Read an exclusive extract – Rolling Stone

When Danny Goldberg started managing Nirvana in 1991, the band was only a promising underground underground act from Seattle. But, as Goldberg's next memoirs tell, Serving the servant: In memory of Kurt Cobain, things would change quickly and decisively. The book is a fascinating portrait of the life, music and workings of Cobain, who died 25 years ago next month, and who has already claimed that Goldberg was like a "second father". In this chapter, Goldberg recalls in a very detailed way the months and days that preceded It does not matter and the complex emotions elicited by the success of Cobain's album. [Find it here on Amazon]

Some in Seattle's music world had an idea of ​​what would happen. Jennie Boddy remembers the first time she and Susie Tennant had seen Nirvana play the songs that would be aired. It does not matter in a Seattle club called OK Hotel. "They played" Teen Spirit "and" Lithium "and all our mouths were open. Susie was hyperventilating how good they were. Even the guys who jumped into the mosh pit knew how good they were.

A few months later, she saw them again at the ramp. "Grohl had recently become their drummer and it was even more amazing to hear him play the new songs. The group played a complete set. Then they closed the club at two in the morning and cleaned it, then we went back together and the group played for two more hours. Kurt was so happy.

In January, when It does not matter would go to number one on the Display panel album board, Eddie Rosenblatt, chairman of Geffen, was interviewed by the New York Times To describe the label's marketing strategy, he replied modestly: "Get away from the duck." It was indisputably true that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had so much magic that it greatly simplified the work of everyone. that the song would have been huge, no matter who was involved or not. Nevertheless, the group and DGC spent a lot of time and energy launching Nirvana's flagship brand career in a special way.

In terms of marketing, the group wanted to maintain its credibility with its first fans while incorporating many new. Much of the anguish experienced by artists with record companies and the media was really related to the tribal differences within the rock public. It was an experience of loving an artist that only a few friends and you loved, and a very different experience they became popular and the school kids you hated were suddenly buzzing their songs. On a personal level, Kurt wanted an acceptable success for all facets of his inner teenager. He identified himself deeply with the pariahs whose self-esteem wanted to be part of a small subculture, but he also embraced the joy of being part of a vast audience that could gather around 39, an anthemic chorus or a powerful riff.

At the time, radio was the main music marketing tool because hearing music is always more powerful than reading about it. Many of the college stations that reported to CMY first supporters of Nirvana and had played "Sliver" and pieces of Bleach. Connectivity with these young college DJs was an essential part of keeping in touch with Nirvana's punk rock fans. The promoters of DGC knew without the group having to tell them that marketing for It does not matter had to start on university radio.

For example, the children who participated in the pep rally in the video "Smells Like Teen Spirit" were recruited through one of these stations, KXLU, a tiny ad-free radio station supported by listeners , affiliated with Loyola Marymount University, near the Los Angeles Airport. Angeles. KXLU was at the far left of the dial and whenever I listened, I felt like I was confiding a secret. They were playing indie rock that could not be heard anywhere else on Southern California radio at that time. True to Nirvana's desire to show that they had not forgotten where they came from, the group chose to visit the KXLU studio and create "Smells Like Teen Spirit" the day before the other stations. radio received the song.

Kurt was brought to the station by young promo John Rosenfelder, among others, Rosie. Krist and Dave rode with Sharona White, assistant in the promotion department. Rosie recalls that the group "joked and threw food between two cars on Highway 405." They did their first on-air interview for It does not matter On that day, they invited listeners to watch the movie "Smells Like Teen Spirit" the next day and take part in the shoot.

However, even though they kept in touch with their independent fans, one of the main reasons why Nirvana wanted to be part of a big label was to make themselves known on commercial radio.

