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Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Nirvana Among O Music Award Nominees

27 Sep 2011 09:07:53 EDT

Katy Perry, Odd Future, Demi Lovato will also face off on October 31 in categories like Oops! I Did It Online and Fan Army FTW.
By Gil Kaufman

The list of nominees runs from Justin Bieber to Courtney Love, Britney Spears, Scissor Sisters, Katy Perry, Bjork, Nirvana, Dolly Parton and Snoop Dogg, and that can only mean one thing: It must be time for the O Music Awards again.

When MTV launched its first-annual digital music celebration earlier this year, we promised that it would be like no other awards show, with trophies handed out before, after and during the show, as well as throughout the year.

Sticking to that plan, the O Awards will return for a second round on October 31, with some of the new categories coming courtesy of user suggestions.

Among the five new user-generated categories are "Oops! I Did It Online," in which over-sharing celebs such as Sinead O'Connor and T-Pain will face off against the Game and Courtney Love; and Best Artist with a Cameraphone, which pits Demi Lovato against Bieber, Young the Giant, Katy Perry, the Deftones and Shiny Toy Guns. The other new categories include Best Web Born Artist (MNDR, Odd Future, the Weeknd), Best Vintage Viral Video (Metallica, Nirvana, Notorious B.I.G., O'Connor) and Best Lyrics Video (Perry, Joe Jonas, Lenny Kravitz, Christina Perri).

Among Gaga's two nominations are Fan Army FTW — in which she'll square off with the followers of Bieber, Taylor Swift, Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, Lovato, ICP, Adam Lambert and Tokio Hotel — and Must Follow Artist on Twitter, in which she faces Cher, Snoop Dogg, Blink-182's Mark Hoppus and Blake Shelton.

The O Music Awards will also honor a number of artists who are really good at this whole online thing, with Bjork, Chris Milk, Girl Talk and the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne vying for the Digital Genius Award.

The other categories include: Best Fan Cover, Hottest Music NILF (think about it), WTF I Love This Award (online craziness), the self-explanatory Too Much Ass for TV award, Most Outrageous Tweet and Best Music Forum. There are also awards coming for Most Innovative Festival, Best Music App, Best Music Hack, Beyond the Blog and Most Addictive Social Music Service, which includes such faves as Spotify, Turntable.fm and Rdio.

The first edition of the awards featured performances by Mumford & Sons, Foster the People, Lupe Fiasco, Matt & Kim and a world record freestyle by Chiddy Bang's Chidera "Chiddy" Anamege

The O Music Award's first-time winners included Gaga (Most Innovative Artist and Must Follow Artist on Twitter), Kanye West (Best Tweet), Tokio Hotel's Aliens (Fan Army FTW), Thirty Seconds to Mars (NSFW Music Video), Aquarium Drunkard (Best Independent Music Blog) and MJJ Fan Community (Best Fan Forum).

The O Music Awards 2 will unfold on Halloween on OMUsicAwards.com, as well as MTV.com, VH1.com, CMT.com, LogoTV.com and MTVHive.com. Fans can vote for their favorites at OMUsicAwards.com.

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Nirvana's Nevermind, By The Numbers

24 Sep 2011 07:53:04 EDT

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the iconic album, we crunch the numbers to measure its huge impact.
By James Montgomery

Twenty years ago today (September 24), Nirvana released Nevermind, and the world hasn't been the same since.

The album would go on to usher in rock's great renaissance, cause a seismic shift in popular culture, bring the underground to the mainstream and make unwilling stars out of three rather scruffy guys from the Pacific Northwest (OK, so Dave Grohl was technically from Northern Virginia, but he lived in Seattle while they were making the album).

And while we'd like to say the earth shifted slightly on its axis the moment that first box of Neverminds was cracked open, we'd be exaggerating. Back then, Nirvana were relative unknowns, and with popular music dominated by the likes of Whitney Houston, Natalie Cole and Color Me Badd (not to mention rock behemoths like Metallica and Guns N' Roses), the odds of them making an impact of any sort seemed long, at best.

Of course, we all know how things turned out. All week long, we've been paying tribute to Nevermind's 20th anniversary on MTVNews.com, but today, the album's actual birthday, we've decided to honor its legacy in a slightly different way: by crunching the numbers. Because unlike the countless biographies, as-told-to features and behind-the-scenes tell-alls that came in the album's wake, the numbers don't exaggerate: Nevermind was (and still is) huge. Even if it probably never was supposed to be. Here are some vital stats about Nirvana's seminal album:

7,305: Number of days since Nevermind was released. In case you're wondering, that's 175,320 hours, or 10,519,200 minutes, or 631,152,000 seconds.

