Customer Reviews

Nirvana: The Biography

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

On page 131, our author states, "I used to say that the only goal I ever had with my writing was to make people jealous of me." That doesn't necessarily make our author a likeable character, and pretty much overshadowed my enjoyment of the book for about the first half. The chapter where he met Courtney, is a total waste of space. It has nothing to do with the band and he's just alluding to how close they supposedly got, like he's baiting us to care.

Please don't take the 3 star review to mean this is not an enjoyable book. It is. I flew through its nearly 600 pages in a couple days and it was quite the page turner. But all of this "this is how it really was" talk seems kind of hard to believe. For starters, Mr. True was supposedly drunk all the time so it's hard to really believe he remembers facts from these events so long ago. Also, when Kurt and Courtney hook up, he takes on the annoying practice of referring to them as "Kurtney." The book doesn't mention Dave Grohl much at all, and a lot of his stories DO seem to be only to make you wish you were him. But hearing countless stories of waking up with vomit caked to your clothes, or being wasted everynight, or waking up naked in a strange apartment, really kind of kill that desire. He calls himself "the man who invented grunge" and a Legend.. and I have no love for such arrogance. In the introduction, he constantly gets off topic and then rights himself, saying "This is a book about Nirvana." I wish he did this DURING the book himself. Wasting countless pages on Calvin Johnson, Mudhoney, and Melvins worship.

Another problem with the book is the sheer amount of errors of things we could actually prove (events recorded for all to see.) Mistakes are that Lori Goldston played cello with the band on Saturday Night Live in '93. Mistakes are messing up the order of events for the Dallas 10-19-91 show. Or the setlist for numerous shows. He'll say a song was played 12th ("More than a Feeling/Teen Spirit") at Reading '92 when it was really 13th (14th if you count "The Rose.") Nothing huge, but why bother reporting 12th? He says they played "Floyd" 4-9-93 when they didn't. The order of songs for 7-23-93 are all messed up. There are mistakes for other shows, but others where Everett turned out to be correct.

You really get the feeling he is writing all of this from memory and not trying to track down the facts first. You get this impression because of the above errors (like saying "I Hate Myself and Want to Die" from the Beavis and Butt-head Compilation was from a Brazil session, when it wasn't.) You also get the impression because he quotes people a handful of times with his own British terminology thrown in. He has Kurt saying "postman" when Americans call him "mailman." Again, not a serious thing, but it's hard to believe he is actually "quoting" people when he'll admit not having the tape on during a 15-16 year old interview.

Everett says Nirvana were possibly late to Reading '92 because of a show the previous day in another country/area. It's easy to prove there was no such show. He doesn't correct people that make mistakes either. Jack Endino says at the late Oct '92 session he did with the band, that Frances Bean was 2-3 weeks old. In reality it was over 2 months. He said Kurt's mom put out the 'missing persons' report on him, but it was really Courtney using her name. He said MTV didn't even air Unplugged until after Kurt died, which isn't true. It was originally aired on 12-16-93. He said the controversy over "In Utero"'s commerciality ended when a few songs were mixed and some of the "noisier" songs "removed"!! I really wish I kept a list of thing like this throughout reading the book, because right now I'm drawing a blank on some others.

When it gets to Kurt's mysterious and controversial death, it doesn't pull the argument much one way or the other. Cali, the male nanny, has a much bigger role in this book. His relationship with Kurt and Courtney is more established and explained. It's strange, though, after 2-3 doctors at the rehab facility Kurt fled say they didn't find him suicidal, and one day (or later on the same day) that Cali's friend talks to him in a supposedly great mood, Kurt kills himself without much warning. The Rome "suicide" note is mentioned. Courtney's overall shadiness is discussed. Her affair with Billy Corgan is mentioned. Her demands on Kurt to make money and her inability to meet him in Europe until a few weeks late is troubling. Not to mention Kurt OD'ing in Rome the same night Courtney finally arrives. It also paints a picture of her as setting out to conquer Kurt. And how he went hardcore into heroin when she came upon the scene. A lot of time is spent on when Kurt and Courtney met. Where a few contradicting stories are told and nothing really established. He DOES point out Courtney's motive for saying she met him way earlier then she did.. being she didn't want to be seen as a golddigger or riding on his coattails. Well, she was.

Maybe this book IS the truth. Maybe Nirvana's story is this dark and unfortunate. How Kurt ever got it together to play a show after hearing all this, is truly something to wonder about. But little is talked about in regards to Kurt's relationship with his band members. Dave is almost non-existant, and it pretty much shows Krist having washed his hands of Kurt after the recording of "In Utero." Some stories make no sense and video evidence refutes a handful of these things. But I still recommend this book to all Nirvana fans who read the Azzerad and Cross books. It fills in holes and is probably closer to the truth than most. You just have to overlook Everett's placing of himself in many scenes and take the "quotes" with a grain of salt. It's a fun page turner that any fan of the band would love. This exposes more like on the darkness of Kurt's mind in reaction to fame and major lable committments, but you still feel like the complete story is still out there somewhere.

