I Want My MTV (84 page)

 

DAVE GROHL:
By the time we did “Come as You Are,” we felt like we had the license to do whatever we wanted to do. So as things went on, the videos got a little darker. In “In Bloom,” we were making fun of the hysteria around the band by using footage from old
Ed Sullivan
shows, of girls screaming in black-and-white for their favorite teenybopper. Plus, we just wanted to meet Doug Llewelyn from
People's Court
.

 

KEVIN KERSLAKE:
There was one thing Kurt wanted in “Come as You Are,” and that was not to be in the video. I had to develop a tool in which he was seen but wasn't seen, whether it was dark lighting or using a sheet of water in front of the camera that distorts his face.

The videos got darker because their psyches got darker. Any band that goes through that transition, it's so explosive and intoxicating and dark as fuck. Kurt wanted substance, and fame at that level doesn't offer much substance.

The idea on “In Bloom” was to satirize the spectacle of fan adoration, where you have expectations of pop stars who are squeaky clean. The band wore dresses, which was a spontaneous thought that Kurt came up with. We shot with old cameras, and did something you're really not supposed to do, which is change the lens in the middle of a shot to make jarring shifts. Then the cherry on top was when the band ripped the set to shreds, which is almost identical to the end of “Teen Spirit,” actually.

 

DAVE GROHL:
At that point, it was all about making people uncomfortable, really. The content and the visuals got heavier. Before Kurt had any idea for “Heart-Shaped Box” or any director in mind, he said, “You know what I want to do for the next video? I want to spend a
million
dollars.” And everybody said, “Okay!”

 

COURTNEY LOVE:
Kurt controlled every aspect of his videos. He wrote the treatment for every Nirvana video, except for “Lithium,” because he was too fucked up, so he let Kevin Kerslake do it. I stupidly recommended Kevin. I didn't realize the level of my reach and influence with Kurt. And Kevin Kerslake ended up suing Kurt on the day of his funeral.

 

ROBIN SLOANE:
Kevin Kerslake made a few Nirvana videos: “Lithium,” “In Bloom,” “Come as You Are.” His videos were just okay, but he and Kurt were friendly. Kurt and Kevin had a couple of phone conversations about “Heart-Shaped Box,” and Kevin wasn't going where Kurt wanted. Kurt said he wanted to work with someone else, so I suggested Anton Corbijn. And then Kevin sued the band for stealing his ideas. They were never his ideas. Even after Kurt's death, this suit was going on. Kevin went nuts.

 

DAVE GROHL:
Kurt wrote a treatment for “Heart-Shaped Box” and gave it to Kevin Kerslake. He started working on the treatment but couldn't get it together in time, so we moved on and did it with Anton Corbijn, and Kerslake came out and said, “Nope, that was my idea.” Which I think is fucking bullshit.

 

KEVIN KERSLAKE:
Legally, I can't talk about the lawsuit. It had to do with copyright infringement. There was a resolution to the case—a financial settlement—and I signed a non-disclosure agreement. There are only two people who know the truth, one of whom is sadly not with us any longer, and we are both at peace with it, even if certain people on the margins of the litigation still use it as an excuse to exorcise their personal demons.

 

ROBIN SLOANE:
Kurt had an idea of doing something that looked like the poppies in
The Wizard of Oz
, so I suggested that we shoot the video in Technicolor. Kurt loved that idea. There is no more Technicolor, actually—there's only one facility, in China—but Anton and his producers found a way to make it look like Technicolor. The video had a weird, beautiful look to it, and it was all over MTV. Videos don't get much better than that.

 

ANTON CORBIJN:
Courtney knew my Echo & the Bunnymen videos, and Nirvana asked me to do the video for “Heart-Shaped Box.” Kurt was fantastic. He wrote most of the ideas for the video. He sent me a fax, very detailed, of how he saw it: the field, the poppies, the crucifix, the fetuses hanging on a tree, the girl with the Ku Klux Klan–type outfit. I've never even seen a director be that detailed about a video.

