With 100,000 fans packed into the grand Estádio Cícero Pompeu de Toledo in Sao Paulo, Brazil on the evening of January 16, 1993, the biggest show of Nirvana’s career should have been a cause for celebration, an affirmation of the band’s status as the pre-eminent act at the vanguard of a new rock revolution. In reality, depending upon your perspective, the Seattle trio’s performance at the Hollywood Rock festival was either one of the greatest punk rock shows ever, or a pitiful display of petulance from a band whose view of their audience often skirted perilously close to contempt.
On stage, bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl knew that something was amiss from the moment Kurt Cobain stumbled through the opening riff of School, the set’s opening number, at quarter-pace.
Nirvana’s frontman’s decision to mix alcohol with painkillers pre-show had ensured that he was, in Grohl’s recollection, “high as fuck”.
“Krist and I looked at one another like: ‘Holy fucking shit! What’s about to happen?’” Grohl recalled. “It was kind of terrifying. And, as Nirvana always did, we somehow managed to sabotage the show.”
Thirty minutes into a shambolic set blighted by scuffed notes and off-key vocals, an embarrassed Novoselic had had enough. Unshouldering his bass, he launched the instrument across the stage at Cobain and walked off into the wings. Confusion reigned before the bassist was cajoled into returning by Nirvana’s tour manager Alex MacLeod, who was aware that the group would forfeit their appearance fee if they failed to fulfil at least 45 of their contracted 90 minutes on stage. Novoselic reluctantly rejoined the fray without even bothering to retune his bass, figuring that the band couldn’t possibly sound any worse. In that assumption, he was entirely incorrect.
After fumbling through obviously unrehearsed snippets of Iron Maiden’s Run To The Hills and Led Zeppelin’s Heartbreaker, the trio swapped instruments for a rock’n’roll covers set that verged on performance art. By the time the group had chewed through excruciating interpretations of Queen’s We Will Rock You (during which Cobain altered the chorus and sang ‘We will fuck you’) and Terry Jacks’s 1974 MOR hit Seasons In The Sun, thousands of bewildered, affronted patrons were already streaming towards the exits. However, those who left early missed the most intriguing part of Nirvana’s set, the unveiling of two brandnew songs destined for Nirvana’s keenly anticipated third album. The first of these, Heart-Shaped Box, exhibited a bruised melodicism betraying Cobain’s long-held love of The Beatles. The second, the lurching sludge rock of Scentless Apprentice, was delivered as an over-amplified primal scream. Taken together, the two songs, and the chaotic 80 minutes that prefaced their premieres, threw up more questions than answers as to Nirvana’s future.
Following the phenomenal success of their second album Nevermind, rumours persisted that its follow-up would be the trio’s career suicide note, a nihilistic kiss-off to a mass market constituency who had the temerity to like that album’s ‘pretty songs’ and file it alongside 1991’s other blockbuster albums from Guns N’ Roses, Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam. The reality would be infinitely more nuanced, and consequently more fascinating.
“Nobody knew what kind of album we were going to make next,” DaveIt was going to be darker, and more dissonant, and noisy. I’m almost positive that the label wanted us to just recreate because it’d be a safe way to sell another thirty million records. But of course we weren’t going to do that.”
