User:Ceoil/Grunge

Days and Nights of Nostalgia: Everett True's Diary of Change, Grunge, and Shameful Self-Promotion
Everett True, The Stranger, 15 March 2001

THE STRANGER'S cantankerous former music editor Everett True recently returned from London to revisit his salad days in Seattle. Herewith is the record of his observations of how low Seattle has sunk in his two-year absence.

DAY 1. I don't expect much from the town. I know everyone will still not be on speaking terms with everyone else. I know Seattle has gotten richer, more smug, and more corpulent, even accounting for the recent dot-com recession. I know that it's a town of winners, among whom some of my friends still drink uneasily. The Kingdome has imploded, but I always suspected it was too good to be true. Belltown has turned into Ballard, which has turned into Capitol Hill. Nothing changes. Upon checking in with your lovely immigration people, I inform the official I am traveling to the United States on work-related matters – here to finish writing a book on grunge music, a sound that I believe the Northwest was once familiar with. I am told that this cannot be considered legitimate work, and I'm forced to reenter all my particulars on a tourist visa. In the evening, I eat spaghetti in Ballard, in the company of a farting pug puppy, and discuss politics.

DAY 2. Sub Pop Records now resides at a smart condo in Belltown. I remember a story that producer Steve Fisk told me years ago, of how a friend got mugged by three crack whores a couple of blocks away from his Belltown studio, and I sigh nostalgically. Everything glistens, even the patrons' teeth. A colleague of general manager Megan Jasper hands me a printout of her original "Lexicon of Grunge" – a parody of media hype she once invented off the top of her head for The New York Times. Even now, phrases like "lamestain" (an uncool person) and "bound and hagged" (staying home on a Saturday night) make me chuckle.

Up to Capitol Hill where, I'm informed, the KFC near the offices of The Stranger no longer stocks its delicious chicken pot pie. Perhaps this is deliberate misinformation. I have no way of ascertaining the truth, because I seem to have left my Seattle street legs back in England.

DAY 3. This damn book is depressing me. Everywhere, people tell me sad tales of heroin and rock music. For relief I recount my last e-mail interchange with Courtney Love – I sent her a note asking, "Can you recall any anecdotes involving me and you back in the day, because I'm damned if I can remember any," and she wrote back and said, "I'll try, but as I remember it, I was the rock star and YOU were the journalist." So I shot back, "You have so got it the wrong way 'round." Everyone nods their heads and laughs because I am so droll.

But hey! I'm telling the truth.

Steve Fisk is excited to learn that I have a song called 'Ellensberg' (a tribute to Some Velvet Sidewalk) on my new record. Charles Peterson shows me photos of girls in Vietnam. We visit Hattie's Hat together to find ace sardonic commentator Peter "Grunge" Bagge. A man greets me by name at the door: the same man who once tried to set a lawyer on me at The Stranger and who now wants nothing more from life than to give me his new CD. His name is Joe Skyward Bass (Posies, Sunny Day Really Lame). I leave the CD in a telephone booth.

Later, I am talked into seeing a photo exhibition at the EMP – a place I had not visited before – and am horrified. I cannot laugh. Even a week later, I cannot laugh. First, the people. There's nothing as objectionable as collections of rich Americans being self-congratulatory (take it from a representative of the rest of the world). The much-vaunted funk ride turns out to be two parts lecture, one part bad Disneyland. Despite Peter "Grunge" Bagge's efforts, I refuse to be drawn into the Guitar Room. Guitars encapsulate everything I despise about rock music.

I enjoy the Sonics exhibit, relish those smart jazz posters, and am shocked beyond repair at the '90s/present-day stuff. Get out your walker, Grampa, and wave it in the air – we've finally made it into a museum! Why does everyone feel this need for validation, for approval from peers they'd probably hate if they ever met? I see moving pictures of my friends from Olympia talking to the Man and think, "You scum." No joke. I see ticket stubs... like that always was the most important part of seeing a show. I see T-shirts, fanzines, posters, records, and I realize that, that's right, we never did have any individuality when we were young. I'm surprised there isn't a Danny Goldbert Memorial Urinal Deodorizer Puck: He's such a great man.

You know that guitar sculpture out in the hall? Best use for them.

Afterward, we see Calvin Johnson doing a very good impersonation of Calvin Johnson onstage at a club they once called the Off Ramp. Peter "Grunge" Bagge wants to heckle with a snappy cry of "wrap it up," but doesn't for fear of upsetting lanky rock star Krist Novoselic, who is standing near us. A woman with hard eyes named Angel asks our names and blanks "Grunge" Pete straight out when she discovers he isn't part of the Northwest's rock cognoscenti.

