Name: If Krist had quit: how Nirvana almost broke up before their first album
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If Krist had quit: how Nirvana almost broke up before their first album

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All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.In 1991, Mark Lanegan’s band Screaming Trees released their fifth studio album, Uncle Anesthesia. The Trees were a part of the budding Washington state music scene that would come to be known as grunge music, but with five albums under their belt, they were one of the more accomplished bands to emerge from the Pacific Northwest: the mid-1990s megastardom of bands such as Pearl Jam, Hole, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains was still a way off. Lanegan, along with bandmates Van and Gary Lee Conner and Mark Pickerel, frequented local bars and small venues to watch gigs and when Van briefly quit the band, it was at one of these gigs that Lanegan planned to recruit a new bassist. Little did he know at the time quite who he was trying to poach…Van quit the band. After marrying his pregnant 16-year-old girlfriend, he took exception to the new band rule that no girls were allowed to ride in our van to gigs. He took it personally, of course, because it was personal: no one else in the band even had a girlfriend. But his wife was unbearable. At every show, she would stand directly in front of Van and scream at the top of her lungs throughout and in between every song as though we were The at Yankee Stadium. Van made no attempt to control her behaviour, so we instituted the new rule. And with that, my lone ally in the band was gone.&nbsp;I got a phone call from a friend, a guitar player I knew, Dylan Carlson. I’d met him a couple years earlier at an outdoor show near a lake in Olympia. The heat was unbearable that day and not knowing his band at all, I had asked them if I could get in their air-conditioned car to escape the oven-hot sun. I quickly became enamoured with his mellow, offbeat, contrary slant on life and his sharp, dry sense of humour. The singer in his band was an over-the-top motormouth named Slim Moon. He was dressed like Olivia Newton-John in her “Physical” video: pink sweat suit, pink headband, the whole nine. I remember being impressed that Slim rhymed stupider with Jupiter&nbsp;in one of their songs. But what struck me most was Dylan’s guitar playing. He was on another plane.&nbsp;Dylan’s best friend was in a band that was booked to play a show in the Ellensburg Public Library with some local bands opening and he asked if I would go down to meet the singer as he was a fan of my band Screaming Trees. Knowing the very small scene of bands playing original music in my town and the very likely minuscule turnout for such a show, combined with my current state of deep, clinical unhappiness, it didn’t sound like much fun but I agreed, thinking I was doing a friend a favour.&nbsp;At the time I was living in a $75-a-week, one-room studio pad with no kitchen, one bare lightbulb that came straight out of the wall, and a terrible 1970s-style shag carpet permeated with the stench of the previous tenant’s pet ferrets. A grim, mold-covered shared bathroom down the hall had the only sink in the place. In other words, a complete fucking outhouse toilet hole. My only piece of furniture was a couch that was also my bed. The only door to the outside from my room led into an alley, at the end of which was the elaborate two-storey house where my most recent ex-girlfriend stayed with her new man. Half the time I left my place the first thing I’d see was the two of them making out on the swinging chair on his decorative, pillared front porch. My only respite from my pseudo-suicidal/homicidal preoccupations came from near-constant masturbation and my used Radio Shack cassette player and the lone tape I owned: Neil Young’s After The Gold Rush. I played it around the clock, morning till night.&nbsp;I might have missed the last band if I hadn’t seen a cop car crawl around the corner a couple blocks away&nbsp;The evening of the band’s show, I skipped the openers and instead spent a few minutes guiltily jacking off while watching my ex through an uncurtained window of their house fucking her boyfriend in a brightly lit room. I might have missed the last band, too, if I hadn’t seen a cop car crawl around the corner a couple blocks away. I hid in the bushes for an agonising moment, then furtively screwed off to the library and showed up just as the band were going on.&nbsp;As they took the stage, I was immediately struck by the bass player, a 6ft 7in giant with a fierce intensity obvious before even playing a note. He looked pissed off and I was instantly drawn to him. I admired his openly angry countenance since that was how I felt every time I was onstage, like I was going into battle.