Read 27: Kurt Cobain for Free Online

never really went away, and Kurt was obliged to adapt his life to cope with this constant torment.
    But the source of his stomach ache was more than nervousness, and it intersected with the very source of his art. Because Kurt was so sensitive and so intelligent, and could feel and perceive so much, he was extremely hurt and frustrated that everyone else didn’t see and sense what he glimpsed. Stomach pain also ran in the family. ‘It’s a psychosomatic thing. My mom had it for a few years in her early twenties, and eventually it went away. She was in a hospital all the time because of it.’ [27]
    He would spend the next years of his life in thrall to this debilitating illness, enduring numerous hospital visits and doctors’ examinations, all to no avail. Later, in 1993, he would explain: ‘Most of the time I sing right from my stomach. Right from where my stomach pain is. That’s where the pain and anger comes from. It’s definitely there: every time I’ve had an endoscope, they find a red irritation in my stomach. But it’s psychosomatic, it’s all from anger. And screaming.’ The pain in Kurt’s belly was now added to another constant hurt: the backache he suffered from his scoliosis, exacerbated by his guitar playing. ‘That really adds to the pain in our music. It really does. I’m kind of grateful for it.’ [28]
    In September 1988 Krist temporarily broke up with Shelli. Krist no longer had regular work, while Shelli had a night-time job. Although Krist was obliged to move back to Aberdeen, to stay with his mother for a time, he was now able to play music full time, and Nirvana could practice above his mother Maria’s hairdressing shop. Yet the split put pressures on Kurt and Tracy, especially from Tracy’s end, as she certainly did not want to split up with Kurt. As a salve to his girl, and after listening to the Beatles’
Meet the Beatles
album for hours, Kurt wrote her a song, ‘About a Girl’.
    Now there were more live performances, all over Washington State. Kurt became legendary for his readiness to smash up his equipment at the end of shows. On 30 October 1988, at a show at a dorm in Evergreen State College, Kurt smashed up a guitar for the first time. And on this first significant tour, they would pick up cheap guitars from pawnshops to be destroyed onstage that night. Similarly, Kurt would seek out effects pedals wherever they travelled. But onstage it was often Krist Novoselic who stood out more than the guitarist. ‘Kurt is a really good songwriter, but to the extent that those songs became full and alive, that was Krist,’ said Jonathan Poneman. [29] Others also noted that Krist was far more confident and at ease with himself than Kurt, rather more in charge. Yet Kurt had an intensity that you could feel, and you knew he was the creative force in the band.
    Sub Pop recognized this. They had decided they wanted Nirvana to record an album, with Jack Endino once again producing. On Christmas Eve, 1988, Nirvana were back at Reciprocal Studios for the first recording session for what would become known as
Bleach
. There would be five more sessions, each of around five hours, until the record was completed on 24 January. Total recording costs came to just over $600 for a record that ultimately would sell one and a half million copies.
    Now Kurt revealed a side that others might not expect, visiting the local library and reading books about music business deals. Aware that Sub Pop made it a statement of their company’s ‘cool’ that the label would not issue contracts – secretly because these leftie bohemian ‘businessmen’ didn’t know what a record company contract looked like or might contain – Kurt brought this to the attention of Krist. One night a drunken Krist turned up at Bruce Pavitt’s home. He demanded a three-album, three-year deal with Sub Pop, and that they would receive