These stations were divided by format, designed to attract particular demographic groups that it then offered to advertisers. Pop radio stations (or "Top 40") focused mainly on pre-teens and young teens and much more on women than men. The different "rock" formats have generally appealed to older adolescents and university-aged children, mainly men. There was a cottage industry of programmers and consultants who claimed to have discovered what combination of recordings at one point would give the best ratings to the targeted demonstration in the geographic market covered by the station's signal .

Much of the limitations of the major labels comes from their reliance on corporate radio stations. Whatever the courage of some record company promoters, they were plaintiffs when they were dealing with broadcasters, who were in turn at the mercy of their listeners. Even radio programmers who were also fanatics of music had to keep an eye on public research. Two or three bad quarterly notes in a row and they were likely to look for another job. Advertisers paid rates based on these rankings, and music stations that generally achieved the best results usually avoided songs that could cause some listeners to change channels. People who had the radio in the background and did not even know the names of the artists they listened to were just as valuable to the advertisers as the passionate fans who bought concert tickets. For the artists and those of us who represented them, it often seemed that the most apathetic listeners had a right of veto.

The influence of the research on the public was the main reason why the most famous rock stations in the majority of the country concentrated on groups of melodic pop songs, called hair groups like Poison and Skid Row, of which the popularity has been enhanced by MTV. Most MTV programmers made their debut in commercial radio and were influenced by the same type of research, although some of them realized that they could afford to do it. have a wider and more diverse playlist, because unlike radio stations, MTV had virtually no competition.

In several major markets, there were two or three rock stations whose main program was to compete with male listeners aged 18 to 35 years. A handful of stations focused mainly on heavy metal, such as Ozzy Osbourne or Pantera. Guns N 'Roses has become the largest American rock band dominating both commercial and metal rock stations, while having a hit on pop music stations with "Sweet Child O' Mine".

Although he insisted on the group's punk credibility with university radio stations, Rosie wanted to convince commercial programmers that Nirvana belonged to the rarefied category of "alternative metal," which included groups such as Jane's. s Addiction and Faith No More, whose recent records were played on both formats. . In their quest to reach a wider audience, the group does not have the trouble to be told this way. But Kurt was also afraid of doing too many interviews on these stations. There was a difference between the metal media that embraced his music and the appearance he was yearning for.

A few months before It does not matter Kates had gone to a Dodgers game with Silva, after which my partner had played him a tape of the Andy Wallace mixes It does not matter In his car. "It sounded really big and I realized we could probably play it on KNAC [an LA station that focused on heavy metal]and if we did, maybe it would be a gold album, "which in the nineties meant sales of five hundred thousand copies in the United States. Rosie recalls, "I remember when Gersh was playing It does not matter for the staff of the DGC he played noisyReinforcing his wish that the promoters work on the disc on metal radio, as well as on rock stations college and indie.

These were the first indications at the record label that Nirvana could be much bigger than Sonic Youth. In addition to the commercial ramifications of this observation, he says that Nirvana's album could create a very rare convergence of cultures. Most metal and punk fans were opponent tribes.

The commercial category that was initially most relevant to Nirvana was "alternative rock" (sometimes called "modern rock"). Stations such as KROQ in Los Angeles avoided metal and hairdressing groups like the plague and broadcast the most commercial songs of the university radio songs. KROQ has developed a substantial audience in Southern California for groups such as Depeche Mode, Smiths and Cure, which are not broadcast on traditional rock channels.

It was not surprising that the day after KXLU's premiere, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was played on most of the CMJ stations across the country, but it was exciting that the track was immediately added to several of the clubs the world's most popular alternative rock. stations, too, starting with WFNX in Kates' hometown in Boston, followed by KROQ in Los Angeles and 91X in San Diego. Although Kurt, Krist, and Dave had an ironic distance from the hype of the music industry, they were excited to be able to listen to their music on the major alternative rock stations they listened to. often with their friends.

