I Was There When… Nirvana Ruled The Palace In 1992

“Everything just went fucking bonkers!” – STEVE “PAV” PAVLOVIC 

“There was this feeling of being in the centre of the universe, and it was awesome” – RICHIE LEWIS 

“That’s one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen... I even get teary thinking about it” – ANDREW MAST 

“You could tell everyone was aware that this band was something special” – STEVE BELL 

Alongside their appearance at the first-ever Big Day Out, the intimate club shows Nirvana played during their first and only Australian tour – freshly catapulted to superstardom off the back of 1991’s career-defining Nevermind record – are often described as the most intense live music experiences this country has ever witnessed. 

Picture the overcrowded scene at The Palace (the now-defunct St Kilda venue that hosted three back-to-back Melbourne shows from 31 January to 2 February 1992, one of which was all-ages): unison headbanging mobilises a sea of long, greasy locks; punters hover precariously on cocktail tables in the middle of the mosh, desperate to cop a squiz; a continuous wave of crowd surfers, repeatedly repelled from the stage – have the retroactive FOMOs kicked in yet? Same! Also, tickets cost just $18+ BF – WTF? Where’s that time machine when you need one!? 

Wish you were there, too? We test the memories of four discerning attendees for whom those early Nirvana gigs remain life highlights.    

STEVE “PAV” PAVLOVIC: Nirvana’s Australian tour promoter who later founded Modular Records. 

RICHIE LEWIS: frontman, Tumbleweed – primary support band throughout Nirvana’s Australian tour.

ANDREW MAST: in the early-’90s, freelance music journalist and The Music’s former Group Managing Editor was a regular contributor at Juke Magazine. 

STEVE BELL: “A uni student, playing footy and going to bands all the time” back in 1992, The Music’s former print editor is currently a freelance music journalist, podcaster and co-owner of Brisbane’s Sonic Sherpa record store.

“Hey! Pav here, from Australia. Would you like to tour Down Under?” 

STEVE “PAV” PAVLOVIC: “The first tour that I ever did was Mudhoney [in 1990], and when Mudhoney were here, we had a great time. And then they were like, ‘You should call our friends Nirvana.’ And then I remember Dan Peters, the drummer from Mudhoney, gave me Kurt [Cobain] and Krist [Novoselic]’s phone number. And so I would just ring them up and say, ‘Hey! Pav here, from Australia. Would you like to tour Down Under?’ 

“I got a voice answering machine a few times, and eventually Kurt answered, and he said, ‘Oh, we’d love to come. We’re just busy making a new record. Can you check back in later?’ 

“So this went on for about a year, you know? I’d just call him up every couple of months and go, ‘Hey, it’s me again. How’s it going?’ And they would just answer the phone. So it was [speaking] directly with Kurt and then Krist. And at one point, I rang Kurt, and he was like, ‘Oh, we just got a new manager on board. Maybe you could talk to him about it.’ And I’d recently just met the manager, maybe a year previously, so I called him up straight away, and he was like, ‘Look, dude, for sure’. 

“I said, ‘Look, just so you know, I’ve been talking to them for a while,’ and he goes, ‘Yeah, look, I’m happy to do it with you’. And then that was probably only sorta like July, August of that year [1991]. And September came ‘round, they put out [Smells Like] Teen Spirit [released to radio on 27 August, then officially released as Nevermind’s lead single on 10 September 1991]. Then everything just went fucking bonkers!”

“Because of my youthful enthusiasm and consistently pestering them, I managed to keep the tour”

PAV: “I kept thinking, ‘Oh, there’s no way they’re gonna stay with me, they’ll have to give it [Nirvana’s Australian tour] to someone else.’ Then every other promoter reached out to them and tried to get them and, you know, Kurt was pretty staunch about, ‘Nuh, we’re staying with him, he was the first guy that called us. He was the first one to show interest’ – I think it meant a lot to them. And because of my youthful enthusiasm and consistently pestering them, I managed to keep the tour and do it.”

Curating Nirvana’s Australian supports 

PAV: “I used to pick all the supports for the tours. We probably had The Meanies on somewhere, and we would’ve had Tumbleweed and just bands that may have fitted in with what they were doing at the time, you know?”

