Nirvana vs. Guns N' Roses: Overboard and Self-Assured

In part 2 of the extraordinary tale of hair metal taking its last, glorious gasp as grunge and alternative swept America, we delve into the simmering tension between Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose and Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain. Their infamous feud reached a boiling point at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, but what were the events that led to that nasty, now-mythic showdown between two of rock’s most iconic frontmen?

We'll also examine how Nirvana’s grunge touchstone Nevermind transformed MTV and top 40 radio, the complicated legacy of GN’R’s nine-minute power-ballad opus “November Rain,” and why Axl ended up ditching women for dolphins. Plus, former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg joins us to share his side of the story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Where Were You in ninety two is a production of
I Heart Radio. There was no question that never Mind
opened up a wide commercial lane for punk influence rock
that hadn't existed before, and it marginalized, you know, a
substantial percentage of some of the so called hair bands.

(00:20):
A lot of bands didn't survive the transition. Welcome to
Where Are You In a podcast in which I your
host Jason Lafier, look back at the major hits, one
hit wonders, shocking news stories, and irresistible scandals that shaped
what might be the wildest, most eclectic, most controversial twelve

(00:43):
months of music effort. This week part two of the
extraordinary Tale of Guns and Roses, epic power ballad November Raining,
and it's equally epic video, which, at the time of
its release became the most expensive music video ever made.
The song may have been a monster hit, but it
was also a swan song for the band and for

(01:05):
all the hair bands who had dominated MTV and rock radio.
As Nirvana's grunge anthem Smells Like Teen Spirit bursts onto
the scene and birthed an icon, gin R, who had
been one of the most popular acts in the world,
would begin to unravel and lose their grip on the spotlight.
In this episode, we explore the simmering tension between Guns

(01:25):
and Roses singer Axel Rose and Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain,
whose infamous feud reached a fever pitch at the MTV
Video Music Awards, a night that for many reasons, has
become legendary. We'll also examine how grunge left heavy metal
for dead and change the music landscape, and why Axel
ditched women for Dolphins. Plus former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg

(01:49):
joins us to share his side of the story. This
is the fascinating saga of hair metal taking its last
glorious gasp as grunge and alternatives swept America. The year
was that previous fall, heavy metal giants Guns and Roses
had simultaneously released their sprawling duel albums Use Your Illusion

(02:13):
one and two, thirty tracks spanning more than two and
a half hours. They were their first proper studio albums
of new material since Night seven's massive hit Appetite for Destruction.
Because of its lead single You Could Be Mine, which
had been featured in the blockbuster flick Terminator To Use

(02:33):
Your Illusion Too was slightly more popular than Use Your
Illusion One, debuting a number one on the Billboard Album charts. However,
just behind it at number two was Use Your Illusion One.
The LPs would eventually be certified seven times platinum by
the Recording Industry Association of America. Use Your Illusion One
would earn a Grammy nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance

(02:55):
with Vocal. G and R would lose to Van Halen.
The biggest hip from both albums was the colossal, ornate
nine minute power ballad November Rain, which at the time

(03:17):
was the longest song in history to enter the top
ten of the Billboard Hot one d It peaked at
number three, behind TLC's Baby, Baby Baby at number two
and Boys two Men's End of the Road at number one.
It's not surprising given that R and B was making
a strong showing on the charts in the early nineties. Rock,
at least, the big hair, testosterone fueled glam medal that

(03:39):
G and R and its brethren had been churning out
for several years was losing its luster. By bands like Poison,
skid Row, Slaughter, Warrant, and Winger were becoming punchlines. Hattie Golzy,

(04:01):
former senior vice President of Music and Talented MTV was
in charge of MTVS music video programming at the time,
and remembers the tides turning. She recalls Tom Freston, then
CEO of MTV Networks, beginning to say he hated hair
bands and wanted to play their music less. She was
a big fan of moralternative rock acts like R. E. M,

(04:22):
so this was music to her ears. She was especially
tired of these hairbands suggestive smutty videos, which often portrayed
women as bimbos and sex objects. There definitely was a
moment when you know, I was watching the video for
Warrant Cherry Pie where the woman is sitting in the
piece of cherry pie falls onto her crotch in the

(04:44):
video where you think damn, And then there's another shot
where it's like a hose suddenly spurts right and you
think this is this is not very all. Yeah, the
video for Warren's Cherry Pie is pretty loot and ludicrous.

(05:04):
Most of the hairband videos were, but the video for
Guns and Roses in November Rain was in a class
of its own, ludicrous and not very subtle in a
different way. Sure. Singer Axel Rose's girlfriend at the time
supermodel Stuff and e Seymour wore that mullet wedding dress,
the front of which was mad short and revealed her garter.
But this video wasn't about sex. Inspired by Rose's Pale

(05:27):
Del James's maccab short story Without You, it was about love, marriage, betrayal,
death and profound grief. With its multiple locations, more than
a thousand extras, and a storyline that included two churches,
a wedding, a funeral, so much rain, and a man
diving into a cake our heroes Steve Catrall. As we

(05:47):
learned last week, it was off the rails in scope
and ambition, and with a reported price tag of one
point five million dollars, it was also the most expensive
video of all time when it was released. As its
director Andy Morahan told us, Rose wouldn't have it any
other way. The singer understood the power of the music
video not only as an art form, but as a

(06:09):
promotional tool. Getting massive exposure through heavy rotation on MTV
meant selling more records and more tickets. Eric Wisebard is
a music critic, a professor, and the author of an
entire book on user illusion one and two, which he
released as part of the thirty three and a third
music book series in two thousand seven, the same year
Guns n Roses guitarist Slash released his memoir Slash Well.