I found this to be pretty interesting, and without a doubt in-depth bio of the band. Similar to the guy that wrote the Neil Young bio, "Shakey," a couple years back Everett True spends too much time talking about himself and spewing his own opinions though. We get it man-you drank a bunch back then and forgot what happened at a lot of the shows. You don't have to remind us of this fact every five pages. The book does turn into a Kurt and Courtney bio in the last quarter-which is kinda a bummer since it would have been interesting to learn more about how the Foo Fighters came to be a full-time band and how Pat Smear (who seemed to be closer to Kurt than Dave was towards the end) ended up in the original line-up of the Foos. True didn't get any new direct interviews with surviving band members for this bio, but he does talk with many an insider who certainly give some interesting perspective and dish. There are a ton of footnotes and chapter ending "addendas" which make this bio stray a bit from the usual formula. I think the footnotes could have been bi-passed (especially since they often seem there just to include even more of True's opinions on different bands) but many of the addendas do prove interesting. I dunno, I just wish more music bio writers would just reign in their egos a bit and tell the story of the musicians they're writing about instead of letting us all know their personal opinion on every other band that was releasing records at that time. If you want a couple of good examples of this, read "Our Band Could Be Your Life" by Azzerad, or the Keith Moon bio "Moon" by Tony Fletcher. Those are rock bios done right. I think True's voice also kinda hurts this book because he seems to have kinda fallen out of love with rock and roll. He just comes across as kind of bitter and spiteful. I like music writings by the likes of Michael Azzerad, Chuck Klosterman, and Nick Hornby. The enthusiasm these guys have for music really comes out in their work, and therefore makes it much more enjoyable. Overall the feel of this book kinda matches that stereotypical early 90's "grunge" vibe-it was kinda brilliant at points but it's so pessimistic and self-loathing that it's tough to take it too seriously.

The story of Kurt Cobain is one of incredible potential. Potential realized, and potential unrealized. It is astonishingly simple, and yet multi-faceted and complex, full of paradoxes and eternal conflict. This was the cultural terrain which was transversed by Nirvana, at a time when the American Dream was pursued with unquenchable fervor as it was questioned and rebuked.

Kurt Cobian's life has been framed in terms of the American Dream in 'Heavier than Heaven' by Charles Cross. And, I have to admit, it worked as a page turner for me, tho, it really seemed offset and confusing in the end. The thesis that Cobain had 'suicide genes' and had some tragic mystery in his soul waiting to find its escape does a disservice to its subject and audience in the end. It's cheap, and really antithetical to its own truth.

The honor and respect Everett True has for his audience and his subject is the real gift in the great work he has created. I don't believe a better a book could have been written even by someone more intimate with Nirvana or Cobain. Everett lets the voices of the story speak for themselves (some of the best and most illuminating of which is through Cali, the ex-nanny and personal assistant to Kurt and Courtney during the last weeks of Kurt's life), and we are able to see Cobain and the cultural landscape of the early 90s youth culture through the eyes of a truly admirable, and truly Alive human being.

Having read Thackray's previous book "Live Through This: American Rock Music in the Nineties," I was not sure what to expect with this book. "Live Through This" almost read like an open love letter to Courtney Love, and The Legend! seemed way too enamored with his own role in the story, so I was worried "Nirvana" would be the same. But that wasn't the case at all (or at least not nearly as much.) Perhaps enough time has passed for Thackray to look back with a more objective eye.

"Nirvana" is an excellent account of the band's rise and fall, and it is indispensable for anyone who wants the entire story. This book does not contain the entire story itself, mind you, but it contains a lot that is not in other books. It reads almost like an oral history of the band, with a lot of quotes from Seattle/Olympia/etc. insiders. I have seen and heard criticism of this book for focusing on Cobain too much, but I can't imagine writing a book on Nirvana that didn't focus on Cobain. While it seems that Grohl and Novoselic were "cooperative" with True according to his acknowledgements section, there aren't a lot of quotes from them in the book. I think if he could have interviewed the two of them extensively, he could have written the perfect Nirvana book. It's pretty cool to see extensive quotes from Channing and also some from Smear in this book though.

I would add this book to the top of the list of books every Nirvana fan must read, along with Azerrad's "Come As You Are" and Cross' "Heavier Than Heaven." If you have not done so, I would read the Azerrad book before the True book if you can. The True book references the Azerrad book fairly frequently. You won't be lost if you haven't read it or anything like that, but the Azerrad book is a good source for an introduction to the history of the band, and from my experience I think it is good to read True's account with the Azerrad framework already in place.

