Nevermind, It's an Interview, Part 1 Songtext
von Nirvana

The following is a transcription of the Geffen Records Promotional CD
(PROCD-4382) entitled Nirvana: Nevermind It′s An Interview. Hosted and
It's An Interview was created in 1992 when St. Thomas was Music Director and
Smith was Production Director of WFNX-FM, Boston, MA, USA.

Released by Geffen Records as a limited edition, ′promotional use only' CD
for radio airplay, Nevermind, It's An Interview is often loosely transcribed
on websites from the interview being run off of radio stations. In fact, the
main reason why the disc was produced in the first place was so that radio
stations all over the world could have a Nirvana interview to air. Nirvana′s
world-wide popularity had grown so quickly that it became impossible for them
to visit all of the radio stations playing their music.

Live versions of Nirvana′s songs (About A Girl, Aneurysm, Drain You, On A
Plain, and School were recorded on the Dogfish Mobile Truck at the Paramount T
heatre, Seattle WA on October 31, 1991) were added to the interview, clearly
distinguishing it from all other discs and establishing it as the definitive
Nirvana interview CD.


All three members of Nirvana were interviewed and recorded on separate
occasions. Krist Novoselic's and Dave Grohl′s segments were recorded at the
Righa Royal Hotel in New York City, right after the band's set for MTV′s 120
Minutes on January 10, 1992. Kurt Cobain's segment was taped late into the
next night on January 11, 1992 at the Omni Park Central Hotel in New York,
after the band′s debut performance on NBC Television's, Saturday Night Live.
What's interesting about the interview process is that all three guys were
asked some of the same questions, but without knowing the other member′s
answers. It was then intentionally edited together to sound like the guys
were all in the same room. It is striking how similar their answers are.

Nevermind It′s An Interview, has been aired countless times on radio stations
all over the world, and was never released for sale to the public. However,
if you search hard in your favorite used record stores, you might be able to
buy one for as little as $20 or as high as $200, depending on the store and
the location. The one hour interview is often listed for sale in collectors
magazines like Goldmine, or try searching the word Nirvana on ebay.com.

"Here, say hi really loud, ready on three, ready go" - DAVE GROHL

"Ahhhhh" (thru telephone) - DAVE'S SISTER

"That′s my sister (laughs) um, that was being recorded for this interview CD"
- DAVE

"I punctured every speaker in the cabinets, and there were, um, 12 speakers
to puncture. Really, I can't think of anything better to do than to
puncture speakers, that′s my favorite piece of equipment to destroy, it's a
lot of fun." - KURT COBAIN

snippet of Aneurysm


"I had Kurt′s guitar cabinet, like, I was smashing it, picking it, these
things are heavy, smashing it onto my bass drum, trying just to completely
crack and destroy the bass drum, and it wouldn't do it. I was wailing on it
with guitars, I was throwing it off the risers as high as I could. Drums are
hard to break!" - DAVE

snippet of Stay Away

"Well, first I wanted to be in a rock band when I was really young, and I
decided in about, 3rd grade that I wanted to be a stunt man, so um, oh heck
yeah, Evel Knievel was a big influence on that. I'd jump my bikes, and I took
all my bedding and pillows out of our house and put it on the deck, and got
up on top of the roof and would jump off. And I took a thin piece of metal
one time, and duct-taped it to my chest, and put a bunch of firecrackers on
it and lit em′ on fire."
- KURT

snippet of School

"Buzz Osbourne guitar player from the Melvins, he like discovered punk rock,
and uh, he was turning people on to it. I heard it, and uh, it sounded live
to me, and then um I borrowed the record Generic Flipper, and I listened to
it, and it just, it was like a revelation. It was like ′wow!', it was just
heavy, it was art, I was affected, and I′ve never been the same since. It was
like a breakthrough." - KRIST NOVOSELIC

snippet of Mr. Moustache

"I was um, 15, when I got my first guitar. My mother had just gotten married
and this was in the first year of her marriage. My stepfather went out on
her, and uh, she got so irate that she took all my stepfathers guns, uh
various guns, pistols, rifles and stuff, and walked down to the river, and
threw them in. And then I hired this kid to fish a couple of them out, and I
sold them, and then I got my first guitar with the money." - KURT

