JIM MERLIS No one in the Geffen camp ever, ever imagined that Nirvana was going to get so big. Because it wasn’t music that was designed to be particularly commercial. When something like that happens, it throws everything into chaos and you lose control of things. They literally had to stop pressing albums by other artists because the plants had to make more Nevermind CDs.
DANNY GOLDBERG I don’t think Nirvana ever wanted to kill anyone’s career. There was just … there was a yearning from a new generation for new stars.
MATTHEW NELSON I remember reading that article in Rolling Stone where Cobain says … you know, they asked him about what’s it like being on the same label as Nelson, and he said, “We burn effigies of them before every show.”
JIM MERLIS I think that Kurt certainly had issues with the misogyny in hair metal, but he also didn’t like some of the music … I mean, I think he probably had a visceral hatred of it a little bit? He did not want to be part of it.
BRYN BRIDENTHAL I had to explain that Guns had become everything that Nirvana was against. They’d become corporate. Axl just didn’t understand that Nirvana was the anti-Guns.
DANNY GOLDBERG There was a cultural contrast and honestly, as one of Nirvana’s managers, I loved that contrast because it imaged Nirvana as something special to their fans and differentiated them from other bands. Kurt was passionate about gay rights, and Axl Rose referred to people in one of his lyrics as “faggots.”
DUFF MCKAGAN I think, really, Axl was bummed because he was a fucking Nirvana fan, you know? But he couldn’t get away from being Axl Rose at that time.
CLIFF BURNSTEIN My partner, Peter Mensch, and I had Def Leppard, who were supporting Adrenalize, at the MTV Music Video Awards in September 1992. As I recall it was Def Leppard, Bryan Adams, who had the hit from the Robin Hood soundtrack, Pearl Jam, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Guns N’ Roses. And as me and Peter walked around, the enmity between the Nirvanas and that group of bands and the Def Leppard and Guns N’ Roses contingent was so palpable. It was, like, hatred.
DANNY GOLDBERG A week before the MTV Awards, Axl Rose had said at a concert that Kurt and Courtney Love should go to jail, that Kurt was a degenerate and his wife was a degenerate because of what he’d read in a Vanity Fair article. It was devastating to Kurt and Courtney. It threatened their custody of their daughter. Their daughter, Frances, was, like, a month old or something and was with them. They had her at the show.
DUFF MCKAGAN There was that whole kind of fracas there. But you know what that was? That was a bunch of drunk fucking idiots.
DANNY GOLDBERG We were sitting at a table in catering, and then Axl and a couple of bodyguards and his girlfriend at the time, Stephanie Seymour, were at the next table. So Courtney says, “Hey, Axl, you want to be godfather to our baby?” And Stephanie Seymour looks over to her and says, “Are you a model?” And without missing a beat Courtney says, “Are you a rocket scientist?” At that point Axl comes over to the table with a bodyguard and says to Kurt, “Hey man, if you don’t shut your woman up, I’m gonna put you down to the pavement.” Kurt was rattled by it. Axl was physically bigger than him. Axl had bodyguards. There was a little bit of shoving, I think, later between other members of the band and Krist.
DUFF MCKAGAN I got into it a bit with Novoselic …
DANNY GOLDBERG Kurt was telling the story about Axl Rose threatening him for months. It was a great story because it differentiated the guy who talks about shutting up a woman and the one who wants to empower them. The guy who threatens violence and the guy who doesn’t.
CLIFF BURNSTEIN This was a generational shift. Literally when Peter and I left that night after those MTV Awards, we said, “Our future is basically done if we don’t get out of what we’re doing.” As soon as we got back to New York we started calling people and saying, “We’re not just heavy metal guys. We can talk to you about all kinds of music.” Like, “I signed Pere Ubu. Give me a fucking break.” So a lawyer named Rosemary Carroll called us and said, “Screaming Trees have signed to Epic. Would you be interested in managing them?” It got us over the chasm.