Kurt Cobain Talks About Nirvana’s Early Days In A Newly Unearthed Interview From 1989

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In 1989, Nirvana had just signed with Sub Pop, and the soon-to-be grunge icons were getting ready to release their debut album, Bleach. Also around this time, Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic sat down with British journalist John Robb in New York City for a 20-minute interview. That conversation hasn’t been heard before, but the audio is set to be released later today, and can be heard here when it goes live.

During the interview, Cobain talked about making it out of Aberdeen and avoiding a future of logging, a prominent industry in the area, and said that if Nirvana didn’t work out, he would “keep trying in another band… I can probably say I’ve never learned the fine art of logging.”

Cobain also talked about writing Bleach, saying the album was a “poppier” direction for the band:

“I’ve written most of the material on this record out of Aberdeen… all of the material on this record was written in Olympia…the songs are getting poppier and poppier as I’m getting happier and happier. [They’re] probably about conflicts in relationships, emotions and feelings…when I write a song, the lyrics are the least most important thing so I don’t dwell on it at all. I can actually have two or three different subjects within a song and the title will mean nothing to the rest of the music.”

Find more quotes from the interview here.

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