One thing quickly becomes clear from this weighty collection of interviews with Nirvana, ranging from the band’s earliest days teasing green kids from local fanzines to Kurt Cobain’s heavier conversations with the bigger hitters towards the end of his life: Cobain really hated doing interviews.
And as this is a collection of archived transcripts rather than narrative articles, it means the earlier pieces are often borderline gibberish, with bassist Krist Novoselic doing the majority of the legwork and the band talking over each other until it all starts to unravel and becomes a bit of a slog.
Stick with it, though (or just dip into a later page at random), and as he gets more accustomed to talking about himself, Cobain’s intelligence and sense of humour start to cut through. It’s a welcome reminder that despite the horrific end to the story, there were many different sides to the king of the grunge generation.
