GW: Did you find it dis heartening that you'd started this band and you were playing these great songs when suddenly, all this weird stuff started happening in the media?

Cobain: Oh yeah, it affected me to the pont of wanting to break up the band all the time.

GW: Was it mainly the Vanity Fair article?[the September 1992 issue of Vanity Fair insinuated that Cobain's wife Courtney Love, was on heroin during her pregnancy with their daughter Frances.-GW Ed.]

Cobain:That started it. There were probably 50 more articles based on the story. I'd never paid attention to the mainstream press or media before, so I wasn't aware of people being attacked and crucified on that level. I can't help but feel that we've been a scapegoated, in a way. I have a lot of animosity towards journalists and the press in general. Because it's happening to me, of course, I'm probably exaggerating it, but I can't think of another example of a current band that's had more negative articles written about them.

GW: Why do you think that is?

Cobain: A lot of it just simple sexism. Courtney is my wife, and people could not accept the fact that I'm in love, and that I could be happy. Because she'sss shuch a pwerful person, and such a threatening person, very sexist within the industry just joined forces and decided to string us up.<br>

GW: Let's talk about In Utero. It sounds claustrophobic to me.

Cobain: I thnk so, yeah. The main reason we recorded the new album In Utero, with [producer] Steve Albini is he is able to get a sound that sounds like the band is in a room no bigger than the one we're in now. In Utero doesn't sound like it was recorded in a haall, or that it's trying to sound larger than life. It's very in-your-face and real.

Technically, I've learned that the way to acheieve that is to use a lot of microphones. I've known that for years, ever dince I started recording, because microphones are so directional that if you want ambient sound you need to lose a lot of tracks. Or you need to use an omnidirectional microphone, farther away from the instruments, so you can pick up the reberation from the walls.

GW: How many mikes did you use in In Utero?

Cobain: I have no idea, but a lot. We had a big old German mircophones taped to the floor and the ceiling and the walls, all over the place. I've been trying to get producers to do this ever since we started recording. I don't know anything about recording, but it just seems so obvious to me that that is what you need to do. I tried to get [Nevermind producer] Butch Vig to do it, I tried to get [Sub Pop producer] Jack Endinno to do it, and everyon'es responce was, "That isn't how you record." Steve Albini proved to to me on these songs, although I don't know exactly how he did it; I jusst knew that it had to be done that way. He had to have used a bunch of microphones. It's as simple as that. Which is why live rcordings of punk shows sound so good. You really get a feel of what is going on.

GW: Did you re-record any of the tracks?

Cobain: No. We remixed a couple because the vocals weren't loud enough. Steve is a good recording engineer, but terrible at mixing, as far as I'm concerned. To me, mixing is like doing a crossword puzzle or something. It;s like math, or something really technical. It drains you; you really have to concentrate on it. There are so many variations in the tones of each instrument that it can take days to mix a song if you really want to get anal about it. I'm all just for recording and however it comes out on a tape, that's howIt should come out. But for some songs it just doesn't work.

GW: I really like the slow songs on In Utero.

Cobain:They came out really good, and Steve Albini's recording technique really served those songs well; you can really hear the ambience in those songs. It was perfect for them. But for "All Apologies" and "Heart Shaped Box" we needed more. My main complaint was that the vocals weren't loud enough. In every Albini mix I've ever heard, the vocals are always too quiet. that's just the way he likes things, and he's a real difficult person to persuade otherwise. I mean, he was trying to mix each tune within an hour, which is just not how the songs work. It was for a few songs, but not all of them. You should be able to do a few different mixes and pick the best.
I never thought I would enjoy talking about the technical side of recording. It never made any sense to me before. But now, I don't think it's a bad thing to talk about.

GW: You appear to be in a really good postion, since even if the album doesn't do well you've made the record that you wannted to make.

Cobain: Absolutely. Oh man, that's why I'm so excited about this record. I actually want to promote this record, not for the sake of selling records, but because I'm more proud of this record than anything I've ever done. We've finally achieved the sound that I've been hearing in my head forever.

