Nirvana Interview
August 1993 — Seattle, WA
Present: Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic
This interview was originally intended for the German Fachblatt Musik Magazin, the short-lived indie magazine C.O.R.E., the trade publication Musik Woche, Marabo, Westfälische Rundschau and a few other publications. At short notice, BRAVO TV (RTL) also became interested and hired a cameraman to record the interview.
Nirvana had already given a number of interviews that day and not all of them had gone well, so I was prepared for the worst. But the band were relaxed and talkative, even though a windy and crowded balcony at the Edgewater Hotel was not necessarily the best interview location.
Here we go:
Q: I think the bonus track on the CD, Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through the Strip, it sounds very spontaneous, did you create that on the spot?
Krist: Which song is it?
Kurt: We just made that up on the spot, I just started playing the guitar part and then Krist and Dave started playing and then we, as we were recording and I just made up the lyrics
Krist: We recorded the song in Rio de Janeiro
Kurt: Oh yeah
Krist: At this tiny BMG B studio that hasn’t been used for like 60 years and they had this like Neve board and they blew the dust off it and we just plugged in and just started screwing around and we did that song and it was totally spontaneous you know, just one of those things.
Q: Yeah it gives that feeling.
Kurt: It was free association.
Q: What the hell does the title mean anyway?
Krist: In Utero is like I think an in vitro pregnancy.
Edgar: No I mean of that song.
Krist: Oh Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol? Will cleanse the strip?
Kurt: Well, I guess it’s a contempt for the hairspray, Guns n Roses poisoned scene that was going on in LA two years ago
Q: I have heard that you recorded this on an 8 track machine. Is that true?
Krist: No that’s not true. It was a 24 track. It’s the same board that recorded Back in Black by AC/DC.
Q: I have also heard that some of the songs had been remixed? Is that true and, if so, which ones were they?
Kurt: Two songs were remixed., Heart Shaped Box and All Apologies. Because the vocals weren’t loud enough and, er, I wanted to put some, er, harmony vocals in the background that I failed to do when we recorded at Steve’s, so we asked Scott Litt to come down and do it. It took about a day or two.
Q: Has any one of you had a sort of musical education?
Various: No, no…
Krist: I don’t think any of us did.
Kurt: I had no concept of knowing how to be a musician at all, whatsoever, I mean I don’t know the names of chords to play, I don’t know how to do major and minor chords on a guitar at all. I mean I couldn’t even pass you know, Guitar 101, you know. Everyone knows more than I do.
Krist: I took accordion lessons when I was a little kid. I played the trombone I think when I was about eight.
Kurt: I was in a band and I played snare drum during Junior High at grade school and I never learned how to read music I just copied the other people who took the time to learn how to read, you know. It was just so simple, boom tap boom tap boom tap tap tap tap and I just copied them you know just to pass. I didn’t see any reason to – even at that age I didn’t see any reason to learn anything that someone else has written, you know, if you go by the text you’re pretty limited you know.
Q: Kurt, do you consider yourself more of a songwriter or a guitar player?
Kurt: Oh, songwriter. I have no desire to become any better of a guitar player. I just don’t. I’m not into musicianship at all, you know I don’t have any respect for it, you know, I just hate it, you know learning how to read music or to understand arpeggios and Dorian modes and all that stuff, it’s just a waste of time, it’s just it just gets in the way of originality
Q: Are there other writers who you could name as sort of an influence or who impressed you with what they were doing?
Kurt: Um, well, yes mostly you know early to late 80s punk rock, you know, American punk rock, and late 70s English punk rock have a lot to do with stuff that I was into. I was just pretty much consumed with that, with that whole scene for so long that I you know I… I never really denied any of the other influences that I had before…Stuff like that, dinosaur rock.
Q: What about novelists or poets?
Kurt: Ummmm… Probably Beckett’s my favorite. I like him a lot.
Q: Sometimes when I read or listen to the lyrics it sounds to me as if you are sort of inspired by the Beat writers too, especially Burroughs.
Kurt: Yeah, yeah, the king, yeah! Actually I’m doing a record with him, a ten inch record.
Q: You are doing one?
Kurt: Uh we, it’s already out, yeah. He did, er, a passage from a poem called, er, The Priest They Called Him and I played guitar in the background and made a bunch of noise.
Q: What is this guy like, how was it working with him?
