Krist Novoselic on Nevermind

As far as the days went, I remember sometimes bringing in a whiskey bottle in the afternoon. I'd take some straight shots to loosen me up. I remember hanging out in the parking lot, hanging out in the lounge. I'd never done punch-ins on a track before, in places where the bass was off a little.

As soon as you finished Nevermind, you went on a short tour. Could you feel excitement building?
I didn't. I was like, "All right, we finished a record." We played shows with Dinosaur Jr. and the Jesus Lizard. We left L.A. and drove straight to Colorado. We were just playing with these other bands in the subculture. But then people told me later that, at the Denver show, everybody bought Nirvana T-shirts.

Kurt later dismissed Nevermind as too polished. What was it about the punk aesthetic that was so important to him?
I don't know how he could say that. That's a cool part of that record — it has that slick sound. I don't know if it was punk dogma. A lot of it was the attention. He was getting all this scrutiny, people putting their perceptions on him. He was a very private person. For being such an aggressive singer and musician, he really was a quiet guy. He never should have left that little apartment in Olympia. He would have been just fine.

It is hard to accept that a record that has meant so much to so many had such a different effect on the guy who made it. Do you wish Kurt could have enjoyed his acclaim more?
Of course I wish he had enjoyed it more. But he was just on a way-different trip. He made all his own decisions. What are you going to do? We're all stewards of our own trip.

It's hard to believe it's such a revolutionary record — for people in the band, around the band, in the world. There's a lot of power in the record, but it wasn't a Sgt. Pepper with symphony orchestras. It was just a rock & roll record. Our record could have come out in the 1970s or 1980s. Maybe that's part of its big success. You can chase after this idea or that concept, but this was stripped down, with a lot of feeling. That's the magic right there. There was no pretension.

Do you hear Nevermind — any of that feeling or magic — in rock today, in Limp Bizkit or Blink-182?
I hear it mostly in the big-chorus thing, the loud-quiet dynamic. Some singers, you can hear they were influenced by Kurt. It's cool, because Nirvana was influenced by all kinds of stuff.

I feel it maybe more with Slipknot. I went to see them — I didn't know what they were about — and they had an intense show. I started listening to their music and was really drawn in. It brought me back to thinking, "God, I should be doing more music." I've actually been playing more music. This last weekend, my friend Donita [Sparks] from L7 came up. We were jamming, putting some songs down. I've been cranking stuff out. It's kind of wild to start again.

But as far as stuff on the radio — I don't know. I've been listening to the Rolling Stones. You remember that record Metamorphosis? I found it in a secondhand store in Oregon. That's a fucked-up record — I like it.

If Kurt had any idea of how people would mourn and miss him, do you think he would have thought twice about leaving?

Kurt would say things, shoot his mouth off about people, get too critical or down on something. But he would always realize that he'd hurt somebody's feelings. And he would feel terrible about it. I guess that's the best way I can answer that.

[From Issue 877 — September 13, 2001]