I Found My Friends (4 page)

Reciprocal Studios had definite advantages for bands just starting out, including price—Nirvana barely scraped together the $152 required.

JAIME ROBERT JOHNSON,
Crunchbird:
The first time I went over there to record, it was affordable, comfortable, and very unpretentious. I was someone with hardly any resources to generate income in those times, so that was a very important consideration.

PAUL KIMBALL,
Lansdat Blister
and
Helltrout:
Reciprocal, it was
the
place to track heavy music at the time. Jack Endino pulled folks in with all the great work he was doing for Sub Pop bands, and Chris [Hanzek] wound up doing lots of the stuff that Jack couldn't do. We didn't know either of them before we recorded there, but we knew we wanted some of that Reciprocal magic.

Nirvana would come to work with Endino more than with any other producer—an indication of how his approach and attitude set musicians at ease.

DUANE LANCE BODENHEIMER,
The Derelicts:
Most of our stuff was engineered by Jack Endino—super nice guy. Really easy to work with, put up with our crap … No attitude at all—very knowledgeable in his profession … Straightforward, precise, does everything timely … One time I recall I said I wanted to practice first, I didn't want him to record it, I wanted to practice first. He said, “All right, cool,” so I did it—and of course he recorded it and it was a great take. He just laughed—“This is it, this is the take.” He knows what he's doing. He makes you feel comfortable.

JAIME ROBERT JOHNSON:
I was a pretty squirrelly guy back when I met Jack. I didn't have the ability to sit still because I was so intense … I wanted to be in a constant state of constant creativity, whether it was working out a song by humming the chords to myself, writing poetry on the nearest piece of paper … what I liked about him was the fact he was an opposite to me in a good way, and the first thing I learned from him was how to listen to other people and how to actually hear what they were trying to communicate … If I mentioned any bands like King Crimson or brought up an artist like Frank Zappa or Ornette Coleman, he didn't judge and I didn't have to explain what I was talking about to him … When Jack said it, he said it with the authority of his expertise and (excellent) taste in music. Also, Jack knew how to do things with a guitar that I wanted to learn to do, and if you catch him in an unfettered moment, he is more than glad to share his expertise … The other thing that Jack has is this ability to tell me the unvarnished truth.

JOHN PURKEY:
When you're in the studio with him, basically … he knows when he hears a mistake and he's not going to let any mistake slip by. He's not going to be all, “Oh, how do you feel about that?” If he hears something, he'll just say “OK, let's do that again.” He's a really nice, really mellow guy.

The session created a decent-enough effort on limited time.

JACK ENDINO:
None of them were recorded or mixed with any time spent due to budget; plus, I had only been working as a recording engineer for three years at that point. The songs with Dale drumming were all mixed in a total of two hours … ten songs on the original demo … do the math. It would have been nice to remix them with some care taken … I never liked the way it sounded …

Unfortunately, the band had only limited money, which meant they couldn't finish the last song they attempted—“Pen Cap Chew”—or record two other songs that they had prepared—“Annorexorcist” and “Erectum.”

JACK ENDINO:
The multitrack master tape ran out just at the start of the second chorus, and the band didn't want to buy another reel, so more correctly the song is “permanently incomplete,” not “unfinished.” You can't finish it when a third of the song is missing. I did the fade ending for the hell of it, just so they could listen to what was there less jarringly.

That same night, back at the Community World Theater again, the band ran through all the songs they'd taped, still veering between sounds and styles.

DAVID WHITING,
Vampire Lezbos:
I felt like they were just another new band playing rock 'n' roll while periodically trying to throw in some musical elements of punk … usually the quick, faster, yelly stuff.

