Nirvana's Krist Novoselic Talks Kurt Cobain

Kurt was like he was counterculture, but he also wanted to be really famous like he was like a windmill and he would just say one thing and then he would like to change his mind about it and then I would like to even point it out and say. Do you know what he just said? He would laugh because he knew that I knew that he was trapped like you were just contradicting yourself but you also hear it in the lyrics like he could leave and I don't know. you know, they made the documentary about him, that was good, the documentary was a good idea of ​​where he was, which one, where his mind was, um Stunt Montage, I remember Devil Montage, the tape he made, my brother remembers it too, we could quote that. we heard that so many I mean the small the small samples he was this avant-garde artist and he used to make these collages collages of like seconds it was crazy he was a great painter a great musician a sculptor like me I have this pipe that he made out of clay and It's like a withering Spirit, a tortured Spirit person, of course, it's all this strange and dark and twisted, and just, wow, and then all of a sudden you're on the cover, like all these magazines, it's like you guys, guys.

Like you guys got shot with a cannon, we got shot with a cannon and like we were on a wall, I had a wall or something, it's like what is this world we're in and then he had his thing. to deal with that drug intake and that's what brought him down, he just couldn't, it was too powerful, it just should have never happened, Kim, so you guys have this massive record, a super unknown record that came out and it's Melancholy, this is Melancholy Melancholy. definitely a little psychedelic in this business Leslie, what role are you playing here?

What's that? What role are you playing here? Which part yeah, we're trying to figure out? I've been asked that a lot recently and you scream, I think it's really weird. I remember learning the arpeggio parts, but I remember not feeling comfortable playing it because it was atypical in the way I played. I remember, I think I remember following him, but I think I remember saying to Chris, what did you just do? It shows and I'll come in with the heavy guitar, that's me there and I also had resistance. It seemed like it sounded like a group of fairies dancing.

You know, in something. I remember hearing him thinking. I think it's too delicate, it's like it's the right hand of the piano, it's like you know what it was, it was too tinkly and I was like and Chris played hard on this demo so I'm learning it and it's like I'm doing it. I love arpeggios, all our first things were writing arpeggios and these are like little triplets of arpeggios and I think I can't do it like that, the Leslie sound and really clean, it was too, too delicate, you know, I'm going to break this. I can't do this and it's okay to this day I can't remember uh according to Adam Casper I'm on it I'm on the intro of the follow up um but I think Chris I think I said why don't you play this and I'll play the distorted guitar and I'll go into the verses so you could hear me in the courses and the bridges and stuff because I changed some things that Chris had written um uh, I moved some of the chords around so they sounded a little more like Sunset and you play this crazy solo there and then the weird solo and part of itself and then there is the second solo, but it is not really a solo.

I accented the vocals, um, so I know this for sure, although that slide at the beginning is Chris, none of us knew how to play the slide and, uh, I could, I could mute the strings other than the ones I'm sliding on, I could just mute them with my right hand uh Chris couldn't do either so he removed all the strings except one so it's on one string and this e because uh that's when the difficulty with playing slide is making sure that you're not playing the whole damn thing, um, I was able to do it with my right hand and not my left, so I know I remember I remember watching him just take a guitar string and just play that when he wrote that song, he came and played the demo for you guys, yeah, and it was almost exactly the same response we had with this multi-teen Spirit that we played. and Matt just Matt heard it and said oh yeah that's a hit and it was obvious to everyone this was obvious to me and yet there's that resistance, it's like loud guitars, you know, distortion madness, you know and listen .

That one, oh yeah, the hero walked in, but we're probably rehearsing in a big place and the hero heard a demonstration of what we were doing and started laughing. I said Bed Echoes pointing to the cassette and saying that about Smells Like Teen Spirit. and it was a hero saying that's your success, that's your success, the hero who is also very, you know, alternative, cynical and a smart guy and now he laughs and looks at us, that's your success and Ben started laughing, He says "Oh my God, I can't." I think we're doing something so sweet, but he's like, "You know," it's like he knows this is cool, this is a great song, but the same thing as laughing like we're doing this, this is an interesting song because of everyone. the changes it has yes, more than the typical indie rock song oh my god this is so sophisticated the arrangement is very sophisticated the arrangement but the chord progression is so sophisticated that it keeps changing Keys now this is something that the two bands share and I'm always preaching this about your bands is how sophisticated your music was even though you have this punk rock ethic these indie rock influences things like that these songs like Lithium, for example, or Drain You, they have all these chord changes, really sophisticated melodies, the melody just smells like a teenager.

