EVERYBODY LOVES OUR TOWN

In the lead-up to the release of the trade paperback edition of Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge (out tomorrow, March 13; order info here), I’ve been sharing some of the book’s better outtakes for my faithful blog readers. Today’s outtake involves a destructive evening MTV News anchor Kurt Loder shared with a couple members of Nirvana after interviewing the band in Minneapolis in December 1993. Amy Finnerty, onetime MTV director of music programming and talent relations, recalls the incident in the recent book I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution:

Kurt and Kurt did the interview, and then Loder and Krist Novoselic decided to go to Krist’s room and have a couple of drinks.

After a while, I went to check on them, and the door was ajar. I walked in, and no one was there, but the room was completely destroyed. I mean, broken glass tables, broken televisions, a full wet bar with every glass broken. It was totaled. I went down to Loder’s room and same thing: The room was completely wrecked. And there sat Loder and Novoselic, each smoking a cigarette and drinking a brandy. Loder denied any participation, but I have a hard time believing Krist would ruin his room and then ruin Kurt’s room, too. Nirvana’s tour manager and I had to settle up with the hotel. They did upwards of $30,000 in damage.

The same incident is reported in Charle R. Cross’s Cobain bio Heavier Than Heaven thusly: “Loder and Novoselic then destroyed a hotel room by smashing the television and dragging pieces of the furniture out into the lobby. The hotel later unsuccessfully sued to collect what they alleged was $11,799 in damages.” Here, for the record, is what Kurt Loder told me:

KURT LODER (MTV News anchor) Kurt went back to his room, and I don’t think Dave was around much either, but Pat Smear and Krist were gonna have some sort of pot party or wine party in their room. So everybody got drunk, and I didn’t get that drunk—I had nothing to do with all of this.

Krist took a mirror off the wall and threw it into the wall, and then furniture was being broken. It was like three in the morning and there were complaints and they’re getting calls and security is on the way. “I think I’ll be leaving.”

I get on the elevator and they jumped in the elevator with me, and they went down to the next floor, where I had my room, and they came in. There was like a coat stand or something, and Krist kept trying to throw it through the screen of the television—it’s much harder than you think. I don’t think it worked. Furniture was being broken, and the bill the next day was like $18,000. The road managers just thought they were acting like Guns N’ Roses: “You guys are assholes.”

It was a great experience. It was really wonderful, actually. Here I am, finally watching somebody trash a hotel room. You hear about that all the time, but there it is. I didn’t trash anything. I broke nothing. I might have broken things other times in my life, but not that particular time. It was just very funny. I’m glad I didn’t get the $18,000 bill.

Previously:

• Everybody Loves Our Outtakes, acrimonious former bandmates edition: Matt Lukin confronts Buzz Osborne over his ouster from the Melvins
• Everybody Loves Our Outtakes, taking one for the team edition: Ex-Pearl Jam drummer Dave Abbruzzese gets smacked in the face over “Jeremy”
• Everybody Loves Our Outtakes, horrifying kitchen accident edition: How Babes in Toyland’s Maureen Herman got her first bass
• Everybody Loves Our Outtakes, drunken horseplay edition:Tripping Kurt Cobain at Reading ‘92

More MTV 30th birthday fun! Kurt Loder recalls the infamous Courtney Love/Madonna incident at the 1995 VMAs in this outtake from my upcoming book, Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge.



“We were set up on the side of Radio City Music Hall, and I was talking to Madonna and something came sailing through the air, and I had no idea what it was. It was a powder compact or something, and there was this kind of garbled shouting. I was up on a platform with Madonna, and we looked down, and there was Courtney. Madonna  said, ‘Don’t bring her up here.’ Meanwhile, someone is in my ear, saying, ‘Get her up there. That would be great.’ I said, ‘Come on up, Courtney.’ So she came up, and she was a total mess, of course, but a wonderful mess—I love Courtney. Madonna, who was like an elder statesmen, said, ‘Oh, poor Courtney.’ She stayed for a little bit, until someone got her out of there.

“And then it was just Courtney. She was talking, and then she fell off the stool she was sitting on and landed on her back with her legs splayed, displaying herself to the camera guys, who were aghast. It was a memorable evening.”