&nbsp;Upon seeing this enormous guy tuning up, my first thought was here’s my bass player. Because of the unique physicality of the Trees, it would take a supersized person with a special charisma to retain the visual balance and fill Van’s shoes. This guy had all that in spades. I began to formulate a plan to steal him away from this band I’d not even heard yet.Most PopularOnce the three-piece group began playing, however, the wall of noise, the raw catchiness of the songs and the voice of the left-handed guitar-playing singer made me realise I was witnessing something special. Perhaps one of the best bands I’d ever seen, in the fucking Ellensburg Public Library, no less. The show was shut down after only three or four tunes due to a typical small-town curfew and timing fuck-up and the giant bass player stood there throwing his bass all the way up to the high ceiling, catching it with one hand and angrily tossing it back up, over and over again until the lights in the room were finally turned off.&nbsp;Leaving the library, I was approached by the singer.“Hey, man, thanks so much for coming out to the show.”“Dude, you guys are great! What a fucking drag that these idiots shut you down. But that’s Ellensburg for you.”“I want to tell you, I’m a huge fan of yours. If you ever need an opener or want to do something musical together, please give me a call.”&nbsp;We exchanged phone numbers, ballpoint pen on the back of a flyer for the show.&nbsp;“Definitely,” I said, “I’ll take you up on that. Seriously, I was completely blown away in there.”&nbsp;“Thank you so much. And, please, give me a call whenever you want.”&nbsp;“I’ll do that,” I said. For once, I meant it. I looked down at the scrap of paper for his name: Kurt.&nbsp;I walked back to my depressing hovel with an electricity in my step and a newfound buoyancy of spirit. I couldn’t shake the notion that I had just experienced something touched by greatness.&nbsp;A couple of weeks later I picked up the phone to a voice I didn’t recognise, a somewhat nervous, anxious-sounding voice.&nbsp;Most Popular“Mark Lanegan?”“Yes…?”“Krist Novoselic here, I play bass in Nirvana. Are you still looking for a bass player? I can’t stand playing with Kurt any more. I’m sick of everything always having to be his way.”&nbsp;I was silent for a moment, thinking it over.“Yeah, man, we’re still looking. I love your style and it would be great to have you in my band. But if I were you, I’d get past your problems with Kurt and make it work. You guys got something special there.” I never mentioned the call to Kurt. It had been easy for us to become friends, just a couple of long phone calls talking about girls, music, life. I loved Kurt and I envied him because Nirvana were fully developed from the first moment I heard them. The difference between Nirvana and the Trees was so clear to me. Nirvana were who they were from the first time I saw them: great songs, great singer, great look, everything.Nirvana were fully developed from the first moment I heard themThe Trees, on the other hand, were always fighting: fighting each other, fighting fans and promoters and bouncers, fighting to find a direction. Three records in, we still didn’t know what the fuck we were. We had no identity beyond our notoriety for our unhinged live show. Lee Conner would go insane and tear up the stage with a ferocity never before seen in a guy that size. People would gawk and stare and then go back to their beers and go on with their lives. Lee’s nightly grand mal-esque fits made us a curiosity, a freak show to be experienced only in that setting, nowhere else. Our records were a shitty mishmash of half-baked ideas and catchy tunes derailed by the stupidest of lyrics. I fucking ached when I thought of all the opportunities we missed as we churned out shit record after shit record. I longed to make music that could be taken seriously, music that I could take seriously, instead of just the tall dumbass singing on the same stage as the lunatic, Falstaffian guitar player. Our mess of a “career” had become only a source of embarrassment, frustration and turmoil. Worse yet, I myself had set the wheels of this machine in motion. I had idiotically insisted that Lee remain in the band and that we play his songs, a move I cursed myself for almost daily. But beyond all belief, we were still upwardly mobile, and I’d be damned if I was going to quit before the ride was through.&nbsp;This is an extract from , out now.Head to for exclusive music content and commentary, all the latest music lifestyle news and insider access into the GQ world, from behind-the-scenes insight to recommendations from our editors and high-profile talent.Now read

All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.In 1991, Mark Lanegan’s band Screaming Trees released their fifth studio album, Uncle Anesthesia. The Trees were a part of the budding Washington state music scene that would come to be known as grunge music, but with five albums under their belt, they were one of the more accomplished bands to emerge from the Pacific Northwest: the mid-1990s megastardom of bands such as Pearl Jam, Hole, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains was still a way off. Lanegan, along with bandmates Van and...

If Krist had quit: how Nirvana almost broke up before their first album

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