DAY 4. In the toilets at the Rendezvous, next to Roq la Rue where Fantagraphics is holding an exhibition of comic art, two guys are pissing in the sink and a half-naked girl is dry-humping another guy having a piss in the porcelain. I sit back down, and a boxer has done a neat switch on my beer, leaving me with nothing to wash down my drain-cleaning whiskey. Cartoonist Jim Blanchard smokes a big cigar, and I talk drivel with the chap responsible for Doofus. Why does Seattle hold some of its most talented citizens (the cartoonists) in such low regard? These pieces would go for three times as much in the U.K., and we'd be grateful. Behind Joanne Bagge, an 80-year-old pimp in full regalia buys three corn-fed girls a beer, and introduces himself. They look scared and confused, not a good combination.

Good to see Belltown hasn't changed too much.

DAY 5. At lunch time, we take Bill Speidel's Two-Minute Seattle Underground Tour in Pioneer Square. (Back in the U.K., we call these places "basements," or perhaps "cellars.") The Californian tour guide is excited to find I'm from England, and asks if I've read any Harry Potter books. Yes, and I like the Beatles, too.

In the Cha Cha before a nostalgically bowel-churning Mudhoney/Bob Whittaker floor show, Stranger publisher Tim Keck announces, "Hey, I'm loaded," and buys the entire Latin Quarter a round of swabbies (Captain Morgan and 7 UP). I suggest several ideas for an English cookery column for the Portland Mercury: "Cooking with Grease," "The Three-Day Boil Fest," "Cool Gruel," "Fry That!" and "Smashed Pea Parfait." A few days later, someone will tell an obscene story involving a Cha Cha bartender, a tampon, and a chili pepper. I have no way of ascertaining if this tale is common knowledge. My Seattle street legs are still back in England.

DAY 6. My book editor refuses to let me call Calvin a "sexy retard." We settle for "sexy special person" instead.

DAY 7. In Second Time Around yesterday I bought double Christmas albums of both Death Row and the Osmonds for under 10 bucks for the pair. ($9.49 was spent on Death Row.) Score! Monday is spent traveling around art galleries and stonecutters in the company of fab Olympian paper-cut artist Nikki McClure. We eat a cheap Indian meal near Pioneer Square and are dismayed when the saffron turns out to be food coloring. A local journalist asks me why Nirvana favored my company over that of respected, "proper" writers – perhaps it was my giant dick – and inquires as to whether I've ever had sex with a certain Stranger critic. I mishear the question, and thus my answer is more amusing.

Peter "Grunge" Bagge shows me his Murray Wilson "Rock and Roll Dad" animated cartoon on www.icebox.com, and we both laugh copiously. Good to meet an artist who appreciates his own work.

DAY 8. The Sonics whup the Lakers by a 10-point advantage as we whack our whackers enthusiastically in the back row. Two questions. One: Why do the video screens show the action smaller than in real life? Whose idea was it to pick Chewbacca as the team mascot? Also: Where are the Tin Pan Alley team songs sung lustily and lewdly like gay Welsh male voice choirs before and after every game? Don't you think that would be immeasurably preferable to the 'Star-Spangled Banner'?

On the way past the $5 colas at the KeyArena exit, it strikes me that the EMP could benefit from being turned into a musical theme park (à la the Funk Blast). Like on the grunge ride, you could slip down the Space Needle into the bloodstream of Seattle rock music and mainline direct to the source.

DAY 9. There was a great lost movie showing in town at the EMP tonight, and only about a dozen of you Yankee assholes turned up to see it: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains. Okay, good call on the EMP boycott, but nil points on the taste-o-meter. YOU NEED THIS FILM! Fabulous Stains premiered in Denver, to no avail, and was never given a release even on video. After 20 years it has attained a cult status, through grrrl fanzines and a couple of arbitrary late-night TV screenings. Patrons of the film include Courtney Love, Tobi Vail, and Jon Bon Jovi – that's some patronage! It also happens to be the best damn rock movie ever.

Fabulous Stains is a post-punk (1981), proto-riot-grrrl movie featuring a couple of former Sex Pistols, Fee Waybill (who was also featured in Xanadu, the second-best rock movie ever), and a whole cast of sassy, disaffected girls. The movie starts with a girl flipping off her boss – she's in a band (which hasn't rehearsed) – and the whole thing snowballs from there, through scarily prescient Go-Go's-style MTV videos and staged riots. The Stains' slogan is "We don't put out," while lecturing gormless Midwestern girls and wearing see-through tops. Of course, the singer fucks the cute Brit boy at the first opportunity.

