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All that stuff has just been so overstated, but nobody ever wants to know the truth. Like the stories that are written about Kurt sleeping under the bridge. It’s just not true! I know that he did once, but it’s not like he said, that he spent hours and days down there, becoming this tortured artist. That’s the biggest myth, right there: Kurt Cobain, the tortured artist. People don’t realize that guy was a funny motherfucker.

MATT LUKIN Yeah, Kurt did try out for the Melvins, and it fuckin’ sounded great! And a couple of days later, I was asking Buzz, “Hey, what’s up? That sounded great when Cobain was playing with us.” And he’s like, “Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to work.”

DALE CROVER We thought about having Kurt in the band, but he didn’t have any gear. It was like, “How’s he going to play if he doesn’t have an amp?” It’s not like he passed or failed, it was just that he didn’t have any money and didn’t have his shit together.

BUZZ OSBORNE As far as Kurt trying out for us, that’s not true, absolutely not. We jammed with him on numerous occasions, same with Krist. We never tried anyone out for the band, ever. I’ve always just thought of somebody who we wanted to play with and made that decision long before we tried it.

SLIM MOON (Earth guitarist; solo artist; Kill Rock Stars label founder) Krist Novoselic had a zebra-striped van that he drove the Melvins to their shows in. He was really tall and always really drunk. There was one party where he set off the fire extinguisher and another where he started dancing on top of a table and the entire table collapsed. Yeah, that was Krist in those days. He reminded me of Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

MATT LUKIN I don’t know if I’d say Krist was a roadie, but we started using his van, and he’d drive with us to Seattle and help load our equipment. So, yeah, I guess he was a roadie. Cobain took that role after a while.

BUZZ OSBORNE We never had any roadies—that’s bullshit. They were just friends. Sometimes Krist would drive us places. I always laugh at that: Kurt Cobain was our roadie. Look at him—he could barely lift himself out of bed. A roadie? For what, a flea circus?

BEN SHEPHERD (March of Crimes guitarist; Soundgarden bassist; Hater singer/guitarist) The first time I met Andy Wood? It was on the way to the first March of Crimes house-party gig, in Bainbridge. There was a car wreck right in front of me and our bass player. We pulled over, and these kids we knew in one car had come down the hill and nailed this other car. Everyone involved was headed to the same party.

Everybody was fine. We’re all outside talking, and I look over at the other car, and I go, “Who’s in there? What’s going on?” They’re like, “Oh, that’s Landrew.”

All of the sudden, Landrew piles out of the back of the car wearing this really long kimono-type thing, and his hair is all wild. Total character.

He’d been sleeping in the car. He’s like, “Whoa. Hey, Shepherd, how are you doing?” We’d never met, but I stuck out like a motherfucker, man. He knew who I was.

“Hey, Landrew, how’s it going? Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I was having the weirdest dream.”

DAVE REES (Malfunkshun bassist) When he was in sixth grade, Andy won a listener contest on KZOK. He got to host the radio show—it was a program called Your Mother Won’t Like It, from six to nine on a Sunday night—and he was brilliant. I remember him playing a lot of Kiss. He told stories, and he did little comedy bits. He had one Mister Rogers bit, I remember. You know, a “Can you say that?” type of thing. His brother Kevin was the show’s engineer or producer.

It was great, but I remember talking to Andy after that and he seemed a little disappointed. Because he had wanted to be a DJ, but he realized that there was no immediate feedback. There was no audience there. And that really bummed him out. He actually told me, “Well, now I’m gonna have to be a rock star.”

KEVIN WOOD (Malfunkshun guitarist; brother of Andrew and Brian Wood)