In Search Of Nirvana -- Aberdeen Betrays The Origins Of The World's Greatest Grunge Band
ABERDEEN, Grays Harbor County - The first thing you see coming into this town is dead trees. Thousands and thousands of dead trees, stacked in pyramid piles along the mouth of the Chehalis River, where it empties into Grays Harbor. This is timber country.
"This Business Supported By Timber Dollars" say green, stenciled placards in the windows of most of the surviving stores and shops in the downtown area. "For Sale" signs are in the windows of the many empty storefronts.
Residential parts of town are dominated by small houses where many windows display the same sign: "This Family Supported By Timber Dollars."
"This is the ultimate redneck town," says Dana James Bong as he waits on the porch for his friend Greg Hokanson, who is upstairs getting some videotapes. The two long-haired guys in their late 20s are among many in the close-knit Aberdeen music community who are longtime friends, fellow musicians and fans of Kurt Cobain and Chris Novoselic of Nirvana, the hottest rock band in the world.
The emergence of the punkish, anarchistic, brooding, powerful trio (which also includes East Coast drummer Dave Grohl) - whose "Nevermind" album has been at the top of the charts since the beginning of the year - has given new validity to the scene here.
"Nirvana's not the first band to come out of here," advises Bong as the wind picks up and a light rain starts to fall outside the porch. Just a few minutes ago, it was sunny.
"The Melvins (a top alternative band) came from here and so did Metal Church (a heavy-metal band)," he explains as Hokanson arrives with tape in hand. "Kurdt Vanderhoof (of Metal Church) lives just down the street, and the Melvins used to practice a few blocks from here"
As we head to the car, a tall, skinny woman in a polka-dot dress walks down the sidewalk carrying an umbrella in one hand and an armful of manila envelopes in the other. "There's one of the town's crazies," Bong says. "One of our log ladies."
Across the street, a house on the corner has a garden filled with brightly painted wood cutouts of flowers. Painted wood birds are attached to trees. Painted wood squirrels and ducks stand motionless in the well-tended yard.
"Yeah, there's a lot of `Twin Peaks' in this town," Bong allows.
We are on our way to the Polish Hall Tavern, because it has a wide-screen TV. Bong lugs a suitcase of videos and a cardboard box containing a VCR. Along the way, he and Hokanson point out Nirvana tourist sites - the vacant lot where one of the houses Cobain used to live in once stood; the second-story window Cobain once jumped from during a party (he didn't get hurt too badly because he was drunk, Bong says); an abandoned house Cobain used to crash in.
"Kurt used to live there," Hokanson says, pointing to a blue boarding house across the street. "He lived all over town. I don't think he ever slept at home past the age of 15."
Cobain stayed in Hokanson's house for six months, sleeping on the couch or on the floor in Greg's room. That was about the time Nirvana started in 1986, Hokanson says, as we go into the tavern's back room. On the big TV, Bong plays a video of Nirvana's first performance, at the Hoquiam Eagles hall in 1986.
That concert has reached near-mythic status in Aberdeen. Every rock fan you meet here claims to have been there, although most admit they went for the Melvins, who headlined, more than Nirvana. The Melvins, now based in San Francisco, introduced live punk to the rock fans of Aberdeen, mostly metalheads, and turned on a lot of people - including Kurt Cobain - to the rage, energy and tortured eloquence of punk.
But people who were there will never forget Nirvana. In the video, it's apparent that back then the group already had a certain spark, a unique way of blending punk, metal and pop, and a strong sense of outrageousness. Novoselic, the 6-foot-7-inch bassist, played the entire set in his underpants. Cobain arrived on stage with his neck painted bright red.
On the tape, the band crunches out a song called "School." In place of the refrain "No recess," Cobain screams, "No Dana! No Dana!" while glaring into Bong's video camera. Bong turns up the volume and starts dancing around the pool table, flinging his arms in the air and jumping on one foot.
"This is the Chris Novoselic dance," he yells over the music.
The library of Weatherwax High School is a stately, high-ceilinged room dating from 1906. A few students sit at tables, working quietly. The morning sun streams through the tall windows. I whisper to a librarian that I'm looking for yearbooks with Cobain and Novoselic in them.
"Chris was not in school very often," a librarian offers.
How about Kurt?
"Oh, yes. He was in here a lot."
She holds up a copy of Spin magazine with Nirvana on the cover. "We've started a file," she said, pulling it out of a shelf behind her. It includes some clippings from The Aberdeen Daily World and a feature from a recent Rolling Stone.
Novoselic and Cobain managed to get through high school without ever having their pictures in the Quinault, the school's yearbook. Head librarian John Eko brings out copies of Ocean Breeze, the school paper, from 1983 to 1985, when the two were enrolled. Again, nothing.
Nirvana's success is the best thing to happen to Aberdeen in years, Eko says. "They're something I can point to and tell kids that there's all kinds of possibilities out there." I tell him Cobain once told me he secretly started writing poetry in junior high, but hid it from friends for fear of being teased.
Eko's eyes brighten. "That's great. I never knew that. Now maybe I can get some kids to read poetry."
One of the Daily World stories quotes Weatherwax art teacher Bob Hunter as saying Cobain was one of the most talented students he ever had.
