like that was sort of a turning point of his life of corker and Courtney's life getting especially complicated or dark because that's when a lot of trouble started well there's no question that viewed from 25 years later that article was a turning point and and it was almost kind of before the Vanity Fair article and after the Vanity Fair article and of course the central problem you know for people who don't know there was a feature story in Vanity Fair written by a writer named Lynn Hirschberg about Kourtney and Kourtney was very excited to do it I I don't remember how she decided to do it I I can say I was not consulted but Kourtney had had an amazing gift for getting press and had accomplished so many of her goals she'd made that first indie record gotten Kim Gordon to produce it she met and married Kurt she she had really accomplished an enormous amount and and just kind of had no reason to believe that her instincts were gonna betray her but in this case she made a mistake told me what kind of a mainstream writer who I think seduced her into thinking that she got corn in was really quite condescending and judgmental of her yeah meanwhile there is truth to the to the to the fact that that Kurt and Courtney had both been doing heroin in early 92 and neither of them made any secret about that later on the horrifying allegation in the Vanity Fair article that makes it something worth talking about 25 years later was that unnamed sources said that Courtney was after she knew she was pregnant was continuing to shoot heroin I am convinced that's not true I was there when when right around the time Courtney found that she was pregnant and she ended up having the same obstetrician that delivered my daughter whose mother rosemary Carroll was also Courtney's lawyer and later was Kurt's lawyer and there's just no way dr. crane that would have been involved with somebody that was not following his guidance on how to have a healthy baby it was known that she had had a heroin issue when she became pregnant but once she knew she was and got a doctor involved followed his instructions and ended up indeed giving birth to a healthy baby and Frances Bean Cobain and today is a healthy adult so there's no question with the passage of time that Courtney's version of the story was true is true I was convinced it was true at the time but not everybody was it's vanity fair-- said the opposite and had a quote from Courtney herself that she denied it had quite a few unattributed quotes legal letters were written statements were issued denying it but at the time nobody knew whether it was true or not in the government and there was a agency in Los Angeles that actually did an investigation and it was months during which Curtin Courtney didn't have legal custody of their own daughter and it was just a nightmare and it it created a from that on a sense of vulnerability and wariness in a good day and paranoia on a bad day about the media that that was a shadow you know for the rest of Kurt's life and I think even to this day it's something the the the the the is bothersome to to Kourtney although she can express it better than I did so that was a big turning point that's when we had this euphoria of the success and then the shock of realizing in January of 92 that there was heroin involved and a bunch of us did an intervention and Corine the Kourtney went to rehab that was exactly the time when she got involved with the with the doctor that I mentioned to deliver her baby and then in August a week before francis was born this Vanity Fair article comes out and it was it was quite a bummer well you mentioned intervention I do I know it's dark stuff but I do want to talk to you about the final intervention which I believe it's the last time that you saw her in person last time I saw him in person wasn't that intervention I talked to him on the phone once after that it was just about a week before he killed himself so if you could what you're willing to speak about it what was going on with that well by this time I was I had not been made president of Atlantic Records and was commuting between New York and Los Angeles because rosemary was pregnant with our second kid and we didn't move to New York until until a year later or so and so I was in New York and Courtney called and asked if I would come and be part of an intervention she was really worried about Kurtz that it was the worst she'd ever seen him and so forth so Janet billig who's now named Janet rich also was living in New York and and she found some dude who was been part of interventions before 12-step person the theory being that someone who kind of had just been around that would you add a little gravitas to it it's it's so hard to know what's gonna work and you just get advice from people and it's a very lot of guesswork involved so so the three of us flew to Seattle and then they were quite a few people had my memory is maybe half a dozen would flown in from from LA I don't remember who it was but there ended up being seven or eight of us in my memory there and you know just the Kurt was really stoned we went to the house and it was weird and he was not happy and feeling invaded by people lecturing him on how he should behave and who would but you know and you know I just kept and he had different things that were bothering him that he would bring up about you know you know his career and about being famous and about other things about his life and my message was just whatever is bothering you you can't make a good decision when you're strung out get get clean and then whatever you want to do I'll help you do whatever you want to do but you can't make any good decisions this way it's it's there's no good future and you know I just just the typical anti-drug get clean plea and you know I describe it in some more detail in the book in the book you saw or described that you maybe have some regret about how it was handled or you wish you'd said other things well you know I was in a hurry to get home and III let in impatience and brittleness get into my tone that sounds like a