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RS: What are the things about [Kurt] that make you laugh now?
Krist: His weird sense of humor, which was kind of grotesque. The comics and drawings he did, because he was a good visual artist. Sometimes he would speak in these high-pitched voices, like a child Satanist. We were always laughing about something, being ridiculous--mostly dumb jokes.
-Krist, Rolling Stone 13 Sept. 2001
29 May 2020
Interviewer: How would you describe the relationship between Kurt and Krist?
Dave: Krist was Kurt's best friend - always. The two of them had a connection beyond words. I think they were closer to each other than they were to anybody else. Krist is a very lovely, gentle, sweet, and huge man. If he's your friend, he's your friend for life. He protected Kurt in a lot of ways and situations. The perfect example is Krist keeping that huge bouncer from killing Kurt after Kurt smacked him over the head with his guitar in Dallas, Texas. The first person to jump up and protect Kurt was Krist. You have a 400-pound bouncer wanting to kill Kurt, and Krist just got up and said, "Don't even try it."
-13 Sept. 2001, Rolling Stone Magazine
Interviewer: Because people thought you were gay and you had gay friends, did you ever wonder if you might be gay?
Kurt: Yeah, absolutely. See I've always wanted male friends that I could be real intimate with and talk about important things with and be as affectionate with that person as I would be with a girl. Throughout my life, I've always been really close with girls and made friends with girls. And I've always been a really sickly, feminine person anyhow, so I thought I was gay for a while because I didn't find any of the girls in my high school attractive at all. They had really awful haircuts and fucked-up attitudes. So I thought I would try to be gay for a while, but I'm just more sexually attracted to women. But I'm really glad that I found a few gay friends, because it totally saved me from becoming a monk or something.
I mean, I'm definitely gay in spirit, and I probably could be bisexual. [...] If I wouldn't have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual life-style.
(The Advocate 1993)
tags:
- date of story:band era,
- date of story:pre-band era,
- date:1993,
- date:band era,
- decade of story:1980s,
- decade of story:1990s,
- decade:1990s,
- interview:the advocate '93,
- media:magazine,
- media:quote,
- person:courtney love,
- person:kurt,
- topic:bisexuality,
- topic:coming out,
- topic:friendship,
- topic:gender-nonconformity,
- topic:homosexuality,
- topic:intimacy & affection,
- topic:sexuality,
- type:factual
"Novoselic admitted he had tipped Kurt off [about the drug intervention], feeling the idea would backfire and that Kurt would flee. "I just felt so bad for him," Krist recalled. "He looked so fucked up. I knew he wouldn't listen to it." Krist saw Kurt for the first time since Rome that week at the Marco Polo Motel on Aurora Avenue. "He was camped out there. He was delusional. It was so weird. He was like, 'Krist, where can I buy a motorcycle?' I was like, 'Fuck, what are you talking about? You don't want to buy a motorcycle. You've got to get the fuck out of here.'" Krist invited Kurt to go away on vacation, just the two of them, to talk things out, but Kurt refused. "He was really quiet. He was just estranged from all his relationships. He wasn't connecting with anybody."
Kurt complained of being hungry, so Krist offered to buy him dinner at a fancy restaurant; Kurt insisted he wanted a Jack in the Box hamburger. As Novoselic drove toward Jack in the Box in the nearby U-District, Kurt protested: "Those hamburgers are too greasy. Let's go to the one on Capitol Hill--the food is better there." Only when they arrived on Capitol Hill did Novoselic realize Kurt didn't want hamburgers at all: He was simply using his old friend to get a ride to score drugs. "His dealer was right by there. He just wanted to get fucked up into oblivion. There was no talking to him. He just wanted to escape. He wanted to die, that was what he wanted to do." The two men began screaming at each other and Kurt bolted from the car."
-Heavier Than Heaven, Charles R. Cross, 2001, pg. 332
tags:
- date of story:1994,
- date of story:band era,
- date:post-band era,
- decade of story:1990s,
- decade:2000s,
- media:book,
- media:quote,
- pairing:krist/kurt,
- person:krist,
- person:kurt,
- topic:death & suicide,
- topic:depression & mental illness,
- topic:drugs & addiction,
- topic:protectiveness,
- topic:tours & road trips,
- type:factual
Interviewer: Your house containing everything you own catches fire. After saving loved ones and pets, you have time to save one item. What would it be?
