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Boston musician Mary Lou Lord met Kurt Cobain just as Nirvana was passing from relative anonymity to international fame. Twenty-five years after her death, she tells her story.
September 22, 1991
The bouncer did not let Nirvana into the club. The album "Nevermind" was only a few days before its release, and the trio of Aberdeen, Washington, was only a few months of international renown. But that night they were not rock stars yet. And they were not on the list to enter Boston's legendary rock club, the Rathskeller, known as "The Rat", at least according to the bouncer. And anyway, the Melvin had already finished their set.
"You should let them in," said a young woman who recognized the group.
With permission of Mary Lou Lord
"Who are you?" he inquired the bouncer.
The woman was the musician Mary Lou Lord. The 26-year-old was known in the subway for her underground career, playing acoustic covers of musicians that she loved but few knew, at least not yet – like Shawn Colvin and Daniel Johnston. She knew Nirvana because her friend DJ Radio had given her a copy of their demo containing songs from "Nevermind" before her release. She loved that. She had spent all summer listening in her Walkman. Something in their sound was constantly pulling her, she said, like a magnet.
Lord told nothing of that to the bouncer, though. She repeated her advice and then returned to the inside of the Rat, hoping that the group would eventually enter it.
They did it. When the blond boy came to thank her, she said that she did not know at first that it was Kurt Cobain. Light and sweet voice, he certainly did not look like the main singer. She was expecting someone who was bigger and bigger to live up to her voice.
"I thought it was the roadie, I honestly did," Lord said.
Nirvana was part of the new rock guard and Lord was not the only one to Rat who knew it that night. When acquaintances came to say hello, she thought it was because of her interlocutor.
Richie Parsons
"The guy said," Hey Mary Lou, I heard you playing in the subway, you sounded really good! " Said Lord. "Kurt was like you're playing in the subway?"
Cobain, then 24, asked her what kind of music she was playing. She replied that he probably would not know it. When Cobain said he liked a lot of music, Lord told him about bands like Daniel Johnston, Teenage Fanclub and The Vaselines.
"These are my favorite bands, in the order," said Cobain, according to Lord.
With permission of Mary Lou Lord
Lord did not believe it, at least not at first.
Cobain invited Lord upstairs to speak. Lord said that she quickly discovered that Cobain, like her, had an affinity for underestimated groups. She discovered that she shared Cobain's liking for music, which she describes in a podcast that she recently produced with fellow musician Maryanne Window as "melodic, different, daring".
At the end of the night, Lord proposed to Cobain to return to Howard Johnson where the group was staying.
Cobain accepted with gratitude, said Lord. He was confused when she started unlocking her bike.
"I said, you're on your back," Lord said.
Cobain went to the back of his bike at the hotel. They stayed up all night to talk, said Lord watching the sun rise. It was September 23, 1991.
The next day, the release of "Nevermind" would mark the beginning of a rock revolution. Cobain would be in the center and Lord would have a place in the front row.
"The outsider wins his day"
Lord spoke to CBS News last month from his childhood home in Salem, Mass., Detailing a relationship with Cobain that she termed short, but intense – in many ways, at the same time. 39, like the rise of the group to glory. The less than two months that the two dated marked the period of time when Nirvana had gone from relative anonymity to international celebrity. "Nevermind" has enjoyed tremendous popularity in the United States, the United Kingdom and most of the world a few months after its publication. By the beginning of January 1992, he had reached No. 1 on Billboard 200, replacing Michael Jackson's "Dangerous".
Nirvana appealed to a generation that rejected stereotypical commercial rock and aspired to music that was both powerful and accessible, said former Nirvana director Danny Goldberg, who recently published a book about his friendship with Cobain. . While hair bands dominated the airwaves, Nirvana was a "f — you" for the general public, said Seattle radio DJ Marco Collins, who defended the "Seattle Sound" in the early 1990s – later known as grunge. a lot in Seattle, "The word G".
Mark Terrill / AP
"[Nirvana] was pure punk rock energy. It was the system tipping over his head. She just felt revolutionary, "Collins said. … All the traditional schlock had become so boring, and MTV was inundated with that —. Suddenly, the anti-rock star applies and steals the microphone. It is precisely this feeling that the oppressed has finally been entitled to his day. "
But even in Seattle, where Nirvana was so popular in 1991, Collins often played "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on his radio station twice, the success of Nirvana was a shock. For those who know Lord, including Collins, it is not surprising that she recognized the uniqueness of Nirvana before anyone knew how popular it would become.
"Mary Lou knows better than anyone about future superstars," said singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin, a triple Grammy winner. Lord played Colvin's songs in the Boston T long before Colvin signed a recording contract and catapulted him to the international stage with his 1997 success, "Sunny Came Home." Both became close friends.
Lord then began writing songs, settled in Olympia (Washington) and recorded for the Kill Rock Stars label. She made her Sony label debut with her album "Got No Shadow" in 1998. The album, reissued last year, featured collaborations with Colvin and Elliott Smith – another renowned singer-songwriter of which Lord was one of the first champions.
