Kill Rock Stars/Rock Stars Kill/Stars Kill Rock, various artist compilations. Released: 1991/1993/1994.
6/14/91 - San Francisco, CA.
Kurt: “It was just something to do. For a while we were thinking about putting out the record ourselves, Punk was mainstream when it first hit - the Sex Pistols were on a major label right away. They sold hundreds of thousands of records. That’s what they started out as - a commodity.”
Krist: “They all came sniffing, MCA, Capitol, Charisma, Columbia, Slash, Polydor, PolyGram… all the Polys.”
Kurt: “Geffen had a good track record with our pals Sonic Youth, they understand our boundaries. They gave us total artistic control and don’t seem to want us to do anything that’ll damage our credibility, plus, it’s nice to get our records distributed better - like in K-Mart!”
(Photo credited to Joe Giron. 6/13/91.)
Interviewer: “The Punk thing, basically that was probably the best thing to happen to music in a long time.”
Kurt Cobain: “Yeah, but there will never be another musical revolution, the only musical revolution that’s going to happen is that people are going to finally appreciate all music.”
“People seem to miss the fact that not all our songs are shrieking Punk Rock monsters.” - Kurt Cobain.
Nirvana is a trio who play Heavy Rock with Punk overtones. They usually dont have jobs. So they can tour anytime.
“We had grown up admiring punk bands and thinking all those groups on the pop charts were embarrassing, and suddenly we were one of those bands.” - Kurt Cobain, 1993.
“The Beatles and Black Sabbath are probably my two biggest influences, I listened to both of them at the same time when I was a little kid in fourth grade, hanging around with a lot of older kids in the trailer park where my dad lived. In the Summer, they would come over to our trailer when Dad wasn’t home to smoke pot, screw their girlfriends and listen to records. They turned me onto a lot of really cool hard rock at a really young age.” - Kurt Cobain, 1991.
Interviewer: “When did you start to think about sexism? Was it an outgrowth of your interest in punk?”
Kurt Cobain: “No, it was before that. I could never find any good male friends, so I ended up hanging out with the girls a lot, and I just thought they weren’t being equally treated and they weren’t treated with respect. I hated the way Aberdeen treated women in general - they were just totally oppressed. The words “bitch” and “cunt” were totally common, you’d hear them all the time. But it took me many years after the fact to realize those were the things that were bothering me. I was just starting to understand that was pissing me off so much, and in high school, I found Punk rock and it came all together.”
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