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STEVEN MORIARTY One of the last shows Nirvana played in Seattle was a benefit that I organized to hire a private investigator to find Mia’s murderer. TAD was scheduled to headline it, and they told Kurt they were playing it. So Kurt called me and said, “I heard you’re doing this benefit. Is there any way we can get on and play?” I was like, “Fuck, yeah!”

KURT DANIELSON The show was at the King Cat Theater, which is a fairly small venue in downtown Seattle. There weren’t the greatest backstage facilities, which meant that all the bands and family and friends were cramming into this very tiny room. There was a lot of sitting very close together and there was a lot of tension. And, basically, Courtney and Tad’s then-girlfriend Barbara had a little tussle.

You should’ve seen: There’s Tad sitting slumped in his chair, there’s Kurt sitting next to him slumped in a chair, those two girls going at it, pulling each other’s hair—total catfight—scratching each other’s faces. They knocked over a lamp, the carpet catches on fire, nobody gets up to put the fire out, so I put the fire out.

STEVE MORIARTY I remember Courtney Love was high out of her mind. Courtney was walking around and saying there wasn’t enough light backstage and she wanted more light. Probably because her eyes were pinned, and she couldn’t see in the dark. Tad’s girlfriend told her to shut up. Then: “Don’t tell me to shut up!” It was just one of those really stupid schoolyard things. It was about, We’re trying to be the center of attention, when we’re clearly not supposed to be the center of attention.

BENJAMIN REW These are two chicks that fight like dudes, okay? It’s no fuckin’ hair-pulling and scratching, this is straight-up fuckin’ fisticuffs.

JEFF GILBERT I heard screaming. I heard some crashing going on. Kurt comes out, and he’s just exasperated. He goes, “Everybody out! This is not cool. Everybody out!” I saw a little bit of it. There were some really funny insults being hurled back and forth, alluding to one or the other’s drug habit.

That’s when you knew the scene was starting to fall apart. When you’d start having drama queen fights like this. Really? The girlfriends are fighting now? It was retarded.

KURT DANIELSON Some months later, we were on tour in Europe. We had a show the night before, and we hadn’t slept much and we did interviews all day. Tad hadn’t had a chance to eat—he had very low blood sugar—and the English journalist took advantage of the situation by asking Tad some very leading and pointed questions about this incident that occurred at this benefit. And so Tad responded with some rather harsh remarks about Courtney, something to the effect of “That bitch slapped my girlfriend.”

And they took this remark and put it in bold-print headlines in the NME and I think Melody Maker, and Courtney saw these things. We were slated to open for Nirvana in America, along with the Butthole Surfers. But because Courtney saw this, she said to Kurt, “You’ve gotta kick those guys off your tour.” And so Kurt turned around and told Krist to tell me that we were off the tour. Which he did.

COURTNEY LOVE Great, is this Blame Courtney Week? I had a role in removing TAD from the In Utero tour? Is this some Yoko shit? I didn’t have anything to do with who Kurt took on tour. I remember my physical altercations. I certainly didn’t get into a fight with Tad’s girlfriend. I didn’t know he had a girlfriend. People like to make things up about me: “Oh, she set a fire, and then we did dope … and she stole my grandmother’s ring.” I get that kind of thing a lot.

KURT DANIELSON I was furious. It’s like, Jesus Christ! I didn’t blame Tad for it, because the reporter pushed his buttons. No matter what we did, it turned out wrong or fucked up or turned into a nightmare where we got sued or we got dropped. It seemed almost pathological, almost like we were doing it on purpose. “How could they have such bad luck?” I heard this many times: “You must