Favorite line (Stains singer to cynical Brit punk): "You're an old man in a young girl's world."

DAY 10. See a tiny slice of Seattle's heritage preserved among the offices of a Canadian Internet company on the 11th floor of the Terminal Sales Building: a four-foot-wide strip of graffiti from the old Sub Pop bathroom. The nice man babysitting the plush surroundings explains that he's a Screaming Trees fan, and quizzes us closely as to what scenes of debauched mayhem might have taken place on the very spot he's now standing. We tell him that we don't know what the hell he's talking about, we're sure.

Decide I should record a punk rock album in Olympia on Saturday – depending on whether or not my chums show. Now that's punk.

Later, see a scary man with a mutoid guitar/Casio keyboard scream schizophrenic songs of alienation and bondage to his three robot pals at the Crocodile. No one tries to engage me in a triple tongue-kiss, and I start to wonder if this town has lost its edge. Maybe it's me, losing my alcohol. My mother phones to say my cat of 14 years is dying from cancer. Decide to dedicate a Dusty Springfield song to it this weekend.

DAY 11. Cadge a lift to Olympia direct from the stonecutters. Endless cars rest sullenly underneath the mystical mountain. I glance back at Seattle's skyline and note that it's smudged over, like a graying, decaying print of the Emerald City.

Extract from Nirvana: The True Story (Omnibus Press)
Everett True, Nirvana: The True Story (Omnibus), 2006

No music writer in the world was closer to Nirvana than Melody Maker's Everett True, who saw them perform on over 70 occasions, interviewed them at length many times and is generally credited with having introduced them to UK fans.

His book Nirvana: The True Story is an incisive re-evaluation of a band that has been repeatedly misrepresented, and it takes issue with existing biographies on the band. A personal friend of many of the stars of grunge, True knows all the stories behind the myths and in Nirvana: The True Story his fly-on-the-wall reportage opens up the group as never before. He tells what happened to Cobain in Olympia, Seattle and elsewhere, offers an eyewitness account of how Kurt first met Courtney and comprehensively covers the music, the parties, the live dates, the friends and the drug dealers surrounding the grunge explosion.

The highlight of the following extract is the infamous encounter between Kurt Cobain and Axl Rose of Guns N'Roses at the 1992 MTV Music Awards.



AFTER READING, Nirvana returned to the US – Kurt returned to detox, this time at Exodus at Marina Del Ray, and Kurtney agreed to submit urine samples for drug testing as part of their ongoing battle to have Frances Bean returned. Kurt wrote Courtney several rambling, self-hating letters from hospital, despising himself for being so stupid as to become an addict, denying that he ever was an addict, blaming everything on his stomach, covering his letters with candle wax and blood. Sometimes, he was poetic – "I'm speechless, I'm toothless. You pull wisdom from my tooth. You give me girth and dentures and fangs" – and sometimes, he was pleading. The treatment worked, albeit temporarily – Kurt shifted his dependency onto other drugs, barbiturates. It wouldn't last long.

On September 8, Kurt was talked into signing a waiver releasing him from hospital for MTV's Video Music Awards. No one who was cool gave a shit for them, but Nirvana's management were concerned there'd be a knock-on effect if this band that MTV had so slavishly championed over the past year didn't show up – Nirvana were nominated for four awards – so Kurt reluctantly agreed to attend.

Some people felt Kurt was being hypocritical in his public distaste for MTV – Danny Goldberg, for one. "Kurt had a strong sense of achievement," his former manager says. "He kept careful track of how many times Nirvana videos were played on MTV compared with Pearl Jam when there was that rivalry going on, for example. MTV wanted him to do an awards show but he hated the whole idea of MTV – but if he'd wanted to say no, no one could've made him do it. He hated having to suck up to MTV but didn't want to pay the price for not sucking up to them. It's not like he accidentally became famous. He carefully planned it out. But the self-imposed pressure to maintain success didn't make him happy. A lot of artists find the baggage accompanying fame weird and uncomfortable."

Even at the rehearsals for the awards, controversy engulfed Nirvana. Kurt wanted to play the haunting 'Rape Me'. MTV were outraged – the station wasn't about innovation or spontaneity, but consolidation. They wanted a hit, nothing less. Plus, the executives felt the song was somehow directed at them, even though it was written in late 1990.

