Remembering Cobain on the cusp of fame

Ten years ago today, Kurt Cobain put a shotgun to his head in a small room above the garage at his Seattle home and traded in his short life for eternity as a rock 'n' roll myth. The 27-year-old's suicide only deepened the already massive impact of his band, Nirvana.

While Nirvana's significance in rock history is clear, people still wonder about the causes of Cobain's despair. Immutable forces and self-destructive choices seem to have converged in a deadly downward spiral of manic depression, drug abuse, a troubled family life, and a powerful aversion to the stardom that Nirvana courted and finally found upon the release of its second album, "Nevermind."

On the day of that landmark album's release, Sept. 24, 1991, and on the weekend preceding, Nirvana was in Boston. Cobain, Dave Grohl, and Krist Novoselic had come to town to perform at Axis, the Lansdowne Street club, as part of the only free radio show Nirvana would ever play: WFNX's 8th Birthday Party, a benefit for AIDS research. The appearance was arranged by Kurt St. Thomas, then the music director at WFNX-FM (101.7), the first radio station to air Nirvana's breakthrough single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and by Mark Kates, at that time the head of alternative promotion at Geffen Records, Nirvana's label.

St. Thomas, now a New York-based filmmaker, has just published "Nirvana: The Chosen Rejects"; he and coauthor Troy Smith are the guest DJs at noon today on 'FNX, which is devoting the entire day's programming to Nirvana.

Kates -- who went on to become Nirvana's A&R man and a close friend of Cobain's -- returned to his hometown several years ago to start his own label, Fenway Recordings. Both remember that long weekend in Boston as a unique moment in time, a strangely compressed handful of days during which they watched Nirvana change, almost before their eyes, from a fringe indie band into rock stars.

"I'd seen them play at Man Ray in 1990," says St. Thomas. "About 75 people were there and I just walked backstage and met the band. We started playing cuts from `Bleach' [Nirvana's first album], mostly late at night. I was calling Mark every other day saying, `We have to have them play at the 'FNX party.' It was a very selfish thing. I just wanted my favorite band to play the show."

"They weren't exactly a hot commodity at that point," recalls Kates, who had first met Nirvana a year earlier when the group -- a local Seattle act signed to Subpop -- opened for the Geffen act Sonic Youth in Las Vegas. "The Axis show was at the very beginning of the `Nevermind' tour, and Kurt was positive, excited, anticipating. Despite what people think, he wanted to be successful. We went out on Sunday, the night before the 'FNX show, to see the Melvins, who were playing at the Rat. Kids were coming up to Kurt and the band saying, `We want to see you guys but the show's sold out.' You have to remember that this was Nirvana's world: kids like that at shows like these. The guys asked us if they could do another show. They had Tuesday off so we arranged an all-ages show for that night. Over the course of those two days the insanity began."

St. Thomas: "There was a sense of excitement that I don't know how to explain. There were 30 bands playing the 'FNX show, but people were talking about Nirvana, trying to figure out a way into the show. In all the years I worked in radio I've never seen the response that `Teen Spirit' got. Nobody knew the name of the song or the band. But the phone calls were overwhelming."

Kates: "Krist and Dave and I went to WMBR and WZBC and I think one other radio station. Kurt wasn't around for that. What can I say? He didn't answer the bell. I'd been warned by one of my co-workers that Kurt wasn't into doing promotion and that I might not be able to count on him to do everything I needed him to do. But it wasn't a big deal because he wasn't a big personality or anything."

St. Thomas: "The night of the show there was this interview area set up in what was [the now-defunct club] Venus de Milo. The band went over to do their first interview on MTV and somehow they had a Twister game over there and Krist and this big jock got into a fight. MTV showed the clips."

Kates: "Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins were playing a game of Twister. The mat was set up and a little tub of Crisco became part of the equation. At one point Krist got too much on him and wiped himself off with an American flag. One guy didn't like it very much, and it got weird. But the show was great. The tour manager -- Monty Lee Wilkes III, this strait-laced guy who had color-coded pens for different paperwork -- at one point . . . came off the stage and said to me, `This tour is going to get crazy.' The next day, Tuesday, which is the day labels get all their chart and airplay information, I was on a conference call in my room at the Sheraton [Nirvana was staying at the Howard Johnson's in Kenmore Square]. `Teen Spirit' had gone from light to heavy rotation at this station in Dallas. The New York show had sold out. I remember thinking that things were going on that weren't easy to explain."

St. Thomas: "Kurt later talked about how one of the best times of his life was right when `Nevermind' came out. It's interesting because for a guy that got really overwhelmed by fame -- at that moment it was still exciting for him. At that moment, he looked at it as, `Wow. People are into our band. We're in Boston, not Seattle, and it's happening here.' From that moment on things were never really the same for them."

Kates: "Kurt wasn't easy. He had to be one of the smartest people I've ever known. He was a complex guy. Humor was more a part of what he was about than he's remembered for. I don't know about the band, but I know that Kurt would have continued to do things that were significant. It wouldn't have been the same; Nirvana's sound was getting tired for him. I know he was into trying things that weren't as loud, and that, to me, was really exciting. If you think about what kind of mark he left in a really short amount of time -- a guy like that, there would have been all kinds of things coming out of him in these past 10 years."

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com.