Original subtitles

Having sold over a million records in six weeks,

they're straight in at number nine, here's Nirvana,

with Smells Like Teen Spirit.

CHEERING

MUSIC: Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana

It was a time when the music industry, rock and roll,

just needed to be shook up.

This little band from Seattle, having the audacity to, like,

break on to TV and be so subversive.

It was punk rock.

# With the lights out

It's less dangerous

# Here we are now

# Entertain us

# Yeah! #

The UK definitely responded to Nirvana

much more before America.

You guys were the first with everything.

It really is like a second home.

Nirvana brought to Britain the most exciting time in music.

They left an incredible legacy to so many bands

and so many music fans.

I'd never seen somebody running at full pelt

and taking a dive onto the drum kit.

# With the lights out

# It's less dangerous... #

We didn't know then we were sitting in a room with a band

who were going to go on and be the biggest band in the world.

If you say to people now that Nirvana played in my pub,

they go, "Aye, right".

But it happened!

# Entertain us

# A mulatto

# An albino... #

He came on in a medical smock.

It was just wonderful rock and roll theatre.

# A mulatto... #

Everybody's talking grunge. What exactly is it?

They made it all right to be an outsider,

they made it all right to not fit in.

A lot happened to Nirvana in a very short period of time,

and that can be hard to survive.

# A denial! #

This programme contains strong language

MUSIC: I Should Be So Lucky by Kylie Minogue

The '80s in Britain was all about wealth and affluence and power.

Music was very formulaic.

You had a lot of Stock, Aitken and Waterman.

Everything was just very shiny and very happy,

and there was very little rebellion.

MUSIC: Cross My Broken Heart by Sinitta

I was always one of those people who never felt like they fitted in.

And I think a lot of people like myself were seeking something

else that was an alternative.

# Cross my broken heart and said goodbye... #

In July of '88, I'm running this little agency, working out of my

bedroom in Nottingham.

I had no cash, and I was promoting gigs and losing money,

Purely by chance, somebody called me up and said, "Oh, you know, there's

"these people in Holland and there's these guys in Germany

"and they're bringing bands to the UK. I wonder if you might be

"interested in helping them to set up some shows."

And I started to develop these relationships

with these American artists and the American labels.

And I begin to hear about the label Sub Pop.

Sup Pop were an independent record label based in Seattle,

in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

They were known for this strain of music that would become known,

in time, as grunge.

They had the likes of Mudhoney, Tad and Soundgarden.

I think Sub Pop was probably a reaction to the government

and the society that was going on in America at the time.

So it was very anti-conservative.

It was very much about the spirit of independence. It was about doing

it yourself. It was about the spirit of rebellion

in a record label.

And one day, through the post, I get sent a seven-inch single

of Love Buzz, the first Nirvana seven-inch...

MUSIC: Love Buzz by Nirvana

..with a little note,

"I think you'll like this."

I'm about 20 seconds into this record and I think,

"I don't like this, I love this."

# Would you believe me when I tell you

# You're the queen of my heart? #

This very raw, vocal,

and this really... real melodic sensibility.

# Can you feel my love buzz? Can you feel my love buzz? #

And I started petitioning Sub Pop -

"We've got to get Nirvana over here to tour."

MUSIC: School by Nirvana

Nirvana came to Britain in 1989.

They were touring with Tad, a double headliner,

Sub Pop extravaganza, and also with an opening band

called The Cateran, who were from Edinburgh in Scotland.

# Won't you believe it? It's just my luck

# Won't you believe it? It's just my luck

# Won't you believe it? It's just my luck... #

We did the tour as sort of first on.

It was fantastic.

There was Kurt and Krist, and the drummer at that point

was Chad Channing.

That was the last tour he did with them.

Lovely guys.

# Won't you believe it? It's just my luck... #

Yeah, I'd never been to Great Britain, and we got

off the plane and we were in this...a different world.

Just got to be careful which way you look when you cross the street.

Whenever I went to London or Manchester or Leeds, Newcastle,

I always had a great time there.

Just your typical kind of working-class lads,

very kind of overwhelmed

that they were in Britain.

There was a British road crew

because the record label had no money.

We were in a Transit van, Tad and Nirvana were in a slightly more

upmarket Transit van that had seats in it.

But there was a lot of them in it, and a couple of roadies

and a driver, so they were pretty cramped.

And we were staying in a manky flat, having to share beds, dirty sleeping

bags, scabby carpets, people's flats, that kind of thing.

You know, people were putting us up at some of those gigs.

It wasn't hotels, it wasn't glamorous, and it was hard work.

We did drink a lot of beer, you know, mess around a lot,

but it wasn't that kind of hell-raiser sort of thing.

It was a bunch of guys who needed to get to bed at some point

because they were going to be up, into the van at seven o'clock

the following morning without having had a shower, sick

of the sight of each other, in for another day's slog.

