Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [184]
I was with the Who a couple of years ago in Seattle and I ended up getting really drunk and I ran into Eddie in the Who’s hotel bar and I said, “You’re the people’s band, right?” He goes, “Kind of.” I said, “Then why do you have more rules than the fuckin’ Army? It would be easier to get into the Pentagon than take pictures of your band.”
EDDIE VEDDER I felt that with any more popularity we were going to be crushed, or our heads were going to pop like grapes. I went through this fucking yearlong period where I wore helmets all the time.… It was this kind of analogy, like I need a helmet …
KELLY CURTIS As Eddie puts it, he was sick of seeing his face everywhere. That’s when everything stopped. It wasn’t like we called up Epic and said, “We’re never doing a video again,” it was more like, Let’s just stop everything now: interviews, photo shoots, videos. There were some great people at the label that were really supportive, and then there were people that didn’t understand. Tommy Mottola, the CEO of Sony Music, told me at Sony’s MTV Awards after-party that if we didn’t release “Black” as the next single, it would be the single hugest mistake I’ve ever made in my life and my career. But the band was done. They just said it was too big: “We’re not gonna go out with some freakin’ power ballad.”
AMY FINNERTY Earlier that day at the VMAs, we were sitting in a greenroom tent outside. Kurt was sitting next to me, Janet, Courtney, and Jackie Farry, my best friend and Frances’s nanny. Axl Rose was walking through the tent, and Courtney yelled out to him as a total joke, “Hey, Axl, do you want to be the godfather of our child?” Everyone cracked up.
JANET BILLIG Axl Rose was with Stephanie Seymour. He turned to Kurt and said, “You tell your bitch to shut up!” And Kurt looked at Courtney and said, completely deadpan, “Shut up, bitch.” Hilarious. Then Stephanie said to Courtney, “Are you a model?” I think she was trying to be mean. Courtney was like, “Are you a brain surgeon?” We laughed and laughed and laughed for days.
AMY FINNERTY Kurt looked at me, and he was like, “I feel scared, like seventh-grade-getting-beat-up-on-the-playground scared.”
BRYN BRIDENTHAL Courtney and Axl spent so much time thinking about each other. Years later, when Axl was starting work on the album that would become Chinese Democracy, Jim Barber was A&Ring the project. And Axl at one point told me that Jim came to the studio and Axl felt Courtney Love energy coming off of him and made Jim leave. He couldn’t work with that energy in the room.
What I found out later, and Axl didn’t know then, either, is that Barber had taken up with Courtney. They kept it a secret from me and the company. So for Axl to feel Courtney Love energy coming off Jim Barber’s forehead, not knowing that they had a relationship, was sort of like, Whooooo! It was just amazing.
Axl would do those kinds of things all the time. This is going to sound ridiculous, but it’s true: He’s a very spiritual person. Jim’s work on the album ended shortly after the Courtney energy came off his forehead. Because Axl thought that Courtney was evil and that her evilness would impact on his record.
AMY FINNERTY When Eric Clapton was singing “Tears in Heaven” at the VMAs, we were on the side of the stage. It was Courtney, me, Kurt, Eddie. Janet was right there, and Jackie. We were all slow-dancing with each other. I was dancing with Jackie, then I was dancing with Kurt, and then I was dancing with Eddie, and then I was dancing with Courtney, and we were all switching partners. There was a moment where we looked at each other and realized that we were all from the same group, we were all from the same movement. I remember Courtney coming up and saying, “We gotta get them”—Eddie and Kurt—“to dance