Kurt: Just um, I don’t know, I never met him. [laughs] I could have talked to him the other day, I was supposed to, there was a meeting set up for me, for him to call me because we wanted him to be in our next video because of the – mostly not because of our association with him or to exploit anything like that because, you know, maybe because, I don’t want anyone to think I want to have a relationship with William Burroughs because of like you know my past drug use or my, my respect of him. We mainly wanted him to be in our video because he’s an odd looking character, we wanted an older gentleman to be in our video and to do a few things, but we realized that the things that we wanted this older person to do, it was a bit degrading to have William Burroughs himself do it you know. We wanted a person to be on a cross and in a hospital bed and stuff like that and it was just too insulting to ask him, so I cancelled the call. I mean that was my chance of actually meeting him and we’ve exchanged a letter through fax and um we have respect for what each other does but I’ve never really had the opportunity… I mean other than that I haven’t bothered to meet him yet but I still want to.
Q: On one or two songs you hear a cello or a some string … was that played live?
Kurt: Er, no, it was we had her come in after the basic tracks were down we had her play along with it.
Q: This was the cello player you had in New York, you…
Kurt: (Interrupting) No this cello player was Steve Albini’s girlfriend at the time. It was just a really – it was just a matter of convenience, she had played cello and we needed one so she was there. She turned out great, she did a really good job.
Q: Kurt, you are left handed, do you find it hard to get the right guitar?
Kurt: Usually yeah. It’s a bit easier now because I have an endorsement with Fender Guitars now so they are making me left handed Mustangs so it’s a lot easier. It used to be a total pain in the ass, I mean when we were on our first couple of tours you know I’d only have one guitar and it had to be cheap you know a 30 dollar guitar from a pawn shop and I’d end up breaking it after the show and then the next day was, was consumed with trying to find a pawn shop and the few dollars that we had to buy a guitar and that then we’d have to turn the strings around and try to intonate it ourselves and it just made for a really out of tune raunchy experience you know during those first few years.
Krist: It was a pain in the ass trying to find a guitar.
Kurt: Yeah it was like the biggest dilemma of the day.This one will work left handed, yeah, it’s cut — this part’s notched just a little bit you know.
Krist: It was a big hassle. In fact we even built a bunch of Mustangs one time. We bought some necks and took pieces of wood and cut out the bodies and put the necks on, and they were completely out of tune all the time and we did a pretty good job at it. We had this little assembly line in the garage and we hung them up and painted them and stuff yeah, huh huh.
Q: In Utero, is getting more back towards Bleach and you said, like months ago, that you want to get rid of some of the fans who just came from the pop side. Do you think you will achieve that? Or is the name Nirvana already so big that the fans will buy everything, it doesn’t matter what it sounds like?
Krist: I don’t know. I don’t think so, because when we put out Incesticide it didn’t sell very well at all. It didn’t even sell, like, a few hundred thousand copies. You know.
Dave: We don’t, don’t wanna exclude anybody or anything you know.
Krist: No, we’re not as concerned with that as we used to be you know. It’s not…
Dave: I think I was being a little reactionary like going through the whole fame and fortune thing and just making statements like that you know.
Krist: There’s nothing you can do about it you know. You can put on a cabaret show and you know just make a total mockery out of your success or you just deal with it you know.
Q: I guess, especially at the beginning, it must have been pretty hard to have to deal with that.
Krist: Yeah it was, because we were really concerned with losing the audience that was into us before, you know, we still wanted those people because, you know, I suppose we feel like we relate to them in a way you know? I mean those are the kind of people that we share common interests with and those are the people that we’re friends with you know, so, we were really worried about that. I don’t think we’ve lost very many of them so it doesn’t matter anymore. As long as they’re there, we can you know just forget about the idiots at the back so long as they don’t cause any trouble. That was another concern we had is that if we were to have this massively mainstream audience that we were going to come across a lot of problems in live shows with, with macho guys beating up on girls and you know starting fights and things like that. You know, the typical things that you see at a Van Halen show or something you know. We just didn’t want to have to, to deal with something like that.
Q: Do you ever feel like you lose intensity at these big arenas or big places?
Kurt: Yeah. I don’t find myself having as much fun as I did when we played in clubs or theatres. Um. The biggest example of that is when we played in Europe and we played all these outdoor festivals. I had a terrible time. I hated it. Like Krist and Dave were like thirty feet away from me you know. It was like ‘Hi-ii!’ you know. It just didn’t seem right. So. We’re gonna make a few changes in our stage set up to alleviate some of those problems, you know. We’re gonna squeeze closer together, you know, on these big stages. And whether that fucks with the visuals for people out in the audience, oh well, you know, at least we’ll play better and enjoy ourselves.