(06:32):
Wise Bard is quick to point out how flaw the
duel albums are. They had a special place in his
heart since they came out at the time he was
writing in the San Francisco Bay area after having worked
as a college DJ. Most of his friends and peers
didn't share his affinity for the records. They were vibing
on groups like R E. M and rising grungejacks like
Sound Garden, Pearl Jam and Nirvana, who were more influenced

(06:52):
by punk and underground rock. They regarded grunge as superior
to heavy metal, more cerebral, nuanced, authentic. As Wise barbaracalls,
I had been a college radio DJ playing the kinds
of bands that Nirvana idolized. You know, it was not
a surprise to me when Kurt Cobain covered Um the Vasilines,

(07:17):
But his taste extended beyond what he blasted at the station.
He still dug g n R even this new grand, extravagant,
melodramatic version of ACXL Rose. So I had this odd
experience as Nirvana broke of seeing Guns and Roses as
the losers at that moment and feeling a certain sense
of empathy for them as they quickly hit their sort

(07:41):
of norma Desmond and Sunset Boulevard moment of feeling like, um,
the rock world had gotten smaller, It wasn't them. Even
if Guns and Roses were selling a ship ton of
records and concert tickets, their popularity and domination were starting
to wane, especially after the magnitude geenre Meldon experimentation in
theatrics have used your Illusion one and two with all

(08:03):
their pianos, horns, choirs and synthesized strings. This fanciful swerve
isolated some rock purists. Why did one time badass axel
Rose suddenly have such a heart on for Elton John
and swoony balladry? Why were his videos suddenly so over
the top? And why the funk was some dude throwing
himself into a wedding gike. You had a few things

(08:25):
happening at the same moment. One is he had a
band that attained such enormous success that it took a
while for the next record to come out, and had
the natural tendency then want to also prove they could
do something new. Um, you had the MTV factor, which

(08:45):
is in that era, the assumption was that when you
made an album, the release of that album was just
the starting point, because over there two or three year period,
the videos from that album Allah Thriller in the eighties
would redefine the album visually metaphorically by putting these gigantic

(09:08):
production numbers around the songs on the album. And you
had the first rumblings of alternative rock, questioning eighties rock values.
Those eighties values included excess, more money, more drugs, more bimbos,

(09:33):
more hair, more makeup, more pageantry, more guitar solos, as
we've learned three in November and alone, all of which
was beginning to feel a bit outdated. With this shift
and taste, this explosion of alternative and grunge, this changing
of the guard, rock was getting smaller, more introspective, stripped
down feedback, rougher rare and more real. And Rob Tannenbaum

(10:07):
and Craig Marks Is two thousand eleven books I Want
My MTV. The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution.
Guns n Roses former manager Alan Niven called the cost
of the November Rain video a quote unquote preposterous waste
of money. Worse. Niven's successor, Doug Goldstein, who was managing
G and R during the Illusion Records and the making
of the November Rain video, has said Rosa's constant tardiness

(10:29):
doubled the cost of its production. Record executive Bill Bennett
called the group's videos quote unquote bloated, saying and I
want my MTV that quote. The band was so big
they did whatever they wanted. Meanwhile, Dave Grohl, the former
drummer for Nirvana and current from Ano Foo Fighters, considers
November Rain something of a disaster piece. When a musician

(10:50):
starts to use the phrase mini movie, it's time to quit,
he says, and I want my MTV. Some videos I
enjoyed just because they were train wrecks, like November Rain.
I looked forward to seeing that on TV because I
didn't need those nine minutes of my life anymore. Dany
I mean that deserves the place and the National Museum
of American History for being the greatest backhanded compliment ever

(11:11):
uttered in this two forty six year old country. Still,
if Morehan is the first to admit the November Rain
video costs an insane amount of money. He's also quick
to defend its grandeur and goofiness. In his mind, detractors
who dismissed or mocked it just didn't get it. He
was supposed to be a surreal nightmare. You know, the
rain is too heavy, But that's the whole point, the

(11:33):
idea of people, you know, pulling tableclothes off and jumping
through cakes. I know some people I hate that it
is so over the toby. It's deliberately supposed to be
a kind of allegory, a metaphorical bad dream. You know,
that's entirely how it was designed. Given the decadent, larger
than life nature of the track itself. Morehan says he

(11:54):
had no choice but to make its visual counterpart decadent
and larger than life. I think people should have a
a better kind of perspective of the irony of it
because he's a melodramastic song. That was the kind of
the whole point when that refrain comes in with the
you know, the you know, the the orchestra. You know,

(12:15):
it's all melodramatic. It's all completely over the top. So
in a sense, it's supposed to be a celebration of
that O T two. I mean we were blurring the
loins of what is reality and what is not reality.
Eric Wisebard was very content to lose himself in November
Rains celebration of the O T T, as he writes
in his book Unusual Illusion one and to quote, the

(12:37):
indulgences turned out to be refulgences. Suddenly the orchestra that
Axle had employed, like Jake Gatsby trying to impress Daisy,
starts getting fierce. The video, with images of the young
bride turned into a corpse, only added to the gothic
aura of November Rain, but the nonbelievers didn't see the
charm in it. The New York Times music critic John Parless,

(12:58):
a vocal non fan, he the Use Your Illusion albums
an okay review, writing quote, at its ugliest, the band
has become a vindictive underdog, lashing out at anyone who
dares to puncture its vanity. Chicago critic Don McLees asserted
that the album suffered when quote Axel Rose is emptying
his head or bearing his soul, and said November Rain

(13:18):
sounded like quote Neil Diamond's next Vegas engagement. The band's reputation,
specifically Rose, His reputation only stoked the anti g in
our flames. He was unpredictable, unchecked, unruly, a loose cannon.
After buying a big house in the hills and regretting it,
he reportedly shattered all its windows, pushed a thirty eight

(13:39):
thousand dollar piano through the side of it, and total
it's fireplace. This behavior sounds eerily familiar to that of
Del James's Without Your Character main Man, who you'll recall,
also trashed his apartment after his ex girlfriend shot herself.
Rose would also come after audience members, like he did
in Missouri before a riot ensued there, antied storm off stage,

(14:01):
abruptly ending performances. Many deemed him a diva, a spoiled brat,
a misogynist and abuser, a racist, a homophobe, a wastril,
a criminal, and just full of ships. Meanwhile, Grunge and
Nirvana in particular had been anointed the sound of the
New Generation and Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain the voice of

(14:24):
that generation. Grune showed up to chuck that unchucked eighties excess,
to crack its artifice, to spit in its face. Nirvana's
grunge touchstone never Mind was saying just that, never mind
all this pomp and lavish nonsense. Never Mind greed in
surface level garbage, as punk forefathers the sex Pistols had

(14:47):
declared fifteen years before. Never Mind the Bullocks. Grunge was
the new punk anti establishment, but it also enthralled mainstream listeners,
winning over MTV and radio and their key demographics, the youth.