JOHN PURKEY:
I specifically remember when those guys played with Dale—it was just that one show, right after they recorded the demo—it was one of the most intense Nirvana shows I ever saw. I think the level of intensity with Dale helped form some of those songs—he's a really original drummer, he has his own style. I think Kurt wrote some of those songs along the lines he thought Dale could play. So when Chad [Channing] joined, he was more of a 4/4 basic drummer and that could have influenced what Kurt wrote—he would have written stuff Chad could play. And Sub Pop turned down the first album, so Kurt just wanted to be part of Sub Pop … He may have changed the sound, but I think it was more to do with the drummers he was with. He was a drummer, he played a little bit, so that could have easily been something he kept in mind, depending on who he was playing with.

Cobain's most underrated talent lay in assimilating sounds that were swirling through the underground and stamping them with his own approach.

1988 had started well. Most significantly, Jack Endino would become the band's newest champion.

JOHN PURKEY:
He was one of a handful of people who gave a shit about early Nirvana; Jack was there. He was instantly a fan—the early stuff was that good … Literally, I'd be standing next to Jack at most of the shows—two or three shows where I'd be hanging out with him … right after Nirvana had recorded their first demo with Dale I heard it. I had conversations with Jack about it and how amazing it was and then I'd see him at the shows and we'd hang out and talk.

Endino's appreciation made a lasting difference to the future of the band. He passed the tape into the hands of Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman at Seattle's upstart label Sub Pop while the band themselves continued to pass out copies to anyone who would take the time to listen.

ABE BRENNAN,
My Name:
We got into Nirvana before they put anything out via demo tapes that our friend John Purkey had—he was friends with Kurt; these were the recordings that Dale Crover … played drums on, some of which ended up on
Bleach
(and maybe
Incesticide
; I can't remember—fucking pot! I'm telling you! I'm glad I quit!) … We dug the Nirvana stuff right away and started going to their shows—really small stuff back then; we'd go see them play parties at K Dorm at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, stuff like that …

BRUCE PURKEY:
It wasn't until the fall of '88, when I got a cassette copy of their early demo from my brother that I fell in love with them. I played that tape to death in my dorm room … At the time, the dorms were filled with the sounds of Rush, the Cult, Love and Rockets, and the Cure. I tried to play Nirvana and tell everyone how amazing it was, but was mostly met with comments like, “They have horrible production values.” … All the while I was in Bellingham, my brother was telling me stories about his band and Nirvana, but neither of us really possibly expected that Nirvana would gain any sort of widespread success.

 

3.0

The Lost Drummer

February to May 1988

Nirvana's first recording
was in the can, but they were still little more than a no-name garage band with barely a half dozen shows under their belt. This was to change rapidly in the short time their third drummer, Dave Foster, occupied the drum stool. He is the mystery man of the Nirvana story.

SLIM MOON:
He was during the time Nirvana was still based in Aberdeen, and I doubt there were any better drummers in Aberdeen, other than Dale Crover.

RYAN AIGNER:
If anybody thinks that Dave doesn't have the chops then they have obviously never listened to Helltrout or Psycho-Samaritan—any of the projects he's worked with … If you want to find the most prejudiced people in the world, talk to a bunch of punk rockers, because if you're not “in,” if you don't have the tattoo and the clothespin or whatever, if you're not part of the club, then they're worried about it. They want you to be a bona fide member and they want you to be one hundred percent. It was pretty obvious Dave wasn't and was never going to be—it had nothing to do with his ability to play the drums. I think they didn't know who else to bring on. Most of the bands 'round here are musicians playing with each other not because we've all been the best of friends but because they're the only other musicians we know. There weren't a lot of other options—Dave was the logical decision, he was the right age, he had the chops, he could do it!

Foster's tenure started with a seemingly unimportant house party, yet this wasn't just someone's home, the Caddyshack was a very well-connected residence. It was this rapid introduction to key individuals in other bands and labels that would allow Nirvana to progress at pace.