“The idea was struck around the pool at the Diplomat Hotel on that Mudhoney tour”

RICHIE LEWIS: “I mean, you’ve spoken to Pav, so you know his side of how it all came together. But, I mean, prior to Nirvana, he brought out Dinosaur Jr. [1989] and Mudhoney – those were pretty big tours. It was a healthy sort of underground scene before Nirvana came along, and, in fact, Nirvana’s Bleach album [1990] had only sold 600 copies. If you compare that to – like, in Australia through Waterfront [Records], who were licensing Bleach at the same time as, say, Superfuzz Bigmuff by Mudhoney [1988], which sold two-and-a-half thousand; when Nirvana were scheduled [to tour], that was the difference and the expectation, you know? 

“I remember sitting around the pool at the Diplomat Hotel in St Kilda with Steve ‘Pav’ and Mudhoney. I was on the Mudhoney tour – I was the drummer in a band called The Proton Energy Pills, and we were touring with them – and Matt Lukin, who was the bass player of Mudhoney, was sharing a flat with Kurt Cobain at the time. And Waterfront Records, who I was signed to through The Proton Energy Pills, had that licence for Bleach. 

“And so he [Lukin] came downstairs one day when we were sitting around the pool and he goes, ‘I’ve just been talking to my flatmate. He’s in a band called Nirvana, you know them?’ And then we went, ‘Yeah, yeah, we’ve got their record. It’s great.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, he’d really like to come out to Australia. Would you guys like to play with them?’ And we said, ‘Yeah, sure. We’ll play with them.’ 

“And Steve was there at the time. So I suppose the idea was struck then around the pool at the Diplomat Hotel on that Mudhoney tour. So Steve followed that up and, anyway, The Proton Energy Pills broke up, Tumbleweed got together and Steve still sort of, like, remembered that conversation and got us on that [Nirvana] tour. So, on that first tour, we did six shows with them. I think we did Sydney, three in Melbourne, Adelaide and Canberra.”

“They were the biggest band in the world and we were on tour with them”

RICHIE: “I mean, I’m glad I was there. For me, at the time, that [Nevermind] was my favourite record. At the time, they [Nirvana] were my favourite band. At the time, they were the biggest band in the world and we were on tour with them, and it was amazing. It was like riding this massive wave and being right on the peak of it. And there was this feeling of being in the centre of the universe, and it was awesome… That’s like looking back at a golden moment of life, really. So I’ll always remember that.”

“I remember having to pull a fucking backpack full of cash up on the table”

PAV: “After the first Palace show, I remember I had to go to the bank. It was really close by, and I remember having to pull a fucking backpack full of cash up on the table – maybe there was, like, I dunno, 30 grand or something in there; I don’t even remember what the number would’ve been. And I can remember, at the time, the people were looking at me like I’d robbed a bank or something ‘cause of the way I looked. I looked dodgy – I was in a pair of ripped shorts and shitty sneakers – and I remember that they were looking at me really oddly [laughs].”

“It wasn’t like I’m a great promoter or anything, I’m just a good host” 

PAV: “It wasn’t like I’m a great promoter or anything, I’m just a good host – that’s pretty much all I did, really. So I’d take them [Nirvana] to my favourite record stores, beaches, cafés, restaurants, you know? All the lifestyle stuff… They were people who would go have a game of pool or have a beer here and eat there and just hang out, which was kinda great.”     

Bonding with Krist over their shared Croatian heritage 

PAV: “I mean, [Krist] wrote some profanities on my tour poster in Croat [laughs].

“He’s pretty connected to his heritage. Both his parents are Croats, so he knows where he comes from, speaks the language with his cousins, aunties, grandma, blah-blah-blah. At one point, he went back over and lived there for a couple of years, maybe when he was about 15 or something.

“My mother was Australian, so I never really learnt [Croatian] or spoke it at the house. I mean, I understand it a bit. But I spend a lot more time there now.” 

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Beware of bootleg Nirvana tour posters   

PAV: “Well, here’s the thing, right? There are a bunch of fakes, that’s for sure. People reprinted it. I see them pop up a lot, and I’ve had friends that I know going, ‘They’re kind of ruining those posters,’ and I go, ‘Oh, man…’ – people did a bunch of reruns and reprints over time, you know?

