“Chemistry”: Dave Grohl on the best show of Nirvana’s career
Nirvana has already been etched in stone as one of the last bands to turn rock on its head for decades now. Although many generations have come and gone since Kurt Cobain screamed at the top of his lungs during the ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ video, there’s still hardly anything that captures that feeling of angst as a teenager than watching a gymnasium’s worth of kids losing their minds to hard rock. That was before catching them onstage, though, and Dave Grohl maintained that one show stood out as one of their finest moments.
Looking through their track record as a live band, though, I see that Nirvana had a somewhat unique approach to the stage. Outside of having to fill everything out as a three-piece, their early ideas featured some of the most punk rock moments of the Seattle scene, whether that was Cobain seemingly having a mental breakdown onstage or watching him and Krist Novoselic destroy their gear for the last few minutes of the show.
In fact, there’s a case to be made that Nirvana was an absolute trainwreck whenever they played live. Much like their sworn nemeses, Guns N’ Roses, there was no telling whether one of their shows was going to erupt into one of the greatest moments in hard rock history or if the band was going to implode at any second by Cobain throwing himself into the drums or diving into the crowd.
That kind of energy came from Cobain not wanting to be in a band of that magnitude. Being respected as a songwriter may have been fairly nice, but he knew that an arena-sized venue was nowhere near the kind of place that he wanted to be, especially when it meant sharing the stage with the biggest names in rock history.
Despite 1992 being one of their biggest years yet, the Reading Festival was still a strange moment for the band. There had been word that Cobain couldn’t do the show and was giving up the touring life to sort out his drug issues, but the minute that the band came out onstage with the frontman in a wheelchair, they pulled off one of the most insane rock and roll shows that any grunge band had ever done.
Even years after the show, Grohl felt that no other Nirvana gigged topped what they did, saying, “There had been so many rumours that the band was breaking up, that Kurt was in rehab, that we were self-destructing. We stepped onstage in front of 60,000 people without rehearsing and played one of the greatest shows that we ever had. It proved that the three of us had a chemistry that went beyond a rehearsal room or a magazine cover.”
Compared to every other rock band on the bill, Nirvana seemed to roar out of the gate like rabid dogs. Despite Cobain’s ongoing problems with being onstage and his growing drug dependency, the back and forth between them in the audience felt like piranhas attacking a ham.
And even though not everything was perfectly in tune or anything, seeing Cobain take a few shots at the media and poke fun at their status as a stadium rock act was half the fun of watching them onstage. The whole mentality behind alternative music was to be outside the mainstream, so when they finally got to the big time, seeing them take the piss out of rock and roll was indirectly one of the best decisions they could have made.