Dave: We played in front of like a hundred thousand people down in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and I just saw the video from the back of the stadium and we were just like little ants on stage and I was just god, who was standing there? You know, and how do they feel about that?
Kurt: I don’t think our music translates in that kind of situation you know? Those people can’t appreciate the energy that is on stage at least because they’re so far away.
Krist: It’s almost understandable why a lot of lead singers in arena rock bands um have this kind of rapport with the audience where they’re going ‘Hey! How’s everybody doing? How are you at the back people?’ you know, and stuff like that ‘Are you feeling alright?’ because that’s pretty much all you can understand when someone’s saying something like that over a PA in front of a hundred thousand people, you know. It’s just, it’s hard for us to adapt to that because we just can’t do that, we can’t bring ourselves to be that ridiculous.
Dave: And there are live shows like you know you try to experience this thing with the audience, kind of reciprocate this feeling this energy and I don’t know how this translates from three people to a hundred thousand people, you know. It’s like mathematically uh pretty wild.
Krist: We need to get a horn section.
(Chorus of “Yeah” from the others)
Q: Are you thinking of employing a second guitar player again for the oncoming tour?
Kurt: Yeah.
Q: Will it be Big John?
Kurt: No. We’ve hired Pat Smear who’s from The Germs. It’s working out great.
Krist: He’s got good energy. So I think he’ll add that to the band live. If one of us is kinda slacking that night, I think we can count on him to keep the energy going, you know.
Kurt: He’s the back-up engine.
Q: I guess it must make your job a lot easier too?
Kurt: Yeah. It does. It totally relieves me of a lot of unnecessary things that I have to think about.
Q Looking back, do you sometimes sort of regret the major success of Nevermind?
Krist: I don’t.
Dave: Not really.
Kurt: No, because for the most part, I’m pretty convinced that most people liked that record, so you know the more the merrier I mean the more people who can listen to your music and enjoy it, the better, you know.
Krist: If it was some big marketing scheme then I think I’d probably feel guilty about that.
(“Yeah” Trying to talk over each other)
Krist: If it was just like a contract thing…
Kurt: It was just like it happened organically more organically than anything has in a long time so you know, it’s flattering…
Q: Especially in the beginning you sometimes had this feeling that even the record company was completely overwhelmed by it, they didn’t expect it.
Dave: They shifted like 40,000 copies and they like sold out in a day or two, then you couldn’t
Kurt: It’s nice to know that you can sell your music on the music alone you know. I mean the time that it took off, a lot of radio stations were playing it before we had a video, which is you know, that’s an uncommon thing in this day and age you know. So it’s not our pretty faces that are selling the records, it’s the music. I walk into the Fred Meyer department store down in Longview Washington, this tiny town, and I look and I go ‘Oh there’s Mudhoney, there’s Sebadoh, there’s Sonic Youth’ I go ‘This is really great, you know’. And before—
Krist: Just a couple of years ago that was impossible. Totally uncalled for.
Kurt: Yeah. And then kids down there are exposed to that. I think it’s really positive.
Q: Nevermind’s success has obviously helped a lot of other bands too.
Kurt: Well what happened to us has kinda opened a lot of doors. I think we were in the right place at the right time for like a, you know, rock and roll, because all those old rock stars, all those poof-di-doo hairspray bands were just hanging on and doing the same thing, basically emulating Hanoi Rocks like over and over again and it stagnated, like the Soviet Economy, or something you know what I mean.
Krist: Yeah it got just as boring as grunge will within a year, you know.
Kurt: We did a photo shoot with someone for a cover of a magazine and he was telling us a story about how Bon Jovi came in and said, er, make me, he came in with like a flannel shirt on and he wanted, he said ‘make me look like Nirvana’ and er…
Krist: Wow. That’s pretty flattering.
Kurt: If Bon Jovi wants to look like us, you know, something’s wrong.
Krist: Well that just proves he’s a desperate, untalented piece of shit.
Q: Do you have yourselves an explanation for your success?
Kurt: Explanation… It’s all in the cards. It’s a roll of the dice.
Krist: It’s a lot of luck (all talking at once) Being in the right place at the right time.