GW: You didn't on Nevermind.

Cobain: Not at all. It's too slick. I don't listen to records like that at home. I can't listen to that record. I like a lot of the songs. I really like playing some of them live. In a commercial sense I think it;s a really good record, I have to admit that, but that's in a Cheap Trick kind of way. But for my personal listening pleasure, you know, it's just too slick.

GW: How do you sing? Because you use a number of voices . . .

Cobain:Most of the time I sing right from my stomach. Right from where my stomach pain is.

GW: That's where the pain and anger comes from?

Cobain: It's definitely there. Everytime I've had an andoscope, they find a read irritation in my stomach. But it's psychosomatic, It's all from anger. And screaming. My body is damaged from music in two ways: not only has my stomach inflamed from irritation, but I have scliosis. I had minor scliosis in junior high, and since I've been playing the guitar ever since, the weight of the guitar has made my back grow in this curvature. So when I stand, everything is sideways. It's weird.

GW: You could go sorted out.

Cobain: I go to a chiropractor every once and a while. You can't really correct scoliosis, because its a growth in the spine. Your spine grows through out your adolescent years in a curvature. Most people have a small curvature in their spine anyhow, though some people have to wear metal braces. It gives me a back pain all the time. That really adds to the pain in our music. It really does. I'm kinda grateful for it.

GW: Do you feel now that there are contradictions between your ideals and your enormus success? Is that something that worries you?

Cobain: I don't really know anymore. I thinkk I was probably feeling a lot more contradictory a year-and-a-half ago,because I was blindly fighting and not even knowing what I was fighting for. And, to a point, I still am. Like I said, I don't really know how to deal with the media. A year ago, I said there was absolutely no fuckinng way that I would ever speak in public again, and that I would go out of my way to never show my face again. But then I decided that I wasn't going to let a handful of evil journalists dictate my fucking life.

I'm just grateful that within the last year, I've come across a few people who happen to be journalists that I trusst and I like to talk to.

GW: Maybe this would be a good time to address some of theee rumors that have plagued you. When Nevermind hit, there were reports that you were a narcoleptic.

Cobain: No, no. . . that was just a story I made up to explain why I slept so much. I used to find myself sleeping a lot before shows. A lot of times the backstage area is such a gross scene, I don't want to talk to anybody. So I just fall asleep. There are so many people that we know now, so many friends and stuff that I can't ask them to leave. I don't want to act like Axl Rose and have my own bus or my own back room area.

GW: Speaking of Axl, what is the story behind your altercation with him backstage at the 1992 MTV Music Awards?

Cobain: Well, apparenty Axl was in a really bad mood. Something set him off, probably just minutes before our encounter with him. We were in the food tent and I was holdong my daughter, Frances, and he came strutting by with five of his hugge bodyguards and a person with a movie camera. Courtney jokingly screamed at him, "Axl, will you be the godfather of our child?" Everyone laughed. We had a few friends around us, and he just stopped dead in his tracks and started screaming these abusive words at us. He told me I should shut my bitch up, so I looked at Courtney and said, "Shut up, bitch, heh!" Everyone started howling with laughter and Axl just kind of blushed and went away. Afterward, we heard that Duff [McKagan GNR bassist] wanted to beat Chris up.

GW: I thought it was great when Chris hit his head with the guitar at the end of your performance that evening. You're all trying to be cool and smashing your instruments, and he really fucked it up-it's really good!

Cobain: That's happened so many times.

GW: An impressive finale, and you end up looking really stupid, but that's great too.

Cobain: It was so expected, you know? Should we just walk off stage, or should we break our equipment again? We went through so many emotions that day, because up until just minutes before we played, we weren't sure we were going to go on. We wanted to play "Rape Me," and MTV wouldn't let us. They were going to replace us if we didn't play "Teen Spirit." We compromised and ended up playing "Lithium." I spat on Axl's keyboards when we were sitting on the stage. It was either that or beat him up. We're down on this platform that brought us up hydraulically, you know? I saw his piano there, and I just had to take this opportunity and spit big goobers all over his keyboards. I hope he didn't get it off in time.