(15:07):
Unlike the newly married, ill fated fictional couple played by
Axel Rose and Stephanie Seymour in the November Rain video,
Nirvana could have their wedding cake and eat it too.
Even if they didn't like MTV and what they considered
its crappy values, they wanted to make an impact and
make it period, so they played the game as Rob
tann Obama and Craig Mark's right and I want my MTV.

(15:28):
Nirvana didn't kill radio stars, they joined them. The groundbreaking
video for Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit, depicted a high
school pep rally transforming into a destructive teenage uprising. When
it landed in heavy rotation on MTV, everybody wanted to
emulate them. Hair Metal looked like a clown show. Axel

(15:48):
Rose wasn't quite wearing the big red nose. He and
Guns and Roses had shown their range and somewhat transcended
that genre. But other bands weren't so lucky, As Kip Winger,
the singer of Winger, says, and I want my MTV quote.
So I watched the Smells Like teen Spirit video and
I thought, all right, we're finished. We all knew it.
It was obvious MTV wiped the slate. Bands like Winger,

(16:11):
Poison and Warrant became the dude at the party with
Tune of Breath. No one wanted them or their videos
directors invited. He remains proud of his work on November Rain,
but director Andy Morihan too could see the writing on
the wall, as he says, and I want my MTV quote.
In a way, Guns and Roses myself, we became the dinosaurs,
the kind of artist punk rockers hated. We become overblown

(16:34):
and indulgent and kind of stupid. And then Nirvana happened,
and suddenly everything was grunge and cheap, and thank God
for it. You know, suddenly MTV needed Nirvana as much

(16:54):
as Nirvana needed MTV. So what did Axel Rose think
of all this, and what did Kirk Quote think of
Guns and Roses? Well, as you can imagine, this is
where the story gets complicated and uncomfortable. Up next, after

(17:21):
the Break, will delve into the tension between the reigning
king of hair metal and the new Prince of Grunge.
It's a tale of clashing philosophies, of swollen pride and
bruised egos, of an inevitable friction that would climax with
a nasty showdown at the MTV Video Music Awards, a
night that has become legendary. We've taken a deep wet

(18:00):
dive into Guns and Roses epic video November Rain. But
before singer Axel Rose and director Andy Morahan crafted that
opulent spectacle, they worked on part one of the video trilogy.
November Rain belongs to video for the Gunners single Don't Cry.
As we discussed in last week's episode, Don't Cry set

(18:21):
the table for the doomed relationship between the fictional versions
of Axel Rose and his then girlfriend Stephanie Seymour. In
case you forgot, let me refresh your memory. He talks
to other women, she gets jealous and cuffs some random
chick at a bar, Axel and Stephanie fight over a gun.
Axel prances around and a pair of teeny tiny jorts
on a rooftop under the glow of helicopter lights. Axel

(18:44):
gets some regression therapy, slash drives a car off a cliff,
but because he is a literal rock god, he emerges
from the blazing debris shirtless, unscathed, and ready to shred people.
This man's heart stopped for eight full minutes, and he
lived to tell he is unstoppable and invincible anyway. As usual,

(19:10):
when talking about a guns and Roses video, I Digress,
you See Don't Cry may not offer up the same
kind of splendor and o t tenus as November Rain,
but it's still significant for at least one reason. At
around the three minute mark, in a scene featuring Axle
lying on the table while his surprise super hot lady
therapist sits in a chair taking notes, we see a

(19:32):
baseball cap by his side. The logo on it is
instantly recognizable today You've seen it on countless T shirts, hoodies,
and other paraphernalia. It reads in big, sharp letters. Nirvana.
Rose was a fan of Nirvana who had wound up

(19:55):
at G and R's label, Geffen. Totally doug what they've
been doing up to this point. Seems he felt there
was plenty of room in the rocker sandbox for both bands.
This was rock. The more rock, the better. The problem
was Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain did not reciprocate the goodwill,
says Don't Cry in November Rain director Andy Morihan, But

(20:15):
l feeling wasn't mutual because you know, these new it's
like the pistols, you know, when you get a new
band and the grounds, you know, they just want to
blow everyone away. You know what they considered to be
the excess of rock and roll. They wanted to blow away.
That's just a cyclical thing in music. Cobain even shaded
G and R and interviews while promoting never Mind, said

(20:36):
Cobain two seconds magazine quote. We're not your typical Guns
and Roses type of band that has absolutely nothing to say,
nothing to say, not even over the course of the
thirty tracks and two plus hours that made up their heaving,
insanely ambitious dual albums. Cobain would utter even harsh words
to Michael Azarad in his biography, come as you are
the story of Nirvana. His role has been played for years,

(20:59):
Cobain said of Rose. Ever since the beginning of rock
and roll, there's been an Axl Rose, and it's just boring.
It's totally boring to me. Why it's such a fresh
and new thing in his eyes is obviously because it's
happening to him personally, and he's such an egotistical person
that he thinks that the whole world owes him something.
Cobain and drew a line in that sandbox, a demarcation
between the real rebels and the so called rebels, between

(21:20):
real rock and cock rock, between us and them. G
and R and those other hair bands were trifles. In
Cobain's mind. They represented not the scrappy underdog, but rather
the uber, macho, hostile, belligerent bullies who'd sneer at a
sensitive boy like Cobain before kicking his ass. Meanwhile, the
fact that many of those glam metal bands also faunted crazy,

(21:42):
big hair and faces covered in makeup rendered them laughable caricatures.
This wasn't rock, Cobain thought, this was the circus. At first,
Rose was undeterred inviting Nirvana to play at his thirtieth