46,521: Number of copies of Nevermind originally shipped to retailers by Geffen Records, which hoped the album would eventually sell 200,000 copies.

144: Nevermind's debut position on the Billboard Top 200.

9: Number of weeks after its release that Nevermind was certified platinum (for shipment of 1 million units) by the Recording Industry Association of America.

1: Nevermind's position on the Billboard Top 200 during the week of January 11, 1992, when it overtook Michael Jackson's Dangerous to become the nation's highest-selling album.

253: Total number of weeks Nevermind spent on the Billboard Top 200.

30 million: Number of copies Nevermind has sold, worldwide. In the U.S., it's certified as diamond by the RIAA, for shipment of 10 million copies.

0: Number of Grammys Nevermind won (it was nominated for two).

4:30: Total length of first single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit." The album version runs 5:01, making it the second-longest song on Nevermind (after aptly named hidden track "Endless, Nameless").

9: Number of times Kurt Cobain shouts "a denial" at the end of "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

6: Highest position "Smells Like Teen Spirit" held on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

$670 million: Amount, in cash and stock, Colgate-Palmolive paid to acquire Mennen, manufacturers of Teen Spirit anti-perspirant, in February 1992, six months after the release of "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

2: Fragrances of Teen Spirit currently available: "Sweet Strawberry" and "Pink Crush." During the height of the brand's popularity, there were as many as 10.

$30,000-$50,000: Estimated budget of the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video.

$7 million: Estimated budget of Michael and Janet Jackson's "Scream" video, widely reported to be the most expensive of all time.

18-25: Age of extras in the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video, according to the casting call. Extras were instructed to "adapt a high-school persona, i.e. preppy, punk, nerd, jock" and "be prepared to stay for several hours."

4: Number of nominations "Smells Like Teen Spirit" received at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards. It won two, for Best Alternative Video and Best New Artist in a Video.

1: Number of nominations "Weird" Al Yankovic's "Smells Like Nirvana" received at the same show.

$50,000,000: Amount earned by the Kurt Cobain Estate in 2006, when he topped Forbes magazine's annual Top-Earning Dead Celebrities list 12 years after his suicide.

MTV News reveals the Nevermind You Never Knew, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's definitive album with classic footage, new interviews and much more.

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Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' Video: Behind The MTV Premiere

23 Sep 2011 16:29:07 EDT

Onetime '120 Minutes' host Dave Kendall relives that Sunday night the generation-defining clip debuted.
By James Montgomery, with reporting by Andréa Duncan-Mao

On September 29, 1991, Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video premiered on MTV's "120 Minutes," an event that, in the years that followed, would come to signify the beginning of rock's great renaissance and usher in a cultural shift that would define a generation.

Of course, back then, it was just another video on another Sunday night, and no one — not even "120" host Dave Kendall — thought otherwise.

"I have to say, quite honestly, as soon as I heard that record and saw that video, I had no idea they were going to be as huge as they were," he laughed. "I was very, very impressed. I was moved but I really didn't have any idea it would explode to the extent it did. There's the truth."

To be fair, no one did. And so, in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the album "Teen Spirit" was meant to promote — Nevermind, of course — MTV News spoke with Kendall about the days before Nirvana became the biggest band in the world and about the alt-rock explosion that followed in their immediate wake. Needless to say, once "Teen Spirit" hit, everything changed and, as host of "120," he had a front-row seat for all of it.

"At that time, most of the music '120' was playing was quite separate from the rest of MTV. Some stuff had crossed over — like, we played Midnight Oil, we played Sinead O'Connor, we played Depeche Mode, the Cure — but a lot of our stuff was really closeted. It was still in this 'alternative' genre," he explained. "So the mood in the building at that point was 'Some alternative acts might cross over, the others wouldn't.' Like, if MTV had known that Nirvana was going to be as huge as they [were], they would've world-premiered the video in prime time, not late-night Sunday on '120 Minutes.' But then, I didn't know either!"

And how could he? After all, since creating "120 Minutes" in 1986 (and beginning hosting duties soon after), Kendall had been focused on trying to find bands he loved — "I was a bit stuck in my Anglo-centric, industrial, techno-pop mode," he laughed — and hadn't been paying attention to the storm that was brewing in the Pacific Northwest. So when the "Teen Spirit" video appeared at MTV, he'd never even heard of the band that would subsequently change the world.

