NIRVANA SLASH ARCHIVE

Rolling Stone: Neither you nor your former band mate Dave Grohl has talked publicly about Kurt Cobain since his suicide. Why?

[...]

Krist: It’s not proper to say anything. The emotional stake that Dave and I have in it is a lot more invested than the person who got to know Kurt through his music. There are things that are private and nobody should know. You can’t go through life tragedy-free. Your parents die, and one day you or your spouse is gonna die. Life is heavy, and it still hurts a lot.

-8 February 1996

Kurt: I always wanted to move to the big city. I wanted to move to Seattle, find a chicken hawk, sell my ass, and be a punk rocker, but I was too afraid. So I just stayed in Aberdeen for too long, until I was 20 years old.

SPIN: Forgive me for being uneducated, but when you said "chicken hawk"--

Kurt: A chicken hawk is, like, an older gay man.

SPIN: Okay.

Kurt: Who sells children, like in Oliver Twist, you know.

-Spin Magazine, December 1992

“I have dreams all the time. I have dreams about once a month. [...] Well, they’re usually all the same, but in all of them it’s prior to his [Kurt's] death. He shows up in my dreams, and I’m like holy shit! You’re not dead, and it’s like it was some big secret or some big joke and then you can’t wait to tell everyone. Then you wake up. Within them there’s the same conversations that always happen. In those dreams, he’s never dead; he’s always alive, so I think it’s kind of cool.

I think there’s a whole lot more to the spirit than people can even comprehend. I think there’s more … it’s even too much bravado and egotistical for human beings to think that we’re the end, or that their minds are capable of understanding the universe. It’s not possible. Fuck you for telling me life can’t exist outside planet Earth. How do you know? There’s romance and mystery or the thrill of the chase, whatever. I’m not willing to make up my mind yet.”

-Dave Grohl, Flaunt Magazine, Nov 2002

"They really liked the studio's monitors, because they were so huge-sounding. When Been A Son was done, Kurt and Krist asked, 'Can we dance on the tables?' They jumped on one table and I jumped on another, and as we listened to the song, we rocked."

-Steve Fisk, engineer & producer, remembers a Sept. 1989 recording session (Jan. 2005 Mojo Magazine)

"I'm not proud of the fact that we have tons of MTV junkies and Guns N' Roses lugheads at our shows now. These are the kinds of people who are screaming out 'Do Teen Spirit!' during Polly. How are these pinheads going to appreciate the subtleties of something like 'Territorial Pissings' when they're doing it themselves out in the hallways? It's about a violent female revolution based on Valerie Solanas's book, The Scum Manifesto. How are these typical, macho American males gonna appreciate that?"

-Kurt, Propaganda Magazine, Spring 1992

"Chris and Dave have had to pick up a lot of Kurt's slack. Chris and Dave were close before, but now they're inseparable."

-Nils Bernstein, Nirvana's fanmail organizer, 16 Apr 1992, Rolling Stone magazine

"Novoselic and Cobain come from rural Aberdeen, Washington. [...] One of the more popular bars in town is actually called the Pourhouse, which is where two young men about Cobain's age, Joe and James, sit down for a pitcher of beer--each. [...]

"Yeah, I know the Cobain kid," says James, "Faggot."
He's a faggot?" asks Joe, taken aback. Recovering quickly, he declares, "We deal with faggots here. We run 'em out of town."

This is where Cobain and Novoselic grew up. That's why they kissed each other full on the lips as the Saturday Night Live credits rolled. They knew it would piss off the folks back home--and everybody like them.

"I definitely have a problem with the average macho man--the strong-oxen, working-class type," Cobain says wearily, "because they have always been a threat to me. I've had to deal with them most of my life--being taunted and beaten up by them in school, just having to be around them and be expected to be that kind of person when you grow up.

"I definitely feel closer to the feminine side of the human being than I do the male--or the American idea of what a male is supposed to be," Cobain continues. "Just watch a beer commercial and you'll see what I mean."

Of course, Cobain was miserable in high school. [...] [He] was a sensitive sort, small for his age, and uninterested in sports. "He was terrified of jocks and moron dudes," recalls Cobain's old friend, Mudhoney bassist Matt Lukin.

"As I got older," says Cobain, a fan of Beckett, Burroughs, and Bukowski, "I felt more and more alienated--I couldn't find friends whom I felt compatible with at all. Everyone was going to become a logger, and I knew I wanted to do something different. I wanted to be some kind of artist.""

-16 Apr 1992, Rolling Stone magazine article by Michael Azerrad

Interviewer: "Was there an incident that really pushed the button that got you and the town [Aberdeen] at loggerheads, as it were?"

Kurt: "Well, what started the witch hunt was I decided to take some acid one evening and spray paint "queer" on the side of four-by-four trucks, the local rednecks' trucks. And so one of them saw me from his window and started screaming, "There's the queer vandal!" I'd been doing it for a while. But that night I decided to really go for it and do a lot, a lot of vandalism. So they caught me and chased me around."

Int: "The cops caught you or just some of the local toughs?"

Kurt: "The locals. The local toughs, right. [he laughs]

Int: "And did they know who you were?"

Kurt: "No. Just that crazy skinny kid who never went to school. Who was probably gay."

Int: "Well, are you?"

Kurt: "If I wasn't attracted to Courtney, I'd be a bisexual."

Courtney: "Faggot!!" [laughter]

Int: "So they ran you out of town?"

Kurt: "Yeah."

Int: "Did you ever go back?"

Kurt: "Well, um, every time I've gone to Aberdeen lately I've felt a real big threat. Actually, Chris was beaten up at a Denny's one night. Some locals were giving him the eye and I don't think it was sexual. They started beating him up in the men's room saying, "Some local hero you are."

-11 Sept 1992, Monk Magazine

"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

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)