subtle thing but it's the whole ballgame when you're communicating with somebody it's not always the words it's how you say them and and and I I didn't want to miss the plane to LA I'd been away from my family in New York and this was sort of an extra stop and you know I otherwise maybe maybe if I'd stayed another hour I would have thought of some intelligent thing to say or take enou got him to take a walk or you know you just go over in your head is there something I could have done so I called him when I got home and and just said look I'm so sorry if I was came across judgmental or you know I love you and I just want you to be happy and you know I'm just trying to be helpful and if it didn't you know that kind of a thing and and my daughter Katie by that time was was close to three and very precocious very verbal and Curt loved her and they used to play a lot you know before Francis was born it was almost like a practice kid for him and she got and I and I started putting her on the phone thinking that would cheer him up and she she told him that she was upset that Francis had pinched her the last time they were together and could Curt please talk to her about that and you know I thought it would and he got back on he still sounded really just depressed and wiped down and she and cheer him up you know and and I just told him I loved him and that was it you know so anytime somebody kills himself I think people around them always wonder if there's something they could have done I don't really believe there is because certainly I've read some if you read with psychiatrists or philosophers or priests or rabbis or Yogi's or philosophy you know people who've studied this stuff nobody seems to have come up with any particular solution to it I think there's 50,000 Americans a year kill themselves 3/4 of them are male half of them are with guns hundreds of thousands of people a year and then you know people say well if somebody had a bad childhood or if they're on drugs or they're prone to depression they're isolated or what are the predictors having relatives who kill themselves could be a predictor and Kurt did have two uncles who killed himself but for you know you have 19 people with those same painful circumstances who don't kill themselves and one does and why why the one does in the 19 don't and what do you do about it with an adult who's got all the legal rights of an adult except begged them not to engage in self-destructive behavior and to try to expose them to options for help so I'm you know I'll never get over it nobody who cared about him will and no one who cared about less famous people who kill themselves will ever get over it but it's what happened it's part of the mystery of the human condition and I love him anyway I'm glad he was alive for those 27 years I wish he hadn't done it but I'm glad I got to know him and that the world got to know his music and it's a it's I think it's dangerous to try to pretend to understand things that really human beings don't understand it is an odd question but given that there had been the incident in Rome yeah earlier and you had seen all the things the other rehab trips the heroin problems that had existed did trying to phrase us right did you sort of worry that this was gonna happen did you fear the worst did you see this coming in any way well the minute that there was that earlier you know again the first time that I in it quite a few other people in the band's life knew that he was doing heroin it had had been a couple of years earlier you know was January of 92 it was I it was exact moment when they when the band did Saturday live for the first time coincided with a couple of articles having come out and all of us seeing Kurt stone and the minute someone is doing heroin you worried they're gonna kill himself I mean this is this is not a rocket science people can overdose a lot of musicians in particular have overdosed it's extremely high-risk behavior and it's impossible especially if you're in the rock-and-roll world not to worry about someone dying young when they're doing heroin I mean it's unless there's really pretty much two outcomes either they get into some kind of a usually it's a 12-step program or some other Epiphany that they have in which they stop or they die or they go to jail I mean those are kind of the three things that happen I mean you don't see a lot of 70 year old functioning junkies you know and so that was always a worry from the time that I knew he had a heroin problem Rome was incredibly scary I always kept praying and thinking maybe this time he'll turn it around because when you talk to people that have had alcoholics or drug problems a lot of them try different things several times before they really turn the corner people will be into rehab five or six times they'll go into a 12-step program leave it go back leave it go back and and there were some examples like David Crosby for example from my generation of rock and roll had been such a mess and and it actually was in jail and you know just it was so close to death so many times and well into his you know well into his 30s maybe 40s finally turned it around and he's today a healthy beautiful being that so so I figured if David Crosby could turn it around then Kurt could and maybe this would be the time every time was maybe this will be the time maybe this will be the time I tried he knew how I felt about it I was like a you know a hardcore anti-drug person and and you know I tried to exploit you know I was a meditator and I would give him statues of Ganesha or durga Courtney was a meditator to and still is the Buddhist and I think that helped her survive Erik also from hole current respected all that he totally respected it but it wasn't his thing I don't think he judged other people badly for being in 12-step programs but it just wasn't his thing and the problem is he didn't have a thing that can liberate him from his demons you know notwithstanding the best intentions of the people around him I think you said was an in Rolling Stone that you feel that if um that if he hadn't