The ’80s were fun, at least for me. With great pride, I can now claim to have been the first mainstream critic on the mailing list of SST Records, writing, of their initial Black Flag issue, “This record, a relentless wall of noise that is never less than noisy, sounds unlike anything else I’ve heard this year.” Even more impressively, I wrote in my seminal record guide Paul St. Pierre Reviews the ’80s that “Ian Mackaye may be ‘straight edge,’ but his music roars down the road like a trucker on speed. What a nice young man.”
But then the weirdo music paradise that I’d helped publicize was first co-opted and then totally corrupted by the recording industry. Capitalism reigned triumphant. As I wrote in a 1993 Spin article that was nominated for a National Magazine Award, “They say ‘we won,’ and they think we don’t know who they are or why.” Observations like that kept me on top long after my generational peers had faded away toward Margaritaville.
All the while, Neal Pollack vexed me. As sharp as I remained in the early ’90s, he was even sharper. Researching this manuscript, I found a prophetic quote from his late diaries that made him seem less like a critic and more like a musical seer from the future: “You can take your Misfits T-shirts and stick ’em in a drawer, and run over your Soundgarden lunchbox with a pickup truck, because the future of music will come from Beck, the Fugees, Moby, and Outkast,” he wrote. “I also predict a rise, in the Midwest, of a white hip-hop artist who stupid critics like Paul St. Pierre will compare to Elvis.”
I don’t appreciate the personal potshot, and I stand by my assessment of The Eminem Show as the greatest album released in the last twenty years. Still, Pollack’s predictions have proven to be eerily accurate. While going through his personal effects, I found an old issue of Maximumrocknroll devoted to praise of Mudhoney. Pollack had written the entire contents. Scribbled on the back cover, in thick black marker, were the words “Blink 182 SUCKS.” Pollack was so right. But how did he know that a band, not yet even formed, sucked? How?
To discover the truth, I now find myself interviewing people at least twenty years younger than I, or more. It makes me uncomfortable, because I want to sleep with all the women, especially Sleater-Kinney, who can make beautiful noise that seems abstracted from their mouths, fingers, bodies, and instruments. They make me want to suck in my gut and remove my chin fat with a surgical hose. Well, do you blame me? They’re hot.
But somehow Pollack seemed to have the distance necessary to see that world as it formed around him. In 1990 he wrote, “A chick band is going to come out of Olympia, Washington, that makes Bikini Kill sound like Melissa Manchester.” Also, he said, “Beware She Who Shall Not Be Named for Fear of Lawsuit. Because she’s been sent from an evil place to destroy us all.”
Never in my life have I found myself face-to-face with She Who Shall Not Be Named for Fear of Lawsuit, or, as my friends call her, the Widow. Now the time of our encounter is nigh. She knew Kurt better than all of us put together. Kurt knew Pollack better than anyone in both their waning days. So I’ve come, at my own expense, to Los Angeles, where the Widow lives. I’ve already been here far too long.
It’s been a dispiriting few months. The Widow has thwarted all my attempts to speak with her. She uses a vast army of lawyers, publicists, bodyguards, personal assistants, salon employees and bouncers to deflect attention from her daily routine. One night, at the Viper Room, I saw what looked like her ankle step out of the back of a Bentley, but one of her behemoths had me in a head-lock before I could take out my tape recorder. Another afternoon, I left a message with her messaging service’s messaging service, and a few hours later, this was on my voice mail:
“Listen, you fucking prick. This is the Widow. I don’t know who you think you are trying to talk to me, but if you try to get anywhere near me or my family, I promise you that I will hunt you down, cut off your balls with a chainsaw, and grind you into fucking horsemeat. You sexless asshole, I will destroy you and then I will eat you and lick the blood off my fingers and laugh and I won’t go to jail because no one cares about you and I’m a fucking superstar. And you ever reprint this message in a book, I promise you that I will hunt you down again and kill you again, and this time, I won’t leave any evidence. Don’t fucking mess with me. I mean it. Good-bye.”
I shivered when I heard the message.
“Ruth, listen,” I said.
But the apartment was empty. Ruth had left me months before. I wept and cursed my former wife.
Someday, I thought, she will ache like I ache.
Now, a year past deadline, running out of money, barely shaven, wearing the same rumpled khakis and blue oxford shirt two days running, I must speak with the Widow. There are holes in my story that need to be filled. Only the Widow can fill them.
An occasion has arisen. I read in the Los Angeles Times that the ACLU, the Sierra Club, the NAACP, Food Not Bombs, and the Spartacists Youth Brigade are honoring the Widow for “relentless lip service to unpopular causes.” This is my opportunity. The Widow would never surround herself with goons while the left was watching.
She appears early, in a flash of glamour. Everyone wants to touch her. She’s an honored guest among people who are normally reluctant to honor guests. Her smile is wide. Her eyes glisten. This is all she ever dreamed about in the heroin dens of Portland. She’s a star.
“Widow!” I shout. “Widow!”
“Hi!” she says.
This is my chance to ask her all the questions I’ve ever wanted.
“Are you glad to be here?” I say.
“I am,” she says. “It’s all about being liberal, which is very important.”
“How’s your new album coming along?”
“Great!”
“Oh, that’s really cool. Listen, I’m writing a book about Neal Pollack, and I was wondering…”
The Widow’s eyes fill with cold, hard hate. She looks at my tape recorder.
“Is that on?” she says. “Because I’m not talking to you anymore if it is.”
“Buh, buh, buh,” I say.
She grabs my recorder and throws it against the wall. Her goons appear. They toss me onto the street. My pants rip at the knee. They’re the only pair I have left.
Because I have nothing else to do, I walk, which is easier in L.A. than you might imagine. Wandering past all the coffee shops, record stores, and empty furniture warehouses, I look into the hills at a million lights. Neal Pollack probably walked these same streets when he arrived here in 1980. He knew L.A. better than anyone, just as he subsequently knew Seattle and so many other points on the open American road. There was nothing glamorous about Neal Pollack’s L.A., Neal Pollack’s America.
