Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [92]
RON RUDZITIS When they released Bleach, I heard “About a Girl” and I became a fan. All of the sudden, there was another side to Nirvana. It totally reminded me of the Beatles. I’m just going, “Holy shit, this guy can write a hell of a song!” “About a Girl” wasn’t on that first demo Bruce played for us at Muzak. If it had been, I know I would’ve freaked out, like, “Gee, sign these guys!”
BRUCE PAVITT I was at a party next door to my house when I got this intuitive feeling, like, I really gotta go over to my house. Right as I did that, Krist Novoselic was walking up my stairway. He’s inebriated and he’s intimidating and he’s demanding a contract. It was very scary. He’s a very big guy. I called up Poneman and said, “Look, I know we don’t have contracts with any bands and I know we don’t have the money to hire an attorney to write a contract, but we need to get this guy one.”
JONATHAN PONEMAN I said, “The contract’s coming.” Krist wasn’t in a friendly, jolly mood. He seemed like he could go off. He didn’t really know who we were, and stories about corrupt record-label people are legion. He wanted to be protected. I sat up for a couple nights and composed a contract, which was largely taken from various music-industry books. We later discovered that the contract was, as you might imagine, very much the product of somebody who didn’t really know what he was talking about.
BRUCE PAVITT I didn’t really believe in contracts, and indie labels didn’t really do contracts. You did handshake deals. So it was like, “What the fuck? Why are we signing this three-record contract?” It seemed ridiculous to me, but it’s that contract that ultimately allowed the label to stay in business. So Krist coming to my house to kick my ass was the biggest blessing of my life.
JASON EVERMAN I can’t remember when Kurt suggested that I play with them, but the first time I did play with them was a party in K Dorm at Evergreen State College. After the party, Kurt was like, “Do you want to join the band?”
ALICE WHEELER Oh, yeah, Jason fit in. He was the prettiest one of them all. He was a good-looking guy. Most of the punk kids were more nerdy. Kurt is extremely photogenic—and after he got to be a star, he learned how to play it up—but he was kind of slouchy, he was really skinny, his hair was kinda stringy.
KELLY CANARY (Dickless singer) Dickless shared a practice space with Nirvana for a while. We were all starstruck by Kurt even before he was famous because you could tell that he was so gifted. Plus, you kind of just wanted to take him home and take care of him, he just looked so sad and lost at the same time.
GARRETT SHAVLIK Kurt was very sweet and very young, and he would confide in me: “How do I deal with Jonathan and Bruce? Who do I need to believe?” After my meeting would be done with Jonathan and Bruce, I’d talk to Kurt at the Sub Pop offices. I’m like, “Go to Bruce. Jonathan will tell you you’re gonna ride the fame train and fuckin’ be beaten by 20 virgins. But Bruce is the real guy.”
With Sub Pop, we’d talk about things like, “What should we do about Europe?” Bruce said, “I don’t think it’s pragmatic for you guys to go right now, and I don’t think we can afford it.” “That’s funny, because Poneman just said, ‘Yeah, it will be all good.’ ” Jonathan could bullshit you. It wasn’t intentional. It was just that he was a positive cat: “It’s gonna be great, man!” Well, sometimes it isn’t fuckin’ great.
BRUCE PAVITT There is a story that is true, and it’s kind of embarrassing: I called Kurt up and said, “Can I borrow your money to put out your album?” Which sounds absolutely insane, but that’s where we were at financially. You have to be really shameless. He said no. We ended up borrowing $5,000 from a friend to put it out.
DANNY BLAND I mostly dealt with Krist, and he was a bright guy. Ambitious for what we were dealing with at the time. Not the kind of ambitious that said, “We’re going to be on the cover of Rolling Stone