“I know that I ended up with about 20 of the original ones, and you can tell by the paper they’re printed on and stuff. I know the paper, because I used to print them all on the same thing – with the same people – every time. So you can kinda feel it in the paper and the inks and whatnot.”    

“That first show in Sydney had more significance to me, personally”

PAV: “Every show was great; every one had different little things happen. The energy was good, the songs were great, they were really powerful performers, it was a really fucking awesome sound. But that first show in Sydney had more significance to me, personally... It was where I’d started doing shows very young, as a promoter. It was kinda like my space, you know? In terms of, me and my friends would go there. We loved it. 

“It was the first show we put on sale, it was the first show to sell out and it was the first show of the tour. And up to that point, I’d never seen Nirvana live, so, you know, when you add all of the six, seven months of craziness building up to this moment, and then it happens – and the band are fucking awesome! – it leaves a pretty impactful memory.” 

RICHIE: “I had seen [Nirvana] a few nights before [The Palace shows] in Sydney – we’d played with them at the Phoenician Club – and so I knew they were going to be pretty awesome.

“The good thing about The Palace ones is [that] there was the all-ages one – that was pretty special. And it also coincided with our guitarist turning 21… So, on his 21st birthday, we got him a birthday cake and stuff, and Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic came back and sang Happy Birthday. And then we had no utensils or plates to eat it with, so everybody just dug their hands into the chocolate cake and started munching it. 

“That was a real nice bit of camaraderie. And we were all young and wild and stupid. And I can remember, at the all-ages show, a bunch of us took some LSD, and I turned the light off. The dressing rooms were at either side of the stage – so Nirvana’s was on, say, stage right, ours was on the left – and you have to go up a couple of stairs. And you can walk straight into the wings at the back of the stage, straight out onto the stage. 

“Anyway, you could turn the lights off and just watch from the stage, really. So I sorta crouched down low behind Dave Grohl, watching him playing this afternoon [Nirvana’s all-ages set commenced at 5 pm], and he sorta turned into a [H.R.] Giger painting where I could see every tendon and muscle and all this energy around him. It was like striking this machine. I’d never seen anybody hit the drums so hard! And around him was this mist of energy, like this orb that sort of pulsated with every strike of the snare drum. And the spray came off it – like, from his sweat – and it just swelled in the atmosphere. 

“And that was one thing about it: there was this atmosphere above the whole crowd – just this cloud of sweat and energy – and, yeah! It was amazing. It was an incredible atmosphere within that room, like the coming of age of all these people that were really into heavy music.”

“[Kurt] thought it was amazing that, for a bunch of kids, this would be their first concert experience”

PAV: “Actually, one of Kurt’s favourite shows was at The Palace; there was an all-ages show. In America, most bars are, like, 21 and over so there weren't a lot of all-ages shows, right? – especially in the world that they were in at that time. So he thought it was amazing that, for a bunch of kids, this would be their first concert experience. 

“He liked the crazy energy of the all-ages kids – you know, they come in the middle of the day and they’re like, ‘Can’t fucking believe we’re at a show!’ They’re excited, they’ve got youth on their side, and they’re just chuffed. He was really excited about the all-ages component – it seemed to mean a lot to him, you know?”

“After the first soundcheck, one of Kurt’s pedals went missing” 

RICHIE: “There were people everywhere – there was a full energy to the whole thing and, yeah! ‘Cause I suppose one of the rites of passage then – of being a young support band – is you had to load the PA in. So we’d get there early and load in all that PA, and I remember – at The Palace – loading up down that ramp and stuff. And the crew that had often been the crew for heaps of other tours that we’d done previously and were our friends, all of a sudden were sort of a little bit standoffish and weird and different because they were working for the world’s biggest band and they were taking their job really seriously. 

“So, after the first soundcheck, one of Kurt’s pedals went missing. And it was just [taken by] some fan that was standing around or something. And, anyway, the crew ended up going through all our bags, and we got accused of stealing it. But we didn’t steal it.”