snippet of Sifting

"Uh, yeah, I took lessons for a week, I learned how to play Back in Black by
AC/DC, and it's pretty much the Louie Louie chords, so that′s all I needed to
know. I never did pay the guitar teacher for that week either I still owe him
money. But that's it, I just started writing songs on my own. Once you know
the power chord, you don′t need to know anything else." - KURT

snippet of In Bloom

"Aberdeen's basically just small town America, It's about 100 miles South
West of Seattle, it′s on the Pacific Ocean, it′s main industry is logging,
and forest products, there's really no roads going through there, it′s kinda
just off the beaten path, off the beaten track, and uh, things just kinda,
change comes slowly to Aberdeen. Everything revolves around the logging
industry there, it's all logging if the logging stopped that′d be a ghost
town." - KRIST

Aberdeen, Washington, 1987, Nirvana was formed between singer-guitarist
Kurt Cobain, and bassist Krist Novoselic. Krist explains the birth of the
band. - ST THOMAS

"A little social group came together, and we just kinda hung out, and y'know,
talked about things, and then one thing led to another, and Kurt did a tape
with um Dale Crover from the Melvins, and one of the songs on it was Spank
Thru, and he turned me on to it, and I really liked it, kinda got me excited,
so I go ′Hey man, let's start a band!' We scrounged up a drummer and we
started practicing. Took it very seriously too." -
KRIST

snippet of Spank Thru

The band recorded their first demo tape with Dale Crover of the Melvins.
- ST THOMAS

"He played on our first demo, and a couple of those songs made it over
to the Bleach LP, Floyd the Barber, and Paper Cuts. We jammed for
about a week, put some songs together, and made this tape." - KRIST

snippet of Floyd The Barber

Kurt and Krist then enrolled Chad Channing to become Nirvana′s first
full-time drummer. - ST THOMAS

"Chad wanted to express himself in a way that really didn′t gel with the
band. Chad really compromised his style to suit the band. I don't think
he was happy doing that and, uh, it was a good departure, y′know, it
worked well for everyone." - KRIST

Snippet of Scoff

Love Buzz original intro from the 7"

In December of 1988 - Sub Pop Records released a limited 1000 copies of
Nirvana's first single Love Buzz - a Shocking Blue cover, with the B-side,
Big Cheese. Months later, in June of 89 the first Nirvana album Bleach was
released. Kurt, Krist, and Chad recorded the album for $600, with Producer
Jack Endino. Jason Everman is also listed on guitar, but he didn′t actually
appear on the album, only on the tour. Kurt on Bleach"
- ST THOMAS

"Bleach just seemed to be really one dimensional. It just has the same
format, all the songs are slow, and grungy, and they're tuned down to really
low notes, and I screamed a lot, and, but at the same time that we were
recording Bleach, we had a lot more songs like About a Girl, in fact Polly
was written at that same time too. It′s just that we chose to put the more
abrasive songs on the Bleach album, so, it really wasn't a matter of
evolving within just a year, y'know, we′ve always liked pop music and have
always had a few songs like that." - KURT

Live Version of About A Girl

That′s About A Girl recorded live Halloween night 1991, in the city where
Nirvana now calls home Seattle, Washington. After the release of Bleach, the
band went on it's first national tour, and they were gearing up to record
their second album. Krist explains. - ST THOMAS

"We went to Madison, Wisconsin to record a record with Butch Vig in
the Spring of 1990. We laid down about 6-7 songs, which was like Lithium, In
Bloom, uh

Polly? - ST THOMAS

Polly, oh Dive, B-side of Sliver made it out, uh Stay Away. Anyway we went
there in the Spring to record a record, right? Right after we finished
recording the record we went on this about 8 week tour of the US starting in
Madison. We got as far as New York, and everything was geared up to y′know,
put out this 2nd Nirvana record, and we were gonna record maybe a few more
songs in Seattle."