The following week, Silva and I attended a marketing meeting at DGC and Kates was vibrating with enthusiasm. Generally, when a commercial radio station added a disc, it broadcast it once or twice a night, was waiting for a reaction and was planning to increase the rotation after several weeks. However, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" became, in the jargon of the radio promo, "heavy phones", which meant that many people were calling to ask for the song. The returns were so important that the rotation had been intensified on several major stations in just a few days. Farrell was receiving information that there were lists of fans in several independent stores who had pre-ordered the album, which would not be available for a few weeks. At that time, such pre-orders were extremely rare, especially for an artist having only one independent album behind them. Since coming to DGC, Kates wondered if he would ever be able to work with a record as great as Cure's or Depeche Mode's and suddenly he had one that felt bigger.

Krist proudly reflects on the lack of advertising or high pressure marketing for It does not matter"Later, when the Internet became so popular, people talked about the difference between a culture" pushed "by marketing and a culture driven by people who discovered it by themselves. We were fired. "

The week after the release of the single on radio stations, Silva received a call from Bob Lawton, booking agent at Sonic Youth, who had attended a Guns N 'Roses concert in New York City the night before. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had been played on the PA system before the show and the crowd cheered as soon as she heard the intro. We were excited. New York did not even have an alternative commercial radio, but some of the fans must have heard the song on WDRE, a Long Island radio station in alternative rock format. It was very short time for a song to become familiar enough to be encouraged in a situation like that. In any case we did not think that no matter who who was a fan of Guns N 'Roses would be in Nirvana.

Despite these promising signals, most Geffen employees still saw Nirvana as a new artistic signature that would make a lot of press coverage, but would probably not be a barrier to sales. To remedy this, the DGC team asked us to organize a show at Roxy, a venerable rock club on the Sunset Strip just across the street from the record company's office. They wanted non-alternative members of Geffen to see Nirvana happen in order to see for themselves the unique power of the group. It was in mid-August, just after the filming of the video by Nirvana, and virtually everyone from the brand came up.

Decades later, the Geffen who I spoke to remember this concert as a peak in their career. The Roxy can hold five hundred people and was filled mostly with music business types, although there are also fans and musicians. (Rosie remembers the singer of the Warrior Soul Moshing metal band during "Breed".) Nirvana was at its peak, tight and powerful. Subsequently, Kurt typically stated that he feared that the show would be a disappointment, lamenting having broken a guitar string. I gave the required insurance, and in this case sincere, the assurance of the management that it had been great.

I've crossed Sunset Boulevard with some of the brand's directors. "I have the impression of seeing the Who in London in 1964," said Robin Sloane. Robert Smith looked at me thoughtfully and said, "I think they could have a gold record."

It was important for the group to be in Seattle the day that It does not matter has been freed. Rosie was blown away by the way Nirvana showed herself at the height of the situation. "The week out, I was in Seattle and Susie Tennant and I went to KCMU and KISW. The group was very professional in doing interviews. They were on time, they were funny. On the day of the release, there was an appearance at Seattle's Peaches Record Store and an evening of record release. Before, wanting to take a break from the promo mode, Nirvana went to Tennant's house, which also served as her office. "I had a long living room. There were tons of CD Geffen and they came out and stacked like dominoes. Dave and Kurt each put one of my dresses. Then they ran to the stacked CDs and dived there. DGC's first successful album was created by the duo of pop brothers Nelson. Kurt grabbed one of Tennant's lipsticks and erased Nelson's gold record with this record.

At the store, where fans spilled over the street, Nirvana was playing live. "It was a super fun show," recalls Tennant, "the first time most fans have heard the new songs." Kurt had an extra diary that day: "He insisted that" a fanzine from Riot Grrrl is integrated with Peaches. Sell ​​there, "recalls Tennant admiringly. "It was supposed to be a day for Nirvana, to celebrate Kurt and the band, and he was taking care of his old friends."