Kurt: I think the old dinosaurs were just like holding on for as long as possible and we had this really strong song and there were like no number one rock records, maybe like REM was number one. But Metallica came out with good stuff, but um…
Krist: Just, change has to happen you know, just part of the whole human experience is change, so.. I think that next we’re probably gonna be these old hacks and there’ll be this young, happening band going on and probably slagging us off or something for being dinosaurs and being defensive and we’ll be sort of established and…
Kurt: Makes me like this new band. (chuckles)
Krist: Yeah, yeah! And we would have like just totally consolidated our relationships with people in MTV, the music labels, different magazines…We’re gonna be like the establishment and hopefully someone will come by and…Kill us…
Krist: No, cause we’re so in, we’re so established…”Cover of Rolling Stone, when do you guys want it?” We’re just like totally, totally terrible, we’re hanging out with Arnold Schwarzenegger…
Q: I guess that must be strange for you anyways, suddenly being involved in real big business on the promotional side and also being on the receiving side of huge tax bills.
Kurt: I’m happy to fucking suffer for, you know, I I I’ll be glad tovthrow out more of the money that I’ve made if it’s going to be put in the right places, if it’s going to help the economy. I mean, everybody should suffer, you know? Everyone should start wearing sweaters and turning their heaters down and you know? I don’t mind, I didn’t mind standing in gas lines when I was a little kid during Carter, I mean I had to sit in the car and wait in line with my dad and he would just curse Carter all the time you know, “what a bastard”, you know, the convenience of America is ruined. Everybody wants to, you know, everybody has to swallow a little bit of bad medicine to make things better, so, fuck it.
Krist: They’re kicking Clinton around and you know it’s like you know – remember Nixon? And Iran-Contra, Reagan S&L scandals? No one ever brings that up, it’s like crazy.
Q: Do you think as a band you have to try to move something in people’s mind to make them think you know, or at least get a message across?
Kurt: Well it’s not like a real conscious goal of ours, or something that we prepared to do, it just emulates the personalities that we have you know, we’ve always been conscious of political things as much as our you know mental capacity can hold and, and we…
Krist: We’ve just been aware of things and it just kinda surfaces and comes out, just because, that’s what happens I mean we don’t have like this angle like we’re in a political band or …
Kurt: We’ve always tried really hard to not put out too much of an image of being too politically conscious, so it gets in the way of the music cause you know, that’s more important
Krist: And I think too that in like this country that people are so apathetic and like they’re so unconscious in front of their TV sets and then somebody like us who has somewhat awareness, it makes us look like we’re really aware and we’re not, I mean. You know what I mean? This is just things we’re concerned about and we just talk about you know. Just cause we talk about them at home or we talk about it with friends and just having a talk about things in interviews you know…
Q: Have you ever experienced that groups that are like political lobbyists or other social groups try to instrumentalise you, your success, for their causes?
Kurt: No, I wouldn’t say they’ve used us. We’ve had a few offers from some political organizations like the Fair Organization who’ve been working for years to expose a lot of injustices and try to um promote real truths in a lot of things that have happened politically you know. It’s like, an underground leftist organization that tries to expose the truths and you know and they’re totally massed over by USA Today and magazines like that, you know, right-wing-on magazines that, a lot of time, the truth and the details of the story aren’t ever reported, and that’s what this organization does. They came to us and of course we’re going to want to do something with them to help them out. But I wouldn’t say anyone’s trying to take advantage of us in that way at all.
Krist: Fairness is an acronym for like fairness and accuracy in reporting. I think I’ve been really conscious of what’s been going on in the media with being part of the media you know and then I just look at the way you know the press responds and it’s like you know being all over the press. It’s really interesting, there are a lot of bozos out there who form public opinion and you know people don’t think for themselves so they have a big responsibility and they’re basically just exploiting it and er, this just it’s into like truth, reality you know. Just like these bad demagogues, demagoguery politicians manipulating people and spreading their lies for their own personal gain you know. Former ex-Communists or ex-Communists or like former ex-Communists. Help people out you know, not just putting band aids on the situation. Totally dispose of the regimes over there you know but there’s not going to be any change, you know, they don’t even recognize the Serbian opposition, the guy’s languishing in prison, they beat the hell out of him, they don’t even help the guy out you know. There were elections in Serbia like there was a lot of panic, it was a sham election, they didn’t do anything about it you know.
Anyway getting back — where were we? Rock and roll…
Q: After all your experience with media all over the world, do you still believe what you read?
(Various — “Never. Never.”)
