The Seattle-based producer/musician discusses pugs, Courtney haters and co-writing the recently released film score for Kurt Cobain: About a Son with Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard.
You're a Courtney defender?I'm
kind of impartial, but I think it's not pretty, it's not funny watching
people in trouble. You know, I've seen Frances when she was a little
girl, and I just think it's so rotten that she has to grow up in this
world with all of this shit going around. When anyone says something
shitty about her mom I think, Would you say that if her daughter was in
the room? And I said that at motherfuckin'
High Times magazine
when they wanted to do the "conspiracy theory" shit and called me. I
was like, "No dude, don't do that. The family is still up here, man."
What do you think the film was able to achieve?It
sounds silly to say this out loud but, for all of the media hype, I
don't think anybody knew Kurt. By the time he died, he was one of the
most famous people of the 20th century, but he really wasn't very well
heard. MTV and other media sources were turning him into this sort of
Axl Rose cartoon version of what people expect from junky rock stars
with controversial wives. (Photographer) Charles Peterson and Michael
Azerrad were legitimately friends and had lots of contact. Kurt and I
recorded a little bit once and saw each other in some clubs, and we did
an interview in my house once. He wasn't like a tight bro of mine, but
I liked him and thought he was a really cool person, and definitely not
how he was depicted on TV.
Do you feel the film sets the record a little straighter?Yeah,
and it does it in an arty way. If there's anything that I'm pleased
with, it's that all of these kids are getting into Nirvana, and all
they know about Kurt is the crappy VH1 documentary and the Nick
Broomfield film, and they go searching and get conspiracy shit and it
doesn't really replay the fact that he was pretty much like all the
other people I knew in that generation. They just wanted to get to the
point where they could quit doing their crappy janitor jobs.
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