Jennie Boddy recalls that afterwards, Kurt looked out the window of the store and saw Bruce Pavitt, Sub Pop's partner, sitting on the sidewalk, head in his hands, waiting for a cab. Kurt shouted at him with bittersweet affection: "Here's the daddy bird! We must leave the nest now! "

As a result of the release of the album, it seemed that everything worked for the band, even when they were unruly. They set fire to a couch in the locker room of a Pittsburgh club, while avoiding the damaging consequences. At the same time, Rosie recalls, "It seemed to me that Kurt had a critical view of everything that was going on, as he had been thinking for years about what a poster should look like. The three of them seemed to enjoy the company one on the one hand, but when deciding, for example if the mood of an interview was to be jovial or serious, Kurt gave the tone. If there was a food fight, he threw the first slice of pizza. "(Several people I talked to mentioned food fights, they never had them in front of me.) It was good / bad news to be ten years older. that Kurt …)

Given the bitter feelings that Kurt and Axl Rose were soon going to develop for each other, it's ironic that in the weeks leading up to It does not matter was released, Rose was talking about Nirvana even though he had never met them. You can see it with a Nirvana promotional hat in the video "Do not cry". The legendary former Vanilla Fudge thresher Carmine Appice, an icon of the metal world, has also provided incongruous but useful support. His new band, Blue Murder, was signed by Geffen and Appice was so impressed by his previous copy of Nevermind that he congratulated Dave Grohl in a column on the drums he wrote for Circus magazine.

By the end of the fall, KNAC, the Los Angeles metal station, had seven lanes in rotation. Rosie recalls that "the program manager of Z-Rock, a Dallas-based, under-union national metallurgical station, was initially concerned that van fans who appreciate Van Halen are not related to Nirvana. . "Smells Like Teen Spirit" ended up being the most played song in the history of Z-Rock. "

Rosie, although only in her twenties at the time, was in old-school promo mode, not always listening to the sensitive line that Nirvana was following. Part of Kurt liked that the headbangers play his riffs on the air guitar. He was proud of being able rock. But another part of him knew that the metal fans were overwhelmingly men and that few of them shared his feminist and gay inclinations, which left him with mixed feelings about the label's push. One day, while Nirvana was at Geffen's office, Rosie surprised Kurt by putting him on the phone with the editor-in-chief. CMY metal section and "Kurt slammed and Silva said I would steam it." Rosie was kept away from Kurt for a while after that.

Each year there were a handful of rock bands playing a rock and pop song, usually catchy ballads like Poison's Every Rose Has Its Thorn. When Gersh and Silva and I had speculated on whether Nevermind had a song that would work on the pop stations, we had assumed that the best suitor was "Come as You Are" because it was not too loud and had hooks melodic. However, the reaction to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" quickly exceeded our wildest expectations. It is an axiom of the record industry to duplicate something you know.

I asked Geffen's pop promotion guy he thought it was worth promoting the song in some adventurous pop music stations. He condescendedly reminded me that pop radio of that era played dancers like Paula Abdul and avoided anything with strong guitars. I could not even convince him to try to run the top 40 stations in Seattle. The problem was solved shortly thereafter by Leslie Fram, musical director of Power 99, an Atlanta pop station. She had noticed that alternative rock records were on the rise in local record stores and were looking for a record to see if the Atlanta Top 40 audience was ready to take a new direction. Fram recalls, "I was stunned when I heard Smells Like Teen Spirit." The track worked so well that she and her colleagues decided to change the format of the station to make them more alternative and were called 99X. Once a programmer said it was a pop song, the old school guy turned converted. This did not detract from the fact that many other pop stations copied the 99X format. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" has become a pop hit, going to number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

The breakthrough in pop radio has put Nirvana in a class of its own. Their music worked for fans of punk, commercial alternative, metal, traditional rock and pop. It was Kurt's vision from the beginning. In his journals, these lists of favorite albums included regularly ABBA, Black Sabbath and R.E.M. and black flag.