"I hadn't heard Bleach, I wasn't that aware of new, American rock ... when I first heard the Nevermind record," he said. "I thought it was going to be another Seattle record, so I was a little suspicious and a little resistant to it because I thought it was going to be a lot of guitars, sort of a '70s feel. I didn't think it was going to be something new," he continued. "And then when I heard it, I knew I'd been wrong. It wasn't just heavy, it wasn't just rock, it was real melancholy, real passion, real vulnerability, the way it married intense rage with deep melancholy and sadness. And that really touched me."

Little did Kendall know that within a year the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video would help bring "120 Minutes" to the mainstream and forever alter the show's playlist too. It's little wonder, then, that he'd leave the show the following year, though, with the benefit of 20 years' worth of hindsight, he can finally appreciate everything that happened following the premiere of that one little video. And, much like the rest of us, Kendall's still amazed by it all.

"It definitely changed the landscape of alternative music at that point. It had become slightly more guitar-heavy over the previous couple of years, partly because of the Seattle grunge influence, but that was the record that ushered in the 'grunge era' into the 'alternative mainstream,' " he said. "It brought guitars back into the music, and took the emphasis away from keyboards and synthesizers. It was gutsy and heavy and authentic, and that's what changed the landscape. Nirvana opened people's eyes."

Stick with MTV News as we reveal the Nevermind You Never Knew, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's definitive album with classic footage, new interviews and much more.

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Nirvana Heiress Frances Bean Cobain: About A Girl

23 Sep 2011 15:52:31 EDT

Daughter of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love turns 19 a month before Nevermind's 20th anniversary.
By Gil Kaufman

From the moment of her birth, she was instantly the most famous baby on the planet. Frances Bean Cobain, now 19, is the only child of late Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain and Hole frontwoman Courtney Love.

As we were digging through the tape archives this week in the midst of the 20th-anniversary celebration of Nirvana's landmark Nevermind album, we unearthed some footage of the rock offspring spending quality time with her parents and thought it was worth catching you up on what Frances has been up to lately.

Born August 18, 1992, Frances — whose godfather is former R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe and godmother is actress Drew Barrymore — had a childhood that was unusual even by Hollywood standards. While Love tried her best to keep the young Frances out of the spotlight, the toddler would occasionally make the papers on Love's arm at a movie premiere or public event.

Photos: Growing Up Frances Bean Cobain

As she grew older, Frances continued to mostly shun the spotlight, giving only a handful of interviews to date, including her first one in 2005 as a 13-year-old to Teen Vogue.

Here are five facts you may not know about Frances Bean:

» She worked as an intern at Rolling Stone during the summer of 2008. The gig was ironic, if only because her dad famously wore a homemade T-shirt that read "corporate magazines still suck" during Nirvana's first cover shoot for the famed rock mag.

» Her sweet 16 birthday party was held in August 2008 at the Los Angeles House of Blues and featured a performance from Mindless Self Indulgence.

» Like her father, Frances is also an artist. She debuted a collection called "Scumf---" at Los Angeles' La Luz de Jesus gallery in July 2010 under the pseudonym "Fiddle Tim." The show mostly consisted of cartoony drawings of distorted figures with titles such as "Hips Like Battleships," "Chopsy Cheech" and "Spector Hector."

» Frances was part of a large group of background singers on a strange project from transgressive Dresden Dolls singer Amanda Palmer called "Evelyn Evelyn," which was reportedly created by a pair of conjoined sisters from Seattle. The song "My Space" features backing vocals from Cobain, comedians Margaret Cho and Eugene Mirman, Andrew W.K., My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way and "Weird" Al Yankovic.

» The biggest splash to date, however, has been a series of moody, alluring black-and-white photos of Frances shot by fashion designer Hedi Slimane.

Who knows what's next for Frances, but given her musical and artistic pedigree, it's likely we've not seen the last of her.

Stick with MTV News as we reveal the Nevermind You Never Knew, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's definitive album with classic footage, new interviews and much more.

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Nirvana: The Nevermind You Never Knew

23 Sep 2011 13:46:00 EDT

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Nirvana's Big Break, With A Smashing Pumpkins Assist

23 Sep 2011 12:57:21 EDT

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of Nevermind, band's close friend — and former MTV staffer — Amy Finnerty recalls their rise to fame.
By James Montgomery, with reporting by Vanessa WhiteWolf

When Amy Finnerty first met Nirvana, she had just come to MTV to work in the Music and Programming department. Of course, she didn't let them know that fact. She was just blown away to finally meet the guys who had made her favorite album (at least at that point): Bleach.