So it's kind of rock and roll, but not very,

not what people think of. # No recess! #

MUSIC: Been A Son by Nirvana

1989, I would have been 20.

I was pitching around, following bands.

There was, like, a real underground little movement of

people who just were living that life.

A lot were students, a lot were just signing on.

The future didn't seem very bright for a lot

of young people at the time so it

was like, well, let's make our own fun. It was a way of life, really.

Got to the first Nirvana gig, got there for sound check, introduced

myself, and me and all my friends

would be on the guest list for the rest of the tour.

They were like, "Would you like a job, selling T-shirts for us?"

You'd get paid a T-shirt a night, which was £5.

"You can either keep the T-shirt or the £5."

I thought, "Well, I'll keep the £5,"

because that was a lot of money back then,

I only had £27 a week to live on, on the dole.

But if I'd kept the T-shirts,

they're worth 450 quid each now, so...

I remember at Duchess of York in Leeds - pub by day,

gig venue by night -

it was small but excellent, and filthy beyond words.

The Duchess was basically a starting point for bands coming

on to the scene. Tad were the headliners -

they were considered to be the better band - and Nirvana

were in the middle.

I'll be honest, I certainly didn't think that they'd be the band

that they turned out to be.

This is a really good photo of them loading in, and I think

Kurt's in the picture somewhere.

It just shows the mundane side of touring with bands.

It's not like today, where they roll up with three

artics, these bands, and loads of make-up people and wardrobe and,

you know, yoga instructors. It just like, you know, three guys

in the band. That was it. Going on stage, you know. What's the story?

We went up there and just did our thing.

People were connecting with it right off the bat.

In those days, you know,

they were all prepared to, like, just doss down anywhere, you know,

just to get gigs.

And Nirvana went upstairs and they kipped everywhere

around the dressing room.

We had a white leather sofa

and the bands used to write their autographs on it,

and Kurt slept on the sofa in my office.

In the end, I gave it to the Sheffield Rock Museum,

which I thought was quite funny.

It would have normally been the situation that we would

have played at the University of London Union,

which was the established venue for breaking artists coming

from the sort of alternative music world, but they didn't want us.

I think they considered that there was something rather

undesirable about these noisy and filthy punks.

So we ended up at the School of Oriental African Studies.

It was very chaotic, just constant stage diving,

just absolute total chaos.

The stage diving came out of the hardcore scene

in the United States.

That just followed us from the punk rock scene

into the mainstream.

Kurt was coming off the stage and I'm like, "What are you doing?

"Why don't you let the fire extinguisher off?"

And his face just lit up and he grabs the fire extinguisher

and just runs on stage and lets it off.

Just like being in charge of, like, naughty kids, you know.

The other side of it is, like, we were getting paid for it and just

getting away with it, you know? So it was all good.

And that was Kurt. He could be so intense.

And that's what appeals to so many people.

And in the meantime, we would try to have as much fun as possible

and just be really silly.

Maybe that was just kind of to balance the intensity.

DANCE MUSIC PLAYS

Well, 1989 was a year of flux, and I think it's a revolutionary year

in a way. With the Berlin Wall coming down, East Europe changed,

and those countries getting out of that oppression

they'd had for years, it felt like everything was possible.

And in a sense, that's what the music was.

There was so many diverse and different scenes all colliding at

the same time. The Manchester thing was really massive,

so it's the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays.

Things were definitely breaking down and changing politically,

socially and musically.

We Conservatives know what we believe, say what we believe

and stand by what we believe.

We'd had a right-wing government in Britain for ten years

at that point, there didn't seem to be any potential end to that.

There was a cultural reaction, and you saw that manifest in Britain,

specifically in the rave scene and the acid house scene.

HOUSE MUSIC PLAYS

People were taking matters into their own hands, and the

authorities were trying to clamp down on these illegal rave parties.

And in a way, the music that came out of Sub Pop and came

to the UK was a similarly joyous expression

of people's discontent.

There was a lot of pent-up frustration and anger, I felt,

and people were looking for a way to express that.

Between 1989, when they toured the UK for the first time,

and when they came back in October 1990, Nirvana had a line-up change.

Chad Channing left.

Chad was a great drummer, but in Kurt's

mind, he was the wrong type of drummer for Nirvana.

I was 21 years old, and the band that I was in, that was called

Scream, we had kind of fallen apart, broken up while we were on the road.

I was stranded in Los Angeles with no way to get home.

And then I got a phone call from a friend, and I had told him

that Scream had broken up.

And he said, "Hey, have you ever heard of Nirvana?"

And of course I'd heard of Nirvana because everybody loved

that album Bleach.

He said, "You know, they're looking for a drummer.

"You should call them."