met Courtney he might have this might happen sooner something like that well that's a quote you know I spoke at the at the memorial that Courtney organized it was separately what kind of there's a big one in the park but there was a private memorial for his friends and family and he and it was ended up being at a Unitarian Church I spoke to Janet billing for the book you know she was tasked with finding a church and cuz it was a suicide a lot of churches wouldn't do it but she finally found the Unitarian Church that would do it and and I was the last one to speak and I don't I didn't take any notes I mean I didn't have a written out thing and no one taped it but but a Rolling Stone writer was there and that's the one quote that made it into the press of what I said and I was thinking about the people that were there and what do I say for the living you know and a lot of the people who'd spoke and had talked about his childhood and knew him in Aberdeen and very moving but there was another community people who got to know him later people from Geffen who had flown up there John Silva my partner at the time Janet and and and others and I was thinking about Courtney and I tried to and I knew that she was a controversial figure among some of these people especially kind of the people that knew Curt in Olympia and the early punk rock world's just they don't like each other for reasons having nothing to do you know with this and she lost her husband so so I about things that I thought would connect to the emotions of those people that I knew that were there because I felt other people had had played the role because Kurt was loved by many different communities of individuals not just fans but people who knew him personally and and I did I did say that I wanted to just say how much he loved her and so I think the Rolling Stone I said that he if it weren't for how much he loved her he might have left us earlier I meant it at the time I again I didn't write it down it just sort of came out I I wanted to acknowledge that for all of the problems and the drugs and the tabloid weirdness that these were people who loved each other you know so I don't actually know that that's true I didn't say it through any deep analysis it's what I said in the moment trying to acknowledge the humanity of people there you mentioned in the beginning of your book your eulogy and how it there were some people that were actually maybe angry about it and in general it seems like there's still 25 years later so much anger a lot about his death fans being angry or I remember Andy Rooney saying some stuff it's I'm just it's curious that people still like cups of strong feelings about like they're angry with him well look I think it's not just Kurt I think when someone commits suicide a lot of people take it as an act of great hostility to the survivor especially the family members and that is a very common response and there were certainly people that I spoke to very very close to current like Crist and Eric for example who just openly said how could he do that what's wrong with him how can you do that to his daughter and and I respect those emotions I mean I totally respect it it doesn't happen to be my emotions no no I felt enormous grief as I still do but I I just see it as a disease that no one could cure you know if somebody died of cancer at 27 you wouldn't be angry at them you would just mourn them and I think this was a mental illness that nobody knew how to cure nobody that any of us knew and no one that he could find and it wasn't like there weren't efforts to dozens of doctors therapists and and so on and maybe there was someone out there that could have helped him but no one that we were ever able to find her he was ever able to find so I I just always looked at it as as a mental illness and not as a moral failing I'm not sure I'm right but that's emotionally how I feel about it as I think about him of course I'm not his daughter I'm not his wife I I don't have to live with the consequences and the profound way that they do but I have to also honor my own view of this and that's that's just that's kind of the book comes from that place I'm curious what your thoughts are on if Kurt had lived where you think he would have gone musically obviously the last recorded thing he did was unplugged and I believe you mention the book he was gonna be doing some work with Michael Stipe and I kind of feel like perhaps if he'd gone on he would have gone more in the route of what unplugged sounded like well he was incredibly smart and had musical interests that were very diverse and I'm sure he would have experimented over the years with different kinds of music the way somebody like Neil Young has the way David Bowie did the way David Byrne did and I think he's on that list of kind of Renaissance musical minds what exactly he would have done I have no idea of course no one does but I I think he would have continued to grow creatively and I'm sure he would have also from time to time returned to Nirvana and I think the same with Dave they've obviously had enormous talent that was not apparent certainly not to me at the time but Dave knew and I'm sure Dave would have found a way of expressing it so you could hypothesize that it would have been like I don't know crosby stills the mission young and then just Neil Young and the Neil Young and Crazy Horse and then Croce Stills Nash and young again I think of Neil Young as maybe the closest person from the older generation that had the kind of diversity and brilliance that Kurt did but Kurt was very different from anybody including Neil Young and he would have done what he would have done but I can't imagine that he wouldn't still be making art and music he was an artist at his core you mentioned the beginning yearbook I want to kind of wrap up we're talking about his legacy you talk about like a little kid who recognized you and Wanda photo with you Utah and there's so many people who weren't even alive when Nirvana were around who still like Nirvana's their classic rock now oh yeah of course they wear the