MTV was at its peak in American musical culture. At the end of 1992, Kurt would say to an Argentine writer, "In the United States, MTV is like God. it's very powerful. Everyone is watching and listening to this channel. Scott Litt, who produced the greatest R.E.M. albums and who would work with Nirvana as an engineer on various projects, including MTV Unpluggedsaid, "MTV was so powerful that you did not tell them no. It was like pop radio in the fifties. If you have not played ball, good luck. "

Amy Finnerty had landed a beginner position at the MTV in late 1989 and soon became a friend with Janet Billig, who had taken her to the East Village Pyramid Club to see Nirvana when Bleach went out of. "It was such an incredible show. It only started well after midnight and there could not be more than twenty or thirty people there, but Kurt still broke his guitar at the end. Then she went back to Janet 's apartment with the group, where she first met Kurt.

A few months later, while Nirvana had been brought to New York to meet Columbia Records, she had seen Kurt behind the scenes at a concert and reintroduced. He said, "I can not believe you know who I am; I'm just in a silly little group. Kurt and Krist laughed at Finnerty about their work for the MTV "company" and said they were going to pitch their beer, but they were laughing.

In the summer of 1991, Finnerty was twenty-two years old and was still immersed in the same punk culture of the eighties that had inspired Kurt. The people who programmed MTV were all at least a decade older and were blind to that. With the zealous assurance of youth, she persuaded senior MTV officials to attend the very important "music meeting" that was held every Monday, where decisions were made as to the choice of videos and their frequency. "I was still at the bottom of the totem pole, but they realized that I was the only one in the population to which they aspired. The other people present were all present for ten years and thought that children like Phil Collins were what the children wanted to hear.

The people of the record companies defending the "alternative" rock quickly realized that they had a new ally to MTV. At the end of the summer, Mark Kates asked Finnerty to meet him at an evening listening to Geffen for the upcoming Guns N 'Roses album at Electric Lady Studios in New York City and promised to give him advance a cassette of It does not matter after. "I had nothing against Guns N 'Roses, but it was a double album and the party lasted a very long time, I always thought I wanted it to be over so I could get that Nirvana tape. I listened on my Walkman while I was going home afterwards, and I knew it was going to be huge.

Submissions of music videos usually take place on Friday to give programmers the weekend to think about it. On Fridays of the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video, the Smashing Pumpkins were in Finnerty's office after crashing into his apartment the night before. She recalls, "We saw how incredible it was" and, while she was walking Billy Corgan and the other Pumpkins to meet various MTV officials, they were playing in each of their offices the video of "This other cool group". of the day, recalls Finnerty, "there was a palpable excitement" in the corridors and "people I did not know came into my office to watch the video."

Prior to Monday's music meeting, Finnerty had met privately with her boss, Abbey Konowitch, and had pleaded for the immediate rotation of the video on Nirvana. "I said if I was wrong and the record was not a hit, they could kick me out of the music meeting. I put my work into play. "Konowitch loved this passion but pointed out that there was only room for adding a new video to" heavy "that week and that MTV had also got a new video of Guns N 'Roses that had to go first because the band was an established favorite among MTV viewers, but he had promised that the Nirvana video would be turned into heavy the week next.

September 29, a few days later It does not matter was released, the video was premiered for the first time on MTV during their alternative broadcast 120 minutesAfter that, he went into the "average" rotation, which was exactly what they did with Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing" a year ago, before giving up after a few weeks. Fearing a new repetition of this trend, I explained to Geffen that we all had to put pressure on MTV for it to turn the video into intense rotation. I did not know that thanks to Finnerty, increasing the rotation the following week was already a done deal.

"In a few weeks, my life has changed," recalls Finnerty. Her status in the network exploded and she was liaising with Nirvana for the rest of their career. MTV was essential to make Nirvana a mass artist, but once became famous, the group was part of the small group of stars that drew viewers to the channel. The relationship has become a mutual exploitation. Kurt hated him when MTV pressed him, but he hated them when they ignored him. He regularly watched the channel himself and wanted Nirvana to be a big deal, and he hated the side of himself that cared so much about it.