(22:03):
birthday party. Yeah, that wasn't happening. The following year, he
invited the band to play with Guns and Roses and
Metallica on their Big Stadium tour. According to former Nirvana
drummer David Roll, Rose's calling Cobain constantly to persuade him
to join GNA on the road, but Kobe didn't want
to be associated with them, didn't like what he thought
they stood for. Turns out, as we know from his

(22:25):
love of piano based ballads at the time, Rose was
pretty sensitive himself. Cobain rebuffing him left him feeling wounded,
says Morihan. And I think he was genuinely surprised at
the animosity that came from that band to him, because
I think in his own mind he didn't seem much difference,

(22:47):
you know, And I think he was a bit shocked
by that. I think he's hurt by that. Actually, as
was often the case with Rose, the hurt turned to anger.
In vitriol, Rose began trash talking Cobain in concerts, saying
his daughter with fellow rocker and holsinger or Courtney Love,
Francis Bean, would have birth defects because of Love's drug abuse.
Rose the Little Cobain's band, and they're cooler than now,

(23:08):
Seattle rock Brethren, saying, as Rolling Stone reported that the
only thing the term alternative meant to him was quote
someone like Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, who was basically a
junkie with a junkie wife, and if the baby is
born deformed, I think they both ought to go to prison.
Rose had kept his cool for a while, and you
could certainly argue that Mr Sensitive Cobain had started it,

(23:30):
But now Rose was living up to the dick head
stereotypes cobe and had associated him within the press. After
Nirvana turned down Jr's invitation to join them for the
stadium shows, a miffed Rose told Metallics magazine quote, they
would rather sit at home and shoot Heroin with their
bitch wives than tour with us. So yeah, folks, this
ship was like the real housewives of rock and roll,

(23:53):
like the housewives on a fun ton of drugs, which
is scary. And what was about to go down where
some serious season for now early worthy shenanigans. So go
for yourself another whiskey and buckle up. It was September nine,

(24:14):
just about two weeks before Guns n Roses lead guitarist
Slash would nearly die from a drug overdose in a
hotel in San Francisco. MTV Video Music Awards were hosted
by Saturday Night Live star Dana Carvey at u c
l a's Polly Pavilion in Los Angeles. The network sold
some six thousand tickets to the public to amp up
the proceedings, promising that for the first time the ceremony

(24:37):
would be totally live. The lineup of performers for the
awards was such a perfect encapsulation of just how batship
music was. Let me set the scene, because this thing
was all over the place. I mean, every lunch table

(24:59):
was presented. You had the hippies a k a. The
Black Crows, Rocks, New Cool Kids, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and
Rod Hot, Chili Peppers, It Curls, and funky Divas and Vogue.
Classic rock dads Elton John and Eric Clapton there to
chaperone hopeless softie Brian Adams. Michael Jackson beamed in from

(25:20):
his dangerous tour in London to sing his clumsy race
Relations single Black or White. YouTube beamed in via satellite
from Michigan to do even better than the real thing,
with Dana Carvey dresses Garth from Wayne's World joining them
on drums. At the actual show, you had def Leopard
Fast becoming the losers while trying to remind the audience
they were the real deal with a song called Let's

(25:42):
Get Rocked. Bobby Brown was there to sing his horny
nothing Burger humping around, and you had Guns and Roses.
Presenters included the likes of Eddie Murphy, David Spade, Andrew
Dice play Ice Team Metallica, Marky, Mark Wahlberg, then trying
his hand at Wrap, Vanessa William and Beverly Hills and
to No Star Luke Perry, along with shock Jock Howard

(26:03):
Stern as his gassy superhero character fart Man Cobain and
rehab for Heroin. At the time, considered bowling on the
whole thing. He was sick. He now had a newborn.
He and Courtney Love were still reeling after a damaging
Vanity Fair article that implied Love was doing Heroin well pregnant.
She'd reveal years later in the two thousand fifteen documentary

(26:24):
Kirk Cobean montage of Heck that she had and as
much as he wanted the exposure and TV sort of
sucked anyway, says former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg. It was
a huge circus. He wanted to go into rehab. He
didn't want to do the show. Uh he he didn't
like the idea of award shows. And you know, I

(26:45):
tried to give him an honest assessment of what it
would mean tim TV, you know, one way or the other,
and that if he cared about his relationship with them,
this was certainly the most important thing to them because
it was their highest rated show of the year and
it affected the reputation of the big executives there. How
that show did so so he agreed to do it.

(27:06):
And then once he agreed to do it, um, he
wanted to be great. Nirvana had been asked to perform
their nominated hit Smells Like Teen Spirit, but Cobain wanted
to tease new material, specifically a song called rape Me.
MTV higher ups weren't about to green like that, so
he h rehearsal. He did rape Me, and Judy McGrath,

(27:27):
who was president m TV, called me just just very upset.
She said, I I can't have this, this song about
rape It's it's not We're not going to air, and
I said, Cudi, it's an anti rape song. Read Kurt
Cobaine's last hundred interviews. He's a feminist. He had an
anti rape song on never Mind called Polly. There's there's
no possibility that anyone would think that he's he's She said,

(27:51):
I I don't care. It's the word rape. I don't know.
So I had a call him and tell him this,
and he basically just said, well, fuck it, I'm you know,
I'm here. We're here to kiss m t V s
as anyway, so we'll do what they want. As vm
as producer Joe Gallan explains in the book I Want
My MTV, the network replaced Nirvana with The Black Crows
to open the show to lower the risk of a fiasco.

