E-Mail This Article to a Friend State of Nirvana (continued)

St. Thomas: Did you do it on purpose?

Grohl: No! Everyone gets into this anal collector trip. When we got our first CD and popped it in, we listened to it, and the track wasn’t there. The reason for it, the original reason, was because "Something in the Way" is sort of the slower song, the last song on the record, most likely to be listened to by someone who would have a carousel CD player. So, why not screw up their little carousel deal? I was talking to a friend who works in a record store, and he said someone came in with the CD and said, "This CD is screwed up. After the last song, there’s like 10 minutes of dead space, and then this total noise song." And he wanted his money back. And the person at the store said, "I think maybe it was the joke of the band." And the guy said, "Well I don’t think it’s very funny!" And he wanted his money back! [Laughs.] "This CD’s busted!" It’s a bonus track, dude!

Novoselic: Our next record’s gonna be different, it’s gonna be way different.

Grohl: Well, I wouldn’t want to put out two of the same record.

Cobain: We’d like to record every song differently.

Novoselic: These are just ideas that we have. I know it’s gonna be a record of extremities.

Grohl: I think we had our shot at doing the big-studio, high-tech, Hollywood thing. That studio, to us, was pretty techno. Maybe we’ll do the next record on eight-track. You can get more low-end frequencies out of an eight-track.

Cobain: We could go back to the Bleach sound. I really liked the production of Bleach, and I felt weird straying so far away from it. There’s definitely gonna be some more-abrasive songs on the next record.

Grohl: We’re gonna do something just to totally test the limits. For all the radio listeners or the MTV watchers, just like really test them and shove something totally aggro in their faces and see if they can handle that.

St. Thomas: How about the album title, Nevermind?

Cobain: I really don’t know. There’s really no story behind it, I just kinda thought it had a nice ring to it. Just like the name of the band, too, there’s no amazing story behind that either. It just sort of sounded nice.

Novoselic: There’s various definitions, there’s the textbook, Buddhist definition: freedom from pain and suffering and the external world. The way I see it, Nirvana is just a name, a name for our band.

St. Thomas: A lot of people say you’ve sold out by going to a major label. How do you feel about that?

Cobain: I really don’t know what the definition of selling out is anymore. I guess I really don’t care. We haven’t compromised — our record label lets us do anything we want. We think on the same level. There’s nothing we’ve done that could be considered a sellout at all. At least not in my eyes. A lot of people who are calling us sellouts are forgetting that the Ramones and the Sex Pistols were on major labels. So were the Clash. And all those bands were trying to become big stars. They didn’t even deny it. Crap, the Ramones had a movie out after them, to help support them.

Novoselic: I think if you make money and you start voting Republican because you’ll get tax breaks and they’re the party of the rich, I mean that’s sold out.

St. Thomas: Let’s talk about the war, because I know that’s an important topic with you.

Cobain: We don’t like to think of ourselves as a political band, because you tend to become too anal and it becomes ridiculous if you shove it down people’s throats. We just ask people to be aware a little bit, and I think the songs kind of reflect that.

Novoselic: It’s just another issue, another topic. I mean, we could talk about racism, we could talk about feminism.

Cobain: There’s just so much corruption going on with the government. And the Reagan years have definitely set us back to where the average teenager feels kind of lost. There isn’t much hope.

Grohl: The way American’s money is budgeted by our government, it leaves nothing to the education system. Teachers are dealing with the future, teachers are dealing with kids growing up who are gonna take care of me, or you, someday. Just the education system in general in a lot of places is really screwed.

Novoselic: The ’60s had, like, Abby Hoffman or John Sinclair, Timothy Leary to a certain extent. And they were spokespeople, they were shaking things up. Nowadays there’s not really anybody.

St. Thomas: Did you ever think the record would be this big?

Grohl: Nobody did, man. Nobody did. Like nobody.

Cobain: Absolutely not. No. Of course not. I’ll never get over the shock. And that’s kinda good.

Grohl: It was sort of a really organic thing. There wasn’t any massive hype.

Cobain: There was definitely no big million-dollar investment in promotion behind this record at all. It’s totally organic. It just happened.

Novoselic: Whatever happened was surely out of our control. And I’m glad it’s happened. It’s nice to sell that many records.

Cobain: It’s not my fault. I never wanted the fame involved. That’s a totally different story. I think Paul Stanley said something like, "The only thing money gives you is relief from not having to worry about money." The only thing I’d really like to do with it is invest in some bands that I like. I don’t want to start my own record label, ‘cause God, I know I couldn’t do that. But I’d like to give some money to some labels that are putting out great music, help in that way. Probably gonna buy a house. Hopefully we can have a recording studio, too, a little eight-track recording studio, so we can make good demos. Those are pretty much the plans. I’m gonna get some new shoes.

St. Thomas: You combine punk and pop elements in your songwriting.

Cobain: Almost anything that’s musical is pop music, as far as I’m concerned. As long as it’s good and it’s catchy, it’s pop. A lot of punk rock is pop. I think the only time punk rock strayed from pop was when hardcore came around, and there was some dirge-y stuff also, like the crossover metal thing.

Grohl: Maybe one percent of the people who listened to Nevermind, or who bought Nevermind, a small minority of the people who are listening to our record now, know about punk rock. A lot of people don’t know about punk rock. They think of punk rock and they think of that Quincy episode where the guy threw that brick off the building.

Cobain: I don’t really agree with the punk-rock ethos of, like, you have to starve to be a real artist. It’s bullshit. I really don’t have much sympathy for people who would buy the record — buy anyone’s record — just because it’s popular and they think that they should be hip and cool. Those kind of people I could do without.

St. Thomas: How do you write songs?

Cobain: It’s usually done on an acoustic guitar sitting around in my underwear picking out riffs, pieces of songs.

Grohl: Maybe Kurt will come in with a melody, a guitar riff, and show it to us.

Cobain: We go to practice, and then we play the song over and over and over again.

Grohl: We just jam, there’s no real formula.

Cobain: Chris and Dave have a big part in deciding how long a song should be and how many parts it should have. I don’t like to be thought of as the whole songwriter, but I do come up with the basis of it. I come up with the singing style during practice, and then I write the lyrics usually minutes before we record.

Grohl: I’m comfortable with what Kurt does, and I’m comfortable with what Chris does, and I think everybody is comfortable with what everybody else is doing, so we just sort of do it. And it happens.

Novoselic: Kurt and I were totally into the Vaselines. They were my favorite band, they’re still one of my favorite bands.

Cobain: Definitely our number-one favorite band.

Novoselic: We finally got to play with them, they re-formed to play with us when we played Edinburgh, Scotland, in early winter of 1990. So we met Eugene Kelly and kind of kept a rap going with him. Then we heard Captain America [the band that eventually became Eugenius]. We heard the tape, and we were totally blown away.

Cobain: That’s his new band, Captain America. They’re really good.

Novoselic: Eugene is a great songwriter. So it was kinda cool. Since our record has done so well, we can open up doors for other bands from where we come from — like Sonic Youth or Mudhoney or the Melvins or L7 or Dinosaur Jr. I could just go on and on.

St. Thomas: What do you enjoy most about success?

Cobain: I guess the best part would be being in the position to take other bands who you like a lot on tour with you. It’s definitely a nice thing to be able to do. We took Shonen Knife, a three-piece all-girl Japanese band, on tour with us in England. They’ve been favorites of ours for years, and no one really knows who they are in England or anywhere in Europe. And we’ve taken the Melvins on tour with us, and in the future we hope to take Hole and Jesus Lizard and a bunch of other bands we like.