Kurt Cobain: The Rolling Stone Interview

 

Preview David Fricke's intense final Q&A with the Nirvana leader, from Rolling Stone's new book, 'The 90s'

By David Fricke

Oct 29, 2010 5:50 PM EDT

This is an excerpt from Rolling Stone's new book The '90s: The Inside Stories From the Decade that Rocked (© 2010 by Collins Design, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers). Click here to order the book, go here to read more about it, or visit the HarperCollins web site to preview the pages.

When David Fricke caught up with Kurt Cobain in January 1994, the Nirvana frontman insisted that he was happier than he had ever been. But their remarkable interview was full of references to guns, drugs and suicide. On April 5, three months later, Cobain shot himself above his garage in his Seattle home.

This excerpt from Rolling Stone: The 90s — The Inside Stories From the Decade That Rocked, in book stores now, includes segments from that interview, which took place in a dressing room during Nirvana's last Stateside trek after a gig at Chicago's Aragon Ballroom that Cobain called "the shittiest show on the tour." Yet rather than trashing a hotel room Fricke found Cobain "in a thoughtful, discursive mood, taking great pains to explain that success doesn't really suck — not as much as it used to, anyway — and that his life is pretty good. And getting better."

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Along with everything else that went wrong onstage tonight, you left without playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Why?

That would have been the icing on the cake [smiles grimly]. That would have made everything twice as worse. I don't even remember the guitar solo on "Teen Spirit." It would take me five minutes to sit in the catering room and learn the solo. But I'm not interested in that kind of stuff. I don't know if that's so lazy that I don't care anymore or what. I still like playing "Teen Spirit," but it's almost an embarrassment to play it.

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In what way? Is it about the enormity of its success?

Yeah. Everyone has focused on that song so much. The reason it gets a big reaction is people have seen it on MTV a million times. It's been pounded into their brains. But there are so many other songs that I've written that are as good, if not better, like "Drain You." That's as good as "Teen Spirit." I love the lyrics, and I never get tired of playing it. Maybe if it was as big as "Teen Spirit," I wouldn't like it as much.

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Where did "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.

One of the songs that you cut from 'In Utero' at the last minute was "I Hate Myself and I Want to Die." How literally did you mean it?

As literal as a joke can be. Nothing more than a joke. And that had a bit to do with why we decided to take it off. We knew people wouldn't get it; they'd take it too seriously. It was totally satirical, making fun of ourselves. I'm thought of as this pissy, complaining, freaked-out schizophrenic who wants to kill himself all the time. And I thought it was a funny title. I wanted it to be the title of the album for a long time. But I knew the majority of the people wouldn't understand it.

Have you ever been that consumed with distress or pain or rage that you actually wanted to kill yourself?

For five years during the time I had my stomach problem, yeah. I wanted to kill myself every day. I came very close many times. I'm sorry to be so blunt about it. It was to the point where I was on tour, lying on the floor, vomiting air because I couldn't hold down water. And then I had to play a show in twenty minutes. I would sing and cough up blood.

This is no way to live a life. I love to play music, but something was not right. So I decided to medicate myself. Even as satire, though, a song like that can hit a nerve. There are plenty of kids out there who, for whatever reasons, really do feel suicidal. That pretty much defines our band. It's both those contradictions. It's satirical, and it's serious at the same time.