"She pays attention in advance," Colvin said. "Most of us have just waited for it to strike us – but Mary Lou is looking for it – she knows what's great and before anyone else."
September 23, 1991
In the group of clubs that doted Lansdowne Street in Boston, in the shadow of Fenway Park, there was only one entrance line. It was the Axis, where Nirvana was playing with Bullet Lavolta and the Smashing Pumpkins in anticipation of the release of the album "Nevermind" the next day. Lord had invited Cobain to come.
Photo: Mary Lou Lord
The place was jam-packed, the room "sick of excitement," said Bullet Lavolta drummer Todd Phillips. Once the opening groups finished their sets, WFNX DJ Kurt St. Thomas introduced Nirvana as "the coolest fan group in the world". As Philips describes in a Boston Phoenix article in 2011, quoted by Vanyaland, Nirvana then played a brilliant 60-minute game "hot, moist, noisy and reckless".
"Sometimes, around 'Drain You,' I looked around me in the room and noticed that everyone had that look in their eyes, though very wide awake; they really saw something important, or were really part of something important, "Phillips wrote.
Subsequently, Lord invited Cobain to the Central Square apartment for Boston's icon of the music scene, Billy Ruane. She stayed there in exchange for organizing the vast collection of records of the beloved music promoter. She had only crossed the C.
Cobain and Lord played records and talked about music, Lord said. Cobain loved Lord's 1953 Martin D18 guitar and asked him to play for him. Lord worked with the courage to play songs from Nevermind – which had just appeared a few hours ago. Cobain, she said, was stunned.
"He just watched me," What's that? " Said the Lord. "It was somehow blown away because it was only a small group from Seattle at that time."
Mary Lou Ford
Cobain insisted that she open for Nirvana the next night, she said, when they will play Axis again. Lord refused.
"It's like, well, we'll bring the guitar just in case you change your mind," Lord said.
Cobain spent the night. The next evening, they returned to the axis, where another line had formed outside. This time, Lord went to the front of the stage with Cobain, carrying his guitar and his hand.
"People knew me as the subway girl," said Lord. "As we walked past the people in the queue, I saw them look like:" What's he doing with a subway girl? "
Lord has not ended up opening for Nirvana. But like the previous night, she said she was dazzled by the energy of the performance.
"You could really feel that there was some sort of change in the train," Lord said, "you just felt like I'm in the right place right now."
"Almost written"
The relationship between Lord and Cobain was not exempt from questions. They went out together just before Cobain and Courtney Love, who publicly accused Lord of harassment and trying to make a career with Cobain. Lord denies these claims and says that it is the love that threatened her. A representative from Love did not respond to a request for comment from CBS News.
With permission of Mary Lou Lord
A note sent by fax to the Boston Phoenix in 1993 and signed by Kurt Cobain, in response to Lord's profile in the paper, indicated that Cobain was drunk in Boston when a "scary girl came to see me".
"I have NEVER had a relationship with her," reads the note. "Please, Mary, whoever you are, leave me and look at a therapist."
Lord is convinced that the note was a fake.
The dispute between Love and Lord largely dominated the media coverage of Lord's story, but the account of Lord's relationship with Cobain remained a relatively unknown chapter of the public picture of Cobain's story. In February, Lord gave a long story about Cobain in his podcast, "How the hell did this happen?"
The story of Lord was also detailed by Cobain's biographer, Charles Cross, and in the story of a writer and friend of Cobain, Everett True, in his book "Nirvana: The Biography". True says Lord "was almost written in the story of Kurt Cobain".
"Still, I remember very well from that time when I met an angry Kurt, speaking to a girl named Mary Lou Lord, of her love for her and the way he was moving to Boston to to be with her, "True wrote. "A fantasy maybe, but he believed in it at the time."
September 29, 1991
Nirvana was going to be on MTV. Lord, his friend Cobain, bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl were reunited in a hotel in New York City, eagerly awaiting the release of the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" clip on MTV's "120 Minutes".
Mark J. Terrill / AP
It was a landmark for any musician at the time, but a monumental moment for Nirvana. The song, which is now considered the defining hymn of a rebellious generation, would contribute to the explosive success of the band, thanks largely to the heavy rotation of the video by MTV.
Lord had taken a bus from Boston to New York the night before, after receiving a message from Cobain on his answering machine that begged her to come see them play. Lord said that she was too late to attend the show, but Cobain was always pleased to see her, even going so far as to dance with her on disco music that she had put into a juke. -box in a bar.
When the video was aired, the band members were ecstatic, said Lord, calling their mother when Lord and Cobain jumped on the bed. "They were like, look at us, we're on MTV!" Lord has called back. "… knowing what we know, it was very important to share this moment with him and with Dave and Krist."
In the weeks that followed, Lord met them on their tours in the United States, while trying to keep his job in a Boston record store. Without a cell phone or the Internet, she said, they had little indication of their exponential success, with the exception of the "observing MTV jocks" that were starting to appear in the clubs. where they played.
