“With the help of his friends and family, he’s gonna make it”: How Nirvana berated the press during their Reading Festival opener in 1992
By August 1992, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain had had enough. Constantly vilified by the media, whose only focus seemed to be his drug use, Cobain had become the reluctant face of an industry gone dark. As tabloids vultured around the conversation, some veiling the issue in lighthearted jabs with headlines like “Hugs Not Drugs!”, another question made its way to the surface: would he make it through their headline set at Reading Festival?
The short answer is, yes, of course they’d make it—and they’d do it well, staking their claim as the biggest headline act they were slated to become at the time. The long answer is also yes: even if the performance would roll out on their own terms, with Cobain having his say about the unrelenting focus on his health and lifestyle in ways that might seem considerably extreme today. Back then, though, all it was was a strategic tactic that made it clear that Cobain had truly had enough.
That didn’t stop the trepidation from reaching behind the curtain and to the rest of the band, though. As Dave Grohl later said, “We rehearsed once, the night before, and it wasn’t good. I really thought, ‘This will be a disaster, this will be the end of our career for sure’.” Grohl wasn’t the only one who worried this performance would be the end of Nirvana.
A particularly scathing article by a powerful, well-known publication tore into Cobain’s relationship with Courtney Love, which tied to the broader view that Cobain was also experiencing issues with addiction, alerting to the Reading show like a final curtain call for Nirvana; like their career would be coming to an end in a demise defined only by the chaos of a frayed machine that could have stayed strong had they pulled themselves together. To the world, Nirvana was on the cusp of splitting up.
On the night, though, a different kind of chaos unfolded: the kind that looked their own scrutiny in the face and addressed it, made space for it, and used it as an artistic device to prove their own stability, or their confidence in their own unstoppable trajectory. Cobain made sure to set the tone from the get-go, arriving on stage in a wheelchair while wearing a wig that partly obscured his face.
Standing up to reach the mic (following Kris Kristofferson’s playful line, “With the help of his friends and family he’s gonna make it”), Cobain feigns weakness in his body and voice, croaking out the first line of Bette Midler’s ‘The Rose’: “Some say love, it is a river”. Midler had recorded the song in 1979 for a film in which she played a troubled singer who died of a drug overdose.
Cobain ended the powerful statement with a fake faint, falling backwards to the sounds of the audience in awe before leaning the band into the first notes of ‘Bleed’, and, consequently, what many believe to be one of the band’s greatest live sets ever. It had been Cobain’s idea to come out with an immediate sense of comic relief, wearing the wig for most of the set and proving that, put frankly, all the media headlines were complete and utter bullshit.
“Kurt had been in and out of rehab, communication in the band was beginning to be strained,” Grohl later reflected. “Kurt was living in LA, Krist and I were in Seattle. People weren’t even sure if we were going to show up. We rehearsed once, the night before, and it wasn’t good. It turned out to be a wonderful show, and it healed us for a little while.”
Most people who were there that day remember the energy. To some, it wasn’t just a gig, it was a spiritual re-awakening for Nirvana, who suddenly rekindled their flame right there on the stage for all to see. And at no point did the humour waver. At one point, Cobain jokingly said it was their last show. Kristofferson said: “It’s not.” Cobain then addressed their upcoming tour, asking Kristofferson if he wanted to make a record; he agreed. Just like that. This was never going to be the end for Nirvana.
