Before there was a Nirvana, Krist Novoselic and Kurt Cobain were best friends. Born in Compton, California, in 1965, Novoselic moved with his family to Aberdeen, Washington, where he met Cobain in high school in the mid-1980s. The two would be roomies, confidants and band mates for the next eleven years, until Cobain took his own life on April 5th, 1994. "Krist was one of the only people who could make Kurt laugh," says drummer Dave Grohl. "They shared a sense of humor. Krist could make Kurt start laughing, rolling and crying on the floor. Of course, I never understood what the fuck they were talking about." After Cobain's death, Novoselic made one album with the band Sweet 75, then founded the advocacy group JAMPAC to fight censorship and raise political and social awareness in the music community. He has recently started playing music again.

Is it hard to imagine that a decade has passed since the release of Nevermind?
The Nirvana ball keeps rolling. There's always something going on, either in the press or internal issues. It will always be a part of me. Some of it was nothing less than traumatic. But I survived it — you interpret it and make sense of it later. Just Kurt's passing: He turned into a deity. Dealing with that is pretty heavy.

How weird is it to hear people talk about him as a god?
There's the icon, and then there's the person. I separate the two. I don't think I ever knew the icon. That's a human thing, to deify someone who's gone. He's legendary now. It's interesting for me to be on this side of it — to have known and remember the person.