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Nirvana · S2 E6
The Van
A Dodge van with no heat, broken seats, and five people crammed in with their equipment. Nirvana tours America on floors and couches, playing to thirty people in basement shows and getting paid in beer. The touring is brutal, unglamorous, and the only way a band from Aberdeen can find an audience
Summer 1989. A Dodge van with no air conditioning, one working headlight, and five people crammed in next to two guitar amps and a drum kit pulls out of Seattle heading east. Bleach has been out for two weeks, and Nirvana is about to find out what America thinks.
"Blew," Nirvana, Live at Reading Festival, August 30, 1992. The opening track of Bleach, the album the band was touring in that van. Three years after sleeping on strangers' floors for gas money, they're playing it for sixty thousand people at the biggest rock festival in England. The van got them here.
The Road
Nirvana crosses America on floors and couches, playing to twenty or thirty people in basement shows, VFW halls, and punk house living rooms. Gas money comes from the door. Dinner is whatever the venue provides, which is usually beer and nothing else.
TAP TO REVEAL: Who did Nirvana share a van with on their first European tour?
Blew, Nirvana (1989)
The first sound on Nirvana's first album is Krist Novoselic's bass, alone, rumbling in like an engine turning over. "Blew" was recorded at Reciprocal Recording in Seattle with Jack Endino for a total studio budget of $606.17, and every cent of that budget is audible. Listen for how the band locks into a groove that refuses to speed up or slow down. This isn't punk velocity or metal heaviness. It's something in between: a slow, grinding weight that became the early Nirvana signature. The Reading version, performed three years after it was recorded, proves the song only got heavier with time.
During the Bleach tour, how did Nirvana typically sleep between shows?
Scoff, Nirvana (1989)
From Bleach (1989), the album the band was touring behind in that van. "Scoff" is four minutes of raw, unpolished anger that captures exactly what Nirvana sounded like in a packed basement at midnight. Kurt screams through blown-out speakers, Krist's bass rattles the walls, and the whole thing sounds like it was recorded in a room the size of the van they were sleeping in.
Life in the Van
Nirvana is not the only band playing this circuit. Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and Tad are all on the same stages, in the same rainy city, playing variations of the same sound. Next: the Seattle scene, and the word nobody likes.
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