Kurt: I never did before but I don’t believe even more now. I know that I don’t even have the right – it’s the only thing I’ve learned, I don’t have the right to make an opinion on anything that I read or see you know on television until I go to the fucking source myself personally. My attitude has changed so much in the last couple of years, mainly because of the crap that’s been written about us that I don’t know, I don’t even find myself having many opinions on like bands anymore or putting them down or, or, going out of my way to like, to have any kind of expression about them at all because I, I don’t know these people you know. Bon Jovi could be one of the nicest people in the world, their music sucks but like, you know, I don’t even want to bother with even expressing those kind of opinions I just don’t wanna because I know that there are people you know, probably in this town right now, talking about us you know. So I heard that you know Krist Novoselic, you know, blah blah blah…
Dave: With his dog…
Kurt: With his grandmother’s dog. And it has AIDS.
Krist: Which is not true by the way.
Q: Does that sometimes affect your private life too, I mean, your friends or your family are reading these stories about you?
Krist: Mmm hmm. Yeah. It’s weird to talk with your, your wife’s great grandparents and they bring up something like that you’re just like man that’s not true at all and you have to explain to them how people have different agendas, each writer has their own perspective and maybe the magazine editor has an agenda you know what I mean and you’re just you’re at their mercy basically so all you can do is be as happy as possible and put on a happy face to roll with the punches.
Q: There are certain magazines where I thought okay whatever they’ve printed is at least like well researched, like Newsweek in America. I found it quite disturbing that even they made up stories
Krist: I was surprised about Newsweek. I thought they were of a different calibre you know.
Kurt: I’m not surprised at all. No magazine has any ethics at all. There isn’t any magazine…
Krist: (Interrupts) Mainstream magazine
Kurt: Yeah, mainstream magazine that would ever um ever you know stop a good story you know. They wanna sell magazines. They’re in the entertainment business. [
Krist: “Yeah, that’s a good point..
Kurt: And they use, they use politics as some kind of fucking fake tool to sell their magazines
Krist: Right, right.
Q: But Newsweek are the sort of magazine who have to lose a real reputation as well
Krist: I think we’re going to have to get Dave in, David Gergen
Kurt: No, there is no one that is challenging these magazines though, there are no protection laws against you know false things that are written about celebrities. Libel suits are a complete farce, you know, basically a libel suit is just a challenge between two people that have a lot of money and you know whoever has the most money will win you know and if you go up against Conde Nast or some major corporation that you know runs a whole bunch of magazines and owns this one magazine that wrote shit about you, they’ll just filibuster for years and you’ll spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in challenging them and you’ll end up losing so there’s really, you can’t even get to that first stage of even filing for a libel law, a libel suit – it’s just, it’s a waste of time
It’s pretty wild like all the relationships between people and the bands and the labels and between magazines and all that stuff you know you’ve got so much like, Bill Clinton had a bad time so he hired David Gergen who started throwing parties for the press corps and started smoothing people over because he had relationships and whaddya know, we have news coming out [inaudible] for Clinton and it’s it’s manufactured perception it’s like it’s not real, it’s all just a charade you know and the bottom line is Stoli vodka ads on the back page, you know, they just get that money and you know everything in between is just not that important … television, cinema… So we’re gonna start our own magazine. It’s gonna be called the Nervewracker.
Full of character assassinations left and right, we’re gonna schmooze with all the people. Whoever greases our palm the most is getting a full cover story, you know what I mean? Step one, take the guys out for dinner – I’ll have lobster thank you. Step two
(Interruption – get me in the show for free)
Yeah, get me in the show for free. Step three, uh I’ve got this niece, she needs a new, I wanna get her a Mustang … car – Done. You’re on the cover of Nervewracker. Unscrupulous magazine – go ahead.
Q: How seriously do you take all these clichés and standards of the business and the roles people play?
Kurt: Uh. Well I just think of like the wrestling industry like WWF World Whatever Federation Wrestling where there’s like Hulk Hogan and all those Roddy, Roddy Piper and … can you imagine all the politics going on in there you know – he’s gonna win this match but see, he has to lose this match and well they’re gonna be on this TV show and it’s like wow, all the drama and all the egos, personalities World Federation Wrestling, it’s like – get me out of here
Kurt: I recommend playing In Utero backwards, and that’s – ooh I let it slip, oh I shouldn’t have said that. There’s all kinds of Kurt is dead stuff, you know, but, it’s total devil worship… of the worst kind … altars, virgins…
Krist: Those white trash mothers are gonna sue us after they beat their children for a few years and then they kill themselves and blame it on us
Kurt: That’s right. And then blow their faces off. I gave them like a good Christian upbringing
(Interruption — “Don’t, man…”)
Kurt: And what happened?