When the tour reached Detroit, Lord told Cobain that she was to return to Boston. She could not risk losing her job at the record store.
"Kurt said, he said," No, please, stay, please, "said Lord," I could not. "
The two separate ways. Lord returned to Boston, and Nirvana continued to perform that night in Chicago. It was there that Cobain's romance with Courtney Love was about to begin.
November 5, 1991
Lord had spent the last few weeks fighting to save a ticket from England. Cobain regularly called him from the road, feasting on raucous emotional stories, and he wished Lord meets Nirvana as the European stage of the tour was launched.
Mary Lou Lord
Lord arrived in London in a very different Nirvana from where she had separated in Detroit. "Nevermind" was already in the charts, and the band was at the center of almost constant activity. She could not have a conversation with Cobain without the others getting in – "Kurt, Kurt." The band seemed stressed – the tour was starting to wreak havoc – and Lord suspected, not for the first time, that Cobain had a drug problem.
But the shows still had their brand energy, said Lord, and the British crowds were "crazy" to see them. And Cobain, she said, seemed sincerely happy to see her.
Then the phone rang. The call took place around three in the morning, while they were sleeping in a hotel after a concert at the London Astoria. Lord was exhausted and went back to sleep, but she remembered that Cobain had spent a lot of time on the phone.
The next morning at breakfast, Kurt told Dave Grohl, "Oh, Courtney called," said Lord. She was not sure what he meant.
After they left, Cobain asked Lord how she was heading to Wolverhampton, the next leg of the tour. She said that she was surprised by the question.
"I wanted to say:" I'm going with you, "he said. said Lord. "But I said," Oh, I have things to do in London, "which I did not do, it was a lie, I just did not know it. what he meant. "
Cobain gave him a route with the tour contacts and said, "Here's how to reach me."
Globe Photos / MediaPunch
"I said okay, and I gave him a kiss and a hug, and I said goodbye," Lord said.
Lord went to visit friends in London, confused. That night, she saw Nirvana participate in a British TV show. Before the show, Cobain said, "I just want everyone in this room to know that Courtney Love, pop band singer Hole, is the best F — in the world."
Lord was shocked.
"I was with him the night before," Lord said. "I did not know who Courtney Love was."
Lord soon discovered that Dave Gwiazdowski, his friend DJ on the radio in Boston, had interviewed the day before, Love, who was in town to play with his group Hole at the Rat. When Love said that Hole had planned tour dates with Nirvana, Gwiazdowski mentioned that Lord and Cobain were together in London. Unbeknownst to the DJ, Love and Cobain had started a quiet romance in Chicago, and Love seemed stunned.
Lord does not know exactly what Cobain and Love talked on the phone, or what precipitated the sudden break-up. Back in Boston, she is devastated and takes on the difficult task of trying to defeat the world's greatest rock star.
"Born alone"
When Cobain committed suicide in Seattle on April 5, 1994, Lord had the impression of having lost him for the second time. Lord was then living in Olympia, Washington, and had just returned home after a tour with Beck when she had learned of Cobain's death, Lord told CBS News during the interview. Devastated, she mourned her loss, accompanied by her fans and friends.
Elaine Thompson / AP
Recalling that day, she said it sometimes seemed longer than the past 25 years because Cobain was gone because she had not seen him since their breakup in London. Even today, she still has a lot to know, including what Love may have told her on the phone that night.
"I have a million questions," Lord said. "And I always thought that I would see him again and that I could ask him these questions, but that did not happen that way."
Lord says that she does not remember Cobain as a rock star because he was not there when she met him. She remembers him as a "good kid" who loved music but who was "born with some solitude".
"I did not have to see [loneliness] to Kurt, I knew that at Kurt's, I felt it, said Lord. I could hear him even in his voice when he said, "Please, do not leave."
Unlike a rock star, Lord thinks Cobain did not want to attract attention when he played – he wanted the listener to be reflected in his songs. Lord believes that music is a way to connect with others, to feel less alone. She describes the same kind of loneliness in singer-songwriter Elliott Smith, as she met five or six months after Cobain's suicide.
Lord calls Smith, who will later become his close friend and tour partner, "incredibly similar" to Cobain. Although Smith had a much quieter musical performance, Lord said that she felt the same kind of "magnetic attraction" on Smith's music as on Nirvana's music.
With permission of Mary Lou Lord
"These two people, in my mind, in the '90s, were the ones who spoke to lonely children," said Lord. "Just like them, they are born alone, and no one could understand that more than them."
Like Cobain, Smith committed suicide. He was 34 years old when he died in 2003. Cobain and Smith have never met, but Lord is convinced that Cobain would have loved Smith's music.
For Lord's friends, it's not surprising that she shares a natural connection with other artists such as Smith and Cobain.
"[Cobain] was obviously so passionate and an artist so profound that I'm sure he found his appreciation and what she intuitively understood as a comforting person, "Colvin said. Many artists feel that no one understands them, and he was clearly a tortured soul and obviously a sensitive person. He is no more amiable than Mary Lou – and I think he knew it well. "
David Morgan contributed to the reports.
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