Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [215]
She said, “You should come up and hang out with Kurt and be a good influence.” And I said, “Sure,” but I think it was just a wasted person saying shit in the middle of the night. I never got any concrete invites to come hang out.
MARK DEUTROM I was playing with the Melvins on the In Utero tour. There was a cocooned environment going on with Nirvana. For people who had come from the same small town and apparently had known each other super-well—with Kurt having this whole “I love you guys” thing—there was surprisingly little love expressed. Really, Rush were more friendly when we played a few dates with them. Trent Reznor was more friendly. Gene Simmons was the weird uncle, there every day in our dressing room going, “What can I do for you guys?”
I’m sure stories abound about the legendary last show. At the sound check, Kurt was throwing his guitar and saying, “This is our last fuckin’ show.” There was a catering area in this venue, and a bunch of phones. Everybody got to sit in the catering area and listen to Kurt on the phone, screaming every expletive in the book at Courtney.
BUZZ OSBORNE The last conversation I had with Kurt was in Munich, after he had the screaming match with his wife. I had told him this before and I basically reiterated, “I think that what you should do is give her everything, and run as if your very life depends on it. Sign everything over to her from this moment on and just be gone. And if you need money, just go out and do a fucking solo tour, play acoustic guitar, you’ll be fine.” He felt like he was trapped. He was embarrassed by her. He wanted to divorce her. He wanted to get out of it. But he was too much of a mess to get out of it.
Right when they were walking onstage, he said, “I should just be doing this solo.” And that was it. I never talked to him again. They canceled the rest of the tour.
DALE CROVER Kurt said he was canceling the rest of the shows because he had laryngitis. While we’re still in Europe, they’re reporting that Kurt Cobain ODs. Accidental overdose. Took a bunch of pills.
COURTNEY LOVE Kurt had gone all out out for me when I got [to Rome]. He’d gotten me roses. He’d gotten a piece of the Colosseum … I had some champagne, took a Valium, we made out, I fell asleep. The rejection he must have felt after all that anticipation …
I turned over about 3 or 4 in the morning to make love, and he was gone. He was at the end of the bed with a thousand dollars in his pocket and a note saying, “You don’t love me anymore. I’d rather die than go through a divorce.” It was all in his head. I’d been away from him during our relationship maybe 60 days. Ever. I needed to be on tour. I had to do my thing.
I can see how it happened. He took 50 fucking pills. He probably forgot how many he took. But there was a definite suicidal urge, to be gobbling and gobbling and gobbling. Goddamn, man. Even if I wasn’t in the mood, I should have just laid there for him. All he needed was to get laid. He would have been fine.
DAVE GROHL [Someone] called and said he’d passed in Rome, and I fucking freaked out. I just lost my mind and started wailing. As disconnected as our relationship had become, you just can’t imagine real tragedy in your life. Twenty minutes later someone called me and said, “Actually, no, he’s not dead, he’s awake.” How weird. That could have been the happiest moment of my life. When he came home, I talked to him on the phone. We tried to avoid the subject—we were talking about buying minibikes or something, and I told him, “Look, man, I was really scared.” He said, “I know. I’m really sorry. It was just an accident.” I was trying to reach out to him and tell him that I really cared about him, but it wasn’t enough.
DALE CROVER But the shows were getting rebooked. They were advertising it on TV over there! On MTV! We even saw posters about them being rebooked. And we’re just thinking, That’s really weird. Those shows are already getting