And so Kurt and I go to the airport and we picked Dave up, and we found

this barn studio place

in North Tacoma, and so it was just like, "Let's play."

MUSIC: Sliver by Nirvana

And then we would just kind of jam,

and we knew right away it just clicked.

# Mom and dad went to a show

# They dropped me off at Grandpa Joe's

# I kicked and screamed Said "Please, don't go!"

# Grandma take me home Grandma take me home

# Grandma take me home Grandma take me home... #

Within a few songs, I just knew, they knew, we knew that this is it.

We just had this feel together that sounded like Nirvana.

And I think it was maybe about 30 days before we went over to the UK

for that tour.

Hey, man!

If this bird goes down, this is the safest place to be!

I'm going to be here,

and I'm going to be safe

as can be.

Wooo!

I remember bringing a video camera and it was just to be as silly

as possible, putting on this persona, that's just not...

It's not the real me.

Welcome to British Airways!

Please follow all the rules.

You hear me?

As soon as you walked on this plane, I took one gander at you and I saw

nothing but trouble.

I joined a band with strangers,

these two guys I didn't fucking know, so that I could, like,

just kind of experience the adventure and the mystery,

not really ever knowing what was going to come next,

Because it says it's almost 3:00 in the morning.

Meaning we've been on this thing for five hours.

You never know. Time flies when you're having fun.

LAUGHTER

20th of October, 1990, we picked them up from Heathrow,

we brought them into town and they went and stayed

at the Dalmacia, which is a guesthouse in Shepherd's Bush Road.

Russell! Goddamn it!

It was fairly unremarkable, but the guy that owned the place, George,

was very, very accommodating towards musicians.

One day, Nirvana basically knocked on the door and said,

"Have you got any rooms?"

So I said, "Yeah, OK, how many nights do you need?"

So they came in, they had a look and said, "Yeah, this is fine."

Got them upstairs to sign the visitor's book,

and that was that, they came in.

They said, "Oh, we've got all of this stuff."

And I said, "Well, OK, I'll stick them in the basement."

There were all three of us, like, crammed into one little room,

like The Monkees, you know. We're like, "Krist's bed's there,

"Kurt's there, and I'm over here."

We'd wake up in the morning,

there was this nice family that would make us fried toast

and beans and bangers, and we'd just sit there drinking tea all morning.

It was a massive upgrade from the Scream days.

I mean, in Scream, we stayed in squats.

We stayed in places where you'd show up and they'd be burning the linens

out front because there's a fucking scabies outbreak.

And so when I joined Nirvana, to me, that was like...

That was some Four Seasons shit.

Dave Grohl, he's one of the few people I've met who's always happy.

Kurt, he would be sometimes withdrawn.

I couldn't pin him down, character-wise.

Whereas Krist, because he was Croatian and we're half Croatian,

we'd have a bit of a connection.

My favourite time being in Britain was at the Dalmacia house.

I'm a Dalmatian!

Not the dog with spots, but from Croatia!

My parents are both from there.

And so I felt right at home.

Wooo!

We would walk around and just get lost.

Let's get some tea at the Dome Cafe. Want some tea? Yeah.

We were broke, but it just felt homey.

I can't get used to the traffic situation.

Well, fuck it, man. Fuck it, man.

Start driving normally!

I have such fond memories of that time.

I mean, we were kids, you know. I was 21, Kurt was maybe 23,

Krist was maybe 24.

We went down to Kensington Market and just, like, bought as many

records and cool leather jackets as we could find.

And there was a kebab place which was opened, luckily for us,

until three o'clock in the morning.

Yeah, it was an extension of their kitchen.

Well, here we are.

It doesn't look that much different to when I was last here.

This is where the Dalmacia Hotel used to be,

and down there, I think,

that's the bus stop where we did some of the photos, the day

I interviewed Nirvana here.

So I interviewed Nirvana in...

..I think it was late 1990.

I was working at the NME at the time.

We turned up in this slightly anonymous hotel

and I think Kurt opened the door.

Krist Novoselic did the entire interview laying on his bed.

Well, with the covers over him, actually, moaning

about the English cold which he'd picked up.

Dave pootled around, picking up dirty laundry, I think.

I mean, we didn't know then we were sitting in the room with a band

who were going to go on and be the biggest band in the world.

We talked about, sort of, where they wanted to go musically,

and then we had quite a long, daft conversation

about, what would be the perfect pet?

Kurt Cobain, I think it was, said, "I think a turtle.

"That would share my character quite well."

We came outside and Martin Goodacre, the photographer, did some

shots, I think, on the steps

with the Dalmacia Hotel sign behind.

CAMERA CLICKS

There's the famous Kurt Cobain shot where he's sort of doing this kind

of...just looking up at you.

I remember Martin having his camera ready, and Kurt wouldn't look up.