Pollack and his Do-It-Yourself message defined the ’80s, the true, noncommercial ’80s. He didn’t care how anyone felt about him, which was good, because everyone wanted him dead. As Jello Biafra said during an early Dead Kennedys show in someone’s basement in Colorado Springs, “Don’t hate the media! Become the media! Unless the media is Neal Pollack. Then you can hate the media.”
The list of bands he influenced and subsequently alienated in L.A. alone is almost too long to believe: the Alley Cats, the Avengers, the Bags, Black Flag, Black Randy and the Metro Squad, the Controllers, and the Dickies, with whom he was once stuck in a pagoda with Tricia Toyota. Then there were the Dils, the Eyes, F-Word, and the Flesh Eaters. Every night for one memorable week at their pad in the Cambridge Apartments, the Go-Gos blew Pollack beyond an inch of his life. He also befriended and betrayed Hal Negro and the Satintones, the Mau Maus, the Nerves, the Randoms, the Screamers, the Skulls, the Last, Wall of Voodoo, the Weirdos, X, and the Zero.
“But Darby Crash and the Germs were the greatest of them all,” he wrote in Slash. “I remember one night I was dry-humping Lita Ford in the alley behind the Masque, and Darby came up and said, ‘I need a ride to the Whisky A Go-Go.’ Then he threw up all over me.”
At midnight, I’m still walking, lost in memory. A limousine pulls up. The Widow pops out the sunroof.
“Neal Pollack was a liar and a thief!” she says. “And he still owes me five dollars! Put that in your book!”
Well, at least I got one quote out of her.
In the summer of 1982, Neal Pollack started sponsoring a monthly “Make Your Own Fanzine” workshop in the basement of the San Bernadino garage in which he was living illegally. The first two months, no one showed up. The third month, because of a promotional article in Flipside, fifty people stopped by, but Pollack told them to come back the next day because he was in the middle of a nap. When they did, he wasn’t home.
The fourth month, he got two kids in their early twenties, one of them an enormous Native American of some stripe, the other a pimply, nondescript white guy. Pollack blearily opened the garage door and found them arguing. They were both holding guitars.
“America is a fascist police state!” said the fat one.
“No, it’s a bourgeois democracy,” said the other one.
“We live under an oppressive regime. Open your mind!”
“All of us are capitalists at the core!”
“Your ideals have been corrupted by the network news!”
They looked up and saw their hero. He was pondering them carefully.
“Oh, wow,” said the fat one. “Neal Pollack!”
“We’re huge fans,” said the other guy.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Mike Watt. This is D. Boon. We read your stuff in Creem and Punk.”
“I’m sorry,” Pollack said.
“We started a band,” said D. Boon, the big Indian. “I wrote a song. Wanna hear it?”
Before Pollack could reply, the guys began to play. Pollack looked at his watch. By the time he looked up, the song was over. The guitar work was very sincere, the lyrics heartfelt:
How can you have a girl
When there’s war in Nicaragua?
Is Ronald Reagan your President,
Or is it Che Guevara?
That’s the question I ask myself every day.
And it hurts my feelings.
Punk rock changed my life
It made me what I am today.
Three hundred years of French racism
But I still want to see the Eiffel Tower
Go on tour in England
And make more SST Records
Television fills my head with contradictory images
I hate new wave music
But I love you.
The song ended.
“French people aren’t racist!” said Mike Watt.
“Yes, they are,” said D. Boon.
What have I created? said Pollack to himself.
“What’d you think of our song, Neal?” asked D. Boon.
“Very nice, boys,” Pollack said.
“Is it going to make us rich, like the Rolling Stones?” said Watt.
“No,” Pollack said. “Rock shouldn’t make you rich. That’s a myth. You need to Do It Yourself. You must live econo.”
A few weeks later, Pollack approached a basketball court next to a half-pipe, where a hardcore show was scheduled to take place. His aesthetic had changed, to suit the changing times. Now his head was shaved. He wore athletic shorts, no shirt, hi-top sneakers, and long socks pulled up to his knees. On his chest was a tattoo of a skull, with pus and worms oozing from its eyes, and the words “WEALTH IS RACISM.” This is what Elvis would have been doing if he were a kid today, Pollack thought. We are his legacy.
In front of Black Flag, a young man prowled. He was the band’s ninth lead singer in three months. Four had quit because of “creative differences” with Greg Ginn, two had OD’ed, and one had stolen six dollars from the SST Records cash box. The latest had accidentally gotten locked in the freezer of the Pizza Hut where he worked and suffered severe frostbite. Ginn subsequently fired him because he wasn’t working for an independent pizzeria.
Pollack could see, though, that this new kid was different. For one, he and the kid were wearing the exact same clothes. For two, the kid exuded an air of authentic menace. The crowd stamped its feet like bulls about to be released from the chute. The sound check alone could have stripped the asphalt off a convenience-store parking lot.
Pollack took a hit of nitrous and plunged into the throng.
The first note sounded a tsunami. The singer launched himself into the crowd. He punched someone in the nose. The crowd launched him back. He grabbed the microphone and screamed.
THE CITY IS DEAD
LET’S PAINT IT RED
I NEED SOME MORE
LIFE IS A WHORE
YOU’VE NEVER BEEN
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR
THE COPS
WILL HAVE
YOUR HEAD
BEER AND WEED
BEER AND WEED
ALL I NEED IS
BEER AND WEED
I’VE GOT A GUN
I’M HAVING FUN
I’M SO AFRAID
THIS IS A RAID
THIS COPS WILL BEAT YOU
WHILE THEY GET PAID
YOU’LL ROT
UNDER
THE SUN
I NEVER READ
I NEVER BLEED
I NEVER NEED
GIMME SOME WEED
GIMME
SOME GODDAMN
WEED!
BEER AND WEED
BEER AND WEED
ALL I NEED IS
BEER AND WEED
JACK IN THE BOX
ASSES AND COCKS
CALIFORNIA DREAMING
CALIFORNINA SCREAMING
THE COPS WILL GIVE YOU
A CALIFORNIA REAMING
THEY’LL STRIP
YOU TO
YOUR SOCKS
Henry Rollins, who was once Henry Garfield, pointed at Pollack in the audience. He emitted a long, low, guttural moan.
