Nirvana Biography

Prior to Nirvana, alternative music was consigned to specialty sections of record stores and major labels considered it to be, at the very most, a tax write-off. After the band's second album, 1991's ‘Nevermind’, nothing was ever quite the same, for better and for worse. Nirvana popularized punk, post-punk, and indie rock, unintentionally bringing it into the mainstream like no other band before it. While its sound was equal parts Black Sabbath (as learned by fellow Washington underground rockers The Melvins) and Cheap Trick, Nirvana's aesthetics were strictly indie rock. They covered Vaselines songs, they revived new wave cuts by Devo, and leader Kurt Cobain relentlessly pushed his favourite bands - whether it was the art punk of The Raincoats or the country-fried hardcore of The Meat Puppets - as if his favourite records were always more important than his own music.

While Nirvana's ideology was indie rock and melodies were pop, the sonic rush of their records and live shows merged the post-industrial white noise with heavy metal grind. And that's what made the group an unprecedented multi-platinum sensation. Jane's Addiction and Soundgarden may have proven to the vast American heavy metal audience that alternative could rock, and the Pixies may have merged pop sensibilities with indie rock white noise, but Nirvana pulled at all together, creating a sound that was both fiery and melodic. Since Nirvana was rooted in the indie aesthetic, but loved pop music, they fought their stardom while courting it, becoming some of the most notorious anti-rock stars in history. The result was a conscious attempt to shed their audience with the abrasive ‘In Utero’, which only partially fulfilled the band's goal. But by that point, the fate of the band and Kurt Cobain had been sealed. Suffering from drug addiction and manic depression, Cobain had become destructive and suicidal, though his management and label were able to hide the extent of his problems from the public until April 8, 1994, when he was found dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound. Cobain may not have been able to weather Nirvana's success, but the band's legacy stands as one of the most influential in rock & roll history.

Kurt Cobain (vocals, guitar) met Chris Novoselic (born Krist Novoselic) (bass) in 1985 in Aberdeen, WA, a small logging town 100 miles away from Seattle. While Novoselic came from a relatively stable background, Cobain's childhood had been thrown into turmoil when his parents divorced when he was eight. Following the divorce, he lived at the homes of various relatives, developing a love for The Beatles and then heavy metal in the process. Eventually, American hardcore punk worked its way into dominating his listening habits and he met The Melvins, an Olympia-based underground heavy punk band. Cobain began playing in punk bands like Fecal Matter, often with the Melvins' bassist Dale Crover. Through the Melvins' leader Buzz Osborne, Cobain met Novoselic, who also had an intense interest in punk, which meant that he, like Cobain, felt alienated from the macho, redneck population of Aberdeen. The duo decided to form a band called The Stiff Woodies, with Cobain on drums, Novoselic on bass, and a rotating cast of guitarists and vocalists. The group went through name changes as quickly as guitarists, before deciding that Cobain would play guitar and sing. Renamed Skid Row, the new trio featured drummer Aaron Burkhart, who left the band by the end of 1986 and was replaced by Chad Channing. By 1987, the band was called Nirvana.

Nirvana began playing parties in Olympia, gaining a cult following. During 1987, the band made ten demos with producer Jack Endino, who played the recordings to Jonathan Poneman, one of the founders of the Seattle-based indie label Sub Pop. Poneman signed Nirvana, and in December of 1988, the band released their first single, a cover of Shocking Blue's 'Love Buzz'. Sub Pop orchestrated an effective marketing scheme, which painted the band as backwoods, logging-town hicks, which irritated Cobain and Novoselic. While 'Love Buzz' was fairly well-received, the band's debut album, ‘Bleach’, was what began the ball rolling. Recorded for just over 600 dollars and released in the spring of 1989, Bleach slowly became a hit on college radio, due to the group's consistent touring. Though Jason Everman was credited as a second guitarist on the sleeve of Bleach, he didn't appear on the record; he only toured in support of the album before leaving the band at the end of the year to join Soundgarden and then Mindfunk. Bleach sold 35,000 copies and Nirvana became favorites of college radio, the British weekly music press, and Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, and Dinosaur Jr, which was enough to attract the attention of major labels.

During the summer, Nirvana released 'Sliver'/'Dive', which was recorded with Mudhoney's Dan Peters on drums and produced by Butch Vig. The band also made a six-song demo with Vig, which was shopped to major labels, who soon began competing to sign the group. By the end of the summer, Dave Grohl, formerly of the D.C.-based hardcore band Scream, had become Nirvana's drummer and the band signed with DGC for $287,000. Nirvana recorded their second album with Vig, completing the record in the summer. Following a European tour supporting Sonic Youth in the late summer, ‘Nevermind’ was released in September, supported by a quick American tour. While DGC was expecting a moderately successful release, in the neighbourhood of 100,000 copies, ‘Nevermind’ immediately became a smash hit, quickly selling out its initial shipment of 50,000 copies and creating a shortage across America. What helped the record become a success was 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', a blistering four-chord rocker that was accompanied by a video that shot into heavy MTV rotation. By the beginning of 1992, 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' had climbed into the American Top Ten and ‘Nevermind’ bumped Michael Jackson's much-touted comeback album ‘Dangerous’ off the top of the album charts; it reached the British Top Ten shortly afterward. By February, the album had been certified triple platinum.

Nirvana's success took the music industry by surprise, Nirvana included. It soon became apparent that the band wasn't quite sure how to handle their success. Around the time of ‘Nevermind’'s release, the band was into baiting their audience - Cobain appeared on MTV's ‘Headbanger's Ball’ in drag, the group mocked the tradition of miming on the BBC's ‘Top Of The Pops’ by Novoselic constantly throwing his bass into the air and Cobain singing his live vocals in the style of Ian Curtis, and their traditional live destruction of instruments was immortalized on a ‘Saturday Night Live’ performance that ended with Novoselic and Grohl sharing a kiss - but by the spring, questions had begun to arise about the band's stability. Cobain married Courtney Love, the leader of the indie rock band Hole, in February of 1992, announcing that the couple was expecting a child in the fall. Shortly after the marriage, rumours that the couple were heavy heroin users began to circulate and the strength of the rumours only increased when Nirvana cancelled several summer concerts and refused to mount a full-scale American tour during the summer.

Cobain complained that he was suffering from chronic stomach troubles, which seemed to be confirmed when he was admitted to a Belfast hospital after a June concert. But, heroin rumours continued to surface, especially in the form of a late-summer ‘Vanity Fair’ article which implied that Love was using during her pregnancy. Both Love and Cobain denied the article's allegations, and publicly harassed and threatened the article's author. Love delivered Frances Bean Cobain, a healthy baby girl, on Augu