So Martin is persisting and saying, "Come on, Kurt, look up."

And he didn't look up.

And eventually I think Martin said something like, "If I promise

"this is the last photo that we're going to do today

"and you can go after that, will you look up?" And Kurt looked

up and just did that.

And that's the famous photo.

MUSIC: About A Girl by Nirvana

The first tour that I did with Nirvana, in 1990,

that, to me, was my rock and roll fantasy come true.

# I need an easy friend

# I do, with an ear to lend... #

All we had to do was play the music. That was all that was expected

of us, right?

No saviours of a generation or spokespeople for a generation.

It was about the music.

We were free. We were happy. We were young.

We were playing music.

People were fucking bouncing around while we played it,

and it was...it was great.

# I'm standing in your line... #

And you could tell at that point, like, something was happening.

# I'll take advantage while... #

The UK definitely responded to Nirvana much more before America.

It just seemed to me like you guys were the first with everything.

Like, we cut our teeth there. After that tour in the UK, I remember

going back to America, to the same bars and clubs where we were playing

to 99 people, 150 people.

It was definitely not like it was in the UK.

# I do. #

CHEERING

APPLAUSE

The late '80s, I was quite a bit lost, early 20s, not knowing

what direction I was going in, not dealing with

adulthood very well.

Would have been on the dole, travelling around.

Yeah, just a bit rough and ready.

Tony was my buddy when I first moved up to Nottingham

and we became firm friends.

Somewhere down the line is this thing, as I did,

I would rope in my friends, you know, like,

"Can you help me pick up this band from the airport?"

I ended up picking Nirvana up from the airport, '89,

I think it was, and it started from there.

Plan for tonight.

I'm not sure how he wound up backstage with fucking make-up

and paint all over him, but he became a dear friend.

Kurt loved him. We all loved him.

Woo! Wooo!

I was a bit of a damaged character, not interacting well sometimes

in social scenes, and just being a bit weird, and I guess Kurt

was accepting of the weirdness and took me under his wing.

He just wound up coming up on stage and dancing one night.

MUSIC: Blew by Nirvana

This guy just started dancing on stage and, like,

"Well, there you go."

It was like... It was kind of fun. HE CHUCKLES

Well, I was just feeding the energy from what was going on onstage.

Maybe a bit of a Native American dance or just pogoing

or just doing something odd.

You know, it was just do anything, freestyle, you know?

People would go, "Well, you know, that was crap, I could do that."

It's like, yeah, that's the whole point of it, you know?

I was absolutely stunned.

I was like, "Wow, where did that come from?" You know?

The Stone Roses had Cressa, The Happy Mondays had Bez, we had Tony,

you know? And, yeah, he's better than all of those.

That was Tony.

CHEERING

SOLO ACOUSTIC GUITAR PLAYS

One thing I want to ask you is about your influences.

I would say the biggest influence I've ever had would be the Beatles,

because I listened to the Beatles since I was five years old,

up until I was in fourth grade, and I wanted to see the Beatles,

and it was about 1973 and I heard on the radio that they'd been broken

up for three years, you know, and I was totally devastated.

# She gives my everything

# And tenderly

# The kiss my lover brings

# She brings to me

# And I love her... #

The Beatles were a huge influence when I was young.

My mother gave me an electric guitar and a Beatles song book

that I would sit down, play the records and play

along with the chords, you know?

And I had no teacher.

Like, that was how I learned how to play was from listening

to the Beatles.

# And I love her... #

Then I was introduced to hard rock, such as Led Zeppelin.

I got into that and

it kind of meshed together, like, when I started playing guitar,

it kind of intertwined the Beatles' melodic-style hooks

with heavy, raunchy guitars.

And I would say that's probably how our style started.

# It's been a long time since I rock and rolled

# It's been a long time since I did the stroll... #

I'd like to think that Britain were kind of dear to Kurt

and to Nirvana, more so than maybe some other places.

This was the place where a lot of

Kurt's favourite bands had come from.

We had so much respect and so much love for bands from the UK,

like The Vaselines, The Raincoats,

because we thought, like, their music

was worth being heard by the masses, you know.

"If you enjoy Nirvana, you might enjoy this."

MUSIC: Fairytale In The Supermarket by The Raincoats

The Raincoats formed in West London in the late '70s postpunk era,

formed by Gina Birch and a Portuguese musician called

Ana da Silva, and Kurt was a big fan.

When he first came to London,

he went on an odyssey, trying to find The Raincoats record,

because you couldn't get it in the States.

Kurt said how much he respected what we did, and so that was

a nice thing.

I was completely surprised.

Kurt wrote this thing which got faxed to us.

"The Raincoats recorded some music that has affected me so much

"that, whenever I hear it,

"I'm reminded of a particular time in my life when I was extremely

"unhappy, lonely and bored.