MTV refused point blank to let Nirvana perform the song. Nirvana refused point blank to perform. So MTV started getting heavy with the band: first, they threatened to boycott Gold Mountain's other acts such as Sonic Youth and Beastie Boys. Next, they threatened to fire Amy Finnerty, an employee that Nirvana liked.

"There was this weird standoff where, all of a sudden, they realised MTV might have them in a headlock," explains Earnie Bailey. "My feeling was, 'Do you really think that they would blacklist you like that? Are you convinced that they would try to take out the biggest non-industry band in the world?'"

In the event, a totally scouring version of 'Lithium' was played, Kurt choirboy cute in his cropped blonde hair, cardigan and Daniel Johnston T-shirt, kids tentatively stagediving off the stage (probably prompted by an MTV exec, ever mindful of the need for the illusion of rebellion and chaos). First, though, Kurt nearly gave MTV kittens as he sung the opening lines of 'Rape Me' accompanied by desultory strumming, Krist flashing the devil sign. As engineers raced across to the control truck to switch to a commercial, Kurt launched into the new single, feverish and mischievous. MTV might have got their way but Nirvana had scored a tiny moral victory. It was a great performance.

At the song's end, Krist hurled his bass into the air and it hit him square on the forehead, concussing him as he staggered off stage. Kurt clambered over the drums while Dave, almost demented, grabbed the mic and shouted, "Hi Axl, where's Axl, hi Axl?"

Dave's improvised speech was a reference to an incident that had happened minutes before, involving the pompous Guns N' Roses singer and his LA hair rock band. Bad blood had been simmering for months, ever since Axl Rose had requested Nirvana play his 30th birthday party in the wake of Nevermind, and Nirvana had treated the request with the scorn it deserved. Next, Guns N' Roses tried to get Nirvana as their opening band for their 1992 spring tour – what were they thinking? Guns N' Roses were a trad rock band that stood for everything Kurt – and more particularly – his adopted hometown of Olympia despised. Why the fuck would Nirvana be interested in associating with them? As Kurt later explained to gay magazine, The Advocate, "Ever since the beginning of rock'n'roll there's been an Axl Rose. And it's just boring, it's totally boring to me."

Still, Axl was a fan; and rebuffed, decided to take the high moral ground, publicly dismissing Kurt from onstage in Florida a week before the Music Awards as a "fucking junkie with a junkie wife. If the baby's been born deformed," he ranted, "I think they both ought to go to prison." The fact that Axl had clear feelings of inferiority towards Kurt and Nirvana was betrayed by his very next sentence: "He's too good and too cool to bring his rock'n'roll to you, because the majority of you he doesn't like or want to play to..."

So when Axl and his girlfriend, model Stephanie Seymour, bumped into Kurt and Courtney backstage, fireworks followed – "Hey Axl," Courtney called out, spotting the pair. "Will you be the godfather of our child?" Rose ignored her and turned to Kurt, who was cuddling Frances: "You shut your bitch up or I'm going to knock you to the pavement." Deadpan, Kurt turned to Courtney and said, "Shut the fuck up, bitch". There was a momentary silence as people figured out what he was doing and then snickers of laughter could be heard. Trying to save her partner's face Seymour turned to Love and asked, "Are you a model?" Courtney immediately fired back, "No. Are you a brain surgeon?" Axl and Stephanie stormed off, humiliated.

"That Axl throw-down was one of the funniest things I ever saw," chuckles Janet Billig. "Axl had no comeback at all."

"My first US show with Nirvana was the MTV Music Awards," states Earnie Bailey. "I was in the food tent in the middle of a football field, right before their performance. Right in front of me is [mawkish female trio] Wilson Phillips, behind me is Elton John, and we're all holding paper plates. Everyone's sporting the big hairdos and shoulder pads and then there's us, Nirvana, and we look like the ones emptying the trash: T-shirts and tennis shoes. People were looking at us almost frightened, like we were people to watch out for.

"I sat down on a plastic cooler because most of the seats were filled up," the guitar tech continues, "and a woman came in and asked if she could sit down next to me. It was Annie Lennox. And I thought, 'Wow, I'm sitting on a cooler with Annie Lennox, eating my lunch'. And that's when the whole scene with Axl and his girlfriend played out in front of us. It was nuts.

"At the actual taping, Krist near knocked himself out and we couldn't find him afterwards. We were worried he'd done himself harm. So I went looking for him out at our trailer – I figured he was probably there duct taping his head back together – when Kurt came in, laughing his ass off. He told me he'd spit across the keys of Axl's piano as he left the stage. So we're laughing about that, watching the ceremony on TV, when these two pianos come up and Kurt goes, 'Oh fuck, I spat on Elton's piano by accident'."