Dave: "Probably this letter I got from Kurt in 1992. That sounds terribly melodramatic, but it's true. I lose everything: passports, wallets, car keys, credit cards, but that letter is absolutely irreplaceable. He wrote it to me when everything was going nuts. We were all living in different places- he was in Los Angeles, I was in Virginia and Krist was in Seattle- and some decisions were being made without me. I got really bummed out and Kurt sent me this letter about my role and stature in the band. It was all, 'I love you like a brother.' It was just before we did 'In Utero' and it said, 'I can't wait to get back in the studio and make a record so we can whittle ourselves back down to a comfortable level,' Which of course never really happened."
Melody Maker (sometime between 1997-2000)
tags:
The Interview: What do you do when you're not playing music?
Kurt: Well, I'm reading Perfume for the second time. It's about a perfume apprentice in the 1700s. And I really like Camille Paglia a lot; it's really entertaining, even though I don't necessarily agree with what she says. I still paint once in a while-I painted the cover of Incesticide.
And I make dolls. I like the style of things from the 1700s and 1800s from Yugoslavia and that area. I copy them from doll-collector magazines. They're clay. I bake them, and then I make them look really old and put old clothes on them.
(The Advocate 1993)
"I met these fellow teenagers, they were in this band called the Melvins. Buzz Osborne was the guru. And he turned me on to American hardcore music, which is like the second generation of punk in the United States. This really independent music - it wasn't on major labels. And there was this whole scene that was independent, it wasn't part of the corporate structure, it wasn't part of the state structure, it wasn't part of the mainstream entertainment complex. And it was vital; there was a lot of great music, and there was this community of young people. And we'd go to punk rock shows and there would be like, fanzines - this was before the internet. [...]
I got into the music scene and the culture of it, then I met this other kid in Aberdeen. His name was Kurt Cobain. And we shared this interest with this music and I was playing guitar and he played guitar, and, 'Well, let's start a band!' and we found a drummer. And then I started playing bass. Kurt was very artistic - he was always painting, sculpting, writing, music, always doing something. And so we started our band and that creativity came out and we had our own identity.
Dave Grohl was in 1990, we went through a few drummers. Kurt and I drove to Los Angeles from Tacoma, WA, which is like a 14 hour drive. We slept in our van in a parking lot on I-5 somewhere. We came here [L.A.] and we talked to some music industry people to get a major label deal. [...] And then we took our leisurely drive back north, 'Let's stop in San Fransisco and see Buzz and Dale from the Melvins.' And Buzz is like, 'Hey, Scream is playing!' 'Oh, we love Scream!' [...] They had this drummer who was really good and played this really big drumset, and I met him briefly and we talked to Buzz, like, 'Wow, what a cool drummer.'
And then Kurt and I drove up 101, we went up north. I think we found a cat. We stopped somewhere on the Oregon coast and this cat came up. We found this cat. Gave it a home. And then we get a call from Buzz, he says 'Hey, man, Scream went down to L.A. after San Francisco and their bass player split. And they're just broke at the singer's sister's house.' [...] And Dave was stuck in L.A. and he got enough money to get a plane ticket and his drumset and he came up and started playing with us, and we were hooked. It gelled right away."
-Krist on how Nirvana formed, Young Turks Interview 2014
tags:
- date of story:band era,
- date of story:pre-band era,
- date:post-band era,
- decade of story:1980s,
- decade:2010s,
- media:quote,
- media:tv & video,
- person:dave,
- person:krist,
- person:kurt,
- topic:art & artists,
- topic:music & bands,
- topic:nirvana,
- topic:pet adoption,
- topic:punk rock,
- topic:tours & road trips,
- type:factual
"It's a gay publication, Kurt, so don't forget to tell them about the time you stole your tights out of your mother's drawer."
-Courtney to Kurt during his interview with The Advocate, 1993
"[Joao Gordo] showed this pic with Kurt and he also showed Kurt's autograph on a Hormoaning CD and the autograph read: "Kurt + Axl are lovers"...hahaha...I sent him a message asking him to scan this and post it online, but I didn't get an answer from him..."
-LiveNirvana user Bruno
"I know there's a sex tape put there. Just like I know there is a video of Kurt consonant cumming on his guitar at the paramount. The corporate bugs cut it out but I know it happened."
-Reddit user bobthe360noscowper in reddit.com/r/justnirvanakissing
"If I remember correctly they also kissed and it was more graphic when they played on SNL with Barkley as host. Here's what I remember. Keep in mind, its been many years since. All three members were on the left side of Barkley, right side of screen. Krist and Kurt had big kool aid smiles like when you are about to do something naughty. Like cats that just swallowed the canary. Barkley says goodnight. Kurt and Krist turn their heads towards each other and full out make out, but they don't turn to face each other, chests still facing forward to the camera. Dave just smiles, but isn't kissed. Credits roll."