“Traitor!” he shouted. “Rock critic!”
The crowd closed around Pollack. He was caught in a steel-booted gauntlet of pain. He felt a tooth loosen, then another, and then his liver. Never before had he seen so much hate and frustration in youthful eyes. This was more anguish than he’d bargained for. These kids were evil.
Something sharp stuck into his upper thigh.
“I’m going to die,” he said. “And I’ve never had a son.”
The band kept grinding. Rollins kept screaming. A wail of sirens, and the cops charged. Some of the kids ran in one direction, some in another. Some of them ran at the police phalanx. The cops brushed them aside. It was the band they wanted. They bashed Black Flag over their heads, but Black Flag kept playing. The cops cuffed them, but Black Flag kept playing. Nothing could stop Black Flag.
Pollack was bruised, bleeding, and confused. He stood on the edge of the playground. A van pulled up. The side door opened. Pollack smelt seven unwashed young men.
D. Boon poked his head out.
“Neal!” he said. “We’re the Minutemen! We’re going on tour! We’re doing it ourselves!”
“Uhhh,” Pollack said.
Mike Watt was driving.
“You look terrible!” he said. “You’ve inspired us! Get in the van!”
In an interview years later, Watt said, “Bringing Pollack on tour with us was the dumbest decision our band ever made.”
Nothing has been written about the Minutemen’s first U.S. tour. Years later, Mike Watt was to say, “We left L.A. young and sincere with such high hopes, and returned beaten cynical old men.” They fell into a trap that so many bands had before. They gave Neal Pollack control.
For the first twenty-four hours, everything went great. Pollack didn’t drink anything, not even water. They did a show in San Diego in the backyard of a guy D. Boon had met at a 7-Eleven, in front of almost two hundred kids, and made thirty dollars each.
“Let me handle the money for you,” Pollack said. “Also, I’ll book all your shows.”
In Phoenix, on the second day, Pollack arranged for the band to play in a downtown parking lot. They unpacked their gear and started playing to their audience, comprised of five men who were in line for the Salvation Army soup kitchen next door. Boon insisted on doing the full set. “These are the guys we’re trying to reach,” he said. “They’re working class.” Within minutes, they’d all been arrested, except for Pollack, who’d easily blended in with the soup kitchen clients. He spent all the San Diego profits on bail.
That night, in his journal, Pollack wrote, “There’s never been a less rock ’n’ roll place on earth than Phoenix, Arizona, and no music will ever come from here, except for the Meat Puppets. It is a godforsaken baked asshole of ignorance and blind consumerism, a festering nightmare. If god picked the lice from his armpits and flicked them to earth to die, he could find no better resting place than Phoenix. Now I have to go rob a liquor store so we can get to Albuquerque.”
No one showed up at the Albuquerque show. It was at a Hardee’s. The next night’s San Antonio taqueria gig went marginally better, because the band at least got free tacos. In Austin, they played at Liberty Lunch in front of 350 people, and sold albums to every one. Watt sold three guitar picks to one guy for a hundred dollars.
“Man,” he said, “Austin rules! We should move here!”
“No,” Pollack said. “It’s too gentrified.”
“No, it’s not,” Watt said.
“It will be,” said Pollack.
Still, they’d made enough money in Austin to keep them going, and the tour really began. Pollack had them on a grueling schedule. They played sixty-five shows in thirty-two days, eating on the fly and sleeping in the van, or, occasionally, onstage. They had six pounds of pot in the van, which, in retrospect, wasn’t a very good idea. From Austin, they drove to Houston, and then to Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Asheville, Winston-Salem, Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Columbia, Charleston, Jacksonville, Tampa, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Atlanta, and Athens.
“Stop the car,” Pollack said. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” said D. Boon.
“It’s the sound of a music scene coming together.”
“There’s no music scene in Athens, Georgia,” said Watt.
“Oh,” Pollack said, “you’re wrong. In fact, I attended a house party here on Valentine’s Day, 1977. A band played a six-song set twice in a row. You may have heard of them. The B-52’s.”
“They suck!” D. Boon said.
“Yes,” said Pollack, “they’re authentic.”
He grabbed the wheel.
“Turn left!”
“Goddamn it!” Watt said.
“Now a sharp right! Here. Drive down that street. There’s a dirt road at the end of that cul-de-sac. Go down that.”
“Why?”
“House party,” Pollack said.
Sure enough, at the end of the dirt road was a house party.
“Who’s playing tonight?” Pollack asked the door guy.
“Tiny Toy, Love Tractor, Pylon, and the Side Effects,” the door guy said.
“Fuck!” said Pollack. “I love those bands!”
The stage was outside. The keg was in the kitchen. On the couch sat a skinny, abstract guy with two women on either side of him. He was talking to them about many things.
“We’re sitting on a couch,” he said. “Or maybe we’re not. It could also be a dream, or a waking thought. There are things that we just take for granted and things that we are very quick and very easy to dismiss and not think about or say, ‘Oh, that’s bad and I don’t want to go there’ or, ‘Oh, I don’t know what I must’ve eaten to make me dream that.’"
“Bullshit!” Pollack sneezed.
“Excuse me?” said Michael Stipe.
“Nothing,” said Pollack. “Please continue.”
He did.
“Most people miss the point that I’m trying to make in my songs, but that’s OK. I’ll accept that it’s a beautiful song and I’ll let it be one. I’ll change MY take on it to allow it to be that. For instance, when I sing about a moral kiosk—”
“What’s a moral kiosk?” Pollack asked.
“It’s a phrase I thought of while listening to Patti Smith’s Horses.”
“Get bent!” Pollack said.
“What’s that?” asked one of the girls, who was looking at Stipe with a twinkle of love.
“A beautiful album,” Stipe said. “I have it right here on cassette.”
He went over to the stereo and put Horses on. Patti Smith screeched from the speakers. Pollack dropped to the ground and twitched.
“No! No! No!” he said.
From his back jeans pocket he produced a copy of Van Halen II.
“Now this is music!” he said.
