Mark Arm of Mudhoney remembers Nirvana’s tour of 1993 and Kurt Cobain’s drug addiction
Mudhoney came up in the very same Seattle grunge scene as Nirvana. They had formed in 1988 after the dissolution of their previous band, Green River, who had laid down the template for the grunge scene in sum.
The band’s singer Mark Arm once noted the difficulties of a 1993 tour that Mudhoney did with Nirvana. He noted, “Nirvana surrounded themselves with really gross people. It was just awful. Everybody was just stepping on eggshells, trying not to disturb Kurt. Courtney wasn’t on that tour. They tried to make it a dry tour with no alcohol as some sort of example to Kurt.”
The idea was to help Cobain’s addiction problems by having no booze on the tour, but Arm felt that this was missing the point. He said, “Kurt’s interest had very little to do with alcohol, so it was a stupid exercise. They had no booze backstage, but we had beer on our rider. So every night, Krist, Dave and whoever else wanted a beer would come to our little room and take our beer. It was ridiculous. Why didn’t they just get enough beer for everybody who wanted it? Why this pretence that it’s a dry tour when it’s not really?”
Identifying the real source of Cobain’s addiction, Arm noted, “Kurt was taking massive amounts of pills. He was totally stoned anyway. The idea that this dry tour was helping Kurt in any way was just absurd. Why didn’t they take his pills? Communication within the band and the people around them was pretty much none existent.”
One particularly frustrating turn of events happened during the Chicago date of the tour. Arm continued, “On the way to Chicago, someone realised that Nirvana’s hotel was far out of town, and the band wanted to stay in town, closer to the venue. They cancelled their rooms, ate the cost, booked another hotel, and paid for two hotels per person.”
Mudhoney had been happy drinking on tour but had evidently been annoyed at other members of the tour getting stuck into their stash. Arm said that their beer had run out during the Chicago show, “so a friend of ours grabs a case of beer from catering and brings it to our room.”
Concluding the story, Arm explained the ridiculous entourage that Nirvana seemed to have amassed following the release of Nevermind. He said, “Next thing you know, a federal case is made over 24 beers. All these guys in their crew are walking around with their walkie-talkies like the Mona Lisa was snatched. They’ve just paid for two hotel rooms, and they’re flipping out over a case of beer. It was the most absurd insane thing. It was indicative of how the whole group of people were running themselves.”