Guns N' Roses' behaviour helped put Kurt's simmering feud with Pearl Jam (who were also present) into some perspective. Later that evening, Kurt grabbed hold of Eddie Vedder and slow-danced with the Pearl Jam singer to the strains of Eric Clapton singing 'Tears In Heaven'. "You're a respectable human even if your band does suck," Kurt told him. For, as Kurt explained afterwards, "There are plenty of other more evil people out there in the world."

"I think that was the show where [Courtney's half-sister] Jamie was pretty focused on having Danny [Goldberg] introduce her to Whitney Houston," laughs Rosemary Carroll. "She was very excited at Whitney's presence. To her, that was a real star."

For their Best Alternative Music Video Award, Nirvana sent up a Michael Jackson impersonator to accept the plaudits, relinquishing his 'King of Pop' nomenclature for the 'King of Grunge'. A nonplussed audience failed to applaud. "A lot of it had to do with the fact they'd taken Michael Jackson off the top of the charts [with Nevermind]," explains Billig. "But no one got Kurt's joke."

Guns N' Roses weren't quite finished, however:

"At one point Krist and I were walking out from the main building to our trailer and [Guns N' Roses bassist] Duff McKagan approaches us," recalls Bailey. "He's got several body guards with him, and one person in his entourage was videotaping, like he's making a Guns N' Roses movie. Duff comes up to Krist and announces, 'I hear you've been talking shit about my band' and Krist tells him that he hadn't said anything about his band. But Duff keeps going on about it and so Krist says flat out to him, 'Obviously, you're trying to provoke me into a fight so you can film it for your Guns N' Roses fan movie, and I could easily kick your ass but then you'd have four of your bodyguards kick the shit out of me – so let's walk over behind these two buses there and it'll be you and me. I'll be more than happy to take you on'. And Duff was like, 'No, right here, right now'. And there's no way... I mean Krist is like Paul fucking Bunyan [legendary giant lumberjack], and Duff was very thin and smelled like he was liquored up. So nothing happened. We walked on, laughing at how absurd it was."

"During the MTV Awards, we stayed at the Hyatt House on Sunset," reveals Earnie. "It was wild. [Legendary Fifties wild man rocker/preacher dude] Little Richard lived on the top floor – and Dave ran into him at the bar. We were up at the pool that Zeppelin had haunted. Barrett [Jones, drum tech] and I flew out immediately afterwards. He and I took a taxi straight to the airport and headed for Portland to set up for the 'No on 9' benefit."

The show was a protest against Oregon State's Initiative 9, an attempt by conservatives to limit homosexual rights. Helmet, megalithic punks Poison Idea and spiky all-female Portland group Calamity Jane were also on the bill, with Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra MC-ing. But even in Portland, Nirvana couldn't escape Guns N' Roses fans: "I said something about Guns N' Roses from onstage," Kurt told The Advocate. "Nothing nasty – I think I said, 'And now, for our next song, 'Sweet Child O' Mine' [Guns N' Roses' phenomenally successful ballad]. But some kid jumped onstage and said, 'Hey, man, Guns N' Roses plays awesome music, and Nirvana plays awesome music. Let's just get along and work things out, man!'

"And I couldn't help but say, 'No, kid, you're wrong. Those people are total sexist jerks, and the reason we're playing this show is to fight homophobia in a real small way. The guy is a fucking sexist and a racist and a homophobe, and you can't be on his side and be on our side. I'm sorry that I have to divide this up like this, but it's something you can't ignore. And besides they can't write good music.'"

The next night, Nirvana played the 16,000-seater Seattle Centre Coliseum with Helmet and Fitz Of Depression – the same venue that Krist had been thrown out, April 1991. It was another benefit, this time to fight a Washington State music censorship bill: an innocuous enough cause, but Kurt started to receive death threats for his pro-gay and pro-choice stances. The management brought a metal detector in, and he was warned he'd be shot if he stepped on stage.

"It was a great show," says Rocket journalist Gillian G Gaar. "The entire floor was a big moshpit and the fans were just leaping around, leaping around, leaping around. I was thrilled to be a part of it. It was the first time since [female-fronted AOR chart group] Heart that I'd seen a Seattle band that was that popular."

"I recall them smashing up their instruments at early Vogue shows when they couldn't afford to, and I was in such awe," says Rob Kader. "You could tell that it was unplanned and spontaneous – and it felt right. Later on, it felt like they were going through the motions. They'd always switch to a cheap Mexican or Japanese strat beforehand. That Coliseum show was the last time I saw them smash up their gear where it felt true and spontaneous."