“What the fuck’s goin’ on in here? I might go and have a look at the front door” 

PAV: “I just remember the first show at The Palace was really fuckin’ rammed, and people were pretty much spilling up onto the stage. I remember the band kind of ripped through their set, and I spent a lot of the show side of stage just helping the tour manager throw people off the stage [back into the crowd]. And it was really hot and sweaty, and I remember thinking, ‘What the fuck’s goin’ on in here? I might go and have a look at the front door.’ And then we became aware that some of the security guys at the time were collecting the tickets as people walked in and then going around the back and reselling them. 

“So it was over-rammed by a substantial amount because the security guys had resold tickets – they probably did alright from it. So I remember that, and it being really crammed and just being on stage repelling people into the crowd [laughs].”

ANDREW MAST: “I was there on January the 31st at The Palace, so that was the first of the three gigs. I had been to The Palace so many times – you knew when it was overcrowded – so that story that Pav’s told you about overcrowding confirms my memory: you were standing like this [hunches shoulders to demonstrate being sandwiched]  in the crowd. 

“There was the floor, then behind the floor was the mixing desk. I was to the left, down behind the mixing desk. You know when you have your favourite spot when something’s crowded? So if I couldn’t get down the front, that was my go-to – close to the bar, close to the toilet. The sound was absolute perfection, and there were really good sightlines at The Palace. 

“L7 toured as well [they played at The Palace on 16 and 17 October 1992]. I saw them, and it had a similar atmosphere... But you could see then that it wasn’t as overcrowded as the Nirvana one was.

“But the funniest thing of the night was people were almost headbanging, and ‘cause everyone had the long hair, I was just getting face-fulls of wet hair – it was wet and stinky – and it was that thing where you just have to think, ‘You know what? I gotta live with this, ‘cause there’s nothing I can do about it’ [laughs]. I hadn’t been to many heavy metal gigs, so I’d never come across headbanging before. So it was just so much of that and, yeah! It happened again at L7, but you could move out of the way. 

“So the night I went: doors, 9 o’clock; Guttersnipes at 9:30; Tumbleweed at 11; Nirvana at 12:30 – I wonder if they were running late because that’s late for opening doors, isn’t it? 9 o’clock? 

“The other thing was, Kurt did not speak… We always talked about how some artists need to learn not to speak ‘cause it was soooooo amazing. He just oozed charisma, and it might be because he was unwell because of whatever happened to him, but I just distinctly remember he had his head down, and he just played and played and played. He’d look up to sing, and that was it – that was my main memory. And just walking away going, ‘That’s one of greatest shows I’ve ever seen’... I even get teary thinking about it.” 

“You’d see him walk on stage and just become a maniac”

RICHIE: “I found Kurt kind of interesting like that. Off stage, he was kinda meek. He seemed good-hearted – like, he’d sort of always be on the periphery, you know? He was calm and quiet, and [had] big eyes just looking – sorta smiling, but not saying much. And then you’d see him walk on stage and just become a maniac. But, yeah! It was incredible.

“I watched every show from out the front, or I watched from the stage. Another great moment from Melbourne was the only time they played the song Something In The Way, and they did it as the first song back for their encore. And it had been an absolutely amazing, wild show, and when they came out and did that, you could’ve heard a pin drop. It was just so silent; it was like being caught in this vacuum. And, yeah, really meditative and moving. So I’ll never forget that.”

“People kept comparing it to The Beatles”

MAST: “People kept comparing it to The Beatles. So, when The Beatles played Festival Hall [on 16 and 17 October 1964], when they were booked, they weren’t famous, so by the time they got here [Beatlemania was in full force]. So people got to see them for a really cheap price, and I think they only did a 20-minute set. 

“So the same thing happened here: they [Nirvana] were booked into the Prince Of Wales, and then the album [Nevermind] took off, and that’s when it just got crazy. So then they got upgraded and it wasn’t even enough!*

“I don’t remember the ticket scramble, but I just remember the buzz was electric; it’s all anyone was talking about. So, I was very much into the club scene. I came from the indie scene, but it was everyone! It was the club kids, it was the rock kids – everyone wanted that ticket.