It was very long finishing that video, because we shot in color, then transferred to black-and-white and hand-tinted every frame. Kurt wanted to shoot in Technicolor, and Technicolor had been sold to China, so he wanted to shoot it in China. My producer didn't like that idea very much. So we used colorization, a technique Ted Turner used for old black-and-white films, which created really vibrant colors.

Because it's so colorful, it got past the MTV censorship board. They didn't ask for a single change. “Heart-Shaped Box” got an award for Best Video and I was not invited onstage. I made the video! MTV gave the awards to the bands. Crazy.

 

STEVE ISAACS:
There was an asinine rivalry between Nirvana and Pearl Jam. I loved them both. But Kurt said in
Rolling Stone
that Pearl Jam's music was “false,” and he accused them of jumping on a bandwagon. The story was everywhere:
Nirvana hates Pearl Jam
. I wrote a letter to
Rolling Stone
saying Pearl Jam was a great band and calling Kurt pretentious. That pissed Kurt off. I was supposed to interview Nirvana in Madrid a few months later, but they faxed over a letter that said, “Anybody can interview us except Steve Isaacs.”

 

RICK KRIM:
Steve Backer, who did video promotion at Epic, said, “You've gotta see this band Pearl Jam,” and I went to the famous show at Roseland in '91 where they opened for Smashing Pumpkins and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Saw the show, was blown away, and shortly thereafter we got the “Alive” video.

 

STEVE BACKER:
As Krim's watching, he turned to me and said, “I get it.” That meant he'd be there when we needed him. He'd be their advocate. Rick came to Boston with me to take Pearl Jam to a Knicks/Celtics game. He became incredibly close with the band.

 

MARC REITER, record executive:
I was the product manager for Pearl Jam at Epic Records. They shot their first video, “Alive,” at the Off Ramp in Seattle, and insisted on using a friend of theirs, Josh Taft, to direct.
Headbangers Ball
was the only show that would play it. In fact,
Headbangers Ball
did the first-ever interview with Pearl Jam. And the band had a hard time with that. They just didn't think of themselves as aligned with that kind of music.

“Even Flow” was the next single. We shot a concept video at Griffith Park Zoo with a director named Rocky Schenck that never saw the light of day. He had done an Alice in Chains video everyone liked, but when we saw the first edit on this, we pushed the abort button right away. So we ate the $40,000 and went back to Josh Taft and shot another live video.

 

RICK KRIM:
“Alive” and “Even Flow” were great performance clips, but “Jeremy” was going to be their first concept video. We were incredibly excited. Steve Backer came in and showed it to me. It's an amazing video. It's even more powerful in the version we didn't air. I still have the original, in my office closet.

 

MARC REITER:
The band gave me a list of five directors and said, “This is who we will consider working with.” And if I have a claim to fame, this is it: I sent them six reels. The sixth was Mark Pellington.

 

MARK PELLINGTON:
Eddie Vedder told me he loved the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy video I did, and the Public Enemy video. He told me the story of Jeremy, the real story of the kid. He didn't say what they were looking for, other than the band didn't really need to be performing in it. Which was good, because I don't love shooting drummers.

When we cast the role of Jeremy, all these kids were being angst-ridden, but it didn't feel authentic. This one kid, Trevor Wilson, was listless and dull and had one droopy eye. He looked really uncomfortable. I found out later he was sick as a dog, but he had this certain thing about him, so we cast him.

I'll never forget dollying around Eddie and oh my god, the hair was rising on the back of my neck at the end. It felt like he was rising from the dead. You don't really direct that, you just unleash it.

 

JOHN CANNELLI:
Part of my responsibilities at the network was working with standards and practices, and giving the labels and artists ideas of how to make the videos more acceptable. I had to be the bad guy. I got on the phone with Michelle Anthony at Epic and Eddie Vedder and explained the changes we felt were necessary for the “Jeremy” video.

 

MARC REITER:
In the initial video, the kid who plays Jeremy takes the gun, puts it in his mouth, and pulls the trigger. The band wanted it in. Pellington wanted it in. For five days, I went back and forth with Pellington and Krim.

 

STEVE BACKER:
MTV came back to us and said, “We love it, but there's no way we're playing it with that ending.” And I didn't blame them. The kid blows his brains out.

