I Want My MTV (83 page)

 

COURTNEY LOVE, artist:
Kurt hated Sam Bayer. For “Teen Spirit,” Kurt wanted fat cheerleaders, he wanted black kids, he wanted to tell the world how fucked up high school was. But Sam put hot girls in the video. The crazy thing is, it still worked.

 

SAMUEL BAYER:
Kurt wanted to make something that felt like a cross between the movies
Over the Edge
and
Rock 'n' Roll High School
. I had in mind something darker and more gothic.

DAVE GROHL:
The idea was, the kids take over and burn down the school gymnasium, just as Matt Dillon did in
Over the Edge
, with the rec center. Kurt was a
huge
fan of that movie.

We walked into that whole thing really cautiously, because we didn't want to misrepresent the band. There were certain things we found to be really funny about music videos—tits and ass and pyrotechnics, shit like that—and when we showed up at the video shoot, we were like,
Wait a minute, those cheerleaders look like strippers. There's fire over there? Hold on
. A lot of people we worked with didn't understand the underground scene or punk rock.

 

SAMUEL BAYER:
I scouted LA strip clubs for the cheerleaders. Kurt didn't like them; he thought they were too pretty. I couldn't understand why he wanted to put unattractive women in the video. I think Kurt looked at me—the way I talked, the way I acted, everything—and saw himself selling out to the corporate way of doing a music video. So anything I did was construed as corporate. But to me, these were nasty girls. They had rug burns on their knees. In my eyes, the whole video was dirty. It's all yellows and browns. It was the opposite of everything I saw on MTV at the time; every video was blue and backlit with big xenon lights. It was MC Hammer dancing, and Guns N' Roses swimming with dolphins. It was ridiculous. I was a painter. I was trying to rip on Caravaggio and Goya. I just wanted to make the greatest music video you ever saw for $25,000.

 

ROBIN SLOANE:
The problems at the shoot weren't Sam's fault. All the kids in the bleachers were drunk, and they seriously wrecked the set. It was out of control. To Sam's credit, he kept shooting.

 

DAVE GROHL:
We did a couple of takes and the audience just started destroying the stage, tearing shit apart. People were out of control and the director's on a bullhorn screaming, “Stop! Cut!” And that's when it started to make sense to me: This is like a Nirvana show.

 

SAMUEL BAYER:
The day of the video shoot was pure pain. Kurt was miserable. We didn't get along. He hated being there. I think at one point my nerves were fried, the set was chaotic, the band didn't like stuff, and I yelled, “Shut up!” at the kids we'd recruited. That was a turning point. I became the enemy. And then Kurt refused to lip-sync. Danny Goldberg, or some other big cheese on the set, had to beg Kurt to sing the song a couple times. And maybe it was his venom coming through, but I've been on two hundred music-video sets since, and that was the best performance I've ever seen.

ROBIN SLOANE:
Sam didn't know how to edit. Most directors hire editors, but Matt Mahurin is a control freak, and Sam learned from Matt. Sam's edit had a lot of footage of the janitor and not nearly enough of the band. He fixated on the janitor. He'd have him on screen for thirty seconds in a row. He said, “The janitor shot is so great.” But of course the most interesting thing in this video is Kurt. Fuck the janitor.

I said to Sam, “You've got to edit this the way Kurt wants.” Sam was like, “Fuck you, I'm the director.” And I'm like, “Fuck you, I'm the record company. I'm taking it away now.” Which is what we did. We hired an outside editor to finish it. It was a very ugly scene.

 

SAMUEL BAYER:
I was a young filmmaker, and when you're young you get too close to your subject matter and things become too precious. There were some characters in the video, a principal and a teacher, that Kurt was adamant had to come out. He was right, but I couldn't see it. Kurt flew down to LA, and it was the last time I saw him. It was a very contentious meeting. And Robin Sloane, who was great to me, made the decision to bring in an outside editor to finish cutting the video. The editor was Angus Wall, who became David Fincher's editor—he won the Academy Award for
The Social Network
. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was one of his first jobs.