“Of all my time going to The Palace, the only other time I thought it was overcrowded was for Prince, when he did a surprise gig there [Diamonds And Pearls tour after-show performance on 22 April 1992, start time 1:05 am] and people lined up in the hundreds from early in the afternoon to get into the show. So I think Nirvana and Prince might have played to the biggest-ever crowds there.

“It was definitely rammed [for Nirvana]. It’s so weird; I can remember going in that night and just freaking out about how packed it was. I cannot remember the support bands, and I must’ve seen them because I would’ve had to find my spot and stay there. I can’t even remember the other members of the band; I was just watching Kurt – Kurt was all that mattered, yeah.

“All I remember is it was a really well-behaved crowd. It was not insane; it was just that nice, tribal atmosphere. It felt very much like a safe space for all these people to be.” 

“You could tell everyone was aware that this band was something special”

STEVE BELL: “I would’ve gone on Sunday [2 February] because I would’ve been playing cricket on Saturday – semi-responsible [laughs].

“I couldn’t convince anyone to come to Nirvana with me, so I went by myself. I usually had all these mates – we’d go to stuff together – but they all decided that they were gonna go to Violent Femmes. I went to both. I was 21, I think, and usually, we’d be right up amongst it. But ‘cause I was by myself, I sorta hung around the fringes about halfway back and, in a way, I’ve got better memories of it than if I’d have been in the mosh and all that [laughs]. I was pushed around a bit ‘cause it was a massive mosh, but that was par for the course. TISM used to get pretty big moshes and stuff, but it was bigger than that. 

“It would’ve been intense down the front; it was pretty packed. I mean, it was quite regular for them to do that – [overselling] happened everywhere back then. But I remember there was definitely a different energy in the room, this heightened expectation or something. I was sort of oblivious to it to a degree, but you could tell everyone was aware that this band was something special, you know? It was definitely a different vibe and it was very intense. And it was very hot.

“[Nirvana] whipped the crowd right up… It just happened; they didn’t really need to do anything. I remember Krist jumping up and down and pogoing. And Dave was like a dervish on the drums, but, yeah! They certainly didn’t say anything to whip up the crowd or stuff like that. It was just the music, I think.”  

“I asked [Dave] to come back after The Palace to have some bongs” 

RICHIE: “Dave [Grohl] considered himself pretty new in the band. ‘Cause I asked him to come back after The Palace to have some bongs with us, at the Cosmo[politan hotel], and he goes, ‘Oh, Richie, I would, but I’m the new guy in the band; they’ve got their eye on me.’ And I said, ‘We know what your singer does!’ And he goes, ‘Nah, nah, I can’t…’ – he always had his eyes on the prize. He was always very kinda sensible. He was business first, but really nice and, yeah! He still considered himself the new guy.”

“If we didn’t fix [Kurt] up, they would’ve had to cancel the whole tour” 

PAV: “We did Adelaide, Sydney, Gold Coast, Brisbane, Melbourne, [and] Canberra. We were supposed to fly from Brisbane to Perth to do the show, and we had to cancel the Perth one because Kurt wasn’t well, and if we didn’t fix him up, they would’ve had to cancel the whole tour. So we decided to sacrifice one show for the benefit of the rest.”

BELL: “I was oblivious to all of that, and now that I've read all of the Nirvana books, I’m acutely aware of what Kurt was going through in Australia. But back then, we hardly knew anything about them – we knew nothing about them pre-internet, basically – let alone what they were going through at that time, you know what I mean? And I just remember thinking Kurt was really intense – this little, intense left-hander, you know? It was different to anything I’d seen, but I had no idea he was going through all those heroin troubles and was really sick and everything – you couldn’t tell that.”

“They were a band caught in a whirlwind, holding on as best they could”

RICHIE: “I think they [Nirvana] were just starting to grapple with people controlling things for them, and sorta like having to be on busy schedules. I think that Australia was pretty relaxed, so they enjoyed a lot of it. But, yeah, you could see that they were a band caught in a whirlwind, holding on as best they could. 

“They were still pretty happy. I mean, at that time – well, I think Kurt left Australia, and after they left Australia, he went and got married in Hawaii [on 24 February 1992]. So these were the days when he was on the up, you know? And things were on the up. So it was a very positive time.” 