GW: Tell me, I have to ask what happened with the gun thing. Was all that Bullshit? [On June 4, 1993, police arrived at the Cobain home after being summoned to break up a domestic dispute. Love told police they had been arguing over guns in the house.-ED.]

Cobain: Oh yeah. Total bullshit. That's another thing that just made me want to give up. I never choked my wife, but every report even Rolling Stone, said that I did. Courtney was wearing a choker. I ripped it off her, and it turned out on the police report that I choked her. We weren't even figghting. We weren't even arguing, we were playing music too loud, and the neighbors complained and called the police on us. It was the first time that they had ever complained, and we've been practicing in the house for a long time.

GW: That's the way they expect you to behave, because you're a controversial rock star.

Cobain: The police were really nice about it, though. I couldn't believe it. See there's this new law, which was passed that month in Seattle, that says when there's a domestic violence call, they have to take one party or the other to jail. So the only argument Courntney and I got into was who was going to go to jail for a few hours. And they asked us out of the blue, "Are there any guns in the house?" I said no because I didn't want them to know that there were guns in the house. I have a M-16 and two handguns. They're put away, there are no bullets in them, they're up in the closet, and they took them away. I can get them back now. I haven't bothered to get them back yet, but it was all just a ridiculous little situation. It was nothing. And it's been blown out of proportion. It's just like I feel like people don't believe me. Like I'm a pathological liar. I'm constantly defending myself. people still haven't envolved enough to question anything that's printed. I'm really bad at that, too. I still don't believe lots of things that I read.

GW: But you must behave badly sometimes.

Cobain: Sure. Courtney and I fight. We argue a lot. But I've never choked my wife. It's an awful fucking thing to be printed, to be thought of you. You know, we haven't any problems, any bad reports, any negative articles written about us in a long time. We thought we were finally over it-that our curse had worn itself out.

GW: It must also be because people have percieved you as a threat.

Cobain: I think Courtney is more of a threat than I am.

GW: What have been the worst temptations engendered by your success?

Cobain: Nothing I can think of, except Lollapalooza. They offered us a guarentee of like six million dollars, and that's way more money than. . . We're going to break even on this tour because we're playing theaters , and the production is so expensive at this level. But other than that, I've never though of the Guns N' Roses, Metallica and U2 offers as any kind of legitimate offer. They just never were a reality to me.

GW: So what are the plans for In Utero? How much are you touring to promote it?

Cobain: We'll tour for about six weeks in the states, starting in October. Then I don't want to commit to anything until we see how I feel physically after that. Maybe we'll go to Europe. I'm sure we'll be over in Europe to support this record within a year, but I'm not sure then. I don't want to set a whole year's worth of touring up.

By Jon Savage 

GW:There seems to be a tension, in that you defined as being influenced by punk, and part of punk was
that it wasn't cool to be successful. Did you feel that tension, and has it caused you problems?

Cobain: That's not how I perceived early punk. I thought that the Sex Pistols wanted to rule the world, and I was rooting for them. But then American punk rock in the mid-Eighties became totally stagnant and elitist. It was a big turn-off for me. I didn't like that at all. But at the same time, I had been thinking that way for so long that it was really hard for me to come to terms with success. But I don't care about it now. There's nothing I can do about it. I'm not going to put out a shitty record on purpose. That would be ridiculous. But I would probably have done that a year-and-a-half ago-I would have gone out of my way to make sure that the new album was even noisier than it is. I know we're not going to have a fringe millions who don't enjoy our music, who aren't into our band for any reason than as a tool to fuck. But we did this record the way we wanted to. I'm glad about that.

GW: It worried me a bit that you might get into the trap, because its not interesting.