Over the next four years, Finnerty would not only become close friends with the band, but intrinsically linked to them too. Since she was just a few years younger than the guys (not to mention a huge fan), she was one of the first people within the company to champion them — and was almost singlehandedly responsible for getting their "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on the channel. And because of all that — and the 20th anniversary of the epochal Nevermind album — MTV News sat down with Finnerty to get the inside story on the days before Nirvana became a household name and the wild (and amazing) times that followed after.

And it all started with that first meeting, backstage in New York.

"The first night I met Nirvana, I was backstage at, I think it was a Waterboys show, and the band was in New York, touring on the Bleach album, and they were being courted by a bunch of record labels, Geffen being one of them," she said. "So I'm standing around backstage, and I see Kurt Cobain leaning up against the wall, and, uh, 'Oh my God, that's Kurt from Nirvana.' And, at that point, they weren't Nirvana — I mean, they were to me, but not everybody on the planet knew who they were — but, I was terrified. I was scared to go up and introduce myself, but I did. And he said, 'How do you even know who I am?' And I said 'You're in Nirvana! I'm going to see your band at the Pyramid in a few days! You're a great, great band!'

"And he was pretty surprised, so we got to chatting and he said to me, 'Who are you? What are you doing here?' and I said, 'Oh, well, I work at MTV, whatever,' and so he screams down the hall, 'Krist, this girl works at MTV.' And it was on from that second," she laughed. "They started teasing me, making fun of me, Krist was throwing beer around, we were shaking up our beer bottles and squirting each other with beer and stuff, so, it immediately became this joke, because I really wasn't trying to tell them what I did [at MTV]. For the longest time, they referred to me as 'V.P. of Post-It Notes,' because they didn't know that I worked in Music Programming, because they would've teased me about it."

Riki Rachtman recalls Nirvana's cross-dressing appearance on "Headbangers Ball."

Of course, in the months that followed, the hype around the band (and their then-forthcoming album Nevermind) began to swirl, and once Finnerty heard what they guys had been working on with producer Butch Vig, she knew big things were on the horizon.

"The first time I listened to the record, it was like, when you're on vacation and you see something really beautiful that you've never seen before and you open your eyes up super-wide, because you want to get the memory ingrained into your brain, and that's the way I felt," she said. "I was trying to remember every single note."

Still, convincing the folks at MTV to take a chance on the band proved a lot tougher than she'd imagined. After all, she was young, and the band was virtually unknown outside of a few hip enclaves around the country. But that all changed the second she saw the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video — which, in a bit of alt-rock kismet, arrived in her office at the exact moment another soon-to-be-huge band did too.

"The Smashing Pumpkins were staying at my house, and I said, 'You guys, come by MTV, give me the keys to the apartment, and then I'll bring you around the halls and introduce you to some people.' ... And so the Pumpkins came in 10 minutes after I had gotten my hands on that music video, and so we went into my office to watch it, and everyone thought it was incredible," Finnerty said. "So I took the video and I walked around the halls at MTV and simultaneously introduced a bunch of people to the Smashing Pumpkins, and then we'd watch the video ... and then we'd go to a producer's office and I'd say, 'These are the Smashing Pumpkins, and the Gish record that just came out is so incredible, and they're going to send us a video. Oh, and by the way, we've got this Nirvana video; you have to check it out.' "

Nirvana's rise to fame, in their own words.

After Finnerty showed a few folks within the building "Smells Like Teen Spirit," she brought it to MTV's music meeting, where the fates of new videos were decided. After some healthy back-and-forth, it was determined that "Spirit" would be given a world premiere during MTV's "120 Minutes" (with rotation on the channel to begin the following week). It was a sink-or-swim moment for the band and as you're probably aware, things worked out pretty well.

"That was unprecedented; MTV, as far as I know, had never world-premiered a video for a band that they had no history with," Finnerty explained. "And then ... some of the crew and a lot of the people that were on the road with the band came over to my house that Sunday night, and we all sat up waiting for this world premiere, and, like, I took pictures of it. It was a big moment!"

It was just the first of many for the band and their friend. But for all the highlights, perhaps none illustrates Nirvana's scruffy charm quite like a story Finnerty told us about a party she threw for the band at her New York City apartment. Twenty years later, it's one she's still amazed by — sort of like the band she helped become huge ("in some small way," she cautioned) just by believing.

