Cobain started writing songs soon after picking up the guitar. His first band, a trio called Fecal Matter, did not last long. But in 1986, he and bassist Chris (later Krist) Novoselic, a friend from Aberdeen High, teamed up to form the nucleus of a band that would eventually be called Nirvana. (Cobain had wanted to call it Skid Row at one point.)
By 1987, Cobain had moved to Olympia, Washington, a college town that was somewhat more bohemian than Aberdeen and about 50 miles closer to Seattle. Acquaintances from that time recall him as a quiet, reclusive guy who mainly stayed inside the apartment he shared with his girlfriend, working on his sculptures and collages. An inveterate haunter of thrift shops and swap meets, Cobain was perpetually buying old dolls and other semi-collectible junk, much of which he used in his artwork. He applied his thrift-shop aesthetic to his guitars as well and became infamous for playing a succession of battered old pawnshop specials. But there was a practical angle to his obsession with six-string castoffs: affordable left-handed guitars are fairly hard to find and Cobain played with such angry violence that the Fender Jaguars and Jazzmasters that were his guitars of choice frequently needed replacing. (In the days before they were popularized by bands like Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr and Nirvana, Jags and Jazzmasters could be had for very reasonable prices.) Shortly before his death, Cobain designed a signature model hybrid cross between a Jaguar and a Mustang for Fender.
Early in 1988, Cobain, Novoselic and drummer Dale Crover journeyed to Seattle to make a demo at Reciprocal Recording Studios with engineer Jack Endino, an important figure at the city’s highly influential indie label, Sub Pop. The demo led to a deal with Sub Pop, and on June 11, 1988, with Chad Channing now on drums, Nirvana released its first single, “Love Buzz,” a cover of an obscure song by Shocking Blue, the early Seventies Dutch group that had had a big hit with “Venus.” A year later, Nirvana’s first album, Bleach, came out on Sub Pop.
Cobain often said in interviews that he deliberately suppressed his more melodic, quirky, “new wave” side on Bleach. (Kurt often used the term “new wave” to describe everything from the Young Marble Giants and Gang of Four to the Butthole Surfers and Scratch Acid, all groups that had greatly influenced him.) His feeling was that this sensibility didn’t really fit in with Sub Pop’s early Seventies hard rock aesthetic, as exemplified by Soundgarden and Green River, the group which later mutated into Pearl Jam.
Cobain’s musical tastes were quite a bit broader than the noisy alternative fare championed by Sub Pop and similar indie labels. But coming from the rural wastelands of a place like Aberdeen, he could see where Nirvana fit in. “We’re a perfect example of the average uneducated ‘twenty-something’ in America in the Nineties,” Cobain told Michael Azerrad. “[We’re] punk rockers who weren’t into punk rock when it was thriving. All my life, that’s been the case, because when I got into the Beatles, the Beatles had been broken up for years and I didn’t know it… Same thing with Led Zeppelin.”
But Cobain’s sense of kinship with his age group went beyond music: “My story is exactly the same as 90 percent of everyone my age,” he said. “Everyone’s parents got divorced. Their kids smoked pot all through high school, they grew up during the era when there was a massive Communist threat and everyone thought they were going to die from a nuclear war. And everyone’s personalities are practically the same.”
Cobain was a reluctant, unwilling spokesman for his generation. He was uneasy with notoriety, even the underground notoriety that Nirvana gained on the strength of Bleach and its follow-up EP, Blew, also released in 1989. On the band’s first European tour, a grueling low-budget trek with the band Tad, Cobain had what Sub Pop co-owner Bruce Pavitt has described as a nervous breakdown onstage in Rome, storming offstage, climbing into the rafters and screaming at the audience. Adding considerably to Cobain’s unhappiness was his chronic, undiagnosable stomach pain, which began shortly after his move to Olympia and would torture him for the rest of his life.
But Cobain’s existence wasn’t completely bleak. In 1990, he began a relationship with Tobi Vail, of the band Bikini Kill, a leader in the radical feminist riot grrrl movement. He apparently took his relationship seriously; by all accounts, he wasn’t much of a casual womanizer. He told Michael Azerrad that he’d slept with only two women over the course of all Nirvana’s touring. “I’ve always been old-fashioned in that respect,” he said. “I’ve always wanted a girlfriend that I could have a good relationship with for a long time. I wish I was capable of just playing the field, but I always wanted more than that.”
Nirvana’s career began to accelerate at a heady pace during 1991. In April, they went to record with producer Butch Vig at Smart Studios, his recording facility in Madison, Wisconsin. Now perhaps best known as the drummer of the band Garbage, Vig was then an up-and-coming indie producer with well-regarded records by the Laughing Hyenas, Smashing Pumpkins, Firetown, Tad and Killdozer, among others. The recording of the song “Polly” that appeared on Nirvana’s landmark Nevermind album came from the Smart sessions. Earlier versions of five other Nevermind songs—“In Bloom,” “Dive,” “Lithium,” “Breed” and “Stay Away”—were also recorded during the week-long recording project.
A month after the Smart dates, drummer Chad Channing left Nirvana. He was replaced by Dave Grohl, a hard-hitting stickman from the Washington, DC, hardcore scene. Grohl took Nirvana’s sound to a new level of intensity. Once the “classic” Nirvana lineup was in place, a significant record deal wasn’t far behind. Geffen Records had been taking an active interest in the band since April of 1990, when Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth (who’d recently signed to Geffen themselves) brought label A&R man Gary Gersh to a Nirvana show in New York. A deal was formally consummated a year later, on April 30, 1991. In May, Cobain, Novoselic and Grohl were in Los Angeles with Butch Vig, recording what was to become a landmark rock album, 1991’s Nevermind.
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