(28:14):
Nirvana agreed to perform the never Mind track Lithium instead,
but after being introduced before they're set at the show,
the band started playing the beginning of Ratney and the
book Amy Finnerty and MTV programming exact at the time,
and a big Nirvana fan recalls briefly freaking out with

(28:35):
MTV president Judy McGrath at the awards when those first
chords of Ratney kick in. All they could do was hope.
She locked eyes with our stage manager and said, no,
leave it, leave it. Finnerty says, as soon as they
launched into Lithium, the two of us just cracked up.
We were so relieved. But if MTV was scared of

(28:59):
what Nirvana might do, Cobain had his own moment of
panic that evening. The tension between G and R and
Nirvana was bubbling and bubbling and would boil over that
night at the v m A s says Goldberg. I mean,
first of all, Guns and Rosas were the biggest band
on Geffen Records until never Mind came out, and it
was weird go Prior to never Mind coming out, Axel

(29:20):
Rose was was was a fan of the album, and
then at the gig that that Nirvana did after never
Mind came out in Los Angeles, which was so very
widely attended by people in the music business because it
was like the talk of the biz, Eddie rosenblat again.
The president of Geffer asked me if he could bring
Axel Rose backstage just to meet Kurt, and Kurt didn't

(29:42):
want to meet him, so we contrived this whole charade
where we pretended Kurt had left the dressing room, and
then I brought them in the dressing room that Kurt
wasn't in This duplicity on top of Nirvana declining Gr's
offers and dissing them in the press. Meanwhile, Rose had
been doing his own dissing, of which Courtney Love was
well aware. That night the v ms before the performances

(30:02):
well the Gunners and Nirvana, an unofficial Nirvana member Love
we're backstage, she decided to take a harpoon to the
big elephant in the room. Walking past Rose and his
supermodel girlfriend Stephanie Seymour, Love let loose. She says, hey, Axel,
I want to be godfather to our baby. Come and
say hi, and you know it's grumpy grumpy. And then

(30:24):
Stephanie Seymour says to Courtney are you a model? And
Courtney looks at her and says no, Are you a
brain surgeon? So so? Or no? Are you a rocket scientist?
I forget what it was pretty sure it was a
rocket scientist, so act a Rose came over and said, yeah,
you know, shut your woman up, rolled, you know, put

(30:47):
you on the pavement, you know, Kurt like you know.
It was first of all very upset by it. He
was very vulnerable anyway about anything involving his daughter, and
somebody had been insulting his wife, and plus he knew
it was a good story, and he called it with
relish and said, uh, shut up, bitch, but like obviously
mocking what a macho guy would do, not being that guy.

(31:10):
Witnesses would call everyone laughing at Rose's macho posturing. It
was like the high school bully losing his power, backing
down and walking away in the cafeteria. Amy Finnerty remembers
later seeing gin Or Rhodes and Bassis stuff mccagan shaking
Nirvana's trailer and screaming for them to stop because love
and the baby were in it. Nirvana, Basis Christ Nova, Slag,

(31:31):
and mccagan nearly got into a fist fight during the confrontation.
Goldberg says that before Nirvana went out to perform, Cobain
passed a stage set up for guns and roses and
spit on actual roses keyboard. At the end of Nirvana's
raucous performance of Lithium, after Novasellage threw his guitar into
the air and it came down, whacked him in the
head and knocked into the ground. After Cobain chucked his

(31:52):
own guitar and toppled over some speakers, Dave Grohl took
the microphone and proceeded to taunt Rose, saying in a
braddy childish voice, Hi Axel, Hi Axel, Where's Axel? The
crowd went crazy. The m as concluded with Guns and
Roses delivering a nearly ten minute performance of November Rain,
backed this time by actual strings as well as woodwinds, horns,

(32:15):
and a full orchestra. Rose sat at one piano while
Elton John, his hero and a major source of inspiration
for the User Illusion albums, sat across from him at
another slash power through his third darker guitar solo, the
Funeral Dirge, a top Roses piano, playing a beloved song
he'd been painstakingly toiling over for years with a legend

(32:37):
he idolized to a packed venue of MTV watchers after
winning the coveted Video Vanguard Award a Lifetime Achievement Award
that same night. Huh. If this moment wasn't the apex
of Axel Rose's career, it's got to be right up there.

(33:05):
But it's hard to watch it now knowing everything that
happened after without seeing it, as Guns and Roses swan
song their epic farewell as they began to fade from
the spotlight. November Rain would be G and R's final
top ten hit, and that evening would mark the last
time the group would win or be nominated for vm
A Use Your Illusion one and two would be their

(33:27):
last albums of original studio material until two thousand eight.
Seventeen years is a long time to make a record.
Grunge and alternative would take over rock and even much
of Top forty radio for much of the nineties, says
Robin Petering, co hosted Nothing Last Forever, the November Rain podcast,
with more than eighty episodes and counting. We say as

(33:51):
when Nirvana played Lit the m and broke their guitar
like changed everything they couldn't and Guns and Rose Is
closed with the dueling piano with Elton John. People did
not want that, you know, It's just fully it was
over like right then and there um changing of the guard,

(34:12):
like really really can put it down to that moment.
It was the end of an era. They had brought
in their sound and set themselves apart from the hair
bands of the eighties. Soaring to the stratosphere to become
one of the most famous acts in the world. But
for many, the theatrics of Guns and Roses performances and videos,
and of Axl Roses offstage antics had started to feel dated, bloated,

(34:34):
and insincere. If G and R were losing their relevance,
other heavy metal bands didn't have a snowballs chance and
hell of surviving. Duff Leopard would enjoy their last top

(34:55):
Board hits. Their manager at the time, Peter Mench, has
said he knew they were basically over after their set
that night at the v M. As though Firehouse won
the award for Favorite New Heavy Metal Hard Rock Artist
at the American Music Awards, they too would lose momentum
after that year, because by then the genre was all
but dead. In a sense, they were the holdovers of

(35:18):
glad metal ballot I Lived My Life for You reached
number twenty six on the Billboard One. It's widely considered
the last eight style hair metal track to make a
decent showing on the charts. As two came to a close,
Kurt Cobain was still bitter and frank when conversation turned
to Guns and Roses he'd been very open and colorful
to the press about the altercation of the v M as, claiming, quote,

(35:40):
twenty bodyguards had surrounded a menacing Rose when Cobain had
a little helpless child in his arms. Novoselach added fuels
to the fire, sniping the guns and Roses quote want
you to buy their package rebellion of sitting on a
Harley Davidson. Will you play at piano with a forty
one piece orchestra? Just like Emerson, Lake and Palmer did
in nineteen they painted Roses a villain and themselves as heroes.

