Free 27: Kurt Cobain by Chris Salewicz

Savage, ‘because a lot of it had to do with the fact that we were playing a lot of these festivals in the daytime. There’s nothing more boring than doing that. The audiences are massive and none of them care what band is up on stage. I was just getting over my drug addiction, or trying to battle that, and it was just too much. For the rest of the year I kept going back and forth between wanting to quit and wanting to change our name, cos I still really enjoy playing with Chris and Dave and I couldn’t see us splitting up because of the pressures of success. It’s just pathetic, you know: to have to do something like that. I don’t know if there is much of a conscious connection between Chris and Dave and I, when we play live. I don’t usually even notice Chris and Dave: I’m in my own world. I’m not saying it doesn’t matter whether they’re there or not, that I could hire studio musicians or something. I know it wouldn’t be the same.’
    The next Brazil show was in Rio de Janeiro a week later: Kurt opened the performance with a few lines from Electric Light Orchestra’s ‘Telephone Line’. Kurt, who had had a row with Courtney, had been threatening to jump out of a high window of his hotel. Eventually the tour manager found Kurt a hotel with a room on the ground floor, which was a dosshouse compared to the palatial five-star hotel into which he had been booked.
    In their time off between the two Brazilian shows, the three group members were supposed to be working on new songs, sessions already having been booked for recording a new album. After his first night in his down-at-heel hotel, Kurt showed up the next day at the demo studio in Rio, ready to work. He had with him the first version of a new song, ‘Heart-Shaped Box’, which they played at the Rio show on 23 January, along with another newie, ‘Scentless Apprentice’.
    Kurt was insisting that the new album would be entitled
I Hate Myself and I Want to Die
. Several times in his journals he had written this phrase. ‘When Kurt used to come out with that I Hate Myself and I Want to Die stuff,’ said Jon Savage, ‘people would completely miss his sense of humour. He was being very ironic: I asked him about this when I interviewed him.’
    On Valentine’s Day, 1993, Nirvana journeyed to Pachyderm Studios, in woodland near tiny Cannon Falls in Minnesota, to begin recording their new album. The facility had been selected by Nirvana’s record company for its pastoral isolation – one that would hopefully ensure the absence of negative characters. Steve Albini, former member of Big Black, a major influence on Kurt, was producing: Kurt loved some of his other productions, notably the Pixies’
Surfer Rosa
and the Breeders’
Pod
.
    After six days, the group had down the basic tracks. The entire album took half as long as
Nevermind
to make. Among the songs were ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ and ‘Pennyroyal Tea’, ‘two of Nirvana’s most accomplished works,’ according to Charles R. Cross. [43] Yet Courtney Love’s own, tighter lyrical writing had clearly influenced her husband. Over subsequent weeks, the
I Hate Myself and I Want to Die
title was changed, first to
Verse, Chorus, Verse
, and then to
In Utero
, a line from a poem by Courtney.
    In March 1993 Kurt and Courtney moved into a relatively modest rented house at 11301 Lakeside Avenue NE in Seattle, as the house they had bought was several months from being ready to live in. To get around the city, Kurt bought a grey 1986 Volvo 240DL, stylish and safe.
    A social worker from Los Angeles flew up to Seattle and declared herself satisfied that Frances was being cared for correctly. But the controversy over Kurt and Courtney’s child’s custody had cost almost a quarter of a million dollars in legal fees. Inevitably, there was a problem with nannies. Unable to cope with the