"So Nirvana played in New York, and I had decided to have a party at my apartment afterwards ... and the band came, and I think [the Pixies'] Kim Deal was there, and then there were just a host of other people that I had no idea who they were. And I leaned over to Kurt and I was like, 'Are these your friends? Do you know any of these people?' And he was like, 'I don't know any of these people ... do you want me to get them to leave?' " she recalled. "So he said, 'I'm going to walk out, I'm going to go downstairs and hide under the stairs, and everyone's going to leave. Watch.' And so he walked out, and, you know, you could see everyone trying to act casual, but they all saw him leave, and then it was like a mass exodus; within 10 minutes my apartment was cleared.

"And then he came back up and got me and told me that we were going to go listen to the best jukebox in town, and I thought I was going to have this unbelievable night of listening to some hidden punk rock on some cool jukebox in New York, right?" she continued. "But instead he took me to the 119 Bar, which, at the time, had a jukebox that only played disco music. And so we danced to Donna Summer, and then we went home. It was a pretty amazing night."

Stick with MTV News all week as we reveal the Nevermind You Never Knew, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's definitive album with classic footage, new interviews and much more.

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R.E.M. And Nirvana: The Kurt Cobain/Michael Stipe Connection

22 Sep 2011 13:34:05 EDT

Bands' intensely private singers had a unique relationship.
By Gil Kaufman

Tony Bennett has been making the rounds this week promoting his new Duets II album and talking about how he wanted to save late singing partner Amy Winehouse by telling her to slow down, to take it from someone who'd already been there and had gotten the same advice from his idol, Frank Sinatra.

That kind of been-through-the-fire mentoring is a time-honored tradition in the music world, one that came to mind again on Wednesday when long-running alt rock godheads R.E.M. announced they were packing it in after 31 years in the midst of the 20th anniversary celebration of Nirvana's groundbreaking Nevermind album.

You see, enigmatic R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe had been through the superstar crucible. The intensely private frontman who spent a good early portion of the band's career mumbling his cryptic lyrics while hiding behind a scraggly veil of wavy hair knew all about the pressures of fame by the time Nirvana were having their world-exploding "Smells Like Teen Spirit" moment.

One thing ends as the dawn of another is celebrated.

It's a rock circle of life that was clearly not planned, but has a very nice, round arc to it. It connects these two bands yet again, providing another reminder that it was because of the hard work of acts like R.E.M. that Nirvana was able to blast out of the Northwest and take on the world.

The coincidental chapters also recalled the fact that Stipe had gone from indie darling to worldwide rock star just months before Nevermind hit in late 1991 thanks to the breakout success of "Losing My Religion," the first single from R.E.M.'s seventh album, Out of Time.

In the ensuing years, the two men would carry on a kind of public mutual-admiration society, as Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain went to great lengths to praise R.E.M.'s influence on his own band. And critics couldn't help but notice how, like R.E.M., Nirvana had managed the tricky tightrope walk of retaining their indie edge while signing to a major label and making polished, pop-influenced music with gritty bite and uncompromising lyrical flavor.

Stipe seemed to gladly take on the role of mentor, perhaps seeing in Cobain's adoration tinges of the same relationship he had with his idol, punk godmother Patti Smith, whose influence Stipe praised publicly at every turn.

"I don't know how that band [R.E.M.] does what they do," Cobain said in a 1994 Rolling Stone magazine interview. "God, they're the greatest. They've dealt with their success like saints, and they keep delivering great music."

By 1994, Stipe, like many in Nirvana's inner circle of friends and management, had grown concerned about Cobain's dangerous drug spiral. In an attempt to try and bring Cobain back from the abyss, Stipe — the godfather of Cobain and wife Courtney Love's only child, Frances Bean — planned a collaboration with the doomed grunge singer.

"I was doing that to try to save his life. The collaboration was me calling up as an excuse to reach out to this guy. He was in a really bad place," Stipe told Interview magazine earlier this year. "I constructed a project to try to snap Kurt out of a frame of mind. I sent him a plane ticket and a driver, and he tacked the plane ticket to the wall in the bedroom and the driver sat outside the house for 10 hours. Kurt wouldn't come out and wouldn't answer the phone."

The superstar hookup never happened and — like Neil Young, Smith and numerous others — Stipe was inspired to write a musical eulogy for Cobain, the moving 1994 song "Let Me In," from the album Monster. Fittingly, that disc found R.E.M. adopting a grungier, harder-edge, distorted sound that went the opposite direction of their two more sedate, previous mainstream breakthrough efforts.

Once again, the celebration of a beginning and a sad ending that can forever link these two legendary acts.

Stipe grew gracefully into the role of alt-rock elder statesman, enduring the rigors of stardom with wit and confidence. "A wise man once said--'the skill in attending a party is knowing when it's time to leave,' " he wrote in a statement announcing the band's end. "We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we're going to walk away from it."