(36:03):
It worked in the band's favor substantially. It was a
little weird, but cured quickly through the alchemy that was
in his rock genius brain turned it into rock and
roll gold and a wildly publicized interview with lgbt Q
magazine The Advocate in December that year, Cobain addressed his
nasty v M A showed down with Axel Rose and

(36:25):
called him a quote fucking sexist and a racist and
a homophobe. J and R had already taken some heat
from Act UP earlier that year, when the organization founded
to end the Age Crisis called for the band to
be dropped from the Fronty Mercury Tribute concert because Rose
had used the slur Faggots and their song One in
a Million. Cobain was redrawing that line in the sand.

(36:46):
You can't be on his side and be on our side,
he said in his Advocate interview. I'm sorry that I
have to divide this up like this, but it's something
you can't ignore. And besides, they can't write good music.
He'd also tell Singapore Magazine they go quote, I don't
want to sound pretentious, but it's a crusade. To me,
what are they rebelling against. Rebelling is standing up to

(37:07):
people like Guns and Roses. Rock and punk fans felt
compelled to take a position Team Kurt or Team Axel,
given the way Rose was coming across in the press,
and given the direction in which Guns and Roses music
was heading while the rest of Rocks seemed to be
heading at a different one. For many, the choice was obvious.
Gin Are wrapped their twenty eight months Use Your Illusion

(37:29):
tour in August nineteen. By then, they had dealt with boycotts, riots,
stage fires, fried vocal cords, near death experiences, and lineup
changes guitarist as He Straud that had quit the band
in November one, he'd gotten sober and couldn't deal with
his bandmate's addictions and actual Roses axelness. Their reputations had worsened,

(37:50):
their relationships were tenuous. Rose's love affair with Stephanie Seymour
soured too. Their split was hardly amicable. After separating, Rose
sued Seymour, claiming she assaulted him at a n Christmas party.
She filed a countersuit claiming he'd assaulted her. They settled
out of court, but the following year Rose's ex wife,

(38:11):
Erin Everley, filed the student, accusing Rows of physical and
emotional abuse during their relationship. That lawsuit was also settled
out of court. G and R's follow up albums, To
Use Your Illusion The Spaghetti Incident, was a collection of
punk and glamor rock remakes. It contained a hidden track,
a cover of an old song by convicted murderer Charles

(38:31):
Manson that went over about as well as you'd think.
The record got decent reviews, but it's their worst selling album.
Soon after, the Gunners released the video for the Illusion
single Estranged, a nine and a half minute ballad stuffed
with multiple verses and piano and guitar solos. The third
video and director Annie Morahan's trilogy for the band, after
Don't Cry in November Rain, Estrange was even more expensive

(38:53):
than November Rain, rumored to have cost four million dollars.
In the video, you'll find a full size oil tanker,
a helicopter, ocean rescue swap teams, axel arrusted and taken
to a clinic for therapy, and slash walking on water
like some sort of metal messiah. Seymour was out of
the picture and Rose was over women. He insisted on

(39:15):
dolphins instead. At the end of the video, he jumps
into the seat and swims away with them. Even Morehan
thinks the whole thing is a mass. It lost. It's
why it was like picking up shelds of glass and
trying to sticking back together. I was floundering in the video. Yeah,
dolphins for the sake of it. Why I can't explain

(39:36):
that even now, other than Actul didn't want a girl
in the video. You'd rather have a dolphin, you know,
I mean, what does that mean? What you know? To me?
Estrange is like everything is broken. I've had to close
that off in my mind for years. Otherways have been therapy.
Rose would become more of a dictator, reportedly purchasing the

(39:57):
rights to the band's name. Slash claimed he and the
other band members had signed it over because Rose had
threatened not to perform at a show during They Use
Your Allusion tour. Gilby Clark, who had replaced Izzie Stradling,
was out of the group. By Slash officially quit it in,
Matt Sorum and Duff mccagan were gone by seven. The

(40:20):
original lineup was no more. Rose and new members slowly
worked on fresh material, but their next album would sit
in purgatory for years. Actually retreated, you know, to Latigo
Canyon or Latigo Canyon, wherever he lives. And I didn't
really want to engage with the world or anybody for well,
you know, it had become so big and so except

(40:41):
obsessive so quickly, and there was so many pressures and
and you know, conflicts and internally with the band and
his personal life. I just think he retreated. It was
just like enough already when that turned into sixteen eighteen
years of toryn Mike Chinese Democracy. Of course, by April

(41:03):
of Cobain was gone. He died by suicide, having shot
himself at the age of seven, less than three years
after Nirvana had changed the music landscape forever, the band
was done up. Next, after the break, we welcome former

(41:27):
Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg to discuss the state of rock
in two, the legacy of Nirvana, and never Mind, Cobain's
conflicted relationship with MTV, and the tension between Cobain and
Rose m H. Welcome back to Where Were You in

(41:52):
ninety two. We've been discussing guns and Roses, Nirvana, the
end of hair metal, and the grunge explosion. Now it's
time to hear more of nirvana side of the story
as we welcome Danny Goldberg, former Nirvana manager and author
of the two thousand nineteen book Serving the Servant. Remembering
Kurt Cobain, You were, in a sense the Kurt Whisperer.

(42:15):
I think because I was older, and because I had
early on recognized that he was really in love with Corny,
that it wasn't just a passing thing. I developed the
role of a personal relationship with him that the other
people in the business at that time didn't didn't have,
and he was under so much public scrutiny and everything that,
you know, he became kind of shrunk the number of

(42:37):
people he was talking to about certain things, and so
that was part of my role. But I you know,
my day job was was overseeing the part of the
A and R at Atlantic that involved trying to bring in,
you know, rock bands that that could be successful in
the post Nirvana music business. Tell me about the state
of music in by nine two, the record companies were

(43:01):
looking for quote unquote the next Nirvana, and UH and
and UH. There's no question that the differences between one
kind of rock and roll another are kind of exaggerated
by anyone who's got an AX to grind. You know,
they were all using guitars and amplifiers, but there was
a cultural difference in the stance, and there was a

(43:22):
musical difference between the music that was that was becoming
the commercial music. Uh on outlets like MTV, which was,
you know, the biggest connector of fans to musicians in
the early nineties. There was no question that never Mind
opened up a wide commercial lane for punk influens rock
that hadn't existed before, and it marginalized you know, a