 

GARY GERSH:
Not everybody at Geffen was excited by Nirvana. A lot of executives were shaking their heads, going,
This is all well and good, but we're having a lot of success with Cher and Whitesnake
. The first pressing of the album was thirty thousand copies, and I made a bet with someone in the sales group, for a relatively large amount of money, that we'd sell thirty thousand within the first month. More than one person took the bet. We sold thirty thousand the day it came out. Within the next seven days, I think we shipped half a million records.

 

AMY FINNERTY:
Initially, Abbey Konowitch said, “Look, the visuals are great, and they have a catchy name, but beyond that, I don't really know what this is gonna do.” And I basically testified for Nirvana. I said, “I'm your target audience. I understand why we're playing Bobby Brown and Paula Abdul and Whitesnake. But this is what we should be playing. And if there isn't a place for this, I don't know what I'm doing here. Give this video significant rotation for a month, and I promise you'll see some return. If you don't, you can reconsider my position.”

 

COURTNEY LOVE:
The first time Kurt and I slept together was at a Days Inn in Chicago, 'cause, you know, that's how Nirvana rolled. I'd seen “Smells Like Teen Spirit” quite a few times by that point, but we were having our first postcoital moment, and we're watching MTV and the video came on. I pulled away from him when the video came on, because it was his video, his moment, he was the king of the fucking world, and he put his arm around me and held my hand and pulled me closer to him. Which was symbolic, like, “I'm letting you into my life.” That really endeared him to me.

The next time I saw the video with him was at the Omni Northstar Hotel in Minneapolis. I'd flown there to fuck Billy Corgan, who still had lots of hair. I hadn't had sex in a while and I needed to have some. I didn't even know Nirvana were playing that night. Kurt and I wound up at the Northstar Hotel and our daughter Frances was basically made that night. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was on MTV every five fucking minutes.

 

SAMUEL BAYER:
I was at a girlfriend's house one afternoon, laying on the bed watching TV, and I saw it. That video immediately gave me a career. Everyone wanted to do a Nirvana-type video: Ozzy Osbourne, Johnny Lydon, the Ramones. They all wanted that look. That first year, the videos I did were all just imitations of Nirvana.

 

KEVIN KERSLAKE:
“Teen Spirit” crossed the Rubicon. Nirvana became the mold for success, the way Poison had been four years before. There are many ironies within the history of MTV, and that is one of them: The revolutionary fights the dictator, and ultimately becomes the dictator. It's just swapping chairs.

 

AMY FINNERTY:
The first time I saw Kurt after the video took off was backstage at
Saturday Night Live
. We were in the greenroom and he said in that scratchy voice, “Hey, Amy. I heard you played our video. Thank you so much. I thought you were the VP of Post-it notes over there, I didn't know you had any power.” He really didn't know that I was in the programming department. He had no idea what my position was.

DAVE GROHL:
It all came down to Amy Finnerty. She championed the band. And she became a part of my family—coming down to Virginia and staying with my family and vacationing with us in North Carolina.

 

“WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC:
My manager was having a very tough time getting Nirvana's management to return his phone calls, and I very much wanted to do my “Smells Like Teen Spirit” parody. So I called Victoria Jackson, who I'd just done a movie with—she was on
Saturday Night Live
and Nirvana was performing there. And I said, “If you get Kurt Cobain alone in a room, please put him on the phone with me.” And she did.

So I talked to Kurt and he said, “Is it going to be a song about food?” I said, “Actually, it's going to be about how nobody can understand your lyrics.” And he's like, “That's great. Go ahead.” That was the last video of mine MTV put in heavy rotation.

 

AMY FINNERTY:
When MTV News reported on the
Vanity Fair
article about Courtney's drug use while pregnant, she and Kurt would complain to me about Kurt Loder. They didn't want to talk to him again. And then—I'm not sure why—Kurt decided he wanted to make up with Loder. I told the news department and they were thrilled, and we jumped on a plane to Minneapolis. Kurt and Kurt did the interview, and then Loder and Krist Novoselic decided to go to Krist's room and have a couple of drinks.

