The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [147]
But I can barely, especially on a bad night like tonight, get through “Teen Spirit.” I literally want to throw my guitar down and walk away. I can’t pretend to have a good time playing it.
But you must have had a good time writing it.
We’d been practicing for about three months. We were waiting to sign to DGC, and Dave [Grohl] and I were living in Olympia [Washington], and Krist [Novoselic] was living in Tacoma [Washington]. We were driving up to Tacoma every night for practice, trying to write songs. I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit it [smiles]. When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily I should have been in that band—or at least in a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard.
“Teen Spirit” was such a clichéd riff. It was so close to a Boston riff or “Louie, Louie.” When I came up with the guitar part, Krist looked at me and said, “That is so ridiculous.” I made the band play it for an hour and a half.
Where did the line “Here we are now, entertain us” come from?
That came from something I used to say every time I used to walk into a party to break the ice. A lot of times, when you’re standing around with people in a room, it’s really boring and uncomfortable. So it was, “Well, here we are, entertain us. You invited us here.”
How did it feel to watch something you’d written in fun, in homage to one of your favorite bands, become the grunge national anthem, not to mention a defining moment in youth marketing?
Actually, we did have our own thing for a while. For a few years in Seattle, it was the Summer of Love, and it was so great. To be able to just jump out on top of the crowd with my guitar and be held up and pushed to the back of the room, and then brought back with no harm done to me—it was a celebration of something that no one could put their finger on.
But once it got into the mainstream, it was over. I’m just tired of being embarrassed by it. I’m beyond that.
This is the first U.S. tour you’ve done since the fall of ’91, just before ‘Nevermind’ exploded. Why did you stay off the road for so long?
I needed time to collect my thoughts and readjust. It hit me so hard, and I was under the impression that I didn’t really need to go on tour, because I was making a whole bunch of money. Millions of dollars. Eight million to 10 million records sold—that sounded like a lot of money to me. So I thought I would sit back and enjoy it.
I don’t want to use this as an excuse, and it’s come up so many times, but my stomach ailment has been one of the biggest barriers that stopped us from touring. I was dealing with it for a long time. But after a person experiences chronic pain for five years, by the time that fifth year ends, you’re literally insane. I couldn’t cope with anything. I was as schizophrenic as a wet cat that’s been beaten.
How much of that physical pain do you think you channeled into your songwriting?
That’s a scary question, because obviously if a person is having some kind of turmoil in their lives, it’s usually reflected in the music, and sometimes it’s pretty beneficial. I think it probably helped. But I would give up everything to have good health. I wanted to do this interview after we’d been on tour for a while, and so far, this has been the most enjoyable tour I’ve ever had. Honestly.
It has nothing to do with the larger venues or people kissing our asses more. It’s just that my stomach isn’t bothering me anymore. I’m eating. I ate a huge pizza last night. It was so nice to be