"If it weren't for the luxury of putting on that scratchy copy

"of The Raincoats' first album, I would have had very few

"moments of peace."

It's very touching.

Um... Yeah.

MUSIC: Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam by The Vaselines

# Jesus don't want me for a sunbeam... #

The Vaselines were a great band from Glasgow, playing

really great melodic guitar, indie rock.

I mean, Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam is an amazing song.

# Don't expect me to cry... #

Kurt was a huge Vaselines fan,

and he would talk about The Vaselines in interviews,

and Nirvana covered several Vaselines songs.

Nobody liked us and nobody really knew us,

so we were just having a night out in Edinburgh, playing a gig,

and got to meet Nirvana, who were complete strangers.

And Kurt just said he liked our music,

and had a moment, you know, that I'll never forget.

# Jesus don't want me for a sunbeam

# Cos sunbeams are not made like me

# And don't expect me to lie

# For all the reasons you had to die

# Don't ever ask your love of me... #

This is a copy of a letter Kurt wrote to me in 1991.

Starts with, "Hi, Eugene.

"We recorded Molly's Lips and Son Of A Gun, hopefully to be released

"in a few months.

"The Vaselines have been my favourite band for a long while now

"and, geez, I can't wait to see you all soon.

"I got evicted from my apartment and am living in my car,

"so I have no address, but here's Chris's phone number for messages.

"Your pal, Kurdt."

CHEERNG

When we played the Reading Festival in 1991, I think

we were halfway up the bill, playing in the afternoon.

MUSIC: Come As You Are by Nirvana

But just seeing, like, 30,000 kids dancing to Nirvana...

..it was fucking awesome.

# Come as you are

# As you were

# As I want you to be

# As a friend, as a friend

# As an old enemy... #

But in '91, I got there and managed to blag it in as per usual.

I just remember being particularly impressed with the new material.

# And I swear that I don't have a gun

# No, I don't have a gun... #

Could feel it in the atmosphere in the crowd, definitely.

Yeah, blown away.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

MUSIC: Molly's Lips by Nirvana

They asked me to sing the Vaselines song, Molly's Lips.

# She said she'd take me anywhere She'd take me anywhere

# As long as she stays with me... #

I'd never been on any festival stage in my life, and it was an amazing

thrill to sing one of your songs, played by this great band.

# Kiss, kiss Molly's lips Kiss, kiss Molly's lips. #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

At the end of the show, Krist just came on and smashed his bass,

and we thought, "Right, this is different."

I'd never seen somebody walking to the lip of the stage

and then running at full pelt and taking a dive onto the drum kit.

CHEERING

And I was standing next to people in other bands, like Mudhoney,

Sonic Youth, and they all went, "Ha-ha!" like it was funny, and I

went, "Ooh, what's he done?!" And, yeah, I think Kurt

dislocated his shoulder and he had a sling for the rest of the day.

After Reading, Kurt sent me a copy of the Nevermind cassette.

And so I'd done loads of copies of that, with literally hundreds

and hundreds of, like, cassettes,

and I'd be phoning up magazines and papers in the UK - everybody

just wanted a copy,

and there was just this, like, amazing buzz.

CHEERING

MUSIC: In Bloom by Nirvana

Those songs are so catchy, and you could tell that it was a step

up in terms of the song craft that Kurt was summoning up.

# Sell the kids for food... #

Within about six months, Nirvana were at the top of the charts

in America - they kicked Michael Jackson off the top of the charts!

# He's the one who likes all our pretty songs... #

You could feel that the energy was changing and that the pace

was really picking up.

# But he don't know what it means... #

You know, the days of just laying around a bed and breakfast

and then loading your equipment into a club to play for some people

had passed. At this point, we were now doing interviews and we were

going to radio stations.

I was working on The Word, which was a TV programme,

and I was booking bands, and I remember sitting in the office

and it was a record label who contacted me and they said,

"We've got this band and they're really exciting, we think

"they're going to blow up." And just as soon as I listened to the song,

Smells Like Teen Spirit, I was like, "OK, right, you know, we've got

"a space next Friday. Can they do it? Are they available?

"I want them on the show."

The Word was, like, the biggest show

if you were kind of between, I suppose, 12, really, and 30.

And just about anyone big in that era, from 1990 to '95,

we got them on before anybody else.

Meanwhile, here's Nirvana, kicking it up good style. 600,000 copies

of their album in the USA, and first time live on TV.

CHEERING

See you next week.

It was live and it was uncontrolled, so when Nirvana came on,

we were overrunning a bit, and then Kurt Cobain made his famous speech.

I'd like all of you people in this room to know that Courtney Love,

the lead singer of the sensational pop group Hole,

is the best fuck in the world. CHEERING

This was their Sex Pistols moment,

because musically, culturally,

philosophically, they were a dare to people's minds

and to their sensibilities.