SCOTT VANDERPOOL,
Chemistry Set:
I went to high school in Bellevue [an east Seattle suburb] with Ron “Nine” Rudzitis [later of Love Battery] and Scott Boggan … I quit to go to the Evergreen State College and was promptly drafted into the Young Pioneers with Brian Learned [who had been in the Silly Killers in Seattle and would later end up in Chemistry Set] … Chris Pugh [who would go on to start Swallow, Creep, and SABA] and Brad Sweek [who would go on to be a major junkie who got clean and helped tons of Seattle music people get off that shit] … It was there I met Bruce Pavitt and Calvin Johnson … We were the Kings of Oly back then. Room Nine got a new drummer and went on to be quite popular in the pre-grunge years in Seattle where the Young Pioneers shared bills with them at places like the Metropolis [where the future Mrs. Chris Cornell, Susan Silver, worked the concession counter] … Chemistry Set played our first show at the Rainbow Tavern, directly behind the notorious Room Nine house, where I lived along with photographer Charles Peterson and artist Ed Fotheringham.

This intertwining of personalities was a constant feature, and Nirvana was regularly playing for fellow musicians, plus the label bosses, journalists, and photographers who made up the Seattle scene—though it didn't mean luxurious circumstances.

SCOTT VANDERPOOL:
A totally beat two-bedroom house with Visqueen plastic for a roof. Painted the moldy walls with paint-store mistake colors … this dump happened to be on the tenth green of a private golf club, so we called it the Caddyshack … When I moved back to Seattle, Chris Pugh stayed and Mike McDowell, lead singer of Noxious Fumes from Tacoma, moved in … I'm pretty sure that's who was there when Nirvana played … I was fairly bummed when the landlord, a former Thurston County commissioner (who once told the religious zealot that called him regularly to complain that the Young Pioneers' satanic music was killing her daughter to quit complaining because we usually got paid when we played and she was getting it for free) finally told 'em all to get out because he was building a luxury golf-course home there. So they had a party and totally destroyed the place … And no one told me!

CHRIS PUGH,
Swallow:
That place was great—bands on tour would stay there, lots of bands played there. Olympia was so small and such a tight-knit scene, if there were ten bands in town then you knew everyone and every member … I was friends with Bruce [Pavitt]; we'd worked at a place called Muzak that provided music services to restaurants and businesses—we'd go out to lunch, see each other. I gave him a cassette of my band and since we were friends already it wasn't a sophisticated contract or anything—he just said, “Yeah, we could put this out for you.”

The Caddyshack was another element splicing Cobain and company into the wider music scene of the Northwest.

March 19, 1988, was the first Nirvana performance.

JOHN PURKEY:
I got this phone call, I answer the phone, it's Kurt: “John, I found a band name, I wanted to know what you think … Nirvana.” “Man, it's perfect, great.” “That's the new name of the band…” Kurt went to Buddhist meetings in Olympia; Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism. In 1980 my mom became a Buddhist; I was really interested … I became a Buddhist and was off and on through the '80s, I'm sure I told Kurt one time … he went to a couple of meetings in Olympia … I believe the name Nirvana could have been inspired by Buddhism …

The show that night was the first time Nirvana took the stage.

DAVID WHITING:
When I phoned the Community World Theater in Tacoma saying we were coming over … we were offered headline position to an already “in-process” show. After all, this was the month of our first LP release, which was a big thing at the time, for the area and for us, and we had played the CWT in the past. When we got there, we used our “headline clout” to ask to play middle slot so that we could push onward to Seattle for a late-night show. Typical headline-band maneuvering.

LARRY SCHEMEL,
Kill Sybil:
The Nirvana Community World show had Dave Foster on drums. I never met him and my only memory of him was his massive drum kit and how great of a drummer he was, very hard-hitting drummer …

Yet while it marked the beginning of Nirvana, the show was when the band said an unwitting farewell to the Community World Theater, which closed before a planned July 3 return. Instead, over the year to come, the fledgling band would perform across the state of Washington. In Nirvana's first year, half of the bands they played with had been Tacoma-based, yet on March 19, their co-performers were Lush, from Olympia, and Vampire Lezbos.