PAV: “They were still pretty much in their own bubble. I think when it first started happening for them was maybe September [1991]. So [Smells Like] Teen Spirit was just going up the charts, and they were like, ‘SHIT!’ And every time they played a show, there were probably another 20 people [to cram into the show] until there were, like, queues around the block and everyone’s freaking out.

“But I think by the time January came around, and they made it to Australia, they’d knocked Michael Jackson off the number one spot in the US Billboard charts [Nevermind officially dethroned Dangerous on 11 January 1992]. They were number one pretty much all ‘round the world, and then everyone wanted a piece of them. And I think they were just starting to circle the wagons and get a lot more insular around that, if that makes sense. 

“There was a lot goin’ on. Then also I think Courtney [Love] had started being grilled in the press, or people were talking shit about her, and she came out [to Australia].”

RICHIE: “When the Melbourne shows came up, Courtney arrived – just after the all-ages show, I think. Or maybe just before it, ‘cause she wasn’t at the Sydney show. And there was a change in mood. Definitely everybody was more, um, on their toes about keeping out of her way, pretty much [laughs]. You knew she was entering the building before she got there... Very, very impressive. And I think at the all-ages show – or one of the shows – Kurt came out, and one of his first lines was: ‘Courtney Love is the best fuck in the world’. I just remember going, ‘Ah, okay. Right.’ I was a little aghast. I was taken back.”

“We brought all our girlfriends on the road with us, but we gave them jobs”

RICHIE: “We brought all our girlfriends on the road with us, but we gave them jobs. So, yeah, my girlfriend was Lighting Director and I think there was a couple that were our T-shirt sellers.”

“Nirvana came along and blew that door open, and everyone kinda marched through”

PAV: “It was a different time. At that point, a lot of that music – the music myself, my friends, and the sorta tribe/community we were a part of was into – was pretty marginal and pretty underground. It wasn’t until Nirvana came along and blew that door open, and everyone kinda marched through and that sort of alternative rock became quite a thing for a bit. 

“But up until that point, it was pretty community-driven, if that makes sense; you know, you’re part of an indie, alternative-rock community, and there were certain people that did shows, and it was very personable – you kinda knew everyone, knew the bands, knew the managers. 

“And it wasn’t until the Nirvana thing blew up so big that a lot of the artists got big management companies, booking agencies. So then that divide goes further and further [away] from the artist to yourself, right? And by the sort of mid-to late-‘90s, you're talking to agents and then managers; it would be inconceivable to talk [directly] to an artist, you know? But when I started in the late-’80s and early-’90s, it was pretty normal just to ring people up and go, ‘Hi, you wanna come to Australia?’ And they’d go, ‘We’d love to!’ Ha.”  

“Stuff like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden probably wouldn’t have had a chance without Nevermind”

RICHIE: “It’s incredible to see the impact that that record had. I remember hearing Nevermind for the first time because our manager worked for Waterfront, and so we got early tapes of it. And, yeah, we knew straight away as soon as we heard Smells Like Teen Spirit. We just went, ‘Wow. This is pretty amazing,’ but we didn’t know that it would have the power to really speak to everyone outside of the scene. Like, I can remember getting a train home from work and hearing just regular people talking about them and sorta thinking, ‘Hey! How did you get to know about my little world?’ But the secret was out, and it was incredible.”

“[Nevermind] just blew them out of the water and it opened a massive crack that everybody could see inside the world that they came from. And that’s where, you know, the record labels came running, and everybody said, ‘Hey, we didn’t foresee it happening, but, look, there’s money to be made there,’ and, ‘Let’s sign up another one!’ 

“And so the whole scene that unfolded after that – for the next few years – was really healthy. I mean, stuff like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden probably wouldn’t have had a chance without Nevermind, you know?” 

“They kind of made it [grunge] palatable. And I think a lot of it came down to, like, really fantastic production [Butch Vig] and mixing by Andy Wallace that sounded like an amazing record, regardless. 

