LIVE NIRVANA INTERVIEW ARCHIVE January ??, 1992 - New York, NY, US

Personnel

Interviewer(s)

Unidified WNEW-FM Correspondent

Interviewee(s)

Krist Novoselic

Dave Grohl

Sources

Medium	Publisher	Date of Issue	Title	Transcript
Audio	MJI Broadcasting	04/20/1992	Rock Today!! #355	Yes

Transcript

Krist: If we are, like, “big stars” now it's, like, not our fault! I mean, we would have made the same record, I don't care if it be on Sub Pop or Touch & Go, you know? Like we've said before, we expected it to sell - at the best, most optimistic - a couple of hundred thousand records, you know? Gold - if we would've got a Gold record, that's just like, “Okay, you guys did good!” you know? And I mean, it all just boils down to the music. If you don't like our record just because it's in the Top 10, I mean, I think that's kinda sad. Are you listening to the music, or do you have to be some cutting-edge cool person, you know?

Dave: Also, I think it would've been a different story if the media was saturated with full-page billboard ads and massive billboards on the street. We really didn't do any massive media hype, you know. MTV got ahold of the video and started playing it a lot but, you know, whatever.

Krist: I think a big way the record got out there was radio stations would add the song Smells Like Teen Spirit and they'd play it like late at night and people would hear and just start requesting it. They'd be getting more and more requests and so it got into rotation. People would hear it and then buy the record.

Krist: I'm not a nationalist at all! [laughs] I just don't care. I mean, I'm from Croatian descent and I see- you know, I call my aunt over there and I see what nationalism can do, the havoc it can wreak. I mean, we live on this planet, we're all human beings, you know? Nationalism is just another ‘ism’. That's all I can say, really. So, I don't care. I'm glad that we live on this beautiful planet. It's a miracle that we're alive and that we can experience so many great things. And I'm lucky that I live in this country where things are very stable and there's a lot of opportunity. You know, I could've been born in Cambodia, I could've been born in Bombay, maybe I wouldn't be so happy to be alive. So, I can look and I can see the problems over there and I can just kinda try to change 'em and say “Don't vote Republican” because they just wanna keep those people down.

Dave: The last thing you want to do is get stuck up on a soapbox.

Krist: Yeah! We're just a band, you know. You can do that, you can definitely put political things into your music, but in an aesthetic way, you know? Art, again, is interpretation… and message, too… but then again, it's Art, you know? I got something out of listening to Punk Rock in the early '80s, listening to Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys and MDC - especially MDC and the Dead Kennedys, where there was a blatant political message - I learned something from that, got a perspective, especially on my young mind. We'd never do anything blatant like that, cuz any of us wouldn't be comfortable with it.

Dave: I enjoy being able to have my family come to some of the shows, my mother and my sister. Just being able to go home back to DC every once in a while. Travel, I guess.

Krist: I like playing live, just getting pumped up and seeing the audience getting really psyched up….

Dave: It's pretty scary. I was looking at some photos of some of the shows we just did. Those audiences - they were these huge general admission audiences - and it's just scary, man!

Krist: Like these big swamping pits!

Dave: A massive sea…

Krist: A 400-person pit, just arms and legs. It looked like Dante's Inferno.

© MJI Broadcasting, 1992