# Load up on guns Bring your friends

# It's fun to lose and to pretend... #

To me, that was almost like a statement of intent.

It was like this little band from Seattle having the audacity

to break onto TV and be so subversive.

It was punk rock.

# With the lights out it's less dangerous

# Here we are now, entertain us... #

I just made sure that I went right down the front,

so I was literally looking up at Kurt.

I don't think my feet touched the ground from there on.

Everyone was just bouncing up and down. It was just sensational.

# Yeah

# Hey

# Hey... #

Smells Like Teen Spirit was probably

the first time I'd ever heard

someone genuinely scream their songs

and what they were singing. His voice was just that raw.

It was pure honesty and pure authenticity.

They were just dressed like normal folk.

And for me, that was just an absolute education,

and it really impacted my outlook on music and on life.

# And I forget just why I taste... #

They made it all right to be an outsider, they made it

all right to not fit in.

# I found it hard Was hard to find

# Oh, well, whatever never mind... #

From when I was 12 to when I was 15, I just wanted to be Kurt Cobain.

You know, I had all his posters on my wall. Literally every inch

of my wall was covered with Kurt Cobain.

It just seemed so strange to be on Top Of The Pops, right?

I mean, that was reserved for, like, pop bands.

"We don't belong there!"

I think there was a conversation about lip-synching,

which we had never done, and,

you know, felt uncomfortable doing it, and they said,

"OK, we'll let the vocals be live, but the music

"has to be pre-recorded."

I mean, you know, they were just asking for it!

IN DEEP MONOTONE: # Load up on drugs

# Kill your friends

# It's fun to lose... #

He sang in this ridiculous voice.

We're all, with our mouths wide open, going,

"What the hell is this?!"

# Hello, hello, hello, hello

# Hello, hello, hello, hello... #

The audience, some of them may have been fans and knew

what to do, and then there was this other faction

that was just, like, trying to, you know, dance to it.

Just a weird environment where everyone's like,

"What the fuck is going on right now?!"

Top Of The Pops back then was, like, the biggest TV music show

you could possibly be on.

This was their big, big moment,

and he completely sabotaged it.

# With the lights out it's less dangerous... #

Nirvana had a sense of humour.

They weren't miserable bastards all the time.

It was very slapstick and very, you know, like Monty Python.

# My libido Yeah... #

If they're going to do something like that, they were going to do

their own way, and it worked for them because it created legend

and it created myth.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

In late '91, Nirvana played a gig in Edinburgh,

at the Calton Studios,

and then afterwards they went to a bar called The Southern.

And this night, Kurt and Dave did an acoustic set in this

rough and ready boozer.

I wish to God I'd been there because it must

have been unbelievable.

Well, it has changed a bit, but it's the same building.

Aye, it's trying to place where everything was,

cos there was the raised stage over there and stuff like that.

Looks cleaner than it did.

It was primarily a biker bar, so there was always a line of bikes

parked outside in the street there.

It would be rammed and it'd be really noisy.

Dunsy and I were a band called The Joyriders, and I knew Nirvana

from being in the previous band that had supported them no tour,

their first UK tour.

We were doing a charity gig for the Sick Kids Hospital in here.

My brother was their tour manager and we knew they had a night off,

so we kind of asked if they'd do it. They said yes.

It started getting really busy in the middle

of the afternoon because, obviously, word had got around.

I remember it filling up and thinking, "This is kind of

"spiralling out of control." The place was rammed.

There was, what, about 200, 300 people in here?

As we went on and played longer... And longer. ..and longer and longer,

people started leaving.

There was shouts from the audience of, "Where are they?" and...

I think people were really gobsmacked when David and Kurt

showed up at the door.

I said to Murdo, "I think we'll survive this, I think we'll

"survive this."

So, I mean, the vast majority of people had been here

during the day, had left, so there was maybe only 30 people left

when the band actually turned up.

But if you were to do a straw poll in Edinburgh, you'd probably meet

about, like, 500, 600 people who will tell you that they

were at the gig. Yeah. They weren't.

We just sat on these bar stools and played some music.

# I'm not like them but I can pretend

# The sun is gone but I have a light... #

I felt completely comfortable doing that, maybe more so than anything

else we were doing at the time, like playing on Top Of The Pops,

you know. Like, that just seemed a little more natural to me.

To see them with pints, strumming acoustic guitars,

just being really relaxed

and having a bit of a blether with people,

it felt really special.

They played and then they hung around, we shut the curtains,

and then we just stayed for most of the night.

And then I sat at the bar and someone gave me a lesson

in whisky that went on for a long time!

If you say to people now that, you know, "Nirvana played in my pub,"

they go, "Aye, right! Pull the other one!" You know?

But it happened!

