Read 27: Kurt Cobain for Free Online Page A

$6,000 in year one, $12,000 in year two, and $18,000 in year three. Sub Pop agreed.
    In December 1988, another Nirvana tune appeared, on the
Sub Pop 200
box set. ‘Spank Thru’ (written by Kurt, with masturbation as its subject) was a really great song, with a burning drive. The song had been recorded on 6 November 1988, but was one of the earliest of Kurt’s tunes, first heard on the Fecal Matter tape. It also set the template for the dynamics in almost all Nirvana songs: slow and quiet, followed by loud, fast and forceful.
    The recording of
Bleach
was followed by a two-week West Coast tour, bottom of the bill to Mudhoney and the Melvins. There were worries over Kurt’s abilities to sing and play guitar simultaneously, so a second guitarist was added. Jason Everman – who had given Nirvana the money to record
Bleach
– got the gig. On 11 February 1989, famously, as though in an effort to upstage his legendary Seattle forebear Jimi Hendrix, Kurt played guitar standing on his head, in San Jose, California.
    In 1989 Nirvana would play over a hundred shows, five times what they had managed the previous year. When not on the road, Kurt would stay at home at the Olympia apartment he shared with Tracy. There he would paint all day. ‘He’d paint with whatever medium came to hand,’ she said. ‘Acrylic paints, magic marker, spray cans, blood, pen, pencil – and on whatever improvised canvas he could scarf up at local thrift stores: often the back of board games. On rare occasions, he’d even paint using his own semen. He’d paint aliens, diseased children, grossly distorted childhood images utilizing pop iconographic figures such as Batman and Barbie.’ [30]
    On 9 June, with Mudhoney and Tad, Nirvana played bottom of the bill at Sub Pop’s Lamefest ’89 at Seattle’s Moore Theater. It was a big event – a year previously these acts couldn’t have played such a venue to a packed-out audience.
Bleach
was released days later. Sub Pop were amazed that the record immediately started to sell, as essentially, Nirvana were an almost unknown band. As soon as the record was out, Nirvana set off on their first US tour. They played twenty-six dates, mainly in bars, never earning more than a hundred dollars a night. They often slept in their van, but were tremendously excited that they were now living the full rock ’n’ roll travelling band life. Although at first there was rarely a large audience, soon attendances picked up, after college radio began to play tunes from
Bleach
such as ‘School’ and ‘About a Girl’.
    Jason Everman, prone to metal rock-star-like movements onstage that jarred with Kurt’s ‘purist’ posture, did not seem to fit in. On 18 July he played his last show with Nirvana, at the Pyramid Club in New York City, part of the New Music Seminar. His fate was sealed after Kurt and Krist got drunk one night – as they seemed to most nights – and then scored some cocaine. While high on the drug, the pair decided that Jason had to go. Jason later joined Soundgarden as bassist.
    It was a three-piece Nirvana that undertook a fourteen-day Midwest tour that started at the end of September. The tour began in Minneapolis. That day Kurt suffered so much from stomach ache that he collapsed, violently vomiting, even when there was nothing left in his stomach. He was taken to a hospital but no specific condition was discovered.
    Back in the studio, Nirvana recorded an EP,
Blew
, named after its title track. Other songs were the previously released ‘Love Buzz’, ‘Stain’ and ‘Been a Son’. Three thousand copies were pressed, but it was only released in the UK. There was a specific reason for this. On 20 October 1989, Nirvana and Tad, who would be topping the bill, boarded a plane in Seattle for the ten-hour flight to London, before driving three hundred miles to Newcastle in the north-east of