WATCHED AT TJ’S CLUB TRASHED HER GUITAR
the night on his computer.
“It’s just before our set so it’s all a bit hectic on stage, with mics being pushed around but it does nicely sum up the chaos of TJ’s,” he said.
“I spoke to Kurt briefly after our set. He was standing on a pile of our guitar cases so he could get a good view.
“I think I said something really mundane about how hot the gig had been and he agreed.
“He was very smiley but seemed shy and completely unassuming. There were no minders, crew, entourage etc.”
Schoolboy Andrew Curran knew all about Nirvana and Hole when he turned up at TJ’s for Cheap Sweaty Fun number 73.
Now he’s a 44-year-old head teacher in Leicester.
“I gave him a fag and a light,” the history tutor, from Newport, said.
“I had seen Nirvana a week or two before at the Bierkeller in Bristol. That was one of their first-ever UK gigs. Midway Still supported them.
“About two weeks later Hole played and a big load of us went down and we were all jumping around to Hole.”
Andrew remembered the moments before he handed the singer a Benson and Hedges.
“I said ‘Are you here to watch Courtney?’” he said.
“He didn’t say much but he asked for a cigarette and I gave him one. assistant
“He was very quiet and trying to keep himself to himself. Then I b****red off because I was a bit starstruck.
“I don’t think a lot of people really knew who he was because it was still early days. He was not a megastar.”
“No one knew they were going to be as big as they were. Now it would be like seeing John Lennon, but at that time it was just that bloke from Nirvana.”
The following year Nirvana headlined the Reading Festival. Twelve months before they had played a daytime slot. They were between Chapterhouse and Silverfish.
Andrew had no idea whether Kurt really proposed to Courtney that night.
“That might be a bit of folklore,” he said. But he has told his pupils many times about that night. “If any of the kids ever talk about Nirvana, or wear a Nirvana T-shirt or anything, I make sure they hear the story,” he said.
Graham Edwards was in the lower sixth at Newport’s St Joseph’s RC High School when he attended the show.
He remembers Kurt watching Hole from the left of the stage.
“He was stood on a bench where the toilets were,” the 42-year-old said.
“There was like a little alcove where he was. There were lots of people talking to him and he was talking to everyone.” Graham went over for a natter, too.
“I told him his girlfriend was nuts and he said ‘Yeah, I know’ and laughed,” the dad-of-two said.
“We were talking about Top of the Pops, because he had just done Smells Like Teen Spirit and he was clearly miming his guitar.
“He had changed the lyrics to ‘load up on drugs and kill your friends’.”
The actual words are “load up on guns, bring your friends”.
“I said to him, ‘You looked like you were off your face,’” Graham, who works in the pharmaceutical industry, said.
“He said, ‘No, I don’t do drugs’ with a wry smile.”
At the end of the night he saw Kurt go upstairs to the flat above TJ’s with someone from Rockaway Records, which Simon Phillips ran in Newport Market. “After that I remember seeing his silhouette walking off down the street, with his blond, straggly hair,” Graham said.
“That’s still in my mind because shortly after that he blew his head off.”
Nevermind had been released on September 24, 1991.
“That night was before they had properly peaked but they were on an upward trajectory,” Graham said.
“I heard the proposal happened behind the fruit machine, but I don’t know whether it is an urban myth.”
Dave ‘Scouse’ Wakely was not at the show. But he later worked behind the bar in TJ’s.
“Johnny Sico had a video of them having dinner above the flat in TJ’s,” the dad of one, who lives in Liverpool, said. “Hole and Kurt Cobain, that was who Johnny Sico was having dinner with. Someone else like Gary Dreads, from Cheap Sweaty Fun, was there as well.”
In 1991, musician Christopher Rees, now of Llwynypia, Rhondda, was a student at Uwic, now Cardiff Metropolitan University.
He made his way to Newport that night. “Smells like Teen Spirit had just come out and there were a lot of people in the audience wearing Nirvana T-shirts,” he said.
“I ended up standing on the left side of the stage for the show.
“It was about as close to the band as you could be. I remember John holding people back like a human barrier.”
Christopher, whose album The Nashville Songs is out on June 30, said: “It was a raucous gig. I remember Courtney trashing her guitar and standing on it like a surfboard.
“Kurt is said to have proposed to Courtney in a Skoda outside, I don’t know if that was true,” he said.
On February 24, 1992, Kurt and Courtney were married in Waikiki, Hawaii. On August 18 that year they had a daughter, Frances Bean Cobain.
On April 8, 1994, Kurt, 27, was found dead at his Seattle home. He had a shotgun pointed at his chin.