“So there’s the production that was good, but also, I think, just refining the structure of songs. It's where you sort of realised the simplicity of verse-chorus-verse-chorus, change, chorus, end – pretty much all of their songs are structured in that way. And it was easy. No matter how wild things got within those areas, you could still understand it because you knew that change was coming up, or you knew it was gonna suck back to that little quiet bit; you know, you could see where it was going to go. And I think that familiarity of structure helped a lot as well. I mean, that wasn’t only them. If you look at the structures of stuff like Soundgarden – that’s incredibly intense. So it’s not one size fits all.”

“I vividly remember hearing Aneurysm at that gig”

BELL: “Once Nevermind broke, too – like, this [tour] was still before it really broke – and then soon all the articles and everything [came out], and we got to learn more about them. At that early stage, it was still sort of just little bits and pieces that you gleaned. But, you know, they were still pretty mysterious.

“I vividly remember hearing Aneurysm at that gig, and loving it and not knowing what it was – until Incesticide came out. But then you get Incesticide [released December 14 1992], and you learn more about them.” 

“There was a strange irony of all these underground bands signing to major labels”

RICHIE: “There was a strange irony of all these underground bands signing to major labels, and there was also this really weird feeling of, ‘Am I selling out?’... To sell out would be like you were giving away your soul and your artistic integrity to sell records, and shift units and be a sellout. But I think, yeah, that was a strange and weird tightrope to walk, in a way, because essentially – you know, looking back at it – a lot of people were sort of doing that to sell records, but I think [Nirvana] realised that you could maintain your artistic integrity and still do that. 

“It was a really weird time where bands that really had no chance of ever doing that before finally had the chance to actually play in front of people and sell some records, so, yeah! A lot of people jumped on that. Also, every record label in the world was signing up any band with a distortion pedal, us included. Well, they wanted to find the next one, you know?

“For me, anyway – I can speak from my perspective – I came from a punk rock background, and I liked heavy stuff. But I didn’t like the posturing of what was popular at the time, like, say, the LA hair metal scene or stuff like that. So when what became the grunge movement, which everybody was loath to call it at that time – it was just another part of punk rock and, you know, the music that everybody was into when it started breaking through. And Nirvana were the champions, and everybody felt it; there was this wave of the underground breaking out into the open, and everybody wanted a part of it because it had this authenticity – it was real.

“There was a real DIY to it, but I think, also, they were really brave about sorta standing up for things. They weren’t hypocritical, you know? Like, the way they’d stand up for homosexuality or women up the front and things like that. I think it was really sort of – they wore their heart on their sleeve, and so they were kicking against the mainstream.”

“There was a lot of beauty in Kurt’s perspective of life”

RICHIE: “I think one of the great things about Nirvana – besides fitting that mood of being another one of those punk-rock bands that we used to go and see, whether it was Sonic Youth or Dinosaur Jr. or Mudhoney, which we’d all seen beforehand; Nirvana came along, and they had the songs that resonated with so many people because of the simplicity, and because of the directness. Because of the beauty, as well. I think there was a lot of beauty in Kurt’s perspective of life; like a sadness and melancholy, but really sort of hopeful, and just a truth and honesty that I think seemed to resonate with people. And still does to this day! It’s amazing. 

“At the time, when they were a band that sold 600 records, I would never have even imagined that 35 years later I’d be talking about them, and they’d be as famous and legendary as they are.”

“They were obviously doing so well overseas, I thought they’d be back in 12 months”

BELL: “I think that gig, too – in a weird way – takes on a lot more importance and gravitas after what happened because you’re never gonna see them again. I remember at the time thinking, ‘That was incredible; I bet you next time they come back, it will be at Festival Hall or something like that.’ You didn’t think, ‘Wow, I’m never gonna see them again’ – it just wasn’t a thing. And they were obviously doing so well overseas, I thought they’d be back in 12 months. 

“And I’ve definitely become a massive Nirvana fan, but I think that’s just ‘cause of the music and what it represented, too, rather than just that gig… It’s just the same as any other band that you end up falling in love with, you know? It’s a moment along the way.”

*According to livenirvana.com, Nirvana’s Melbourne shows were initially scheduled to take place at the Prince Of Wales (900 capacity) before being upgraded to The Palace (up to 15,000 capacity).