Kurt's dad showed up, alongside Kurt's half-brother Chad: Don bluffed his way past security by showing his driver's licence, and there was an awkward moment backstage where Don confronted the son he hadn't seen for seven years. Also present was Wendy, Kurt's mom, and Kim, Kurt's sister, plus Courtney and Frances Bean – neither of whom Don had met before. Eighteen years had elapsed since Wendy and Don had divorced, and the reunion wasn't friendly – both sides sniped at each other about their age. Kurt told his dad to shut up, and Kim and Wendy soon left. Many folk suspected that Don was only making contact because he was after money, but Kurt was cool about it – or so he told British journalist Jon Savage in 1994.

"I was happy to see him because I always wanted him to know that I didn't hate him anymore," he said – echoing a line from 'Serve The Servants', the first song on In Utero: "I just want you to know that I/Don't hate you anymore."

"On the other hand, I didn't want to encourage our relationship because I didn't have anything to say to him. My father is incapable of showing much affection, or even of carrying on a conversation. I didn't want to have a relationship just because he was my blood relative. It would bore me."

"That show had an incredible destruction scene at the end," smiles Earnie. "It began when Kurt approached the amp cabinets that were in front of my work station, so I cleaned up all my stuff, and sure enough he toppled these two top cabinets over onto what would have been my area, and then he went over to a second bank of amps and tipped them over front ways on top of the guitar and then climbed back on top of the cabinet and rocked the cabinet on top of the guitar and got it to make these amazing sounds by squishing the cabinet on the strings... and just when you think the guitar is finished, it's not, he's got a long way to go with it. He dismantled it slowly, over the course of what seemed like about 15, 20 minutes – and it was still plugged in. It was awesome. They systematically threw every drum at Kurt, and Kurt was handling his guitar like a baseball bat."

It was time for Kurtney to return to Seattle. They kept their LA apartment for a while, but purchased a house in the country, in Carnation, 30 miles outside Seattle, for $300,000. The house needed a lot of work done to it – "I don't think anyone spent a whole lot of time there," comments Rosemary Carroll – so the couple spent the last few months of 1992 moving from one four-star Seattle hotel to the next, with their entourage in tow. Wherever they went, they left cigarette burns in the sheets and the carpets.

"I went to that house once," comments Michael Lavine. "He was there, and Kevin Kerslake and Courtney. Nothing was there. It was empty, with a Hotwheels circuit in the middle of the floor, boxes of stuff from Europe, pictures and underwear, and the kitchen covered with junk food. That was it."

"I saw Star Pimp at the Colour Box in October 1992," recalls James Burdyshaw. "Kurt and Courtney were there, trying to look inconspicuous... well, he was trying to look inconspicuous. I was in line for a beer and she was right in front of me, checking out the crowd, like 'Oh, nobody I really care about is here'. I said hello to Kurt – 'Remember me? James? I was in Cat Butt', and he was like, 'Oh yeah! How are you?' All of a sudden, the nice guy came back. We talked for a good 15 minutes, and I said that I'd heard he had a farm, and he goes, 'Well, we don't have any sheep or cows or anything like that, but we own some property.' He was real soft-spoken and then Courtney gives him a dirty look and he says, 'I gotta go now'. I shook his hand, and that was it."

Nirvana: The True Story by Everett True, Omnibus Press (636pp, available in hardback at £19.95), Omnibus Press (636pp, available in hardback at £19.95), Omnibus Press (636pp, available in hardback at £19.95)

Grunge: A Success Story
By RICK MARIN Published: November 15, 1992 WHEN did grunge become grunge? How did a five-letter word meaning dirt, filth, trash become synonymous with a musical genre, a fashion statement, a pop phenomenon?

From subculture to mass culture, the trend time line gets shorter and faster all the time. It was just over a year ago that MTV began barraging its viewers with the sounds of Seattle "grunge rock," featuring the angst anthems and grinding guitars of bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam. By last summer, the glossy magazines began tracking grunge looks, the threadbare flannel shirts, knobby wool sweaters and cracked leatherette coats of the Pacific Northwest's thrift-shop esthetic. Hollywood weighed in, too, with a grunge-scene movie, "Singles." Then two weeks ago -- all in the blink of a flashbulb -- the fashion designer Marc Jacobs, who has never even been to Seattle, was hailed as "the guru of grunge."

