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Kurt’s relationship with Vail was the inspiration for a number of songs on Nevermind, including "Lounge Act," which, obviously enough, is written in the style of a lounge song. And that’s as far as the similarity goes, because "Lounge Act" was actually written as a result of his heart-wrenching break-up with Vail and being the dumpee instead of the dumper. "That song is mostly about ... being smothered by a relationship," said Kurt, "and not being able to finish what you wanted to do artistically because the other person gets in your way."

Which might explain how and why "Stay Away" was written. "God Is Gay," a line from the song itself, and "Pay To Play" were some of the earlier working titles for this song. "There are also some ridiculous, even more embarrassing titles than that," said Kurt. "Like, ‘The Rocker,’ ‘The Eagle Has Landed,’ ‘Stay Awake,’ but there’s no story behind that at all. That’s just typical cliché punk rock, like, ‘Fuck off! Stay away — get away from me!’ Just bitching about something, I guess."

A demo version of "Pay To Play" eventually appeared on the DGC Records–released compilation DGC Rarities. In a 1989 interview, Krist noted that in big cities like Los Angeles and New York, "there’s so many bands and so much competition that bands have to pay to play. It’s ridiculous."

"On a Plain" is a really simple song about Kurt recognizing how good his life is, despite all his bitching and complaining about how bad things appear to be. In his typical flippant regard for some of his songwriting, Kurt dashed off the lyrics for "On a Plain" without much thought or direction, as the song opens, "I’ll start this off without any words."

Perhaps the most artistic and impressive song on Nevermind is the down-tempo "Something in the Way." Kurt, Krist, and Dave play nearly all the instruments on Nevermind, but for "Something in the Way" they brought in Kirk Channing (no relation to Chad) to play the beautiful and sad cello harmonies. Again, Kurt used the cheap Stella guitar to add depth to the dark and flowing imagery of the song. The lyrics in this song refer hauntingly to Kurt Cobain’s personal refuge under a north Aberdeen bridge, located just blocks away from his mother’s house in Aberdeen. This spot has now become a sort of graffiti museum for Nirvana fans, who visit it from all over the world. Kurt explained in 1992 how quickly the song came about: "That song really wasn’t even written until a week before we went into the studio. And, uh, I knew I wanted cello on it, but after all the music was recorded for it, we’d forgotten about putting a cello on it, and we had one more day in the studio, and we decided, ‘Oh geez, we should try to hire a cellist,’ y’know, and put something in, and we were at a party, and we were asking some of our friends if they had any friends who play cello, and it just so happened that one of our friends in LA plays cello, so we took him into the studio on the last day and said, ‘Here, play something,’ and he came up with something right away. It just fell like dominoes, it was really easy."

"My favorite song on the album is the song that’s after the 12th track.... It doesn’t have a name," Dave said about "Endless Nameless." Because the band intended it to be a hidden track on Nevermind, the song wasn’t supposed to have a name; Dave thinks "Endless Nameless" might have come from something Butch Vig scribbled on the tape box of the master.

Creating a gold mine for collectors, the first pressings of Nevermind did not include "Endless Nameless." The oversight by DGC was corrected shortly thereafter when a new pressing was immediately sent out once the error was discovered. "It got screwed up and it didn’t get on the first bunch of them," said Dave, "and when we got our first CD we listened to it and ‘Endless Nameless’ wasn’t there. So we called Geffen immediately."

Burying the song 13 minutes and 51 seconds after "Something in the Way" ends was an intentional strategy; the band hoped it would jump out at people when they least expected it. Said Dave, " ‘Something in the Way’ is sort of like your slow song, the last song on the record, and most likely to be listened to by yuppie folk or someone that would have, like, a carousel CD player. So, why not just screw up their little carousel deal?"

"We made the record we wanted to make," said Krist proudly about Nevermind. "We didn’t want to make ‘the number one’ record. We didn’t want to make some big hit record. It would’ve been the same record if it was on Sub Pop. It probably would have sounded as slick, but I hear our songs on the radio next to some other total mainstream music and it sounds a lot rawer. That’s what we wanted to do. We thought, ‘Well, it’s like a major-label release, but let’s make it raw enough to where we don’t totally compromise.’ "

"It’s not like we had some scheme," Dave said defensively. "We’re the last ones to analyze anything we’re doing. Other people are a lot better at deciding what we’re thinking than we are.... Let them spend their own time doing that — I’ve got better things to do."

In another interview, Dave added this sentiment: "I just thought [Nevermind] would be like another successful independent-record vibe. I didn’t think it would be that much different than Bleach — just a progression."