After a while, I went to check on them, and the door was ajar. I walked in, and no one was there, but the room was completely destroyed. I mean, broken glass tables, broken televisions, a full wet bar with every glass broken. It was totaled. I went down to Loder's room and same thing: The room was completely wrecked. And there sat Loder and Novoselic, each smoking a cigarette and drinking a brandy. I was like, “What happened?” And they just smiled and smoked. Loder denied any participation, but I have a hard time believing Krist would ruin his room and then ruin Kurt's room, too. Nirvana's tour manager and I had to settle up with the hotel. They did upwards of $30,000 in damage.

 

PETER BARON:
I took Kurt and Krist to do
Headbangers Ball
. Kurt wore a big yellow ball gown. He was completely fucked up. He was sleeping the entire time we were waiting to go on.

RIKI RACHTMAN:
I was so excited to meet Kurt Cobain, and he was passed out in the greenroom. And when he came on the show, he was high as a kite. He wasn't even really talking. That clip is all over YouTube.

 

STEVE ISAACS:
I had no problem with being called “the grunge VJ.” I was wearing combat boots, I had flannel shirts, I was obsessed with Nirvana and Pearl Jam. It felt like my generation had its moment, and MTV was depicting it. Nirvana broke about two months after I got to MTV.
Boom
, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and everything was different.

 

GARY GERSH:
There was a Nirvana show in LA, early on, at the Palace, and backstage there was, like, the royalty of hard rock and hair metal bands. They were there to see what was up.

 

KIP WINGER:
I was talking to Rick Krim on the phone and he said, “You haven't heard of Nirvana?” So I watched “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and I thought,
All right, we're finished.
We all knew it. It was obvious. There was no “Won't you play our video?” MTV wiped the slate.

 

JOHN KALODNER:
When I saw “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” my immediate thought was
My bands are in real trouble
. I took Kip Winger to lunch, and he was so dejected because Beavis and Butt-head were making fun of him. Mike Judd or whatever that fuck's name is. Fuck him. I mean how, how dare they? Hard rock bands made that network.

 

JANI LANE:
My manager and I flew to New York to say, “Please play our new video, ‘Bitter Pill.' Just give it a shot.” And Rick Krim said, “I can't do it.” It was a real blow. I went home thinking,
My career's over
.

 

RIKI RACHTMAN:
People think grunge killed metal, and that's not true. The musical climate is always changing. Nobody said that A Flock of Seagulls killed Adam & the Ants. Everybody was toning down. All of a sudden, you weren't seeing pyro at shows.

 

JOEY ALLEN:
Warrant had five number one videos at MTV. But I saw the writing on the wall from the Seattle bands—Pearl Jam's
Ten
was killer. We were at a Grammy party in LA. I had a few drinks in me and I bumped into Rick Krim. I'd played golf with him a few times, we were friends. I pulled out every credit card in my wallet, all the cash I had, and said, “Please play my video!”

MEIERT AVIS:
After “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” I could not get arrested. I'd done a couple of Warrant videos, and if you'd ever done a hair band, the Seattle bands would not touch you. Suddenly everything had to be like Sam Bayer. It was like a wave that cleaned a whole bunch of crappy directors out of the system.

 

BRET MICHAELS:
I don't blame grunge for anything. Poison was imploding anyway. I thought “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was phenomenal. And let's be straight honest: Grunge collapsed quickly. It exploded and then collapsed.

 

JANI LANE:
All of a sudden, we were scapegoats. I remember an interview, on MTV I believe, where Joe Elliott said, “Warrant ruined the '80s.”

 

ANDY MORAHAN:
I wanted to cry when I saw “Teen Spirit.” I thought it was perfect. In a way, Guns N' Roses, myself, we became the dinosaurs, the kind of artists punk rockers hated. We'd become overblown and indulgent and kind of stupid, and then Nirvana happened and suddenly everything was grunge and cheap, and thank god for it, you know?

 

KEVIN KERSLAKE:
The Michael Bays of the world, their aesthetic was so foreign to me. I wanted nothing to do with it, and it fueled a lot of defiance in the indie world, musically and visually. There was enough gloss to go around, so our approach was anti-gloss. Nirvana talked under their breath to me about “Teen Spirit,” and they just wanted to move on and do something different.