Luerssen - Nirvana FAQ: all thats left to know about the most important band of the 1990s

Copyright 2014 by John D. Luerssen

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.

Published in 2014 by Backbeat Books
An Imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation
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The FAQ series was conceived by Robert Rodriguez and developed with Stuart Shea.

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Snow Creative Services

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Luerssen, John D., author.
Nirvana FAQ : all thats left to know about the most important band of the 1990s / John D. Luerssen.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61713-450-0
1. Nirvana (Musical group) 2. Rock musiciansUnited StatesBiography. I. Title. II. Title: Nirvana frequently asked questions.
ML421.N57L84 2014
782.421660922dc23
[B]
2014003409

www.backbeatbooks.com

For Heidi, Meredith, Hayley, and Jack

Contents

Foreword
Another Curt

When people suggest to me that my band and my songs had some kind of significant influence over Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, I have to wonder. I really just think Kurt liked my music. I cant imagine the Meat Puppets really having that big of an impact. I mean, Im influenced by people, too. Everybody who plays music is. And none of us are that fuckin original, really. Its just you have that voice or talent or whatever.

I never heard a lot of the Meat Puppets sound in Nirvanas music, but I always thought some of the songwriting was really clever. The tunes were a little bit traditional, but there was always a little bit of a spin on them that made them distinctly Kurts own. Thats something that Ive kind of always been a proponent of, whileof coursebeing cautious not to be entirely derivative.

Honestly, I think Im pretty minor. I think Kurt had plenty of motivations. He was probably really into Kiss and the Beatles, and we all know he loved the Melvins. And I always heard a lot of Black Flag. So it makes sense to me that he supposedly sent his early demos to SST Records.

Most people who are familiar with the Meat Puppets know that we were influenced by the Grateful Dead. We werent a jam band in the classic sense, but their music spoke to us. Even when my brother Cris and I were playing hardcore punk music, we loved the Grateful Dead. So, if Nirvana was as influenced by us as some say, then they were indirectly influenced by the Deadthe ultimate hippie band.

The Meat Puppets stuff that Nirvana covered on MTV Unplugged was pretty much just a kind of folk music anyway. The guys at SSTChuck Dukowski and Greg Ginn, who were in Black Flaglistened to the Dead when they were younger. We were on SST Records at the time, and I can remember when they started getting into it again. It began to influence Black Flag toward the end, and later, when Greg was doing Gone, he was way into jamming.

We did a bunch of tours with Black Flag, but that tour in 1984 when they released My War was the longest. At that point, they would go see the Dead whenever they could. Henry Rollins would, too. I know for a fact that Henry loved em.

Moving ahead to the summer of 1993, Nirvanas management at Gold Mountainwhich was also our managementgot in touch with us and asked us to go out on tour with them. They were about to put out In Utero . And thats how we met them. I hadnt known them at all before then, but I liked what they were doing.

The follow-up to Nevermind was a hectic period for them. Nirvana had moved into arenas, kind of against their will. We had played some larger places by then, mostly opening for people and doing festivals, and we were comfortable playing those kinds of venues. They were good guys. Kurt and Dave and Krist were all really easy to get along with, and we kind of became pals. It was a lot of fun.

Its always nice to have people that you admire be into your songs. And I thought it was a really cool idea to put different bands like ours and the Boredomsa cool Japanese punk bandwith a comedian like Bobcat Goldthwait. I really respected how Nirvana took matters into their own hands and just did what they wanted to do.

Novoselic was probably the most accessible and the most affable right off the bat. He and I became good buddies. Years later, we worked together in a band called Eyes Adrift. During the tour, wed hang out in each others hotel rooms or go get coffee and chat. We werent big museum guys or anything. Besides, it was a bus touryoure getting hauled around, and youre either at the hotel or at the venue.

I watched Nirvana play every night. I remember at one Halloween showin Ohio, I thinkthey played in costume. Kurt was dressed as Barney the Dinosaur, Pat Smear was Slash, Grohl was a mummy, and Krist pretended to be someone famousTed Danson, maybe.

I cant remember if we jammed onstage. Maybe we did, but I dont remember it. I think I would remember that. That would have been killer. I jammed with the Foo Fighters one time after Kurt was gone, and that was fun. Eddie Vedder was out touring with the Foo Fighters and Mike Watt. Eddie and I had played together on Big Train [a song from Watts 1995 solo album Ball Hog or Tugboat ], so we did that as a jam. I dont remember doing a jam with Nirvana on that tour, but it might have happened.

Midway through the In Utero tour, Kurt told me that they were going to go up to New York to do an episode of MTV Unplugged . He told me that Nirvana wanted to cover three of our songsPlateau, Oh Me, and Lake of Firebut they were having trouble figuring out how to play them exactly. That was the kind of lead-in to Kurt asking my brother Cris and I, Would you guys want to come and play the guitars? And we were like, OK!

Even though we were honored to be a part of it, the whole thing was pretty grassroots. Those guys were really unpretentious and still sort of befuddled by their huge fame. That kind of success does sort of create a gods effect, but they were really easygoing. For what they wanted to do, it made sense, and up until then, I hadnt really paid that much attention to what Unplugged was, but we always liked playing acoustically, so we thought it was a great idea.

Ive heard it suggested that the songs of mine Kurt picked to play were selected because they were a challenge for him to sing. I dont really know about that, because I just have those two registers I can sing in: I can sing in my normal talking voice or I can sing like Alfalfa from The Little Rascals . Back on Meat Puppets II , which was where those songs came from, I was kind of using my Alfalfa voice. I was kind of pitchy, and I really hadnt a clue about proper vocals. It was kind of a weird-ass record for the time. With that said, Kurt didnt just pull it offhe did an amazing job. He actually tagged the notes and had a lost boy sort of warble going on.

I remember we practiced for about a week or so up in New Jersey at a rented space in Weehawken. We were in there every day for quite a bit of time. But it wasnt like we would go over and over the stuff. They would play their songs, and then we would do our little bit. It was never really that together until we did Unplugged .

The overall vibe was similar to how the Meat Puppets have always operated. They were like, We know these songs and it will work out. And once the cameras were rolling, that was a real show. It wasnt like a bunch of takeswe played straight through. And it was pretty amazing. Our band had done some television, like Conan OBrien, but nothing like that.