Come as you are: When Nirvana rocked NZ
Thirty years ago the biggest rock ‘n roll band in the world blew through New Zealand on their way to changing popular music forever. David Skipwith reports.
‘‘It was probably the closest thing to the Beatles coming to New Zealand,’’ says David Saunders, who famously played support for Nirvana. ‘‘I remember driving up to the venue to play and there would have been more people outside than inside. It was crazy. It was like longhaired surfies had taken over Auckland.’’ Saunders, the guitarist for Dunedin-based Flying Nun band The 3Ds, says the whole experience was ‘‘just insane’’.
The Seattle grunge three-piece, fronted by Kurt Cobain, were at the peak of their popularity, fresh off the global success of 1991 album Nevermind. Reviews of the gig vary, though it’s widely acknowledged that the tour-weary Nirvana were below their best, and outshone on the night by local heroes The 3Ds.
The visiting headliners played for little more than an hour, performing 18 songs mostly drawn from their first two records, and closing their encore with a raucously received rendition of smash single Smells Like Teen Spirit.
‘‘Everyone was so excited to see Nirvana and just happy to be there,’’ recalls Saunders.
‘‘They were tired and seemed to be running through the motions a little, but it still sounded awesome. It was still loose and mental. They didn’t play a bad show. There was just so much energy from the audience, we were just feeding off that. We’d never had a crowd like that.’’
Six months earlier, no-one could have predicted Nirvana – also featuring bassist Krist Novoselic, and drummer and future Foo Fighters kingpin Dave Grohl – would become the hottest band in the world.
The chances of them playing in New Zealand at that point were just as unlikely, but a connection between retired Auckland promoter Doug Hood and his maverick Australian counterpart Stephen Pavlovic made it happen.
The man known as ‘‘Pav’’, just 25, had previously worked with Nirvana’s kindred spirits Mudhoney and Sonic Youth. He travelled to the US where he met Cobain and secured the still-obscure act for their only tour Down Under. Nirvana went on to play a run of frenetic shows through Australia – including the first Big Day Out – before their one and only New Zealand concert.
‘‘Steve was in the studio when they made that record,’’ says Hood. ‘‘He called me from the US and said ‘I’ve got a great band for you, I can’t tell you who they are, but I’ll see you next Saturday on my way back to Sydney’.
‘‘I picked him up at the airport. We went up Mt Eden and got really f…… stoned. He handed me this tape and I put it on my car stereo and that was the album Nevermind.’’
Following the pair’s mood-altered listening party, Hood pushed on with plans for Nirvana to play at The Powerstation on February 9, 1992.
‘‘It sold out in a day. So we moved it to the Town Hall and that sold out in about two days,’’ says Hood.
‘‘We switched it to the Logan Campbell Centre and on the night we were 10 short of a full house.’’
Seemingly overnight, the scraggy trio with one previous album to their name – their raw 1989 Sub Pop debut Bleach – had transformed the landscape of popular music with the
September 1991 release of their infectious new lead single, and accompanying gamechanging video of a riotous high school pep rally.
By January 11, Nevermind was selling 300,000 copies a week and had knocked
Michael Jackson off the number one spot on the Billboard album charts. Alternative music had entered the mainstream.
‘‘It was the definitive crossover. That’s the point in the timeline when everything changed. The Smells Like Teen Spirit video first and the song itself, then the album coming out,’’ recalls Kiwi musician and radio and television identity Mikey Havoc.
‘‘By the time they got here it was peak Nirvana buzz worldwide. Whatever it was that they brought to music, it moved the goalposts so significantly, and was so refreshing. If you were into what was going on, that sort of music, it was really exciting to be able to share that. And all the people that you knew in Auckland and from around the country who were into that were at the gig.’’
The notoriously poor-sounding Logan ‘‘Concrete’’ Centre is blamed for contributing to what some remember as a lacklustre performance from Nirvana.
While their jam-packed gigs throughout Australia are always mentioned in fan discussions regarding the band’s best outings, the Auckland show by comparison was a bit flat – but an important milestone nonetheless.
‘‘I just remember the wild and uninhibited thrash of sweat, hair and bodies when the fastest, heaviest and more intense songs kicked in,’’ remembers concertgoer Chris Familton, from 90s Auckland band Thorazine Shuffle.
‘‘Even though in hindsight it wasn’t one of their greatest shows it still felt at the time like one of the peak moments of the alternative rock-grunge movement hitting Auckland.’’
But the change in venue was welcomed by younger fans who gained rare access to the highlysought-after tickets – just $25 – including Jonathan Lymer, who was 12 when he attended the nowlegendary show.
‘‘It was lucky because a lot of those gigs at that time were at licensed venues like The Powerstation, so under-20s couldn’t go,’’ says Lymer.