All this has happened before, with the mass-marketing of disco, punk and hip-hop. Now, with the grunging of America, it's happening again. Pop will eat itself, the axiom goes. Here's how it feeds:

In 1988, a fledgling Seattle record label called Sub Pop released a three-boxed set called "Sub Pop 200." It was a compilation of bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden and Mudhoney, and it came complete with a 20-page booklet packed with pictures by Charles Peterson, the photographer credited with creating grunge's hair-sweat-and-guitars look. Sub Pop also sent a catalogue to the nation's alternative-rock intelligentsia describing its bands' punk-metal guitar noise as "grunge," the first documented use of the now-ubiquitous term. "It could have been sludge, grime, crud, any word like that," said Jonathan Poneman, a Sub Pop founder.

Grunge stuck, maybe because it so vividly evoked both the black-noise sound and the smelly-caveman look. Ratty rec-room chic has been hibernating since the 70's, emerging from the basement every so often in movies like "River's Edge," "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" and "Wayne's World."

This generation of greasy Caucasian youths in ripped jeans, untucked flannel and stomping boots spent their formative years watching television, inhaling beer or pot, listening to old Black Sabbath albums and dreaming of the day they would trade in their air guitars for the real thing, so that they, too, could become famous rock-and-roll heroes.

A culture was born.

"Thrifting" is a verb in Seattle. Flannel and leatherette, the boho-hobo staples of second-hand attire, are the basics of a nonfashion statement. A flannel shirt worn around the waist is a precaution against the Pacific Northwest's mercurial clime. Army boots slog effectively through mud. "It wasn't like somebody said, 'Let's all dress like lumberjacks and start Seattle chic!' " Mr. Poneman said. "This stuff is cheap, it's durable, and it's kind of timeless. It also runs against the grain of the whole flashy esthetic that existed in the 80's."

"Kurt Cobain was just too lazy to shampoo," said Charles Cross, the editor of the Seattle music monthly The Rocket, talking about Nirvana's lead singer. Mr. Cobain's matted sheep-dog mop became a much-emulated cut when his band's first single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," hit last year. A native of Aberdeen, Wash., Mr. Cobain was also "dirt poor," Mr. Poneman said. He looked like (and was) a guy who slept on friends' couches or under a bridge, and bought his clothes at thrift shops.

Mr. Cobain has since become wealthy and married (to Courtney Love of the all-women grunge band Hole).

Nirvana's first album, "Bleach," was recorded for $606.17 in 1989. Shrewdly, Sub Pop spent more money flying in a writer from Melody Maker magazine, who carried the hype back to London. The band left the little label in early 1991 for Geffen Records.

MTV put "Smells Like Teen Spirit" into its "Buzz Bin" in September 1991. Picks & Pans in People magazine picked Nirvana's "Nevermind" album last December, and by January it was No. 1 on Billboard's pop album chart. Rolling Stone put the band on its cover in April and called Seattle "the New Liverpool."

Musically, grunge's roots lay elsewhere. In the early 80's in Minneapolis, there was the proto-grunge of Soul Asylum. Out of the Los Angeles post-punk scene came the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Nine Inch Nails and Henry Rollins, who spread their maximum-decibel gospel in the summer of '91 on the Lollapalooza tour, an alternative-rock road show. In Seattle, the movement was localized. Melodies filtered through the mist, inspired and tempered by that city's three principal drugs: espresso, beer and heroin.

"The vibe now is a little bit like the early 70's, before metal ceased to be heavy and relied on adrenaline highs as opposed to despondency," said Simon Reynolds, the author of "Blissed Out" (Serpent's Tail, 1990), a chronicle of rock subcultures. "There's a feeling of burnout in the culture at large. Kids are depressed about the future."

James Truman, the editor in chief of Details, the young men's style magazine that is taking grunge to the masses, said: "To me the thing about grunge is it's not anti-fashion, it's un fashion. Punk was anti-fashion. It made a statement. Grunge is about not making a statement, which is why it's crazy for it to become a fashion statement."

In Details' July issue, a member of a band called Firehose wrote a paean to his flannel shirt. In September, the magazine ran an article called "Nirvana-bes: A Bluffer's Guide to the New Indie-Rock Superstars." Entertainment Weekly discovered underground music in August with its "Complete (Idiot's) Guide to the Future of Rock & Roll." Vogue dispatched Steven Meisel to photograph grunge fashion in Northwest noir for its December issue. But none of this would have happened without MTV.