-Youtube user TrOllinM4sTEr 2015
"At that, Kurt jumped on James [Seenan] and started wrestling with him. Kurt did well for his size and height and had great wrestling technique. He was apparently on the school wrestling team. He did really well, had him on the floor, then Kurt kissed James. Krist picked up some food and started a food fight. Within 30 seconds chaos ensued, with food, beer, and red wine everywhere. Kurt then climbed up a stack of 12 function suite chairs and dived off, bringing them all down. [...] Suddenly the three of them stopped and ran through the door and went on stage. I couldn't believe it."
-Andy Bollen, drummer for Captain America, describing Nirvana-style backstage chaos on the '91 tour (Nirvana: A Tour Diary, 2013, pg. 176, written from Andy's contemporary notes of the '91 tour)
"[One of] Kurt's earliest aspirations [was] to earn enough money to buy a piece of land that both he and his best friend, Krist, could live on with their girlfriends. Sub Pop's Megan Jasper recalls an early conversation:
"I remember one time they were in my office waiting for Jonathan and Bruce and they were making jokes about why they were making records, they were half-joking, because they never thought it would be possible, but they wanted to buy a chunk of land in the middle of nowhere that was all farm land. And they wanted it to be big enough so Krist and Shelli could have a house built on that land, and Kurt and Tracy wanted a house on the same chunk of property, so they could be neighbors and have these great farmhouses. And they were laughing because they never thought they'd be able to have it. Those two [Kurt and Krist] were inseparable at the time. They were so tight.""
-from Nirvana: The Daily Eyewitness Chronicle by Carrie Borzillo
"I bonded with Eddie from Pearl Jam. We broke our little feud. And we kissed and made up and danced, to an Eric Clapton song."
-Kurt about the '92 VMAs (MTV Seattle 1992 interview)
Archivist's note: They slow-danced to Tears In Heaven
FUDGE PACKIN
CRACK SMOKIN
SATAN WORSHIPPIN
MOTHERFUCKERS
-Nirvana t-shirt designed by Kurt
( Click to view images )
"I always wanted to think that I was an alien. I used to think when I was young that I was adopted, by my mother, because they found me in a spaceship, like maybe I was from a different planet, I always wanted to be from a different planet really bad. Every night I used to talk to my real parents or my real family in the skies. [laugh] I knew that there were thousands of other alien babies dropped off. And they're all over the place and I've met quite a few of 'em. It's just something that I've always like to toy with in my mind. It was really fun to pretend that, you know. There's some special reason for me to be here. I feel really homesick all the time, so do the other aliens, and I only have the chance to come across like a handful of other aliens throughout the rest of my life. Eventually, one day, we'll find out what we're supposed to do."
-Kurt, About A Son (interviews conducted 1992-3, film released 2006)
[Archivist's note: The 1998 Todd Haynes film, Velvet Goldmine, has a scene based on this quote.]
Interviewer: First of all, love the suit. [referring to Kurt's canary yellow dress]
Kurt: It's Headbangers' Ball, so I thought I'd wear a gown. He [Krist] wouldn't wear his tux. He didn't give me a corsage, either.
Int: You hurt his feelings.
Krist: At least I asked you out, you know.
(MTV, 25 Oct 1991)
"God is gay and so am I"
-Kurt, Journals (hardcover ed.), pg. 123, exact date unknown
[A heckler has been shrieking at the band to play a song about "fucking girls". They respond sarcastically, at first, mocking his misogyny and homophobia, but then switch tactics:]
Krist: I'd like to tell you about this next song. It's about homosexual love. Cause we're all queers. We're all butt-pirates here. We're butthole surfers.
Kurt: By the way, Chris is a girl. This song is About A Queer. [starts playing About A Girl]
-22 Nov 1989 during a gig
Interviewer: What do you get by smashing guitars? [footage of Krist and Kurt bashing their guitars together]
Kurt: Satisfaction. Climax.
Krist: [not audible]
Kurt: [smiling] What??
Krist: [grinning] Don't have to do encores.
-1991 French TV interview
Dave: [holds up a small glass bottle full of white liquid]
Camera man: What is that?
Dave: It's jissom.
Krist: It's jissom.
Dave: It's cum.
Buzz Osborne: I'm serious. Everyone's really hard up and it's a long drive--
Krist: We've all been masturbating...
[A bit later]
Krist: Homo-sex rules. You're not a man till you've sucked a cock. You're not. Only a man knows what another man likes.
-21 Sept. 1991, Montreal, backstage amateur footage