He ripped the Patti Smith cassette from the player. A spool of magnetic tape spilled onto the floor. Within seconds, Van Halen was ripping through the party.
Michael Stipe stood up. Pollack looked at him. Jesus, he was tall. What was with that stupid cap?
“That music promotes rape,” he said.
“Well, I hope so!” Pollack said.
“I know who you are, Pollack,” Stipe said. “And you’re not welcome at this party.”
Neal Pollack punched Michael Stipe in the face. It was an action, Stipe later said, that prompted him to take Pollack’s name out of “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” Stipe staggered backward, but he didn’t fall. The band outside stopped playing. A whole mess of country folk with a somewhat hippie aesthetic moved toward the patio door. Pollack glanced over his shoulder. The Minutemen were backing up toward the front of the house.
“Run!” he said.
They played Richmond, Annapolis, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Trenton, Jersey City, and Newark, skipping New York City because Pollack didn’t feel like seeing anybody he knew there. That was when the band realized something was awry. But they kept going because they had no other way of getting home. Pollack had taken all their driver’s licenses and put them in a locked box, he said, “for your protection.”
So they hit Boston, Burlington, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, Lexington, Bloomington, Indianapolis, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis, Iowa City, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Lawrence, where the show was attended solely by William S. Burroughs, followed by Omaha, Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Laramie, Salt Lake City, Boise, Eugene, and Portland.
In Seattle, they played at a construction site at midnight.
“There aren’t any clubs in this town that book unsigned bands,” Pollack said. “Believe me, I looked.”
After the show, the band held a meeting. It was decided to slip two Valiums into Pollack’s whiskey. About an hour later, the van moved slowly down a small-town Washington state highway. The side door opened and Pollack tumbled out.
The van screeched away. Pollack rolled down a hill, but still he slept. A few hours later, it was dawn. He woke to the sound of timber mills shutting down because of the recession.
He stirred, barely, and knew what had happened. Like always, once a band got big, they dropped him. It was OK. He’d see the Minutemen in the afterlife for sure, and then he’d get them, those ungrateful bitches.
He looked up. A sign read “Aberdeen, Washington. Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.”
“ABERDEEN?” he said.
Man, he thought. I could really use a doughnut.
The front page of the Aberdeen Desperate Shopper drifted by him in the wind. He could make out the headline: LAST DOUGHNUT
SHOP IN TOWN CLOSES.
“Shit,” he said.
Thin raindrops fell, followed by thick ones. Pollack sat by the side of the road, waiting for the rain to stop. It didn’t. An hour later, he decided he’d wait another hour. It still didn’t stop. He didn’t care, until about four hours after that, when it was still raining. Max and Kansas City were soaked to the bone, their wet fur pasted against his chest.
“I’d better go find a bridge to live under,” he said.
Great wind gusts blew sharp sheets of rain under the bridge. Pollack’s mouth felt silty and rotten. His pants and coat and hair were caked with slime and mud. The cats, terrified beyond imagining, had burrowed into a hole in the concrete. Crap, Pollack thought. I’ve lived for seven men. Enough. He looked at his wrists, which were in need of slitting.
Then, from the other side of the Young Street Bridge, he heard a voice, soft and young and sweet and full of hope. He looked to the embankment on the other side. There sat a young man, stringy blond hair cascading over his face, in a Kermit the Frog T-shirt. He played a guitar and sang.
Crawling crawling on the floor
A cigarette consumer whore
Eating from the feedbag
Living by the sea
Feel the needle, Mr. Flea
I’m unconscious
In the darkness
I’m unconscious
So alone
My aloneness
In the darkness
I’m unconscious
So alone
My family is a famous lie
You want to live
I want to die
Patriotism
Made of jism
It’s a prism
I’m in prison
I’m in prison
I’m in prison
Pollack swore he saw a halo shine around the young man’s head. He had come at last. The golden one had come. I’ve lived my whole life for this moment under a bridge in Aberdeen, Washington, Pollack thought. Suicide? Bah! I must wade across that river to my destiny.
“Come, kitties,” he said. And they miraculously swam together, while the boy sang, penetrating the dawn fog.
From the river, young Kurt Cobain heard a voice shout, “Your song is sentimental nonsense!”
Kurt saw a man’s head and shoulders barely bobbing against the current. Two cats clawed desperately at the man’s scalp. The man swam toward the tiny rotting island where Kurt sat.
Kurt thought, I need some weed.
Pollack emerged from the river a muddy, rotten, wasted, confused-looking junkie wreck. He bore the scars. But somewhere, in the bag of bones that was Neal Pollack, lay the essence of rock.
“I’ve been searching for you,” Pollack said. “For you are the chosen one.”
“Ch-ch-chosen?” said Kurt. “Me? But I’m just some stupid kid who says he lives under a bridge!”
Pollack took the guitar from him.
“I like your singing,” Pollack said, “but your song selection is all wrong. I want to play you something.”
Pollack took the guitar. He began to thrash as young Kurt had never heard thrashing before, and he screamed:
On Wisconsin
In the darkness
On Wisconsin
So alone
In the darkness
On Wisconsin
In the darkness
I’m alone
On Wisconsin
On Wisconsin
On Wisconsin…
The guitar ripped through chords of unbearable grief and anger, the very sound of savage rebellion being born. Pollack sang. He created a wall of noise like nothing Kurt had ever heard before. When he finished, he said:
“Bad Brains! Bad Brains! Fucking rock ’n’ roll!”
“You totally got my lyrics wrong, dumbass,” Kurt said.
He made quote marks with his hands.
“Whatever.”
Kurt’s flip, ironic tone hung in the air, becoming a poison gas of cynicism that withered everything it touched. It diminished our national character, nullified debate, and across the country, people prayed for it to end. But like most diseases, irony lingered, a festering sickness on the body politic. Would sincere discourse ever be possible again after the withering pessimism of Generation X?
“Human existence is pitiful and meaningless,” Pollack said. “All we can do is chronicle it with agonized mockery.”
“Will you be my dad?” asked Kurt.
“Sure, kid,” said Pollack. “Let’s go get some smokes.”