The spirit is very sophisticated, the notes that Kurt goes to in the chord progressions of this song, a lot of your songs have very sophisticated rhythms, they have sophisticated chord changes, all the weird tunings, but this song is crazy, it's all over the place and yet it's so Melodic and that's what both bands share, these sophisticated songs, you don't even realize how complex they are unless you really sit down and analyze, it's not free Prague, although it's not , at the service of the earth, always at the service, that is what starts from the arpeggio in verse.

I still can't believe he wrote that on the guitar, it sounds like something someone would write on the piano, right? And those are the things that most of us wrote on the guitar, except Hero Run on the bass, um, so there was always a guitar riff, occasionally Chris would have a melody in his head or imagine, you know, you know a lot of it. a song, usually when you're driving, you hum something, I think and I'm not sure I don't remember our conversations about this because there are so many different conversations we would have about songs and our memories change, you know, it's what do you emphasize in your memory about writing a song? song or learning a song, but that doesn't sound like something That would have started on guitar like a lot of our riffs, but with Chris I would often start things from the vocal melody and then figure out what the chords around it were, which is yes, which is much harder to do.

Yeah, but he was able to do that because he knew where the melody was and he would listen to it and then he and you would pick up the guitar and find out if the guitar was changing the melody that he had in his head and then he knew that wasn't working, so Now he realized what he thought about that song. Well, he didn't comment on her. You know he would write. I mean, he'd play you a demo. I would tell you? Hey look at this. song, he didn't because he didn't want to influence, you know, our opinions and he wouldn't let our opinions, you know, he wouldn't let that get him down, like we don't like something, he likes it, it's okay because it's becoming much more. prolific, so if you only had one or two songs and we thought, well, we don't like it very much, we don't feel like playing them, it might put him off, but if he does, he learned this from Andy Wood, um, who was his roommate for At one time, Andy, the singer of other Love Boats, did, and Andy told him that Chris wondered how Andy could put out so much material that he was constantly writing and recording songs, and a lot of them were terrible, but not Andy.

I don't care, it's like just writing this document, I'm just outlining this demo and he explained to Chris that it's okay, the band is going to like everything you know and I'm not going to like everything, but he just you will like it. Writing it, I would record it and Chris learned it from him. They were probably the smartest things Chris did. He became super prolific. You know, that's when he found out that Andy passed away and he and he started writing his ass and then you. I know Temple, the dog, and, uh, and then things like a rusty cage, so he wouldn't let that get him down anymore, he kind of learned that from Andy, they like cool, they like it if they don't like cool . there are other songs, it's okay, he trusted our judgment for the most part and didn't let that inhibit him, he would just keep writing it's like they don't want to do it, we won't do it, it's okay, it's not our thing.

Okay, so what would Kurt think about what Kurt thought about Smells Like Teen Spirit oh don't ask him, he would say oh, I don't know, I can't speak for Kurt, I mean, he's made statements about that or there, the way the record was mixed or whatever I don't agree with, I think the record sounds great, the record sounds amazing, we went in, we recorded, we were going to mix with Butch and then Butch wanted to take a few days off to rest your ears. but then the recording lasted a few days and he had to start mixing right away, so we went to this mixing studio and then Gary Gersh, who hired us, didn't really think they wouldn't do it.

I really like the mixes and you can hear Butch's mixes like on the box yeah that's fine for with the lights out you know if anyone wants is interested so Gary recommended that we try another mixer and it was Andy Wallace so Which, wow, who is it? Andy Wallace likes to mix Slayer. Actually, he was more asking what I thought of it as a song and what I thought of these things as songs, just like I asked him about Chris Smells Like Teen Spirit, yeah, you know, we were in that dynamic out loud. you know, you come in, okay, let's go in with a base that you know on the battery and let's just build it and then we build it and then, you know, throw it away, boom, find the lights out, you know what I mean, that's right that's right. like us it seemed to work and we like that, you know, and we heard that others like Pixies would do that and Surfer Rosa that they would have that kind of thing and you know, we almost liked it and it was kind of Pavlovian with the live audience in those days too, you know, when you played that chorus, everyone would crowd around, yes, only the dog was salivating, it was just crowds that went crazy, you know well, there is a video of the first time we played that song at the OK. hotel and it was just a crazy house and they had never heard the song before, yeah, they had never heard the song before, people are crazy, so there's something about that dynamic, you know, you have Dave, he played the bass drum and Kurt is so intense.

You know, and just like Bang Bang, it all came together, you know, I try to keep the foundation stable, just keep it stable, I try to be reliable, you know,