He vividly remembers the coming-of-age
‘‘The label tried to cancel the tour. They wanted them to stay in the States because the record was breaking big time. It was really only down to the friendship between Steve and Kurt that the tour actually even happened. Loyalty, you don’t get that much in rock n roll.’’ Doug Hood Retired Auckland promoter
experience that began and ended with his friend’s parents dropping them off and collecting them from the Georgie Pie carpark in Greenlane.
‘‘We had upstairs tickets and were sitting there for The 3Ds, who were really good,’’ says Lymer.
‘‘We managed to swap our tickets with some people in the foyer and made it into the general admission area for Nirvana.
‘‘It was just so surreal. You see these famous artists who you are pretty stoked about, and then you’re standing there watching them. It was like being out of your body, I guess. Or close to it.’’
The night had a lasting impact on Lymer, who remains a huge fan of Nirvana’s music and collects replicas of the guitars favoured by Cobain.
‘‘I know the songs by heart. I normally try playing a good ol’ Nirvana tune,’’ he says.
‘‘I have a couple of Fender guitars. A Mustang with a humbucker in the bridge, which was a Cobain special release. And, just recently, I built a replica of the Stratocaster with the vandalism sticker.’’
Not everyone was pleased that Nirvana had made it all the way to New Zealand.
Were it up to Geffen Records, the band’s new major label, their golden goose would never have flown to such far-flung territories, when they were being asked to join – and politely declining – lucrative stadium tours with the likes of Guns N’ Roses and Metallica.
‘‘The label tried to cancel the tour. They wanted them to stay in the States because the record was breaking big time,’’ says Hood.
‘‘It was really only down to the friendship between Steve and Kurt that the tour actually even happened. Loyalty, you don’t get that much in rock n roll.’’
Despite their newfound success, Nirvana’s brief visit came at a difficult time for the group, towards the tail end of a torrid touring schedule that had left the trio exhausted.
Cobain was also in a bad way health-wise, suffering from heroin withdrawal, amid a growing
addiction that had already created divisions within the once-tight-knit group. Two weeks after their Auckland show, Cobain married Courtney Love in Hawaii, as the band returned to the US. His tragic death came little more than two years later, when he committed suicide at his Seattle home in April 1994.
‘‘He didn’t say a word. I don’t think I spoke to him,’’ says Hood. ‘‘He had something wrong with his stomach and the excuse was the heroin was a crutch for the pain.
‘‘When we got him backstage he was freezing. We had to get a heater for him to sit in front of with blankets wrapped around him. He was genuinely sick.’’
His poor physical state aside, Cobain made a famous visit to Real Groovy Records, where he bought an album by wild 80s Christchurch band The Axemen.
‘‘I didn’t recognise him. He probably looked like a lot of our customers. I bagged his records up and took his money,’’ says store founder Chris Hart. Other staff members recognised the famous rock star and persuaded him to autograph some Nirvana records.
Jules Barnett, drummer for opening act Second Child, recalls Cobain making special mention of the iconic Auckland music store at the beginning of Nirvana’s set; one of the singer’s rare interactions with the audience.
‘‘Kurt walked onstage, swung his guitar on, and casually said: ‘Hi, this song [Negative Creep] is off our first album which you can buy at Really Groovy Records [sic]’,’’ says Barnett.
‘‘Earlier that day we saw Krist Novoselic and his girlfriend at Victoria Park Markets. They were sitting outside McDonald’s. They had no rockstar pretensions.’’
Saunders was surprised when members of Nirvana’s entourage began rocking out while watching The 3Ds performance from side of stage: ‘‘I looked over and Dave Grohl and the Nirvana crew were jumping up and down and getting into it. After we played, Dave and Krist came in bouncing off the walls of our dressing room wanting to look at our guitars. Kurt was just sitting in a corner with a blanket over him.’’
Speaking to the Sunday Star-Times last October, Grohl explained the band were worn out after months of touring and promotional duties.
Given that Nirvana were barely here for 24 hours, flying out immediately following the Auckland concert, it’s hardly surprising that the gig itself has slipped from his memory.
‘‘That tour Down Under was a bit of a blur. It was at the tail end of the most chaotic six months of our lives,’’ he said. ‘‘And, unfortunately, I don’t remember. I’m sorry. That one didn’t stick.
‘‘We were starting to feel the strain of what had happened in the three or four months before. It was a pretty gruelling itinerary. It was f…… exhausting.
‘‘It was just plane after plane after plane and show after show after show.’’
Now 53, Grohl laughed when he saw evidence of his diminished physical state during that heady time.
‘‘There’s a picture of me at the end of the tour, and I’m just emaciated,’’ he said.
‘‘I was just completely withering away from no sleep and no food and playing five nights a week. It blew my mind.
‘‘I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m f ...... malnourished. That’s crazy’.
‘‘Nowadays, it’s like ‘oh my god, I’ve got a f…… beer gut and a spare tyre’. I definitely don’t look like that any more.’’