There was, between Neal Pollack and Kurt Cobain, an instant, pure, and total love. All his life, Kurt had sought a man to replace the man who thought he was his father, and all his life, Pollack had sought a son to replace the man who had been his father but failed. In Pollack, Kurt had a mentor and friend. In Kurt, Pollack had a willing, naïve tool, a boy of raw mental clay. Pollack could, at last, create his perfect rock machine.
That afternoon, Kurt took Pollack home. Kurt’s mother was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking, drinking whiskey by the glass. She gave Pollack a sly look.
“Dude,” Pollack said to Kurt, “your mother is hot.”
“Stay away from my mother,” Kurt said.
In Kurt’s bedroom, Pollack looked through the LPs and cassettes.
“These aren’t very good,” he said.
“I keep all the records for my favorite band in my closet,” Kurt said.
“What’s your favorite band?”
“Judas Priest.”
Pollack brought a fist down on Kurt’s head.
“Ow!” Kurt said.
Pollack hit him again.
“Stop it!”
And then he hit him again. Kurt fell to the ground, unconscious, an experience that he would later chronicle in an early song, “Unconscious.” It went, I’m unconscious, in the darkness/I’m unconscious, so alone…
When Kurt awoke, it was night, and he was on his bed. Pollack sat in a chair next to him, daubing his forehead with a cold cloth. He said, “You’ll probably have some minor brain damage. Which is good.”
Pollack produced a large red box, on which he had written, in thick black marker, the words “RECIPE FOR ALIENATION.”
“I have a gift for you,” he said.
Kurt opened the box. Inside were old copies of Creem and Punk and Crawdaddy, Slash and Bomp, and many English magazines of which no other copies existed in North America. Every one of them contained at least one story with Pollack’s byline. Also in the box were albums from X, the Germs, and the Dickies, to which Pollack had contributed the exact same liner notes, word for word.
“Wow!” Kurt said. “You even gave me a dirty needle!”
“It belonged to Nancy Spungen,” Pollack said. “Don’t touch it without gloves.”
That night, and all through the weekend, Kurt read the history of rock as told by Neal Pollack. Kurt had never heard of half these bands. Pollack told him that the corporate media wanted it that way so they could sell him inferior musical products that would keep him from thinking for himself. As Kurt read, he got angrier and angrier. Nothing was going to control him from now on. He wrote that night in his dream diary:
Neal Pollack is meaner stronger less susceptible to disease and more dominant than a male gorilla. He comes to me at night. Without warning, he bends the bars on my brain and infects my mind with his words. He is costing me my sanity. I see his cats and I want to slit their throats and drink their blood. He comes to me in my bedroom, appearing in a pillar of fire, and he sprouts horns. His body is covered with thick black greasy hair. He stands in a pool of his own semen and vomits bile. I lick it up, and vomit out my own. He laughs. He mounts me. I’d like to kick his hot-stinking, macho fuckin’ ass.
An American poet had been born.
Around midnight, from his mother’s bedroom, Kurt heard a man moaning. Not again. He was tired of the men his mother brought home, all of whom wanted to be his dad. But he only had one dad, now, a rock dad, Neal Pollack, who’d made his life weird.
“Neal, oh, Neal!” he heard his mother say.
“Crap!” said Kurt.
He ran to his mother’s room. The door was open. Pollack wore nothing but an L.A. Dodgers baseball cap, backward. He was sitting straight up, riding Kurt’s mom, howling like a beast.
“Damn it!” Kurt said.
“Sorry, man,” Pollack said. “Your mother’s hot.”
That night, in his journal, Kurt Cobain wrote the word “kill” for the first time.
Days passed, as days do, and then they turned into months. Pollack and Cobain lived with Cobain’s mom. So he wouldn’t hurt Kurt’s feelings, Pollack only slept with his mom when Kurt was at work or at school or running errands or out of the house for any other reason. When Kurt’s mom finally found another man, who called them both pansies, Pollack and Cobain were forced to move from house to house, Kurt sleeping on the couch, Pollack on the floor. Every well-meaning person in Aberdeen put them up, and subsequently booted them out. Kurt got a job at a pet-food store so he could steal grub for Max and Kansas City. Pollack drank copiously and worked on the first sentence of his novel, The True Story of How Rock ’n’ Roll Smacked Me in the Mouth Until I Bled Real Tears. In the evenings, they would go see the Melvins play at the Thriftway. Before bed, as they nodded out on lithium, Pollack told Cobain stories.
“I once lived with the Rolling Stones,” he said.
“No!” said Kurt.
“Yes,” said Pollack. “They attached electrodes to my testicles.”
“Wow!” Kurt said. “Oh, wow!”
“Those were the days. With the old sounds. We had real bands then, like the Yardbirds.”
“I’ve heard of them.”
“And the Monks.”
“I haven’t heard of them.”
“They were these American soldiers in Germany in the mid-sixties. They didn’t have anything better to do, so they started a band. Their heads were shaved like monks’ tonsures, and they just thwacked away at their instruments like idiots. One of them cut a hole in a banjo and stuck a microphone inside. I saw them play once at an army base in Hamburg. They were horrible.”
“Right.”
“But they were also the greatest band of all time. They were the first punk rockers. And they taught me an important lesson.”
“What’s that?”
“Remember, Kurt,” Pollack said. “There’s nothing more important in life than being cool, except for making music on your own terms, unfettered by corporate constraints. If you live by these principles, you’ll be happy. You have my guarantee.”
Neal Pollack had lucked into one of the greatest cultural flowerings in the history of the world. Fifth-century Egypt, the golden age of Athens, Greece, the Italian Renaissance, the Babylon of Hammurabi, none of them had much on western Washington state in the late 1980s. The area’s relative geographical isolation, high concentration of colleges, and cheap weed all contributed to what Pollack called “the largest gathering of talented morons in human history.” Every day, a new band crossed Pollack’s ears. He wrote about them in Brand New Age, and in his journal. The March 1, 1988, entry read, “Screaming Trees is the greatest band in the world.” The March 2 entry read, “Jesus. I can’t believe this new Green River record. They’re the greatest band in the world.” On March 3, he simply wrote, “Mudhoney, Mudhoney, Mudhoney! Motherfucking Mudhoney!” The next week, in an article for the Rocket, he wrote, “Mudhoney has sold out like the troglodyte college-boy indie-rock posers that they are. They never rocked at all.” Then he wrote, “Shonen Knife, Shonen Knife! Shonen Knife! TAD TAD Fastbacks Walkabouts! Swingin’ on the flippity flop!”