Cobain, on the other hand, was swallowed up by the machine, prematurely putting an end to his story and walking away from the party way too early. Maybe if he'd had that sit-down session with Stipe he might have managed the dream he shared with us in a 1993 interview. "I wanted to have the adoration of John Lennon but have the anonymity of Ringo Starr," Cobain told MTV News. I didn't want to be a frontman. I just wanted to be back there and still be a rock and roll star at the same time."

Stick with MTV News all week as we reveal the Nevermind You Never Knew, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's definitive album with classic footage, new interviews and much more.

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Nirvana Trash A Hotel One 'Fabulous Yet Wrong' Night

22 Sep 2011 06:53:14 EDT

In celebration of Nevermind's 20th anniversary, Kurt Loder recalls a seriously costly interview with the band.
By James Montgomery

In December 1993, Nirvana sat down with MTV News' Kurt Loder in the frozen expanses of St. Paul, Minnesota — but only on the condition that he also sit down with one of the opening acts on their tour: all-girl Japanese punk act Shonen Knife.

It was, in retrospect, a very Nirvana thing for them to do: Kurt Cobain loved nothing more than lifting some of his favorite bands up into the spotlight. And while Loder would write about the entire back-and-forth that led to the interview in a 2004 feature for MTVNews.com called "Nirvana: Days of Thunder," the story of what happened afterward is just as compelling — mostly because it involved $19,000 in property damages.

So in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's iconic Nevermind album, we sat down with Loder to get the full story of that interview — the last time he'd ever see Cobain before the frontman's suicide in April 1994. And the tale of wanton destruction he told is not only one for the ages, but it reminds us that, no matter how much they've been mythologized in the 20 years since they first burst forth onto the mainstream, Nirvana were very much just a trio of young guys, coping with fame and, sometimes, behaving as young guys often do: very badly.

Nirvana's rise to fame, in their own words.

"Everyone was wondering, 'How will Kurt be? Will he be weird?' He wasn't weird; he was just not hanging around. We had got the guys set up, we had done Shonen Knife first, and then Kurt came in last and sat down. We did the interview, and he was great," Loder said. "He was funny, he knew to be funny, and he's very dry. He was very bohemian. He was almost like a beatnik or something. He hearkened back to that age.

"And that was it. [After the interview], he had to go into his room and, whatever, and so I went upstairs with [drummer] Dave [Grohl] and [bassist] Krist [Novoselic], and they just got really, really drunk. Not that I was trying not to get drunk, but I didn't get as drunk as they did," he continued. "And at one point, Krist just took this picture off the wall and just broke it against the wall, and then they started destroying everything in this room. And it's, like, 4 in the morning, and we hear that hotel security is coming up, so I said, 'Well, it's really time for me to leave.' So I'm leaving, going to the elevator, they're behind me, because they want to go down to my room; they don't want to get in trouble either."

So, of course, Loder let them in (how could he not?), but rather than cool their heels, Grohl and Novoselic only continued smashing things. After all, it was 4 a.m. and, yes, they were still very drunk.

"So we go down to my room, and they do the same thing. They're just breaking chairs and tables, and I was not drunk. ... The band's minder said, 'Well, you must've been doing it too,' and I was like, 'Actually, no,' " Loder laughed. "I was saying, 'Please don't destroy the television set in my room.' It was hard, you know, to use a coat stand [to break a TV set] — you'd figure it would go right through it — but you had to continue doing it before it finally works. They were just out of their minds; it was fabulous in a way and yet wrong. ... Don't do that at home. And the bill the next day was, like, $19,000."

This wasn't Nirvana's only notorious interview: Riki Rachtman recalls the group's cross-dressing appearance on "Headbangers Ball."

For the record, Loder wasn't sure who picked up the tab. But in a lot of ways, he found the whole hotel-trashing incident to be rather refreshing. Because, like much of Nirvana, it recalled a time when rock and roll bands lived for antics like that — a time that, coincidentally, also produced some of the finest rock acts to ever walk the earth.

"I thought they were great. ... They had the thing all great bands had. It was three guys coming together, but when they play together, it's like something bigger than all three of them. It was like this enormous energy center. It's like the Who, although they resembled the Who in no other way, but it was that energy," he said. "And I think they unified people at the time, brought people in that maybe had given up on that kind of music and said, 'Oh, wait a minute, this is really, really good.' They were just great musicians."

Stick with MTV News all week as we reveal the Nevermind You Never Knew, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's definitive album with classic footage, new interviews and much more.

