Once we got back to the office and I had made the band a round of tea, we settled down to talk – well, Krist and Dave did. Kurt was clearly the shyest of the trio; Krist and Dave guffawed and fooled around throughout the interview, full of that self-deprecating and sarcastic humour Nirvana would soon become famous for.
Kurt, however, hunched at the end of the sofa, rolled an un-lit cigarette I had given him between his fingers, his eyes caked in heavy black eye-liner, as he interjected occasionally in a soft, quiet voice as the band discussed the music scene at the time, politics and their mistrust of major labels, who were starting to show an interest. The frontman became more animated as the interview went on, telling a story of how when on tour in Columbus Ohio with TAD, this guy had smashed in all of the windows of their van because he thought Kurt was having an affair with his girlfriend. “I was butt naked covered in glass, I just stood up and went ‘don’t kill me’,” he laughed.
After the interview, I’d wanted to get some photos to go with the feature, but the magazine wouldn’t commission a photographer for a small piece, so I asked the office manager Hanne Jordan to bring her camera in as I knew she had been a music photographer in the early ’80s. She hadn’t shot a band in years and her quirky, old-school manner amused Nirvana greatly and they really came alive, goofing around on the roof of the offices, Kurt even breaking out into a huge smile for some of the pics.
Hanne later sold the photos to an agency and probably did quite well out of them. If I’d known how big they were going to get, I would have taken the bloody pictures myself!