Pollack and Kurt moved to Olympia, and Pollack named himself Kurt’s manager. When Kurt complained, Pollack said, “First of all, I’m your dad, so you do what I tell you to. Second of all, I have a lot of experience in this business. I know what works.”
Despite Kurt’s protesting, Pollack named the new group Kurt and the Cobains. He said that the world was ready for a return to eponymous garage bands. Using a stolen mixing board and “borrowed” amps, he recorded a seven-inch single of “Unconscious,” which he considered Kurt’s best song. He arranged for a meeting with Calvin Johnson, founder of the band Beat Happening and also the boss of Olympia’s own K Records. Johnson was the ultimate proponent of honest indie-rock business practices. Pollack despised him.
Kurt and Pollack cut their hair short, shaved at the bus station, and wore clean T-shirts and blue jeans.
“No flannels,” Pollack said.
They met Johnson at a coffeehouse. Over decaffeinated tea, they made their pitch.
“Um, I’m really ethical,” Kurt said.
“He is,” Pollack said, “the most ethical musician in all of Olympia.”
“And I’m a vegetarian,” said Kurt.
“Vegan,” said Pollack.
“Right,” Kurt said. “Locally grown produce.”
Johnson studied them carefully for signs of weakness or sellout potential.
“Do you know how to play your instrument?” he asked.
“No,” Kurt said.
“Do you hurt girls when you dance?”
“No.”
“Do you believe in purity?” he said.
“Oh, yes,” said Pollack. “We are rigidly pure. We fly in the prevailing winds of rock decadence.”
Kurt vomited.
“Shit,” he said. “Sorry.”
“I don’t think you’re for us,” said Johnson.
Outside the café, Pollack considered the situation.
“Fuck it,” he said. “We’ll just sign with Sub Pop.”
Kurt nodded off while standing up.
Pollack shook him by the shoulders.
“Goddamn it, Kurt, you’ve got to stay off the junk!” Pollack said.
“Huh?” said Kurt.
Pollack scratched his forearm hungrily.
“Hey,” he said. “Do you have any?”
The tour van raced down the autobahn from Hamburg toward Berlin. There were ten of them in that Fiat minibus: Pollack, Kurt, and the rest of Kurt’s band, which, to Pollack’s disgust, he’d renamed Nirvana. There were also a couple of roadies, and another band called Tad, fronted by a three-hundred-pound behemoth named Tad Doyle. Nine countries, ten men, thirty-nine cities in forty-two days meant the van could smell like only one thing: ass.
“Damn it,” Pollack said aloud. “What am I doing here?”
“You wanted to come,” Kurt said.
“Well,” said Pollack. “I AM your manager.”
“Wish you weren’t,” Kurt mumbled.
Pollack grabbed him by the shirt.
“WHAT DID YOU SAY TO ME, YOUNG MAN?” he said.
“Nothing, sir,” said Kurt.
“YOU’D BETTER CALL ME SIR,” said Pollack.
It was the worst fight they’d ever had. Neither of them spoke for the rest of the drive. Kurt looked out the window at the Black Forest and wept. When would he no longer be poor? When would he find true love? When would the soul-sucking vampires stop haunting his dreams?
They got to Berlin at 2 P.M. Soundcheck wasn’t until 7. The show didn’t start until midnight. Kurt looked terrible. Well, he always looked terrible, but this time Pollack saw that he’d really hurt the little guy’s feelings. Usually, he didn’t care if he hurt someone, but Kurt was his son, after all.
Pollack started tickling him. Kurt started giggling. He could never resist when Pollack played Tickle Monster.
“Tickle tickle monster!” Pollack said.
“Quit!” Kurt said.
“Tickle tickle too!”
“Stop!”
Pollack put an arm around his son. He said, “We’ve got a few hours. I want to show you something.”
A quick subway ride and short walk later, they were knocking on an apartment door.
“Who lives here?” Kurt said.
“I don’t know,” Pollack said.
A woman answered. She was holding a baby.
“Yes?” she said.
“Excuse me. My name is Neal Pollack. I’m an American rock critic.”
The woman said, “So?”
“You speak excellent English,” he said.
“That’s because I grew up in Manchester, England,” she said.
“Oh,” said Pollack. “Well, I just wanted to show my son this apartment, because I used to live here with Iggy Pop, about twelve years ago.”
“Bullshit,” said the woman.
“Bullshit,” said Kurt.
“No, seriously,” Pollack said. “I can prove it. There’s a loose tile in the bathroom to the left of the sink. You should find a mouse skeleton. We buried it there in case something like this came up.”
The woman went back into the apartment. Pollack and Kurt heard a scream. They looked at each other.
“Let’s blow,” Pollack said.
A few blocks later, as they caught their breath in front of a department-store display window, Kurt looked at Pollack with renewed wonder.
“You knew Iggy Pop?” he said.
“Know,” said Pollack. “I know him well.”
“Iggy rules!”
“Yes,” Pollack said severely. “Yes, he does.”
A few weeks later, the band was in New York City, where they were scheduled to play a show at the Pyramid Club. Kurt was reluctant. As he ground away in front of a pit of bobbing hipsters, he saw a familiar figure, bony and desolate, moving in the crowd. Could it be? No. Someone like that would not come hear him play.
Pollack was in the crowd, and he saw the figure, too.
“Iggy!” he said, after the set. “Oh, Iggy!”
Iggy Pop approached Kurt instead.
“Hey, man!” he said. “Great fucking show! I fucking loved it!”
“Thanks, man,” Kurt said.
Pollack was tugging on Iggy’s sleeve.
“Iggy, Iggy, Iggy,” he said. “Hey, Iggy.”
But Iggy and Kurt were deep in conversation.
