5. NirvanaNevermind
I remember hearing this record knowing that I hadn’t heard anything sound like that. And, of course, they played with us. When we were in The Fall they were in the support band in Germany. It was on their first European tour with Tad and we were playing all in the same venue. They were like this little bunch of ragamuffin, scraggly, waify, grungey American kids. I wasn’t that much older but me and Marsha [Schofield, The Fall’s then keyboard player] were like, ‘oh my God! Those poor boys are starving!’ So we would take our rider and feed them every night.
But, I mean, we had no idea! They made such a racket, such a sound! But yeah… Kurt; he was a massive, massive Fall fan. And there’s this famous story when he tried to get on The Fall’s tour bus and went, ‘I wanna leave Nirvana and I wanna join The Fall!’
But they went on and when they released Nevermind, I’d never heard anything like it. It was the sound of it; the sound! The songs and the sound! It made be sit bolt upright and I could not get enough of it. And of course, he died so soon and you couldn’t get enough Nirvana. You never got satiated or got your fill. It was cut short in the prime of the music so everyone is still hungering for more and that sound and you’ll never get it. I think that’s partly why Foo Fighters are so humungously popular because they’re the one attachment to Nirvana.
I just love that record and I remember listening to it in California – it was after I’d left The Fall and it was the worst point in my life. I had this boyfriend who had this little convertible sports car and he introduced this to me. We’d drive along with the top down listening to this on the way to the beach. We just blasted it and listening to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and it was just orgasmic!