Nirvana t-shirts and they're like a 12 year old boy yeah yeah what do you think it was about him and about Nirvana that kind of transcended so many different types of people and is transcended generations there are a lot of his peers who don't have who were huge at the time but they're not necessarily the classic rock of Generation Z now yeah it's some subtle thing that doesn't lend itself to a sentence that that certain artists have that can transcend generations and I might add transcend nationalities you know never mind was a phenomenon in Japan and Belgium and Eastern Europe and France as well as in the english-speaking world which is not true of every I mean a lot of classic rock from America did not translate especially the places like France which is you know quite picky about what what they like and it happened quite quickly and and similarly it's transcended that a few generations not at the same level of mass appeal I mean but if you go on Spotify the amount of streams the Nirvana has is greater than any of their peers and Spotify only started 14 years after Kurt died I think that that he had he was tuned into something timeless about what it is to be human being in a society that you feel alienated from and how to try to cling on to some integrity and and and also recognize the darkness and something about the combination of his voice and I do think he's one of the great singers almost on the list with Billie Holiday and other greats classic great singers over the years and the sophistication and complexity it was writing that that touches people in a way that transcends generations that's kind of just answering the question by stating the question but it reminds me in a way I was trying to think of an antecedent for it and there are other artists like Bob Marley for example continues to be relevant even though he's been dead for a long time Bowie I think John Lennon Dylan is alive but I think his music is his lived on although not necessarily so much two younger people to me I'm always at doing a freak but but I think that I remember when I was 13 or 14 I read the novel Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger which had been this huge thing ten years earlier and it wasn't my generation it was described in kind of the 50s and an alienated kid in the 50s but yet the artistry of the way Salinger expressed this kids emotions made me feel less alone I can't even explain how that happened but I'm one of millions and millions of people and catch her in their eyes been reprinted like a zillion times and still you can find it in any Airport and it's gotta be 60 70 years since it came out so there are certain artists that just do that and he was one of them and I don't exactly know how he did it but there's no question that that there was something more timeless about the essence of what he did than just the exact musical trends of the time even though he also was a master of musical trends of the time which is why he was able to have number one hits my last question related to that is in the mythology of rock and roll we sort of have you know B N and a unlike before Nirvana and after Nirvana and Nirvana and never mind specifically is brought up as something that sort of effectively killed hair metal and basically ushered in what we now look at is the alternative rock revolution and many other bands that got signed in their wake from Seattle and otherwise so I guess do you think that alt rock revolution that changing of the gaurd would have happened if not would another fan of ushered that in if Nirvana hadn't came around or would it or would we be looking at a very different musical landscape in the 90s and beyond you know probably I think Pearl Jam would have found an audience I think they're a great band I think Nirvana made it a lot easier for Pearl Jam to find an audience and Pearl Jam's big success came within months of Nirvana's big success as did Soundgarden's breakthrough even those those bands that have been around for a while it was Nirvana that kind of proved to radio programmers at MTV and that that there was a mass audience for a more intimate less polished kind of rock-and-roll so I think Nirvana definitely was the catalyst in the media for a younger generation differentiating themselves from people five or six years older but you know generations are going to come you know anyway I think maybe the success of that music delayed by a couple of years hip hop's ascendance in replacing basically rock and roll as the primary voice of of teenagers I think the destiny when you look at the history of music that this the bigger thing that happened was hip hop emerging you know and especially you know once the gangster rap and you know NWA was was kind of around the same time as Nirvana and ended up actually having quite a bit more influence but I think that what Nirvana was was certainly it created Alaine for at least six or seven other artists to reach a mass audience because like I said it reassured the mass media that that kind of music was had an audience and I think it also you could make the argument that they that they were the last rock band to also be a major mass appeal cultural and pop phenomenon yeah they're still rock and roll I'm involved with it I'm a rock fan I wish I understood other genres as well as I understood rock because rocks are now more of a niche you know genre commercially speaking when people like Drake have a billion streams you're not gonna see a rock band getting a billion streams probably but you know so in a way it was sort of the book end of an era that started with the Beatles where a certain kind of rock and roll was the dominant mass appeal culture it did create a space for a number of other artists both from Seattle and elsewhere you know and you know I think Green Day and and offspring you know also had an easier time because of what happened with never mind but I think Green Day would have been successful where there were that never mind I mean they're a great band but Nirvana was the one that opened that door no question about it you mentioned