“You’ve gotta look up at the audience more,” Iggy said.
“Yeah,” said Kurt, “I know.”
Pollack said, “I’ve been telling him that for months!”
“Come on,” Iggy said to Kurt. “I’ll buy you a beer.”
They walked toward the bar. Pollack moved after them, but the crowd seemed to close in around him, as if it was protecting Kurt and Iggy. But from what? Pollack just wanted to be their friend. If they acted like a couple of sellout rock stars that only hung out with other rock stars, fine. Who needed them?
“Hey, Iggy!” Pollack shouted. “Your new album sucks!”
One afternoon in the spring of 1990, Pollack returned home to Olympia. He’d been in Los Angeles, where he’d stolen the original masters of Wire’s Pink Flag LP, an album that he frequently referred to as “the greatest record of all time,” especially after he finally got around to listening to it. He hadn’t been to L.A. in seven years, and was disappointed in how things had changed. In his journal, he wrote, “Everyone’s into glam metal. All the rock stars now are these shitty farm boys with long hair who fuck porn stars. Not like back in the day, when L.A. was free from artifice and posing. But the rap scene is pretty cool. Thug Life 4 Ever!”
Back in the Pear Street apartment, Pollack found Kurt and another guy decapitating toy soldiers.
“Hey,” Pollack said.
“Hey,” said Kurt. “You want some Quaaludes?”
“No, thanks,” said Pollack. “I had a big breakfast. Who’s the dude?”
“This is Dave,” Kurt said. “He’s our new drummer.”
“Hey,” said Dave.
Kurt and Dave were listening to a record. The music was very loud. A crazy man screamed something about American Airlines.
“Who is this?” Pollack asked.
“Wesley Willis,” Dave said.
“Who’s that?” Pollack said.
The music seemed to stop. In Pollack’s mind, time froze, because he knew this was the key moment. Punk rock had finally passed him by. Kurt cannon-launched a gaze of withering sarcasm that exploded, full on, in Pollack’s face.
“You don’t know?” he said.
“No,” said Pollack.
“He’s from Chicago.”
“Figures,” Pollack says. “Chicago’s not a real rock town. Fuck Steve Albini and his elitist indie attitude! If I had a chance, I’d—”
Kurt stood up and grabbed Pollack by the shirt.
“Don’t disrespect Steve Albini in my presence again,” he said. “Steve Albini is a god.”
Kurt’s eyes filled with an eternal hate, but Pollack felt his own demons slipping away. He was, once again, a scared little boy, running from his own father, down that Chicago alley so many decades before. The fight was gone from him.
“Dude,” Dave said, “chill out. Our girlfriends are coming over.”
Kurt let go.
“Hooray!” Kurt said. “Hooray! Our girlfriends! Our girlfriends!”
He started running around the apartment, picking up animal turds.
“Got to clean this place up,” he said.
Pollack heard a loud, discordant guitar note. The front door blew off its hinges. Two chicks were standing in its place. One of them wore a Misfits T-shirt. The other wore no shirt, and had painted the word “SLUT” across her belly. They looked ready to make music on their own terms.
“Yay,” Kurt said. “It’s our girlfriends!”
So Neal Pollack and Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl and their girlfriends Tobi Vail and Kathleen Hanna went out on the town. They were on the guest list for the Nation of Ulysses show, which featured eight bands playing seventeen minutes each. The kids all seemed to like it, but Pollack had his earplugs in by 9 P.M. By 10:30, he was smoking a cigarette in the parking lot. It was all too loud and rowdy for him. Now X, or the Ramones, or Television, those were bands. This was nonsense passing for a music scene, in his opinion, and it would never have an impact on the larger world.
After the show, they went to another show, and then they went to a bar. The girls did all the talking. Tobi, the drummer, said: “—We’re gonna start our own band and our own record label, and I already publish three fanzines. Chicks can rock and they should control their own destiny. Punk isn’t about control. Punk is freedom.”
“I understand,” Pollack said. “I knew Wanda Jackson.”
“Shut up, old man,” Hanna said.
Kurt looked at Tobi moonily. On his napkin, he wrote the words “Tobi, Tobi, Tobi,” over and over again.
“Punk is freedom,” he repeated. “Freedom, freedom.”
The girls went to the bathroom. Pollack went to the cigarette machine. He was bent over, trying to coax an extra pack out of the slot. As the girls were coming out, he heard Tobi say, “Let’s ditch these wimps and go fuck some bikers.”
The bitches! They sounded just like men!
At dawn, Pollack woke on the floor. In the bed above him, Kurt was moaning loudly and muttering in his sleep.
“Tobi,” he said. “Tobi, Tobi, Tobi, Tobi, Tobi, Tobi, Tobi, Tobi. Let’s go get tattoos, Tobi.”
Pollack got up and shook Cobain by the shoulders.
“Snap out of it, boy!” he said. “You can’t lose yourself like this over a woman!”
Kurt woke up.
“But I love her!” he shrieked. “She’s perfect! I love her so much she makes me sick!”
Kurt started weeping. Pollack looked on, concerned. The crying grew more intense. Pollack put his arms around him.
“There, there, son,” he said.
“Why didn’t she sleep over tonight, Neal?” Kurt said. “Why?”
Pollack hated seeing Kurt in so much pain. Young love sucked, it really did. He had to find him another girlfriend, one who would take his mind off Tobi, because Tobi was obviously going to break Kurt’s heart in such a way that he’d never write lyrics again. But who would be right for Kurt? He could be so picky. Then, suddenly, he just knew.
He rocked Kurt back to sleep, went to the bus station, and bought a ticket for Oregon.
Pollack walked into Satyricon, a small dimly lit club somewhere in Portland. A sign out front promised a three-band lineup: Hazel, Drunk at Abi’s, and the Village Idiots. Satyricon was red-bulbed lights, a few booths, a stage, and a back bar that had once served up shots to neighborhood guys on their way to work. Smoke wrapped the room in a hazy crust. The air was thick and choking. He saw her immediately, at a booth, each arm around a different guy. Her eyes prowled the room, looking for more interesting company. She was also with three women who resembled Nancy Spungen, but not as much as she did.