Krist: I tanned his ass every day, he should have turned out just fine, if it weren’t for that record
(Laughter — tanned his ass)
Q: Because no kid’s committed suicide yet listening to a Nirvana song.
Krist: Let’s hope. Let’s hope.
Kurt: They’re committing social suicide.
Q: Moral Panics or is there something more sinister in American culture?
Krist: Well. This is I dunno, there’s a lot of symptoms out there like I don’t know, kids killing themselves or people walking into MacDonald’s and blowing people away.
Kurt: They’re always killing people who don’t deserve it though, you know what, I mean if you’re going to kill a bunch of people why not assassinate someone who deserves it, you know?
Krist: But they don’t, they don’t show that as like a symptom. They just say that’s a problem. “Random act of violence!” But maybe that’s a symptom, of what kind of a country you live in and people’s values, you see what I mean? I say they’re all just FUCKED! I’ll answer that question by first off saying that everybody’s FUCKED. If you ask me. And then why don’t we take it from there? We’re all fucked. Alright, well, we’ve established something. Some kind of criteria. Like a base to where to go on to. Maybe we’re all…
Kurt: And how are they fucked?
Krist: How are they fucked? Well, I don’t wanna think about that because that just involves effort.
Kurt: Because then if I just waste my time thinking about it and we create some kind of dialogue about it for a while then we’ll just come back to the conclusion that everybody’s fucked.
Krist: Everybody’s fucked, you know, so you just have to take up smoking and you know live a leisurely lifestyle and you know bomb some third world countries, walk into MacDonald’s and shopping malls with automatic weapons readily available and…
Kurt: Hey if life gets too tough just buy an AK47 and walk into MacDonald’s. You’ll feel better.
Krist: Yeah. Cause you hate Mondays.
How is Francis Farmer gonna have her revenge on Seattle?
Krist: What, what about it?
Kurt: Uh you should read Dreamland by this PI reporter who wrote this book about her, it’s really good. She was an actress, she was kind of a foul mouthed person and she, and she hated the whole Hollywood scene and she expressed her hatred for them publicly and so. And she also when she was like, I think she was 15, she entered this essay contest when she was living here in Seattle entitled God is Dead and a lot of people accused her of being a Communist. And then she went to New York and was a part of this acting troupe and it supposedly had Communist ties too. So then there’s this big conspiracy amongst this judge, a very well-known prominent judge here in Seattle and a bunch of other people who had ties with Hollywood and they basically just set her up and ruined her life you know. They had some pictures taken of her when she was arrested for drunk driving. I just was a big huge scandal. And she eventually was sent to a mental institution and given a lobotomy and raped every day for years and just totally abused and ended up like working at a at a, um, Four Seasons restaurant alone and dying by herself.
Krist: It was Cambridge Island. That’s where she was institutionalized. Right over there. It was this old broken down infirmary there.
Kurt: For years every night there would be lines of custodians, friends and um people, you know, part of the staff who would wait in line to rape her every day you know, she went through a lot of shit. And it just disgusts me, you know, to know that there, some of the people there were part of that conspiracy, were living here in Seattle in their comfortable cushy little homes and their families you know. This is twenty, you know, this is forty years after the fact and it’s, just, you know, makes me want to kill them
Krist: It’s a just God not a fair one, you know, that’s what the Christians say. “God! Why was there Auschwitz?” “Well, I’m a just God not a fair one.” “Oh, okay.” You know?
Q: Touring must have changed for you quite a lot too, suddenly being confronted with this giant machinery when you play big venues and you don’t have a lot of people and equipment and the real organization required…
Kurt: Yeah we used to drive around just three guys in a van..
Krist: But you know for, compared to a lot of other bands that are on our scale, like we only have like a handful of roadies and a tour manager and a helper, for him, you know, it’s like a lot of bands that are bigger than us or as big as us you know have like 50 people on the road with them, it’s this big confusing stupid thing that happens. We’re still really down to earth in that area and we may suffer for it a lot of times because we don’t get things done but oh well…
Kurt: We save a lot of money. (Laughter)
Krist: It’s just funnier and simpler that way
Q: Kurt, did having a family, did that change your attitudes towards music at all?
Kurt: Mmmm, not towards music.
Q: But towards the lifestyles associated with it?
Kurt: Mmmm it doesn’t seem that much more optimistic, I mean I totally, I like having a family it’s fun it’s great, but you know I’m so angry about a lot of other things you know, in life, so it doesn’t really, you know, stop me from being angry in music. It hasn’t changed us very much.
