The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [162]
I hadn’t written the lyrics yet. It was the last song I recorded, and when I was finally ready, it took a different turn. Instead, I paid homage to the warrior—the warrior who fell.
You also pay tribute to Kurt Cobain in “About a Boy.” What was it about his life and music that touched you?
When Nirvana came out, I was really excited. Not so much for myself—my time had passed for putting so much passion into music and pinning my faith on a band. I’d had the Rolling Stones. I was happy for the kids to have [Nirvana]. I didn’t know anything about his torments or personal life. I saw the work and the energy, and I was excited by that.
So it was a tremendous shock—quite a blow to me—when he died. I remember being upstairs taking care of the kids. I came down, and Fred told me to sit down at the table. When he did it a certain way, I knew it was serious. He sat me down and said, “Your boy is dead.” And when he told me how . . .
That day, we went to a record store for something, some Beethoven thing Fred wanted. And I remember kids were outside crying. They didn’t seem to know what to do with themselves. I felt a little like Captain Picard: I couldn’t mess with the Prime Directive. It was not my place to say anything. These kids didn’t know anything about me. But I really wanted to comfort them, tell them it was all right, that his choice was a very rare choice. I started writing “About a Boy” right after that.
What did you want to say in the song about his choice?
He had the song “About a Girl,” and I got the title from that. Initially I had two parallel things I wanted to express in the double meaning of the chorus [“About a boy/Beyond it all”]. When I was a kid, the ones who were beyond it all were the ones who felt they were beyond responsibility. But I was also shifting it to mean beyond it all in terms of earthly things—and hopefully beyond all earthly pain, to some better place. Nirvana. [Smiles]
But I have to admit, originally it was written with a little more frustration and anger. In 1988–89, I watched my best friend die—slowly. Robert Mapplethorpe, in that time period, did every single thing he could to hold on to his life force. He let himself be a guinea pig for every type of drug. He met with mystics; he met with priests. Any scientist he could find. He was fighting to live even in his last hours. He was in a coma, but his breathing was so hard the room reverberated.
When you watch someone you care for fight so hard to hold on to their life, then see another person just throw their life away, I guess I had less patience for that. You want to take a person by the scruff of the neck and say, “Okay. You’re suffering? This is suffering. Check it out.”
I don’t say any of these things with any kind of judgment. It’s just frustration, concern for how something like that affects young people. I am aware that I am somewhat estranged and out of touch, maybe even a little out of time. But I’m not so out of time that I can’t see that young people feel even worse than I ever did. I remember the early Fifties and fallout shelters. But still, life in general seemed pretty safe. Now kids must look around—there are viral conditions, pollution, still the threat of nuclear war, AIDS. Drugs are so plentiful and scary.
How hard has it been for you as a mother to navigate your own children through that minefield?
I was lucky because they had a father who was continually involved in their growth process. We were never separated from our children—ever. They knew what our philosophies were, and I know they felt protected.
What was also important was to tell them about God, to say prayers with them. I never promoted any religion to them because I don’t believe in that. But the concept of God, or