(43:46):
substantial percentage of some of the so called hair bands.
A lot of bands didn't survive the transition culturally, which
had to do with the generational change. Why do you
think there was such a divide between the guns and
Roses and heavy metal sector and then the Nirvana and

(44:07):
I think they were there. They're The biggest thing is generational.
You know, you think high school is four years, So
to me, I always look at it. You know, people
talk about what's how long is the generation? In demographic terms,
that usually think of fifty five years. But to me,
in the music business, the generation is four years, how
long high school is. And and you know every time

(44:28):
every four or five years, there's a yearning of people
who are thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen to differentiate themselves from
people they're five years older. So that's just number one.
That's that's that's that's a permanent fixture of just the
psychology of public during you know, as long as I've
been alive, then there was the political environment of of

(44:48):
of we we were. We were ninety two was the
last of twelve years of Republicans in the White House,
two terms of Ronald Reagan, one of George J. Stubb
be a Bush. There was the Gulf war had happened
at the beginning of Bush's term, and there was a
generation of people that felt like outsiders from you know,

(45:11):
the sort of conservative political consensus, and they felt a
desire to differentiate them themselves. Uh. Then there was also
the evolution of of sexual roles and and what it
was to be a man. And and you know, one
of the things that Courtney had said to me early

(45:31):
on when I met her after she was dating Kurt's
that she thought, you know, Kurt was really gonna one
of his missions was, you know, the feminization of rock,
the challenging the the the idea of what manliness was
from the uh, from the images on MTV of guys
who'd obviously spent a lot of time at the gym
and were wearing their cutoff showing showing their muscles, and

(45:54):
and and uh, you know, wearing black leather and talking
about women as sort uh, you know, objects, and the
strain of punk that had inspired Kurt and and also
inspired Pearl Jam and Sound Garden and a lot of
the other bands that emerged in the nine in ninety two,
which which included the Riot Girls. In the influence of feminism,

(46:17):
the influence of the gay rights movement and a real
challenge to that idea of macho maleness as being the
coolest thing. So you had the sort of cultural changes
involved in sexuality, had the generational changes, and you had
the political changes, and you had had a decade in
the eighties of this German aating American punk rock culture

(46:41):
that never was very big commercially, but had a tremendously
intense influence on the on the cult of fans that
it did have artists like the Black Flag and Dead
Kennedy's and Fugazi um and and a number of others
who who it was a laboratory for creativity for the

(47:01):
previous decade coming from that subculture. Those were not artists
who were written about and Rolling Stone or whose videos
were on MTV for the most part, but they played clubs.
And then there's the mystery of creative genius that just
pops up in certain people at certain times, and and
they have a lot of influence when those human beings
come along. And this was manifest by the variety of

(47:23):
radio stations that played Smell Like the in spirit. It
was the quintessential magical song that crossed a lot of boundaries.
You know, you your team, and even you know, even
Kurt in the band did still want to be popular.
They did want to be bigger. You know, he obviously
understood he needed MTV, but he also unders at MTV
needed him. But it was it was definitely a struggle

(47:46):
for him. Tell me a little bit about that. The
main people he dealt with, particularly Amy Finnity, who was
sort of designated by MTV to be the Nirvana person,
but also Judy McGrath, who was president of MTV. He
had never had a problem with them as human beings.
He had a problem balancing three different things, one of
which was his own inner voice as an artist, which

(48:06):
was the number one thing to him. Number two is
he had a tremendous amount of respect for the punk
culture from which he had emerged and did not want
to disrespect it. He didn't want to leave it. He
wanted those people to still be his fans. And he, uh,
he wanted to be a big, big rock star. There's

(48:27):
no question about it. If you look at the Kurt
Cobain journals, you know he was when he was a teenager,
he was doing a drawing showing Nirvana headlining big places
and things like that. You know, he he um he
wanted all of that so an MTV embodied all those contradictions.
Sometimes they'd asked him to do something like an award show,

(48:49):
which to him was kind of an anapoma compared to
the sort of punk ethos. On the other hand, if
he was watching him. There was one time I tell
the story, but you know he called me be us.
He had been watching MTV and he'd seen more Pearl
Jam videos than their Vana videos and wanted to know
where they mad at him, or what what do we

(49:09):
do about this? You know? So you know he was
he was had those contradictions. He's not the only artist
who has been conflicted between a desire to be a
pure artist and and and and a very successful one,
but a lot of them. When you look at Nirvana's career,
you look at Unplugged, you know, one of the most
important albums, you know, an MTV special, you look at

(49:32):
smells like teen Spirit. It's hard to think about that
song without thinking about that video. So uh, you know,
some of the most famous moments happened on some of
those award shows. Um so they were. They were a
big part of his career and he knew it. You
write in a book that Kurt associated, you know, certain
values you know, with guns and roses and heavy metal

(49:55):
bands that he didn't endorse. In addition to the music,
he was incredibly sophisticated about the cultural symbolism that connected
an artist to an audience. And he really wanted and
he was particularly conscious at that moment in time of
having left an indie labeled Subpop Records and signed to

(50:16):
this major label, Geffen Records, go on with managers. He
really wanted to be consistent in the message he was
sending culturally about his what we would call today brand,
you know, where he would have been horrified by, but
that's kind of today how people described their image, you know.
And uh, I don't think he wanted to have anecdotes

(50:37):
or photos about that would make his punk audience and
punk fans feel that he was leaving them or betraying them.
There was this different camps, and he wanted to be
kind of loyal to and the and and a thought
leader of his camp. I think five years later it
would have been a completely different thing, because those things
are temporary. But in moment, there was a real difference

(51:00):
between coming and embracing the punk culture and embracing the
you know, kind of macho what he perceived as the
macho rock and roll culture. The line with the lights out,
it's less dangerous here we are now entertain us. What
does that line mean to you? I I thought it

(51:21):
was a commentary on the shallowness of the people in
high school that he didn't like and people like that.
It was kind of the cool people joining together to
to to focus on what they thought the shallowness was
of people that were just into superficial entertainment as opposed

