By Keith Cameron (Sounds - October 1990)
If any of the US underground bands are likely to break through into the mainstream, then it’s got to be NIRVANA.
Currently being courted by eight major labels, they’ll probably take the money and flee their Sub Pop nest but they’ll be taking their dignity and powerful pop with them. Keith Cameron visits them at home in Seattle.
“One person per car! One person per car!”
Nirvana’s bassman and mild mannered lunatic Chris Novoselic is screaming his way through hell’s freeway, bumper to bumper on the Tacoma-Seattle main route, offering a side-splittingly accurate parody of the American sickness - greedy, selfish dumb-assed Republican-voting, sabre-rattling macho bullshit, all wrapped up in a smoggy petroleum haze.
Chris reckons that when the 70’s oil crisis made the traditional gas guzzlers obsolete, people over here simply compensated by having two small cars instead of one big ‘un. Husbands and wives drive into town separately. And they’re all on this freeway. Sanity’s gone out of style. “I voted last week,” says Chris, “and everything I voted for was defeated. l voted for less police station money and against adding more courtrooms. The guy I voted for, a congressman, lost big time because he’s totally anti-military. He wanted to cut the CIA budget! He’s really cool. But he lost.
They’re raring to go in the Gulf, though,Chris. “That’s gonna be great, that’s gonna be so great. And I want it to happen, I really do, cos it’s gonna throw a wrench in the works. It’s gonna be trouble. Things are too smooth.”
THEY SURE are. Right now, American rock ‘n’ roll apathy is a growth industry up there with towelhead-baiting and electoral non-turnouts.
Latest MTV gods are Nelson, the twin blonde bozos who make like the new soft rock kings but aren’t much more than the white Milli Vanilli, and Warrant, whose ‘Cherry Pie’ promo vid sets new standards in plopcore metal porn — a not inconsiderable feat.
Metal’s a formula cop-out, with the rise and rise of Faith No More sparking a host of odious “funk” crossover acts, while the noise underground remains content to pillory the on-going “sell-out” of Sonic Youth yet failing to offer anything better. Thank God, then, for the few still prepared to kick the proverbial botty with a bit of style. And although their awareness of quality control in their vocabulary could occasionally be doubted, Seattle’s Sub Pop label has breezed life back into the Yank rock scene.
Soungarden made metal fun again while proving themselves arch riffmasters before buggering off to major label luxury. Tad gave ‘heavy rock’ a novel twist and have begun to shake off the unfortunate novelty tag with music as monstrous as mainman Mr Doyle’s girth. And Mudhoney made stoopid snotrock clever once more, before cutting their hair and heading back to school.
But now we’re entitled to ask - where’s the beef? A greasy grin on a few thousand clued-in faces isn’t going to change lives, and that’s all the latest US invasion has really brought. Mudhoney are cool, funny and occasionally even turn out an inspired song but ain’t gonna make the world hold its breath for more, ain’t gonna penetrate deep into the gunked-up minds of our misspent youths. Enter Nirvana. . .
Anyone privileged enough to have attended last December’s Lamefest UK Sub Pop triple header in London will recall how the first-up Nirvana ripped the night’s glory from the hands of their more notorious neighbours Tad and Mudhoney with a slew of tunes from their debut ‘Bleach’ album.
Nirvana don’t tell jokes, don’t invite the crowd to invade the stage and don’t blatantly take the piss out of rock ‘n’ roll. Instead they burn with a wholly unpredictable intensity that sets them apart from their label’s generic sound and irreverent attitude.
With furiously catchy pop songs set to monster heavy rock riffs, Nirvana stand out. Tempers and instruments fly. They’re for real. They’re the beef.
It’s been pretty obvious for some time that if any of the emergent US underground bands are to break through into the mainstream, Nirvana will be the ones to do so. Sub Pop knows it.
LAST TIME Sounds caught up with the band was during an East Coast tour last spring, and label bosses Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman were courting CBS for a lucrative distribution deal that would catapult Sub Pop into shops all over the US. Nirvana were prime bait.
But Nirvana themselves are aware of their potential and when it became clear that Sub Pop’s flirtation with corporate compromise was not about to bear fruit they decided to cut out the middle man and take on the bad boys themselves- “We got tired of waiting,” says band leader Kurdt Kobain, “so we started looking”. Nirvana currently have eight major US labels seeking their signatures.
“It’s really not hard to keep your dignity and sign to a major label,” says Kurdt. “It shouldn’t be too hard. Most people don’t even have any dignity in the first place. Sonic Youth have been really smart about what they’re doing. They’ve had the experience of this shit for seven or eight years. I feel we’re experienced enough to deal with it now. I hope that we are. A year ago we wouldn’t even have considered signing with a major, or even looking into it.”
So what’s happened in a year?
‘lt’s hard to tell. We’re changing a little bit, we’ve been into more accessible pop styles of music for the last two years and finally we’re being able to relieve ourselves of some of that. The ‘Bleach’ album is pretty different to what we’re doing right now. So we figured we may as well get on the radio and try and make a little bit of money at it.
“I don’t wanna have any other kind of job, I can’t work among people. I may as well try and make a career out of this. All my life my dream has been to be a big rock star- just may as well abuse it while you can.”
Money, Nirvana freely admit, is the essential reason for them seeking to quit the Sub Pop nest.
They share none of Mudhoney’s political opposition to hooking up with multi-national dollar machines and cite lawyers’ bills as one of the new drains on their stretched resources.
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