Kurt would insist on making three more videos for the Nevermind and rarely refused MTV when they wanted the band for one of their concerts. One month after the release of the album, for an appearance on MTV's heavy metal show, Head ballKurt wore a vintage canary yellow prom dress. When host Riki Rachtman asked him why, Kurt replied timidly: "It's a balloon, is not it?" Twenty years later, MTV's website broadcast an interview with Rachtman in which he complained of getting answers from Kurt for his show. pulling teeth "and that Kurt acted like" he did not want to be there. "Showing this dark, punk attitude to a heavy metal show was the way Kurt had his heavy metal cake and ate it too." He was determined to let both old and new fans know that he hated macho attitudes. , mais il aimait toujours l'idée qu'une émission de métal joue sa vidéo. Finnerty et ses patrons chez MTV ne partageaient pas la colère de Rachtman et comprenaient ce que Kurt faisait.

Quand Kates et Smith avaient rêvé d’un disque d’or, ils avaient imaginé que cela viendrait après une année d’efforts méthodiques. Malgré l’enthousiasme suscité par le spectacle Roxy à Geffen, le pressage initial n’était que d’environ 50 000 unités, ce qui était plus que suffisant. Eau de Javel avait vendu, mais à peine un indicateur qu'un succès fulgurant était à l'horizon. Cet envoi initial a été vendu presque immédiatement dans les magasins, suivi de réapprovisionnements massifs. Ça ne fait rien a été certifié or (500 000 exemplaires expédiés) le 12 octobre, soit à peine dix-huit jours après sa sortie. Boddy se souvient: «Tout le monde à Seattle était tellement excité. Tout ce qui est arrivé Ça ne fait rien nous arrivait. C'était comme, 'Notre équipe a gagné!& # 39; & # 39; Kurt, Krist et Dave étaient aussi excités mais les choses bougeaient si vite que l'accomplissement avait un air d'irréalité, et il me semblait que le groupe faisait de son mieux pour ignorer autant le "succès" que ils pourraient pendant ces jours.

Je n'avais pas une telle contrainte intérieure. J'ai composé une chanson que je chantais moi-même dans la voiture: «J'ai le plus grand groupe, le plus grand du pays.» Jimmy Iovine, qui avait cofondé Interscope Records l'année précédente, était quelqu'un que j'essayais toujours d'impressionner. . «Je pense vraiment que ce sera plus important que tout ce à quoi je sers jamais,» lui ai-je dit au téléphone un jour. Iovine a répondu de manière explicite: «Cela me rappelle la police.» Je ne sais pas où j'ai eu les couilles pour répondre: «Je pense que ça va être plus grand que la police.» J'étais hors de contrôle, mais peu importe mon optimisme eu sur le succès de Ça ne fait rien, il a continué à dépasser mes attentes.

La radio commerciale et MTV étaient pour les masses; le support d’impression était destiné aux fans de culte. Lors du dernier voyage du groupe à New York avant Ça ne fait rien Janet Billig a emmené Kurt à Madison Square Garden, où Metallica présentait son nouvel album lors d’une soirée d’écoute géante. Kurt aimait Metallica et s’amusait bien, mais il pensait aussi à comment éviter une éventuelle réaction de la presse sur le prochain album de Nirvana. Faisant écho au tour qu'il avait donné à Montgomery et à Thurston, Kurt évoqua une nouvelle fois «About a Girl», rappelant à Billig qu'il avait toujours écrit des chansons mélodiques. Il voulait que les gens sachent qu'il n'avait pas changé simplement parce qu'il avait signé avec une grande maison d'édition, et il savait que Janet était une journaliste qui était régulièrement en contact avec la plupart des journalistes qui couvraient la sous-culture indépendante et qu'elle allait donner sa tourner à eux. Elle se souvient: «Kurt a tout lu. Il a toujours été à cheval entre le monde du rock indépendant et celui du rock traditionnel, et il a réussi.

