The Memory Hole: The Truth About Nirvana's "Legendary" Reading Festival Show

In case you've been living under a rock for the last few weeks, this year marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Nirvana's Nevermind, a truly great album. To commemorate it, Geffen is releasing a deluxe box set of Nirvana recordings, there's an exhibition in Seattle and a tribute concert.

The anniversary says a lot about the way marketing and media can change our actual memories of events and sell them back to us years later as meaningful experiences -- even if we didn't really have them.

I say this because I saw Nirvana play their legendary Reading Festival gig in 1992. The BBC tells me this show "was performed with an unflinching ferocity and became one of their most memorable performances" and "one of their biggest moments." It is an established part of the Nirvana myth narrative that Reading in 1992 was their finest hour,

That sure isn't the way I remember it. The truth is, Nirvana's Reading gig was not that great. It's a heresy, but it's true.

On paper, the lineup of bands at Reading that year was epic: In addition to Nirvana, there was Public Enemy, Smashing Pumpkins, L7, Pavement, and The Farm. Even though the festival had just two stages of bands, there were so many you wanted to see that it became a scheduling issue. Some bands had to be missed.

It was rainy and chilly at Reading that year (as you can see by this horrible photo of me at the festival with the woman who would later become my wife, and then my ex-wife).

Smashing Pumpkins played the day before Nirvana, and were a huge disappointment. The problem seemed to be due in part to the weather -- the wind made the band difficult to hear unless you were right at the front, in the mud. The lousy sound system and the band's "don't care" attitude didn't help. We'd traveled a long way to see the Pumpkins and were angry at how underwhelming the performance was. You can see a video of part of it below. Even with advantage of recording from the stage, the sound is muddy and tinny at the same time:

Nirvana's headline performance the next night took place within the context of reports that Cobain had nearly overdosed on heroin while touring elsewhere in Europe. It wasn't clear to fans whether this was tabloid nonsense or not, although we later learned that Cobain's heroin problem was real and serious. Cobain was pushed onto the stage in a wheelchair, wearing a white medical smock, as if in a stupor. It was supposed to be a joke but it seemed forced and inappropriate. And then they began playing:

As you can see, the band played a lot of bum notes that night, and skipped entire lines of lyrics. It was only possible to follow some songs if you already knew them by heart. Don't get me wrong, it was great to see Nirvana play. But it was far from the best gig I'd ever seen. And it was only later, from the media, that I "learned" I had attended the zenith of Nirvana's career.

The 20th anniversary -- and the marketing that accompanies it -- will likely whitewash some other unpleasant truths about the band. One of the reasons Nevermind is so great is because it was produced by Butch Vig, who said this to NPR about what "Smells Like Teen Spirit" sounded like before he got his hands on it:

... it was so distorted I couldn't really make out anything ... when they kicked in it was complete distortion.

Nirvana also played Reading in 1991, but further down the bill. (I was at that festival too, and I believe I saw the show because they came on after Silverfish, who I do remember seeing. But I have no memory of Nirvana in 1991 whatsoever. Strange how your brain picks the "wrong" things to remember.) Here's what happened when Cobain got home from that tour:

... the album didn't score Gold Record status until a month after its release, and the bulk of the sales arrived in 1992 or later. Most record companies only pay royalties twice a year, and payments lag sales by several months. As a result, Cobain earned almost no money from Nevermind in '91. His income that year totaled $29,541, and almost all of that was from a fall tour. When Cobain returned home to Olympia, WA, after recording the record in the spring, he found his belongings sitting in boxes by the curb: He had been evicted. He spent that first night sleeping in his car, while his record label completed the finishing touches on an album that would sell over twenty-five million copies.

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