Reading 1992 – Nirvana

Reading Festival, 30 August 1992: gown, wheelchair, last UK show

Reading, 30 August 1992. The British music press had spent the weekend on a rumour that Nirvana might not play. Heroin, a new baby, a marriage the tabloids had already called a disaster: Frances Bean Cobain was twelve days old. Backstage, Dave Grohl has said, friends in the support bands asked him what he was doing there. Everett True, of Melody Maker, wheeled Kurt Cobain out in a hospital gown and a long blonde wig. Krist Novoselic leaned into the microphone and played the nurse. With the help of his friends and family, he told the field, he’s gonna make it.

Cobain reached for the stand, croaked the first line of Bette Midler’s The Rose, a song about a singer who does not survive the job, and fell over. The joke lasted only a few seconds. Then he was up, guitar on, and the band hit Breed. What followed is the set people still name when they talk about Nirvana live. Drain You, Lithium, Come as You Are, the riff of Boston’s More Than a Feeling tipped into Smells Like Teen Spirit, and, later, All Apologies, dedicated to Courtney Love and the child. He told the crowd this was not the last show. He also got them to shout, together, that they loved Courtney. The British press had not been so generous.

Grohl has been frank about the hours before. One rehearsal, the night prior, and it was not good. He thought the career might end on that stage. It did not. The band was loud, the songs were still new, and the field, mud and all, sang them back. At the end they broke what they could break. Novoselic sat in on the remains of the kit. Cobain, still in the gown, picked at a version of The Star-Spangled Banner and gave the guitar to the crowd. It was the last time Nirvana played in Britain.