Not long after its debut, Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video ran four or five times a day for weeks. In October 1991, Steve Isaacs, MTV's first grunge veejay, was hired and was put into equally heavy rotation. But by last May, Pearl Jam's acoustic jam on the network's "Unplugged" show made Nirvana look like last year's model.

"We have a pretty big role in spreading something from the underground to the heartland," said John Canelli, the senior vice president of music and talent at MTV. But a band playing the heartland isn't underground anymore, which explains why, Mr. Canelli said, "we're always looking for whatever the next thing is."

MTV embodies the paradox of selling a phenomenon like grunge. When an alternative movement goes mainstream, it relinquishes its alternative credentials.

"You cross over to the point where you lose the original following," said Jay Coleman, the president and chief executive of Marketing and Communications International in New York. "But you pick up 10 times the original audience." Mr. Coleman's company marketed an alternative-music compact disk, "Stolar Tracks" (available from a "900" number), for Stolichnaya vodka, starring, among other artists, Seattle's Screaming Trees. He offered to arrange corporate sponsorship for the organizers of the second Lollapalooza tour, held last summer, but was turned down on the grounds that it would be like "sponsoring Woodstock."

By the same logic, Mr. Truman of Details thinks that "buying grunge as a package from Seventh Avenue is ludicrous." When Marc Jacobs sent out a parade of the world's most beautiful women wearing wool ski caps, unlaced combat boots, clashing prints and dirty-looking hair (styled by Oribe) for his spring Perry Ellis collection, Women's Wear Daily dubbed him "the guru of grunge." Now, Frederic Fekkai, the Manhattan stylist, says all the young models are asking him to make their lovely locks "a little more greasy-looking."

"A hippied romantic version of punk" is how Mr. Jacobs described his collection. Another W.W.D. story said the unwashed Goodwill-garb look "bombed when it was too grungy," quoting buyers' complaints about the creations of Mr. Jacobs, Anna Sui and Christian Francis Roth, who dressed for his show in a wool cap and played an electric guitar.

Cliff Pershes, an assistant designer at Perry Ellis, admitted to being influenced by grunge rock's moldy chic but insisted that he "used it in a new way." The Perry Ellis "flannel" shirt that models tied around their waists was in fact sand-washed silk. Mr. Pershes swears there's "not a drop of polyester" in the whole collection. It just looks like polyester.

A DESIGNER can steal street style and put it on the runway in the space of just one season, noted Walter Thomas, the creative director at J. Crew. "By the time you see it in Kmart, which you will, it can be three years," he said. The difference with grunge is that it was already for sale at Kmart, not to mention the Salvation Army.

Outdoorsy trading posts like L. L. Bean, Timberland and Lands' End have been flogging long johns and flannel forever. "I haven't heard it called the grunge look," said a baffled L. L. Bean spokeswoman. But notice that Timberland stock has doubled in the last year.

"The interval between something being dangerous and being normal is very short," said Mr. Reynolds, the author. And, in fact, the month that Rolling Stone put Nirvana on its cover, Weird Al Yankovic's "Smells Like Nirvana" parody video was already a hit on MTV. When Cameron Crowe shot "Singles," the members of Pearl Jam were sufficiently unknown to appear in the movie as extras. (Matt Dillon, the movie's moody leader of a garage grunge band called Citizen Dick, stereotyped their kind.) But by the time the band played the premiere party at the Plaza Hotel in September, they were rock stars.

Back in Seattle, a backlash is brewing. "All things grunge are treated with the utmost cyncism and amusement," said Mr. Poneman of Sub Pop. "Because the whole thing is a fabricated movement and always has been." The still-unfamous Seattle band Mudhoney even wrote a song about it: Everybody loves us Everybody loves our town That's why I'm Thinking of leaving it Don't believe in it now. . . It's so overblown. < HB>LEXICON OF GRUNGE: BREAKING THE CODE

All subcultures speak in code; grunge is no exception. Megan Jasper, a 25-year-old sales representative at Caroline Records in Seattle, provided this lexicon of grunge speak, coming soon to a high school or mall near you:

WACK SLACKS: Old ripped jeans

FUZZ: Heavy wool sweaters

PLATS: Platform shoes

KICKERS: Heavy boots

SWINGIN' ON THE FLIPPITY-FLOP: Hanging out

BOUND-AND-HAGGED: Staying home on Friday or Saturday night

SCORE: Great

HARSH REALM: Bummer

COB NOBBLER: Loser

DISH: Desirable guy

BLOATED, BIG BAG OF BLOATATION: Drunk

LAMESTAIN: Uncool person

TOM-TOM CLUB: Uncool outsiders

ROCK ON: A happy goodbye