 

MARC REITER:
In the final version, you see Jeremy walk into the classroom and extend his arm toward his head, but you don't see his hand, and you don't see a gun. For one split second, you see him close his eyes. And then you see his classmates, frozen, covered in blood. Some people thought, incorrectly, that Jeremy shot the kids in the front row, or shot the teacher.

 

MARK PELLINGTON:
Eddie wasn't anti-video. He became that way after “Jeremy.” It was edited and censored; it was misinterpreted by people who thought Jeremy shot his classmates, and Eddie was really pissed off by that. They were artists, man.

 

JUDY McGRATH:
When Pearl Jam decided, after “Jeremy,” not to make any more videos, Eddie Vedder said to me, “Look it's not personal, we're just not gonna make these things anymore.” I adored Pearl Jam and totally respected what he was doing. But we could not have played “Jeremy” without editing it. Anything involving kids and suicide was extremely touchy.

MARC REITER:
Pre-”Jeremy,” the album had sold between 500,000 and 1 million copies. And it had taken ten months to get there. After “Jeremy,” it was a blockbuster. It went to 2 million copies in a flash. And then 4 million, and 5 million. That's when it became a blur.

 

ABBEY KONOWITCH:
Grunge was a watershed moment, because it proved a huge musical movement could exist outside of us, not just because of us. For me, it began to signal the end of MTV's musical impact.

 

JOEL GALLEN:
1992 was my favorite VMAs. We held the show at the Universal Amphitheater from '89 to '91, and the energy in the house was always a little low. I convinced MTV to move to a bigger arena and to put real fans in the front. We got Pauley Pavilion on the campus of UCLA to let us do it at the gymnasium, and I gave fans all the good seats, and gave the VIPs the seats on the side. A lot of people were angry about that, including Tom Freston.

 

JUDY McGRATH:
I'll never forget the '92 VMAs. We had Pearl Jam, Bobby Brown, Guns N' Roses, Eric Clapton, and Nirvana. I could have died right then and there. A half hour before showtime, Nirvana weren't there. Kurt called, said he was driving and he was lost. He was in the car with Courtney and Frances, looking for the Pauley Pavilion and trying to get directions.

 

JOEL GALLEN:
We asked Nirvana to open the show with “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the biggest song of the year. And Nirvana said they didn't want to play “Teen Spirit”—they wanted to play “Rape Me,” a song nobody had ever heard. I said, “You can't play ‘Rape Me.'”

 

JUDY McGRATH:
Nobody had heard the song yet, and it's the opening of the show . . .
and it's called “Rape Me.”
But they were Nirvana; we should have let them do whatever they wanted. Every time we've gone against an artist, I've regretted it. Every single time. Whether it was Neil Young's “This Note's for You” or Nirvana at the VMAs.

 

RICK KRIM:
The 1992 VMAs were the greatest VMAs ever. We had Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Guns N' Roses with Elton John, Tom Petty, Black Crowes, U2 via satellite on the Zoo TV tour, Eric Clapton, Howard Stern as “Fartman.” And of course, Nirvana wanted to play “Rape Me.” I remember Judy telling Nirvana's manager Danny Goldberg, “You can't put a song called ‘Rape Me' on the Video Music Awards.”

 

AMY FINNERTY:
Kurt wanted to give MTV a new song that hadn't been released yet. In his mind, he was giving us something special. There were some uncomfortable conversations back and forth about whether or not they were going to play the show. While this was taking place, Kurt was in rehab. Courtney and I drove to the rehab clinic together, walked in, and she
ran
up to Kurt, like before I got through the door, and said, “Amy's here to try to convince you to play ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.' Don't do it, don't do it!” I said, “I'm not going to try to talk you into anything. I just want to know what your feeling is about this.”

 

COURTNEY LOVE:
Kurt was very ill, very frail, around the time of the 1992 VMAs. He was in rehab and he was propped up on some kind of high-end methadone. He was real fucked up, that's for sure. He hadn't seen Frances in a long time, and we'd been through a lot because of the
Vanity Fair
article. Anyway, Kurt did not want to play “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the VMAs because he was a full-on contrarian.