"What we’ve turned into over two years [shows that] our appreciation for pop music has just gotten greater," said Kurt. "During the time we were recording the Bleach album, we were into more aggressive, meaner music, and now I like all of it — I haven’t denied any of that — I just think we’ve put together a good mixture of both elements."

Dave concurred. "It’s just really heavy pop songs played by punk-rock children. I think that to give it a definition would be a contradiction. Punk rock is just freedom."

The freedom Nirvana experienced in working with DGC spilled over into other creative avenues as well. The band insisted on creative control of itself when it first signed with DGC, and they exercised that right immediately when it came time to design the artwork for Nevermind.

"Dave, Krist, and I were sitting around watching a documentary on babies being born under water, and we thought that was a really neat image," Kurt recalled. "So we thought, ‘Let’s put that on the album cover.’ And then when we got back a picture of a [naked] baby under water, I thought it would look nice for a fish hook with a dollar bill [to be] on it, and so the image was born."

Controversy over the taste of the album cover was brought to light when someone suggested that the combined visual of a baby, which is actually a photo of then-five-month-old Spencer Elden with his penis in clear view, being lured to a fishhook by money, might distort the image of Nirvana that DGC was trying to present to the public.

Even harder to understand was the back cover of the album, which features a photo taken by Kurt. It shows a monkey with a bomb on his back in front of a strange collage of images. "I was in a bohemian photography stage, taking a bunch of weird arty pictures, and that’s one of them," said the singer. "Everyone thinks it’s a real monkey, but it’s just a rubber monkey that I’ve had for years. The collage I made many years ago. It’s pictures of beef. I got these pictures of beef from a supermarket poster and cut them out and made a mountain of beef and then put Dante’s people being thrown into hell and climbing all over it. If you look real close, there’s a picture of the band Kiss [taken from the Love Gun album] in the back, standing on a slab of beef."

Though it would become more disturbing years later, after Kurt’s sudden tragic death, there is a running theme in Nevermind that was a cause for concern for many involved in its making. "Yeah, I realized that after everything was written," Kurt said sadly about the many references to guns in the album. "I have no idea why it turned out that way. I really don’t know why. Geez, I went shooting once with my friend Dylan ... God, it was weird. Because I’d never shot a gun before, and it reminded me of how totally violent those things are. They can rip right through you. I guess I’m opposed to guns because they’re a violent tool ... but ... I’m not one of those anti-NRA people."

DGC’s attempts to properly present and promote their new superstars were to be commended, but there isn’t a single band on the planet who is ever entirely happy with a label’s marketing perspectives. Nirvana, certainly, were not an exception to that rule. "The band bios that record companies send to press and radio people are so stupid," said Dave. "They all say the same thing. ‘We’re the best band in the world.’ So we thought we’d write our own and put in all those ‘rock band meets in art school’ clichés. It’s all lies! But it’s sort of unfair because nobody knows. Radio stations are still going, ‘This next track’s from Nirvana, three guys who met in art school and walked around reading Rod McKuen poetry ...’ We should issue a public disclaimer."

Those close to Nirvana understood the band’s inside jokes in the biography, but the different spellings of Kurt’s name on Nevermind’s liner notes needed an explanation. "I think I wanted to be anonymous at first," said Kurt. "I was really thinking about changing my name for the Nevermind record. But then I just decided to spell it the right way. I just wanted it to be confusing. I wish I would have done the same thing that Black Francis did. He’s changed his name so many times that nobody really knows who he is. I wish nobody ever knew what my real name was. So I could some day be a normal citizen again. I have no real reason. I just didn’t bother with spelling it correctly. I didn’t care. I wanted people to spell it differently all the time."

With the release of Nevermind just around the corner, Nirvana found themselves to be completely uncomfortable with the sudden notoriety. "And now we’re snubbed by people who think we’re big rock stars," said Dave. "They think that when you get signed to a major label you get all this cash to spend."

"We’re guaranteed two albums [by DGC], and then after that they can drop us at any time," said Kurt. "I imagine we’ll get dropped eventually, and after that it doesn’t matter. We’ll start another band."

The hyperbole surrounding the release of the album was starting to build. "It’s becoming a bit exaggerated," Kurt said. "I’m looking forward to some backlash, at least in criticism, because there’s so much anticipation, so much encouragement by our friends and label, that I’m afraid."

"If anything, we’re trying to deny the fame," said Dave. ‘We don’t want to be recognized on the street. We have lives outside the band. Fame isn’t what we were looking forward to at all."

Excerpted from Nirvana: The Chosen Rejects by Kurt St. Thomas with Troy Smith, published by Griffin, a division of St. Martin’s Press, © 2004. St. Thomas is former program director of WFNX radio, the sister station of the Boston Phoenix.