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Nirvana On 'Headbangers Ball': Behind The Ball Gown

21 Sep 2011 06:53:16 EDT

In celebration of Nevermind's 20th anniversary, Riki Rachtman recalls Nirvana's most notorious MTV appearance.
By James Montgomery, with reporting by Matt Elias

On October 25, 1991, with their Nevermind album only a month old but already gaining traction and the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" beginning to turn the world on its ear, Nirvana appeared on MTV's flagship metal show "Headbangers Ball" for an interview that would become legendary — mostly for all the wrong reasons.

As they made abundantly clear during their stint on the show, Nirvana considered "Headbangers" to be the epicenter of everything they considered evil: the teased-and-tousled, tough-guys-and-tanned-babes world of mainstream metal. As if barely feigning interest wasn't proof of this point, one only had to look at the canary-yellow ball gown Kurt Cobain threw on for the occasion. It was about as un-metal (and tellingly un-macho) as you could get.

The on-camera interaction between Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic (drummer Dave Grohl had apparently decided to skip the taping) and "Headbangers" host Riki Rachtman was awkward enough, but you don't know everything that happened behind-the-scenes. Now, in celebration of Nevermind's 20th anniversary, we sat down with Rachtman to get the story of what happened on that fateful, cringe-inducing day. And, as is the case with most great rock stories, this one starts backstage.

Can the album that changed everything change it again? Bigger Than the Sound looks back on Nevermind.

"I did that show for five years, and when Nirvana was coming in, here was a band that I could tell was on the verge of making it huge. I was a fan of [them], and I was pretty stoked that I was going to get to meet them, because I had never met Cobain or any of these guys," Rachtman told MTV News. "Bands would always sit in the green room before they came on the set, you know, have some drinks or whatever, and I walk into the green room thinking, 'Hey, I'm going to meet Kurt Cobain, you know, we'll talk a little bit before the show.' And he is just sprawled out on the floor, passed out. I mean, kick him, not moving."

Of course, things didn't improve much once the cameras started rolling, as Rachtman repeatedly tried to rescue the interview, despite mounting evidence that this one was heading downhill fast.

"So the first time that I ever met Kurt was when all of the sudden they bring him onto the show with his big yellow ball gown. ... I'm like, 'OK, whatever.' So he sits down, and the whole time he's just like, 'Uhhh.' You could tell that he didn't want to be there," Rachtman explained. "People always knew that when I was on the show and there was a band that I was digging and excited to meet, I'm all excited, so I'm up ... [but] in that interview, I looked like I was about as slow as he was, because as we started ... I wasn't getting any good answers, I wasn't finding out anything about them. ... It was like pulling teeth. And what started as a day that I was really excited about ended up becoming a day that I was just like, 'When is this over?' And you can just see [it]."

Of course, Nirvana's anti-antics only further rankled metal fans, most of whom were already suspicious of the band's motives and increasing popularity. They saw their "Headbangers" appearance as not only a slap in the face of the respected Rachtman, but of the entire genre. Then again, all that has only added to the episode's mystique in the years since it first aired. Even if, to this day, Rachtman won't watch it.

"I don't watch that show, even though it was pretty historic and, hey, I got to interview Nirvana; it was one of the worst interviews I've ever done," he said. "And you can just tell that I didn't want to be there the whole time, because they didn't want to be there either."

Despite the "Headbangers" experience, Rachtman remained a Nirvana fan. In fact, almost 20 years later, he'll still defend them to metal fans who maintain they singlehandedly killed their genre.

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"People say, 'Nirvana killed heavy metal,' and they didn't. If you had any type of music scene that is so weak that another band can come on playing a different type of music and kill your scene, then your scene wasn't good enough in the first place," he laughed. "You come out with this crazy hair and all glam, look like a chick, you know, if you do that, OK, that's fine, but after awhile, you're going to need some sort of substance behind it. And what happened was, here's somebody new that really doesn't care, that picks up dirty clothes off the floor, wears 'em, has no stage show, goes on camera, does concerts and just plays rock and roll."

Stick with MTV News all week as we reveal the Nevermind You Never Knew, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's definitive album with classic footage, new interviews and much more.