A librarian tells me she once saw Cobain when he was very down. She asked him what was the matter and he said his father had smashed his guitar because he was playing too loud.
"Sounds like his father was his first critic," says Eko. Maybe that's why he still smashes guitars on stage.
Maria's Hair Design, on M Street, is a blue, two-story house on the edge of downtown with a small black Nirvana sticker in a corner of the front window.
Maria is Chris Novoselic's mother. A tall, perky redhead, she's bubbling with enthusiasm over her son's good fortune.
"I still can't believe it," she says, with a trace of an accent. "I still can't believe it's happening."
Maria Novoselic put the sticker in her window two years ago, when Nirvana released its first album on the Sub Pop label, "Bleach." No one paid much attention to the sticker until late last year, when "Nevermind" - the band's second album and its first for a major label, Geffen - was released. Now Nirvana fans come into the shop, wanting to take her picture.
"Chris was here for Christmas," she says. "He couldn't even go to the store, because people just make such a big fuss over him. And Chris is a very down-to-earth kid, he doesn't want all this fuss."
Chris Novoselic was born 26 years ago in Compton, Calif., after his parents emigrated from Yugoslavia. The family came to Aberdeen in 1979.
"There are lots of Croatian people here, and that's why we are here," Maria says. "We are not Yugoslavian anymore, we are Croatian."
Chris Novoselic speaks fluent Croatian. When he was 14, he went to school in Croatia for a year, living with relatives. When he and his mother talk - which they do frequently on the phone - they speak Croatian.
When Novoselic started hanging out with Cobain, his mother didn't like it. "I remember Kurt as just this little skinny kid, and I thought, `Oh, my God, who's this?' "
She said Kurt was shy and never spoke to her, but Chris assured her, saying Kurt was talented and was going to be somebody. Knowing her son's love of music, she approved - until she came home one evening and found the house full of kids listening to Chris and Kurt jam with some friends.
"I just yell and scream, `Get these kids out of here!' I didn't understand. I was protecting my property."
For a while, Novoselic worked as a house painter, but was always more interested in music. About four years ago, he and Cobain moved to Olympia to concentrate on making Nirvana happen.
Two years ago, Novoselic married his longtime girlfriend. They recently bought a house in Seattle and furnished it with antiques, most of them collected in Aberdeen thrift shops. Novoselic, who loves working on cars, bought a junker for $100, and fixed it up himself.
"Chris is just a sweetheart," says his mother. "He respected me so much. I'm not bragging. He is just a super son. He helped a lot of people. He's not bratty, he doesn't smoke. He's a strict vegetarian for years. If anybody deserves this, it's Chris."
The Pourhouse Tavern is Aberdeen's hottest rock spot. On weekends, the old tavern - with a long bar, an old wooden phone booth, a small stage and a pool room in the back - is just about the only place in town to hear live rock music. All the best local bands play there, mixing original tunes with popular cover songs.
"Kurt played here once," Greg Hokanson says, straining to be heard over the music. He doesn't remember the name of the band, because Cobain was in so many before Nirvana was formed: Ted Ed Fred, Bliss, Pen Cap Chew, Skid Row.
Before hooking up with Cobain, Novoselic was lead singer and guitarist in a band called the Stiff Woodies that also played the Pourhouse. Hokanson remembers hearing them do a great song called "Vaseline and Gasoline."
Hokanson introduces me to his mother, a young-looking woman who easily fits in with the mostly 20s crowd. What was it like having Kurt Cobain living in her house?
"Like living with the devil," she shoots back.
Cobain had one of his destructo raids in her son's bedroom, destroying furniture and scrawling things on the wall (he still does the same thing, but now it's hotel rooms). But she was impressed by his intelligence and talent, she said. He read a lot and could talk about anything. Greg Hokanson adds, "Kurt read more books than anybody I ever knew."
One day he rented the video of "A Clockwork Orange" and watched it with Cobain. "The next day he went to the library and got the book and read the whole thing, and then read it a couple more times, then read everything by Anthony Burgess," Hokason said.
Earlier, Bong said, "Kurt Cobain was the only young kid I knew who did not smoke, did not drink beer and did not smoke pot." But, he added, he did all of those things later. In excess.
Performing Artists Services is an old building on the edge of town that a group of Aberdeen musicians are converting into band practice rooms and a recording studio. One of those involved in the project is Aaron Burkhart, Nirvana's first drummer. Like so many other musicians here, he once lived with Kurt Cobain.
"He had a bathtub full of turtles," Burkhart recalls, as Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" blares from huge speakers. Cobain collected the turtles at nearby lakes and streams. "One of the little ones escaped once, and he accidentally stepped on it and squished it."
Burkhart takes me into one of the practice rooms. "I live here some of the time," he says. The back seat of an old car rests on the floor, with blankets and a pillow. Burkhart talks about jamming with Cobain at the Melvins' house and says that some of Nirvana's old equipment is still there.
Burkhart's big moment with Nirvana was a show in Seattle at the Vogue in 1987. Shortly thereafter he was kicked out of the band after he borrowed Kurt's car and was arrested for driving while intoxicated.
Burkhart, who now heads a band called Attica, says he has no regrets. "I was the first one," he says. "They had four drummers after me.
"I'm just proud I was part of it."