(51:48):
to deeper matters of the heart and mind, you know,
and and and and so on. It was sort of
a snobbish commentary on idiots. It it was a comment
on the shallowness of group think as opposed to the
soulful brothers and sisters that you know, were the US

(52:08):
as opposed to them. How would you sum up the
legacy and impact of of of Nirvana and ninety two
in particular, you know, the impact of never Mind and
smells like teen Spirit. Look. Rock and roll have been
around since the middle of the fifties, and it was getting, uh,
it was starting to fade as as having real cutting
edge cultural power because it had been so popular for

(52:32):
so many decades and had become formulaic, like all genres
get at a certain point, and uh he and the
rest of Nirvana figured out a way to reinvent it
for for for the nineties. He uh he took some
of the energy of punk rock and uh and and
merged it with mass communication skills and and created an

(52:54):
art that spoke to uh you know, it was very entertaining,
which he wanted to be, but which also spoke to
a kind of a redefinition of what masculinity and critique
of bigotry of any kind, particularly uh misogyny and homophobia
at that moment. Uh that was that was the first

(53:14):
time somebody who had access to a global mass audience
was saying those things in that way. But but the
other legacy is just here's a great musical artist. You
know they the world produces these people, the genre of
pop music produces them every once in a while. Chuck
Berry was one, Bob Marley was one, John Lennon was one,

(53:37):
Bob Dylan was one. And I don't know who else
other people would put on that list, but I don't
think there's anyone that wouldn't put Kurt Cobain on that list.
It's it's a it's a list of people who you
took took music into into a deeper place while maintaining
a mass audience, you know, And he was that guy
for that moment. I see people in their teens and

(53:59):
twenties were in Nirvana t shirts almost every day. Something
about what he did transcended time revisiting the stories of

(54:21):
guns and roses in Nirvana, and specifically that fraud fateful
night of the n m A S doesn't so much
excite me. Has bummed me out, and not just because
both stories and tail tragedies call me a Pollyanna. But
in an ideal world, rock fans would never have had
to choose between these two bands. But I'd also like
to think plenty of rock fans didn't choose Nothing Lasts

(54:43):
Forever podcast host Tera reader and Robin Petering didn't, music
journalist and critic Eric Wisbar didn't. November Rain director Andy
Morahan didn't. Hell even Dave Grohl ultimately didn't. G and
R and the former Nirvana drummer who taunted Axel Rose
and called the November Rain video a train wreck, seemed
to have buried the hatchet. Grol has collaborated and performed

(55:05):
with Guns and Roses, including returning members Slash and Duff mcgagan.
In recent years. Groll even let his old pell Axel
his elaborate performance thrown after the singer broke his foot.
I certainly didn't choose. I can fully respect and appreciate
Irvana's impact. It is mind blowing and undeniable. But I
can also say I wholeheartedly and ironically love November Rain

(55:27):
and its video. It remains one of my all time
faves for Morahan. November Rain also transcended time. People say
to me, how you know what makes a great video, Well,
now you need the riot artists at the right time
with the riot song, and if you can get all
those stars aligned, you get a home run. There a
very few home runs in the pop cultural landscape, and

(55:49):
I think this is one of them. It resonated, and
I think it's still resonates because it has a kind
of slightly timeless quality about it. Yes, Rose was probably thematic,
but at the end of the day, both Kobe and
Rose were flawed, damaged men who poured their guts into
their music, very publicly confronting their demons, albeit in very
different ways. And hoping listeners would understand and accept them

(56:13):
and maybe find a kindred spirit in them. We'll enjoy
them out of the line and saying and go oh yeah,
you know, end of hair up, beginning of grums. They're
kind of indivisible. It's just a different approach to life.
A lot of these bands aren't that different. They just
wear different clothes and have a slightly different outlook on life.
But they're still fucking rock and roll pets who want

(56:33):
to make loud music, adds Wise Bard. What absolutely fails
at the level of rock albums is also the thing
that kept Guns and Roses eternally fresh for new generations
of music fans, because November Rain turned out to be

(56:57):
one of those musical experiences that a lot of people
enjoy having. In some ways, you could argue that, although
it was maybe not his goal, Axel Rose didn't make
a great rock album to follow up on Appetite for Destruction,

(57:17):
but he did make a music video to follow up
on Thriller, I would argue that November Rain is sort
of a little bit in that category. That is. One
one way that pop works um is that a certain
kind of song can escape um the moment of its

(57:37):
creation and just have a kind of afterlife all of
its own. Wise, Bard goes on to argue that listeners
these days don't give genre the power it had in
pop is no longer a dirty word, nor his metal
pianos are cool. Synthesizers are very cool. Alternative doesn't mean
anything anymore alternative to what a genres fused together and

(58:00):
influence one another, as once maligned genres are reconsidered and
reinvented in cool new ways. Genre purism sometimes feels like
it's going extinct. It's all flipped and flopped and mixed
and remixed. Um. But what we do do I think,
as individual listeners, is we make just decisions about um,

(58:22):
what makes us feel connected to something. I don't think
that anyone listening to November Rain these days is thinking
at all about Nirvauna, is thinking at all about questions
of corporate rock and indie culture. If they're thinking about something,
it's not that um and and so you know that

(58:43):
is that is something that happens over time. In a
lot of ways, that version of nineties culture is less
tied to remembering a scene, less tied to remembering his genre,
and it is more just a free floating thing in

(59:05):
and of itself, that um, so far as we can tell,
still has a ways to go before the helicopter is
gonna land, and the and the and the video will
finally be over for a certain segment of the population.
Guns and Roses nine minute power ballot Opus November Rain
showed up when it was supposed to being in the
wrong place at the wrong time, actually served it well.

(59:27):
It was really like nothing else in two and it's
like nothing else now. Epic, unruly and ridiculously extravagant. It
spins along on its axis and its own vast and
infinite universe. Maybe some things do last forever. Where Were

(01:00:29):
You in ninety two was a production of I Heart Radio.
The executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk.
The show was researched, written and hosted by me Jason Lafier,
with editing and sound design by Michael Alder June. If
you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us
a review. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, check
out the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever

(01:00:52):
you listen to your favorite shows.