This was gonna be on Sub Pop? - ST THOMAS

"This was gonna be Sub Pop, This was gonna be our second record right, it was
was supposed to come out probably September of 1990, and well once we got off
that tour, that's when we lost Chad, so there′s uncertainty with that, we
didn't want to release it, if we wanted to to anything we wanted to do it
with a new drummer. Sub Pop was doing some wheeling and dealing, they were
going to sign a licensing deal with a big label and that kinda um scared us,
and there were so many variables to consider, that it wasn′t wise to put out
a record at all. We went and we toured the UK, and uh, we went and uh, toured
uh, Western Canada, and uh next thing y'know, we were talking to labels
ourselves, so that was just like, canned" - KRIST

snippet of Dive

With Chad leaving the band, Kurt and Krist then enrolled friend, and
Mudhoney drummer Dan Peters, but Dan only lasted one gig - ST THOMAS

"Well yeah, it was a great gig too, it was at the Motor Sports Garage in
Seattle, there was about 1500 people there.or no, there was a lot more
people there. There was a lot of people there, and uh, we just recorded
the Sliver single with him, a couple of weeks before, and he looked
like he was gonna be in our band, and that was just another case of
compromising his style for our band, y'know, he was gonna go out and buy
a bigger drum set and y′know you can really hear his style, it′s just
Mudhoney, y'know, those snare rolls and well you know that′s when the future
of uh Mudhoney was uncertain, Steve wanted to go to school, and there was all
this.it was just like 'are Mudhoney gonna break up?′ and Dan saw opportunity
to join our band, it was a certain thing, so like yeah, we love Dan as a
person and we love his drumming. Well it just goes back to - it was
uncertain, and if Dan were to join our band, it would've been certain that
Mudhoney was finished, and we didn′t want to be responsible for that." -
KRIST

snippet of Sliver

Enter Dave Grohl not just another drummer - ST THOMAS

"He's the most well adjusted boy I've ever met. He′s totally easy to get
along with, everyone loves him, he plays drums better than any drummer
I′ve ever heard. I mean he blows away Jon Bonham, if I had, If y'know
if I had the choice of like, bringing Jon Bonham back to life, or to
choose of any drummer of any band I could even think of, they wouldn′t
be better than Dave. He's great." - KURT

"He′s great, yeah, he's the backbone of the band." - KRIST

Dave was playing in the Washington DC band Scream, when things fell
apart, Dave explains - ST THOMAS

"In 1990, we were on tour, doing a tour of America, and we were halfway
through the tour in Los Angeles." - DAVE

"Their tour made it as far as Los Angeles, and their bass player flew
the coup." - KRIST

"We got stranded there, there wasn′t really much to do, and I called my
friend Buzz Osbourne, who um, is the singer for The Melvins, and, we'd
known each other for awhile"

Mutual friend of Kurt and Krist - ST THOMAS

"Yeah.he's actually the one who introduced them to each other, and he
ended up introducing me to the band. And he just said that, um, they
were looking for a drummer, and that they saw Scream play in San
Francisco, and they thought I was really good, blah blah blah, no
romantic story" - DAVE

"We were just blown away by the whole, whole band, especially the drummer,
the drummer was really good" - KRIST

"I called them up" - DAVE

"When he called up we′re like, ′Yeah man! Come on up!'" - KRIST

"The strangest thing about it was moving up to the North West with no money,
and nothing, I didn′t, I still only have like, a bag of clothes and my drums.
I've bought a bed a couple of months ago, so I have a room with this futon on
the floor, but I mean I don′t have anything, so I didn't really have to move,
and uh, just y′know, moving up leaving your best friends in the world" - DAVE
"Yeah, it was weirder for him probably cause' he's kinda homesick,
y′know." - KURT

"I mean I didn′t know Krist or Kurt, and I ended up living on Kurt's
couch for 8 months" - DAVE

"He just packed up his stuff and came to Washington state." - KURT

"I had every misconception that everyone else had you know?" - DAVE

"Sure" - ST THOMAS

"Y′know, all I thought Seattle was, was like, flannel shirts and blurry
Charles Petersen photos y'know... Wheesssshttt" - DAVE

"We were living in this little cracker box hell hole of an apartment,
and I′m quite a slob as you can see." - KURT

"If you had someone you did not know come and move into your apartment, and
you were sorta like you felt this responsibility to like, 'OK, we must get
along′". - DAVE

"It was kinda hard for two people to live in this really small apartment
with one bedroom, and just garbage all over the floor, a lot of corn dog
sticks laying around" - KURT

"Whatever, like a month or two, we were out in the backyard shooting
stuff with BB guns, and breaking windows at the lottery building across
the street. It was fun, it was great, that apartment was great." - DAVE

"It was nice because Dave turns out to be just as much of a slob as me."
- KURT

Aneurysm Live

That's Aneurysm, the b-side of Smells Like Teen Spirit recorded live, We'll
be back with more of Nevermind It′s an Interview right after this. -ST THOMAS