“I am soooooo bored,” she said. “Let’s go to the Blah Blah Café.”
One of the girls put her hand on the Widow’s knee. The Widow guided it upward.
“You’re nothing but a rock ’n’ roll slut,” she said.
Pollack went to the jukebox, put in his coins, and flipped around, purposely choosing songs he’d never heard before. From fifty feet away, he could feel her breath on his neck. He turned. They stood toe-to-toe.
“I know who you are!” she said.
“Yeah?”
“You’re Neal Pollack!”
“That’s right.”
“I think your writing sucks!”
“Yeah, well, I think your music sucks!”
“Shut up, Neal,” said the Widow. “Why don’t you go suck off Joey Ramone in CBGB’s basement? I hear you work cheap.”
Pollack grabbed her by the shoulders. He swept his right leg across her left ankle. Smack. She was down, and he was on top of her. Pollack had her pinned, but that wasn’t going to last. She was four inches taller than he was, and had bigger biceps. Her nails dug into his palms, and he yelped. She left-hooked him in the face the second he released his grip. He went hurtling into a table. Drinks spilled. Her knees were on his chest. He couldn’t move and could barely breathe.
“Who sucks, old man?” she said.
“Uhhhh,” said Pollack.
“Who sucks? Who sucks? WHO FUCKING SUCKS NOW, POLLACK?”
Pollack was blacking out.
“I suck,” he moaned. “I suck very hard.”
The pressure let up.
“That’s better,” said the Widow. “Now what are you doing here?”
“It’s Kurt,” he said. “He needs your help.”
“Who’s Kurt?” she said.
“You know who he is,” he said.
“Please. Enlighten me.”
“Could you let go of my arms first?”
“No.”
“OK. He’s the guy you call Pixie Meat. He’s the guy in Washington to whom you sent a heart-shaped box filled with a tiny porcelain doll, three dried roses, a miniature teacup, and shellac-covered seashells. You rubbed your perfume all over it.”
“Nope,” she said. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
Pollack said, “He’s the guy in Nirvana.”
“Oh,” she said. “Yeah. They’re OK, but too metal for me. I like Mudhoney.”
“Kurt’s always evolving,” Pollack said. “He’s a true poet.”
“He’s cute,” she said, “but kind of messed up.”
Pollack sat up. She hovered over him. He tried another tack.
“He’s starting to get famous,” he said. “The A and R werewolves are coming to his shows.”
The Widow twirled her hair.
“Really?” she said. “Now, isn’t that interesting?”
Pollack could see that the fish was on the hook. He didn’t want to do this. The pain swelled in him and brought him nearly to crying. But his son was an emotional wreck back in Washington. For some reason, he knew that this woman was the only glue that could mend Kurt’s heart. Pollack gulped and prepared for the ultimate sacrifice.
“You two should hook up sometime,” he said.
“Maybe,” she said. “I have to check my schedule.”
“Check fast. He’s in love with someone else.”
The Widow froze. She snarled. Pollack, in his diaries, later wrote, “I swore I saw her nails grow two inches right there.”
“No bitch is gonna steal my man,” she said. “Let’s call him.”
Outside, in a thick drizzle, Pollack dropped eight quarters into a pay phone. He dialed Kurt’s number. On the sixth ring, Kurt answered.
“Tobi, is that you?” he said.
“For god’s sake, Kurt,” Pollack said. “Be a man. Someone here wants to say hi.”
“Tobi?” Kurt said.
“No, not Tobi,” said Pollack.
The Widow took the phone.
“Hey there, sugar lumps,” she said. “Why don’t you come on down here and pierce my cunt for me?”
A silence on the other end.
“Hello?” she said.
“I…I…I love you,” Kurt said. “You’re amazing. I think you’re the coolest girl in the whole world.”
“What’s he saying?” said Pollack.
“Get outta here,” she said. “I’m talking to my boyfriend.”
About a year later, at the Palladium in Los Angeles, Kurt and Pollack were hanging out backstage during an L7 concert. They passed around a bottle of Romilar. Pollack took a long chug.
“I always loved this shit,” he said.
“Tastes like cherries,” said Kurt.
From behind them, they heard, “Watcha drinkin’, boys?”
It was the Widow.
“Cough syrup,” said Kurt.
“That’s not cough syrup,” she said.
She reached into her purse and pulled out a bottle of Romilar Extra Plus PM Cold Relief, Now With Liquid Barbiturates.
“This is cough syrup.”
She drank the whole bottle in one smooth gulp.
“I’m fucked up,” she said.
Kurt stood up.
“D-Do you have any more?” he said.
She tackled him. They fell to the ground. His hands moved toward her breasts. This was a private scene, and Pollack didn’t want any part of it. Somehow, he knew that he was done. Kurt had found his heart’s home, his sweet love. Pollack moved toward the exit.
Kurt and his bride tumbled. Pollack opened the door. The sunlight hurt his eyes, as always. He looked behind him. Kurt’s mouth moved.
“Thanks, Dad,” he whispered. “Thanks for everything.”
Pollack waved.
“Good-bye, son,” he said.
He’s in good hands, Pollack thought. The Widow is a safe, loving harbor. My boy will be all right.
A bunch of antiracist skinheads were hanging out in the parking lot, looking for racists to beat up. Pollack hated the smug looks on their faces. They didn’t get it, these damn kids. A lot of people had taken boots to the face so these schmucks could disrupt Klan rallies. He said: “Fuck you, skinheads!”
They moved in. Their blows and kicks peppered Pollack’s torso and skull. It felt good to bleed and bruise again. Pollack didn’t fight back. Let it come, he thought. I’ll endure this as I’ve endured the rest of my life. I’ll prove it all night. You bet. Nothing can finish me off. My retirement years have arrived.
I’ll go to Brooklyn, Pollack thought, as he spit out a tooth. That should be a safe place for me to write my novel, dictate my memoirs to a college student, and compile two volumes of my best record reviews. Yes, Brooklyn. Perfect. The kitties will love it there. I can be free.
Rock ’n’ roll will never come to Brooklyn.