Kurt n'avait pas besoin de s'inquiéter. La plupart des écrivains qui se sont identifiés au punk rock ont ​​reconnu que Nirvana avait réalisé un album qui conservait et développait leur version personnelle du rock and roll et le voyait comme le triomphe de la culture punk des années quatre-vingt qu'ils défendaient depuis longtemps. C'était aussi une énorme validation de la communauté rock de Seattle. Boddy se souvient: «Tous les critiques se sont réjouis, même au maximum Rocknroll et Flipside. Ils n'avaient pas l'impression que le groupe était à guichets fermés. Personne n'a ressenti ça. En tant que journaliste pour Sub Pop, je vous le dis, nobody. "

En attendant, j'ai fait ce que j'ai pu sur un flanc plus dominant. Je suis ami avec Bob Guccione Jr. depuis le début de Spin en 1985. Comme moi, c’était un homme d’affaires qui se sentait ému de la culture punk à laquelle il avait été identifié comme un public mal desservi. Quand nous avons déjeuné à la fin de l'été, il m'a dit qu'il allait mettre Soundgarden sur la couverture de leur numéro de fin d'année. (À ce moment-là, Soundgarden était toujours le nouveau groupe de rock le plus populaire de Seattle.) J’ai dit à Bob que, d’ici la fin de l’année, le plus grand groupe de Seattle serait Nirvana, pas Soundgarden. Le jeune personnel de Guccione doit avoir donné son accord, car il a chargé Lauren Spencer d’écrire ce qui serait la première histoire de couverture du groupe dans un magazine national.

À la fin du mois de septembre, Kurt savait à quelle vitesse les choses bougeaient et souhaitait un look différent pour Tourner que les coups de relations publiques qui avaient été prises pour l'étiquette quelques semaines avant. La veille de la séance photo, le groupe a rendu visite au WOZQ à Northampton et il a demandé à une jeune femme qui y travaillait de se teindre les cheveux en bleu. C’est ainsi qu’il est apparu sur la couverture du premier magazine national de Nirvana.

De nombreux critiques de rock plus âgés ont vu Ça ne fait rien comme une renaissance du rock and roll américain qui était sure quelque chose. R.E.M. Le dernier groupe qui a à la fois dirigé un public de masse et abordé des thèmes plus profonds, mais depuis près de 10 ans, leur public principal était désormais principalement composé de jeunes universitaires. Guns N’ Roses had added adrenaline to the teenage rock-and-roll world, but they lacked cultural depth. It seemed to many middle-aged critics that rock and roll had morphed into a louder version of shallow pop, but in late 1991 most of them saw the breakthrough of Nevermind as rock’s return to a level of cultural centrality that they feared had become irretrievably out of reach. Critics usually looked down on very popular artists and only a small fraction of the mass musical audience read reviews. Nevermind became one of the very few albums that had massive chart success and also placed first in the Village Voice’s highly respected Pazz & Jop poll, which tabulated the top ten lists of hundreds of American rock critics at the end of the year.

Kurt kept telling everybody that he had only wanted Nirvana to be as big as the Pixies. I’m almost certain that he was being disingenuous and that he had been thinking about how to react to success with the same intensity that he had brought to musical rehearsals. Notwithstanding whatever personal struggles he had with lurking demons, and as unprepared and sometimes repelled as he was by the personal experience of fame, as an artist Kurt was preternaturally well prepared and he always seemed to be thinking several steps ahead.

Just as he had figured out a way to uniquely transcend divisions in radio formats, Kurt endeavored to go beyond the pigeonholes that rock journalism had created. “People think I’m a moody person, and I think it’s lame that there are only two kinds of male lead singers,” he complained. “You can either be a moody visionary like Michael Stipe, or a mindless heavy metal party guy like Sammy Hagar.” Once he knew he was becoming famous, Kurt was determined to play both roles.