What everyone does know about Seattle now is its music,

which sounds like the illegitimate offspring of punk and thrash metal,

and looks like the result of a nasty accident in an Oxfam shop -

grunge.

I wasn't really plugged into the mainstream world, so I never

thought that we would have anything to do with that, because we were

kind of weird. And, yeah, then the next thing we know,

we're just really, really popular.

Everybody's talking about grunge at the moment.

What exactly is it? OK, it's against the commercialisation of the '80s,

and it's very anti-fashion.

It's got to be dark and preferably faded. Flannel shirt, like that,

perhaps, over there, which you actually put around your waist

and you don't actually wear it as a shirt,

just as something to cover your bottom, really.

It doesn't matter if your jumper's got holes in it,

you can recycle clothes and you can wear just, like,

the scruffiest things. Oh, my God! As a scruffy kid

throughout my life, that completely appealed to me.

It really did.

The people who were close to the music never really took

any of that stuff seriously at all.

Once you start having £5,000 checked shirts being worn by models

in New York fashion shows, you know, the shark has been well

and truly jumped.

You have to remember how bizarre it was that Nirvana became

so omnipresent and so culturally important, because they were

the first band in my mind to do that, to actually be so visceral,

to be so cathartic and to actually break through into a mainstream

crowd, and Nirvana almost requalified what pop music

could be at that point.

MUSIC: Love In An Elevator by Aerosmith

It's also, I think, very important to remember that rock music,

especially at that point, was so macho, it was kind of seen

as a boys club, and Kurt Cobain had no interest

in furthering that mind-set.

Like, what was all this kind of misogynistic take on playing

rock music?

# Workin' like a dog for the boss man Whoa

# Workin' for the company Whoa, yeah... #

You know, it was a time when the music industry,

rock and roll just needed to be shook up.

You know, there was Aerosmith and this...kind of this hair metal

scene that was... That was that archetype, right?

And then in Nirvana, we came, we had facial hair and we had grubby

clothes, but we had a very feminine sensibility, right?

And that's how things change.

# Come as you are

# As you were

# As I want you to be... #

Kurt was a pro-feminist person

and he was anti-homophobic.

He actually said, "If you're homophobic or don't respect women,"

and so forth, so forth, "don't come to our gigs,

"don't buy our records."

Saying something like that has a really big impact,

and that's one of the legacies, I think, that he's left.

# Memoria... #

Kurt was really intense, so he could be incredibly sweet,

but he could also spit venom.

Kurt really cared a lot about people,

and it was a gift, but maybe that weighed on him some, right?

As they started to explode on a global scale, it was like being in

the eye of the hurricane. Normality in the centre,

everything else crazy.

I think we all sort of processed it and dealt with it and did it

in our own ways, and, you know, as the drummer of the band,

I really was, like, practically anonymous.

I was kind of relieved of a lot of that pressure of the success.

I really can't speak for Kurt's experience but, I mean, it seems

pretty clear that his experience was a bit more complicated

than Chris and I's.

By summer 1992, the tabloids were feeding on every bit

of Nirvana gossip, rumour that they could find.

So there was a rather fevered atmosphere that was building

up in advance of Nirvana's headlining appearance

at Reading in 1992.

There was loads of rumours that the band were going to split

up and there was lots of talk that they were going

to cancel Reading.

Everywhere you went, people just said, "Are Nirvana playing?

"We've heard they're not playing. Where's Kurt?"

And it was just nonstop.

This is Little John Farm in Reading,

the site of the Reading Festival for aeons.

It's very strange trying to get your bearings.

Yeah, I'm guessing that...

..the main stage was roughly over here.

August bank holiday, 1992, Sunday...

..the energy was palpable.

A sea of people, as far as you could see, really.

On the night, Kurt just masterfully sent up all the scare stories.

He came on in a medical smock.

He was wheeled on stage by Everett True, the Melody Maker journalist.

With the support of his friends and family,

he's going to make it.

CHEERING

I remember standing side stage giggling, just hysterically.

# Some say love

# It is a river. #

CHEERING

That was his kind of like fuck you to everybody.

It was just...just wonderful rock and roll theatre.

ELECTRIC GUITAR PLAYS

I definitely felt like we had to prove ourselves.

# I don't care, I don't care I don't care, I don't care

# I don't care, care if it's old. #

And at the time, I didn't really feel entirely confident

that we could do that.

We hadn't really been playing very much at all

and I think we maybe rehearsed once...

..twice maybe.

# Get away, away, away from your home. #

I think every amount of frustration and anger that they had felt

over the last few months was channelled into that show.

# If you have, if you need

# I don't even care, we could have all three

# She said, she said

# She said, she said. #

CHEERING

And everyone's singing every word to Breed

and every word to Teen Spirit, every word to Lithium.

