THE LEGACY OF EVERETT TRUE AND NIRVANA
During his time working for Melody Maker and NME, music critic Everett True was one of the first British writers to introduce us to bands such as Nirvana, Hole and Pavement. He ended up partying with many of the bands he championed and formed friendships with them along the way.
The story of Nirvana has been told so many times, what can you tell us that’s new?
A couple of things, first up most of the times the story has been told before portray Nirvana as a band from Seattle and I think that’s not true at all. If any one city can lay claim to them it would be Olympia. Kurt lived in Olympia pretty much from when Nirvana started going until after ‘Nevermind’ was released. To say that Nirvana is a band from Seattle is like saying Morrissey is from LA, simply because he moved there at the end of his career. Also a lot of the books have been written by people that weren’t even there so I’m not quite sure about how they’re meant to have a grasp on the situation.
What are your lasting memories of Nirvana?
I don’t really have any to be honest because I was drunk the entire time. Memory is a really fucking weird thing. No two people see events in the same way so if your writing a story about times you lived through you have to be aware that the version you lived through is entirely different to somebody else’s version.
Wasn’t it you who pushed Kurt’s wheelchair onstage at the Reading Festival? Do you remember any of that?
I do remember seeing the lights, you couldn’t see the audience it was just big and black and a lot of noise. The lights were really bright. Also, you can see this on the video, I do vaguely remember this, I was wheeling him out and all of a sudden he grabs me and I think ‘Ah, cool, he wants to have a ruckus onstage like we always used to’ so I start hitting him and he’s like ‘No you asshole, you took me to the wrong microphone’.
You seemed to be drunk throughout most of the early nineties – which bands were the most fun to be around?
It was always fun with The Breeders, those two sisters were always a lot of fun. Courtney [Love] was the most fun to be honest. I mean I haven’t spoken to Courtney in a very long time we’ve drifted apart. But if I’m being honest Courtney was the most fun to anybody back then, that’s why I used to hang out with her. For the same reason Kim Deal was fun as well, because they were entirely spontaneous people. They would react according to the circumstance and not according to how they thought other people would expect them to behave.
Does it annoy you when people ask about Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love?
They don’t to be honest. I did stop going out in the immediate period after Kurt’s death, probably because I was depressed as well. I stopped going out in London anyway because that did get annoying, but it wasn’t anyone being nasty. It’s annoying in as much as I’ve done other things in my life beyond that, but it’s not an over-riding factor in my day-to-day life.
Have you got any advice for aspiring music writers?
I never ever though I would become a music critic. The only thing I’ve ever done is written what I want to write, which is the only advice I’d give to anybody. But that’s not actually as easy as it seems. When you’re starting out its not very easy at all. I was fortunate in as much as that the only reason anyone ever printed my work, which was NME, was because they thought I could spot new bands and they let me get on with it. But most people aren’t in that situation so I would say write what you want to and fuck everyone else really. Obviously you want to get opinions from other people on your writing but don’t necessarily take it to heart.
words: Amanpreet Kahlon
Illustration: Vincent Vanoli
First published in Fused magazine issue 27