I really liked the Cross book and definitely recommend reading it, but I don't feel it is nearly as essential as the Azerrad book or this True book. Cross took a lot of artistic license, especially in his account of Cobain's last days which is almost entirely fictional considering that neither Cross nor anyone Cross cites was actually present for any of the events he writes about. Accordingly, Cross has to be taken with a big grain of salt. But then again, Everett True has to be taken with a pretty big grain himself. I guess the lesson is, as with anything else, you have to consider the source and the context with whatever you are reading...

British music writer Everett True's account of his extremely close ties, life and interaction with the band Nirvana, and particularly its tragic singer/songwriter the late Kurt Cobain and his obnoxiously toxic widow Courtney Love pulls few punches. A friend to both, and a huge fan of the alternative music and the bands that played the music that came to be known as grunge, True (real name Jerry Thackeray) gives us an inside account of the hell that consumes young musicians who cannot handle the horrible pressure of wanting success and accidentally creating the music album of the decade and all the temptations, demands and responsibilities that come with it. True finds it difficult to defend his former friend, Courtney Love, for her absence during the last few days, weeks and months of her husbands fatal decline into drug addiction and suicide, though he doesn't blame her, nor the music industry executives or hangers-on and drug dealers who enable him, but rather views Cobain's self-destruction as just that, and perhaps a little more - his ultimate expression of anger, angst and frustration at the world he found himself in. It's a cliche to summarized such a life as the tortured artist effect, but often great art and music arises from the fires of a hellish childhood and youth, and perhaps its most often those who have suffered from dysfunctional families and divorce who have the temerity, inspiration and experiences to voice what so many others are feeling. True succeeds in portraying Cobain as a funny, flawed, decent human being, one who failed to handle the pressure of getting what he wanted. And that's the ultimate morale of this story - be careful what you want because you might very well get it, and it will consume you.

"Everett True, My Story with Nirvana", that should be the title. I'm not much of a book reviewer; however, this book was so horrible that I felt compelled to give my opinion. The book is almost entirely written from the perspective of the author, he even puts his articles from Melody Maker throughout the book. We get to hear how the author met Courtney Love and how drunk he got all of the time, and how the one time he even got on stage with Kurt.

I hated this book! It was absolutely painful to read. For what it's worth, I would look for another book on Nirvana; there has to be something better.

I have read every Nirvana bio out there, and without a doubt this is the end-all be-all of Nirvana biographies. Written by English journalist Everett True, he was the famous journalist brought over from Europe by Sub Pop records to do an article on the local "grunge scene", which introduced the world to bands like Nirvana, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains. This was a man who was there from the very beginning, who formed close friendships with many of the famous personalities in the Seattle music scene of that time. He was the man who wheeled out Kurt Cobain for his famous entrance at the Reading festival. He was the man who first introduced Kurt to Courtney. He toured with these bands, interviewed them extensively, and became a trusted person in Courtney & Kurt's inner circle. While alot of readers seem to be turned off by True- I was just the opposite. I loved his honesty and candar- even if it casted different people in a bad light at times. There were so many things I learned in this book that no other Nirvana bio had talked about. Coming from someone like True, who was a Nirvana insider from the beginning, I did feel like he had an intense respect for his subjects in this book, and was always seeking to tell the events as truthfully as he could remember. His writings about Courtney in particular, whom he seemed closer to than anyone else in the Nirvana circle, were the most revealing and fascinating insights I have ever read about Love. True never seemed to take sides, either, or make any attempt to portray his famous friends as anything more than what they were to him- which was refreshing. He managed to strip away their public masks and portray them as real people, warts and all- as he knew them. And the man genuinely seemed to care about Kurt, Courtney, and others he was close to despite how messed up their respected relationships became toward the end. This book as a whole feels as though it really comes from a place of love- a desire to strip away the public myths and misconceptions that have distorted the perceptions of these people he considered his close friends. He never points fingers at anyone for Kurt's suicide, but you can clearly sense that he has enormous regrets for not having done more to save Kurt. In a large way this book reads like a personal catharsis for True- something he needed to do not only to set the facts straight for the public, but most importantly, as a way of finding healing for himself. If you only read one Nirana book your whole life- make it this one.

I have always enjoyed Nirvana's music but I never got myself in real deep with the facts about the band and Kurt's life. This book was in my opinion amazing. The author gives you multiple sides to the stories by people who were there. It was not written in a bias way and it really gives good descriptions. If you are a fan of Nirvana or someone who is just getting into them I HIGHLY suggest this book. It was worthy ever word written.

ok to the point: this is my favourite nirvana book 9 out of 10 times. the only problem i really have with is that mr. true can be narcissistic at times. having said that however, this is by far the most engaging book i have read about the band. it's nice to read a book by someone who was there. it's also nice to read a book where there's not constant foreshadowing of kurt's suicide.

I've read many books about Nirvana and the life of Kurt Cobain. This book gives you an inside look at part of their lives told by someone who was there. Nothing added for shock value, just what happened. Along with his own experiences, there are other stories from people who were close to the Nirvana camp during this period. It's very informative, and if you're a Nirvana fan, this is the book for you.