Kurt So Good

Thirty years on from Cobain’s death, photobook Charles Peterson’s Nirvana remembers the glory that was grunge.

“CHARLES WAS IN the trenches, always right down in front,” says Nir vana bassist Krist Novoselic in his foreword to Charles Peterson’s Nir vana, which handsomely compiles the photographer’s images of the group from 1989 to 1993. Novoselic also reflects on Peterson’s black and white, long exposure style, as “the musical technique of dropping a guitar’s low E string down to the D note, while sending the signal through a vintage Fuzz box. That’s basic Grunge.”

There is something raw, immediate and, yes, amplified about Peterson’s photographs of Nir vana playing live, between gigs and doing magazine shoots. The book also contains 30 images never before seen, including the wild accompanying shot of the band at the Motorsports International Garage in Seattle on September 22, 1990.

“My informal title for this image is ‘the chaos of youth,’” Peterson tells MOJO. “I sometimes forget just how crazy and chaotic these shows could be… our switch was ‘on’ and for a lot of us we had no idea there was even an ‘off ’ setting. I want the images to evoke that time and energy and passion. It’s in the details – the crushed cans on-stage, the duct tape and ripped jeans and flannel shirts, hair and hands emerging

Charles Peterson’s Nirvana is available in Europe through HHV Records in Berlin and TLP in Dublin, and through minormattersbooks.com. An exhibition of Charles Peterson’s Nirvana will open on October 5 at the Tacoma Art Museum and will travel thereafter.

“My informal title for this image is ‘the chaos of youth.’” CHARLES PETERSON

Grunge mob blur dance: Nirvana rev up at Seattle’s Motorsports International Garage, September 22, 1990. from the blur of audience and light, and the youthful faces that are no longer.” He adds that the unseen images were awaiting digital scanning technology to bring them to fruition. “The band was amazingly photogenic and it was really easy, even within a single show, to make a lot of great images of them,” he says. “There’s still a lot more, but we could only make the books so big!” It is, unbelievably, three decades since we lost Kurt Cobain. Peterson says what has stayed with him is, “how much of a ‘family’ the grunge scene was… despite being quite dysfunctional at times, we all had each other’s backs. And just how great and powerful Nirvana’s music was and still is. There’s been a lot of train-spotting and mythmaking surrounding this band, but at the end of the day none of it would be important or relevant without the incredible music they made.”