Silva and the band thought it was important that the first time Nirvana played each major market they return to a small club where they had appeared before. In the parlance of the business these were “underplays” and helped them remain connected to their core audience. Because “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had gotten such a quick reaction, the shows sold out immediately, even though the tour actually started in mid-September, a week before Nevermind came out. Montgomery recalls, “It was insanity. At every show there were more people outside who couldn’t get in than there were inside.” For those who had tickets, the trajectory of the record gave all the early shows a sense of instant rock-and-roll history, and the audience often worked themselves into a frenzy.

In St. Louis, security guards were getting rough with some kids who were rushing the stage. After trying to cool down the guards, always difficult in the middle of loud music, Kurt stopped the show and invited a bunch of the kids to stand on the stage while Krist earnestly explained to the audience that “anarchy only works if we all accept responsibility.”

In Los Angeles, where Geffen was headquartered and much of the media was based, we wanted to make room for more people to see them so an underplay didn’t make sense. October 27, a month after Nevermind had been released, Nirvana headlined at the Palace Theatre, which had 2,200 seats, the biggest place Nirvana had headlined up until that moment, and the show quickly sold out. The band had been consistently playing great shows and this was no exception. Backstage afterward, Eddie Rosenblatt told me that he had come with Axl Rose and asked if he could bring him into the dressing room to say hi to Kurt. When I conveyed this request, Kurt grimaced and said he really didn’t want to meet the Guns N’ Roses singer. I didn’t want to put Geffen’s president in an untenable situation, so I suggested to Kurt that he and I leave the dressing room and then I’d give Rosenblatt a couple of passes. That way it wouldn’t be like we were excluding them, just that Kurt couldn’t be found. Kurt nodded and I walked outside, delivered the passes to Rosenblatt, and asked if he and Rose could wait five minutes for Nirvana to “change clothes.” Then I went back in and grabbed Kurt and we ducked out a back door. Rosenblatt never gave me shit about it afterward so the charade worked on some level, but I doubt it left Rose with a great taste in his mouth.

Kurt and I stood in the corner of a corridor backstage where music business hangers-on walked by, not realizing that the slight guy in the shadows was the singer who had just given a classic and powerful performance, his sweat still drying. Kurt took this moment to tell me that he’d been concerned that a lot of the recent articles about Nirvana had emphasized his anti-misogynistic lyrics to such a degree that he was worried about coming across as being too serious and without a sense of humor. While he admired overtly political punk bands like Fugazi and the Dead Kennedys, he didn’t want Nirvana to be perceived that narrowly.

I always dreaded conversations with artists who were unhappy with how they were described in the media because it was extremely difficult to do anything about it other than be more selective about who they talked to in the future. I launched into a generic rap about the limited ability we all had to influence nuances like this.

Kurt’s response has always stayed with me because it was a moment when I had a glimpse of a level of calculation in his head I hadn’t previously known was there. He looked at me with that same patient look I’d seen in the office and gently interrupted, “I know, and I’ve been trying to think of why this is, and I think it’s because there is some political stuff in the press kit the label is giving to writers.”

He was a step ahead of me even in my supposed area of expertise. Since the official “bio” was the mostly fictitious parody, Geffen had added some earlier articles about the band, some of which focused on the anti-rape song “Polly.” I felt like an idiot for not thinking of this. “So, you want me to ask the label to remove those pieces?” I asked. He nodded appreciatively. “Yeah, that would be great.”

Those kinds of adjustments were easy. More complicated was the fact that, as of a couple of weeks earlier, a new person had entered Kurt’s life whose presence would be felt by everyone who knew him for the rest of his days.

From the forthcoming book SERVING THE SERVANT: Remembering Kurt Cobain by Danny Goldberg. Copyright © 2019 by Daniel Goldberg. To be published on April 2, 2019 by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.