Fact #156448
When:
Short story:
Nirvana support TAD at the Piper Club, Rome, Italy, Europe. When Kurt Cobain becomes disenchanted with the proceedings, he climbs a speaker stack and makes his way across the stage via the lighting rig.Full article:
Jonathan Poneman (Sub-Pop co-founder) : There’s TAD and Nirvana riding around in this crummy little van and here come the moguls, flying in to Rome.
Kurt Danielson (Tad) : They’re really cool. Bruce (Pavitt) is really into chemical abuse and Jonathan is very business-like and smokes a pipe, and they sort of compliment each other. It’s weird. They’re really not businessmen at all.
Kurt Cobain : By the seventh week I was ready to die. We were touring with Tad. It was 12 people in a really small Volvo van, with all our equipment.
Jonathan Poneman : We thought that we were lending emotional support but, from their perspective, I can see them thinking,’ These arrogant sons of bitches… We don’t have any money, we’re barely eating, we’re riding around in this cramped van, we’ve got this fat lead singer who’s throwing up all over the place, and you’ve got a crazy drunk bass player… and here come the moguls.’
Bruce Pavitt (Sub Pop co-founder) : He (Kurt) had a nervous breakdown on stage. After four or five songs, he quit playing and climbed up on the speaker column and he was going to jump off. The bouncers were freaking out and everybody was just begging him to come down. And he was saying ‘No, no, I’m just going to dive.’ He had really reached his limit. People literally saw a guy wig out in front of them, who could break his neck if he didn’t get it together.
Jonathan Poneman : Kurt was profoundly miserable then. More so than I’d ever seen him, and that’s no mean feat. My feeling is that he was a conflicted individual. On one hand he wanted to be true to his friends and his culture. On the other he wanted to be fucking rich and famous. He knew how good he was, how talented he was, how great his band was, and he expected great things of them.
Michael Azerrad (writer/friend) : He wound up backstage, where someone from the venue was arguing with their tour manager over whether Kurt had broken some microphones. Kurt grabbed both mikes, flung them to the ground, and began stomping on them. ‘Now they’re broken,’ he said.
Jonathan Poneman : I was walking around the club with him (afterwards) and he was saying ‘I just want to go home. I don’t want to play for these people. These people are fucking idiots. They’re stupid. They expect me to go up there and perform like a trained animal. I don’t respect them. I want to be with my girlfriend and I want to quit music. This is not what I’m about.
(Source : not known)
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Kurt Danielson (Tad) : They’re really cool. Bruce (Pavitt) is really into chemical abuse and Jonathan is very business-like and smokes a pipe, and they sort of compliment each other. It’s weird. They’re really not businessmen at all.
Kurt Cobain : By the seventh week I was ready to die. We were touring with Tad. It was 12 people in a really small Volvo van, with all our equipment.
Jonathan Poneman : We thought that we were lending emotional support but, from their perspective, I can see them thinking,’ These arrogant sons of bitches… We don’t have any money, we’re barely eating, we’re riding around in this cramped van, we’ve got this fat lead singer who’s throwing up all over the place, and you’ve got a crazy drunk bass player… and here come the moguls.’
Bruce Pavitt (Sub Pop co-founder) : He (Kurt) had a nervous breakdown on stage. After four or five songs, he quit playing and climbed up on the speaker column and he was going to jump off. The bouncers were freaking out and everybody was just begging him to come down. And he was saying ‘No, no, I’m just going to dive.’ He had really reached his limit. People literally saw a guy wig out in front of them, who could break his neck if he didn’t get it together.
Jonathan Poneman : Kurt was profoundly miserable then. More so than I’d ever seen him, and that’s no mean feat. My feeling is that he was a conflicted individual. On one hand he wanted to be true to his friends and his culture. On the other he wanted to be fucking rich and famous. He knew how good he was, how talented he was, how great his band was, and he expected great things of them.
Michael Azerrad (writer/friend) : He wound up backstage, where someone from the venue was arguing with their tour manager over whether Kurt had broken some microphones. Kurt grabbed both mikes, flung them to the ground, and began stomping on them. ‘Now they’re broken,’ he said.
Jonathan Poneman : I was walking around the club with him (afterwards) and he was saying ‘I just want to go home. I don’t want to play for these people. These people are fucking idiots. They’re stupid. They expect me to go up there and perform like a trained animal. I don’t respect them. I want to be with my girlfriend and I want to quit music. This is not what I’m about.
(Source : not known)