hip hop and actually a lot of hip hop people are really big Kurt Cobain fans I know I you know Kid Cudi and Kanye and the quite a few others have referenced him in lyrics eminem and i think it's not the music i think it's his authenticity it's his commitment to being a vulnerable human being unafraid of darkness and and and and his integrity and intensity that somehow made him a respected artist in that world even though the music is obviously completely different and i'm sure he would be really proud of that the last thing I want to ask since we talked about hair metals I do want to talk a little bit about he had some kind of feud with Axl Rose because at one time Nirvana and Guns N'Roses kind of coexisted on the charts as the two biggest rock bands in the world and then I don't know I it seems like Axl was a fan at first and then what was that rivalry well when they were on the same label yeah you know so the official label that released Nirvana's record was called DGC but it was an imprint Geffen Records it was the same staff second company DGC was kind of created to be a alternative lane to just focus on certain ores but it was it was an imprint so they were there was all the same people they were on the same label and when the early tapes of nvm were floating around I guess someone played it for Axl Rose and he and he liked it enough that he said something nice about them and I think he wore nirvana had him one of their videos maybe was November rain and so that that was a the one positive moment and that was didn't last very long I think that current and Nirvana you know had a real fierce sense of differentiating themselves from the commercial rock-and-roll seem that was prevalent before they arrived the so called hair bands and I don't think it's exactly fair to call them hair bands they all play musics Axl Rose a great singer the Guns & Roses I think is a great band but there was definitely a macho swaggering identity to those bands that that was really diametrically opposed to the idea of masculinity and integrity that Kurt and Nirvana and bands like Pearl Jam had and and so it became so current current you know was trafficking in that also in terms of the media and how they were imaging themselves so um I know at the at the LA show after nevermind came out Axl Rose was there with Eddie Rosenblatt the president of Geffen and and he said to me Jackson wants to come back and you know and introduce himself to Kurt and I told Curtis and Kurt says oh god I don't want to meet Axl Rose so we like ducked out the back and then I went back and gave passes to Eddie saying oh here's your passes but then when they went in you know we weren't there and you know it was a it was a charade that was at least didn't openly say no I don't want to meet you but Axl Rose probably knew what happened and then later on he asked them to do some birthday party and of course never it's not gonna do a birthday party from Axl Rose and you know in Kurt's whole thing about being a feminist and again this was a time when when Guns N'Roses had a song that was on one of their big albums that referred to you couldn't have something more offensive to somebody like Kurt than that so they were just culturally in different camps at that time and then after the Vanity Fair article came out Axl Rose said something very rude you know the current Kourtney should be in jail or something like that it was pretty gross and right after that we're all at the MTV Awards together Nirvana and Guns N'Roses both performed on the MTV Awards the first of the MTV Awards shows that came out after nevermind had been a big record and it's a pretty to Nirvana freaks this is not a new story but I retell it since I was there and it was so surreal you know this was a week or two after after Axl Rose had said these mean things about Kurt and Courtney relative to Vanity Fair and what kind of baby they were gonna have and and you know Francis was I don't know a month old or something a few weeks old and was you know Courtney's holding her there and and he you know so she says they came and there was an area where where the bands and their guests could have a bite to eat you know it was like a backstage type area with catering and all that and she said hey Axl want to be Godfather to our baby so then he had a girlfriend at the time I think her name was Stephanie Seymour who says cattle II - Courtney are you a model and without missing a beat Courtney says all right are you a brain surgeon so so Axl Rose had these huge bodyguards and and he had somebody with a camera that was documenting a backstage possibly to make some future documentary so him the bodyguards and the camera person come over to the table where we are and he says you know shut your woman up or I'll throw you down to the page and we're looking they're like trying that you know and and so so Kurt just a beat goes by and Kurt looks at at Courtney and he had this kind of slacker voice and he says shut up [ __ ] like mocking this this request and and we all cracked up because he was making fun of it in axles went away in a big huff so that was kind of the central event of the feud and they were some bickering they went back it was that was it I actually think that if Kurt were alive that I've noticed a closes supports Democrats lately and I'm sure he's been through a lot in his life and it's just as likely as not that they would be friends if Kurt were alive today but at that moment in time it was like two clashing philosophies and it went on in the press for someone's it was the 90s we are out of time but thank you so much for this wonderful conversation it learns a lot the book is great thank you and you know it's sad circumstances but it's great that the music lives on indeed thank you thank you

Channel: Yahoo Entertainment

Views: 137,712

Keywords: Nirvana, Danny Goldberg interview, Kurt Cobain, Nirvana manager, 90s music, Courtney Love, Serving the Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain

Id: 3WLsMQHMfO0

Length: 58min 28sec (3508 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2019