# I'm so happy cos today I found my friends

# They're in my head

# I'm so ugly That's OK, cos so are you. #

It really was a triumphant return in a time,

where I'm not sure even we knew we could do it.

# Yeah, yeah

# Yeah, yeah

# Yeah, yeah

# Yeah, yeah. #

I just remember being so fucking relieved

that we didn't train wreck in front of everybody.

I was...I was very happy.

# Yeah, yeah

# Yeah, yeah. #

I remember it being a little bit ramshackled but...

..but that's punk rock, innit?

# Yeah, yeah. #

At the end of the night, they just overdid it.

Just too much head-banging and...

..I had to wear a neck collar for a few days, gave myself whiplash.

# I'm not going to crack. #

CHEERING

Them giving me the opportunity to do this

has got me through dark times of feeling depressed and worthless

and I just think,

"Well, hold on a minute. You've done this. You can die happy,

"having contributed to this mythological show."

# What else should I be?

# All apologies. #

It's bittersweet, '92, you know.

It was the last time I saw Kurt.

Reading '92 had a huge significance or relevance in...

..the timeline of the band, emotionally.

It was huge.

# Buried

# Buried. #

And, unfortunately, it was the last time we ever played the UK.

Nirvana were meant to tour the UK in spring '94,

but by that point, things were already looking very...

..grave indeed.

There had been an overdose in Rome, the tour was cancelled.

Things were really, really serious at this point.

Even though Kurt was really talkative,

it just wasn't the same energy.

The crew and everything was flat.

It just wasn't the same.

It was kind of obvious he had a bit of a drug problem back then.

It was just really uncomfortable.

A lot happened to Nirvana in a very short period of time.

Those few years between headlining Reading 1992...

..and cancelling that 1994 tour,

it was kind of like...

..being shaken from side to side and just holding on,

trying to...to keep from...

..sinking.

And so, in a way, that was us saying,

"No, this is not going to happen right now.

"We need to take care of some other shit."

Nowadays, depression is...

Everybody talks about it...more openly.

Got to look after people.

That person's struggling a bit, we'd better go and help them.

That didn't happen then, did it?

Society used to be all about just coping and getting on with it

and you'll all be OK.

There was so much bravado and...

..it never felt like it was the right thing to do,

to put your hand up and just kind say, "God, I'm struggling here."

From 1991 to 1994...

..when I think about that period,

it feels like it was ten years.

It was really intense just from the attention.

Those are the personal things that I'm still trying to get a grip on.

And we just wanted to make music.

It wasn't till late Thursday night, early Friday morning

that people in Britain found out the news.

The lead singer of the rock band Nirvana, Kurt Cobain,

has been found dead at his home in the United States.

Police say it looks as if he shot himself.

He was 27 years old.

I remember coming down to breakfast and just everyone was talking about,

"Have you heard that Kurt Cobain is dead?"

Whatever you thought about his mind-set at the time,

it was still such a shock. It was so sad.

I think one of the things

we always kind of had in the back of our mind is like, what happened?

What went wrong?

Yeah, it was extremely upsetting.

Just crying for three or four days.

I remember running straight upstairs to tell my mum and dad

that Kurt Cobain had died because it was on the news.

I remember it was the first time I cried...

..about losing something or someone.

It felt like it was someone you knew.

I'm still processing the Kurt stuff, you know?

Because...

..I have to explain it to my kids...

..who love Nirvana.

Because for the longest time, you know, I would...

..I would try to process and talk about it with friends and family

and things like that...

..and they would help me...

..but...

..now, like, I feel like I have to help my kids go through it.

It's a lifetime of healing.

It must have been over ten years before I listened to Nirvana again.

I'd hear tracks every so often,

but most times if they ever come on...

..I try to listen to them but I just find it difficult.

I think all of us flailed around for a few years

and through sort of the rest of the '90s.

It was a very, very tough time, personally and emotionally

and there wasn't any real closure on it.

MUSIC: Territorial Pissings by Nirvana

It's been 30 years, but coming back to the UK,

it really is like a second home.

Anton Brookes, Russell Warby -

I still work with most of those people.

Whenever the Foo Fighters come back for shows,

like, we get together like it's a family reunion,

so there is a bond that is like a forever thing between all of us.

To this day, I'll get fan letters

or I meet people, like, in the public

and they'll say, "Nirvana got me through a really bad time",

or, "Once I heard Nirvana, I kind of...

"..felt better about things."

And I'm so grateful that people are connecting that way

still with Nirvana, because that's the way I feel about music.

# Got to find a way, find a way When I'm there

# Got to find a way, a better way I'd better wait

# Got to find a way, find a way When I'm there

# Got to find a way, find a way When I'm there

# Got to find a way, find a way When I'm there

# Got to find a way, find a way. #

SCREAMING