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Nirvana's Nevermind 20 Years Later: Forever Changes

20 Sep 2011 09:03:41 EDT

Can the album that changed everything change it again? Bigger Than the Sound looks back.
By James Montgomery

Here's an abbreviated list of everything that's happened in my life in the 20 years since Nirvana's Nevermind was released: graduated middle school, started wearing thrift-store corduroys, got my learner's permit, lost my virginity, got my driver's license, got in several accidents, named All-County keeper in the Central Florida High School Lacrosse League (two times), graduated high school, started smoking clove cigarettes, had an ill-fated long-distance relationship and an even iller-fated run in a community-college film program, moved out to attend "real college," spent six years doing anything but, slept on a futon in Burbank, attempted to use 9/11 to reconnect with my ex-girlfriend, experienced shame from that attempt, moved to New York City, had dark times (aside from the Red Sox '04 and '07 World Series wins), met a girl, fell in love, got engaged in Reykjavik, got married in Dublin, recently discovered small black hairs growing on my earlobes.

Of course, reading back over all that, none of it makes me feel nearly as old as the fact that on Saturday, Nevermind will officially turn 20. Because as a kid who was alive and kicking during that era when all of a sudden "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was everywhere and Nirvana were the biggest thing in the world (or at least the suburbs), I can tell you that it seemed impossible that this music would ever age; mostly because everything about it seemed so of the moment, so important, so young.

That was, in part, due to everything Kurt Cobain was (unwillingly) on his way to becoming: an outsider icon, a generational symbol, maybe even a musical messiah. Like I wrote a few years back, on the 15th anniversary of Cobain's death, he represented truth and the honor that came with never compromising. He had made it on his terms, and he was going to lift us all up with him. That's the kind of stuff you believe in when you're too young to know better.

Mostly, it was because Nevermind ripped up the mainstream and instantaneously made everything else out there seem passé. (Guns N' Roses? Please. They were making "trilogy" videos with supermodels and dolphins. Metallica? They were cramming orchestras on their albums.) And it did so without an ounce of intent. The opening riff of "Teen Spirit," the snarl of "In Bloom" 's chorus, the weird take of the Youngblood's "Get Together" tacked onto the beginning of "Territorial Pissings" (and the hyperkinetic hyperventilation that follows), the sneering sentiment of "Drain You," the guttural growls of "Stay Away" ... all of it seemed to have happened almost by accident, because, surely, no band was capable of doing it willingly.

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In short, Nirvana sounded like nothing I'd ever heard, mostly because I was 13. But then, almost as if it was their duty (or at least Kurt's), they kept leading me in further expanding circles, talking up the wonders of Shonen Knife and the Melvins, Daniel Johnston, Bikini Kill. I discovered the Breeders because Cobain said he liked them, and then, by proxy, discovered the Pixies too (backwards, I know; I was a weird kid, music-wise). Nevermind made me want to seek new music, to listen to stuff that wasn't getting played on the radio (or MTV). So, in that regard, yes, it changed my life. Because it connected me to rock music in a deep, personal way, which, in a lot of ways, has led me to right here, right now.

You can see why it's so unfathomable that the first album that changed my life (not to mention the lives of a whole lot of other folks) is turning 20 this weekend. Of course, the beauty of Nevermind lies in the fact that, two decades later, it does not sound old in any conceivable way. In fact, it is the rare album that still reveals more with each spin. When I listen to it these days, I am struck not so much by the newness of it all, but how equally indebted it was to punk, thrash, blues and even the Beatles. I now marvel at the chorus of "On a Plain," the harmonies on "Come As You Are" and "In Bloom," the Chuck Berry guitar rushes on "Breed," and the sheer amount of really good playing on the album. As a three-piece, Nirvana truly were one of the all-time best.

But mostly (and perhaps sadly), I find myself identifying more and more with the nascent pessimism of Cobain's lyrics, both bold-faced (his sumptuously sneering admission that the finest day he ever had "was when I learned to cry on command") and subtle. When he sang "Something in the Way," he meant it both literally and figuratively; as you get older you realize that there's always something in the way, and more often than not, whatever that something is seems nearly insurmountable.

In a lot of ways, I assume that listening to Nevermind as a 33-year-old in 2011 was a lot like hearing it as a 33-year-old in 1991. You've been around long enough to remember the good stuff, and you're mortified that the bad stuff will never go away. And then, out of nowhere, you hear something visceral and vibrant, something so different and compelling that it makes you want to believe that maybe good can win out once again. We don't even have to be talking about music right now.

Of course, in 1991, they were lucky enough to get Nevermind. I'm still waiting for the album that's going to recharge the 33-year-old me. Maybe it's just around the corner, maybe it's not. Either way, I've still got hope, and that's the essence of youth. Even if I'm old enough to know better.

MTV News reveals the Nevermind You Never Knew, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's definitive album with classic footage, new interviews and much more.

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