Danny Goldberg will release his new Kurt Cobain book ‘Serving the Servant’ next week, and in a Rolling Stone excerpt, Cobain attending a listening party for Metallica’s black album was discussed. Cobain was ‘brooding’ at the show as he was nervous about the perception of Nevermind.
“Commercial radio and MTV were for the masses; the print medium was for the cult fans. On the last of the band’s trips to New York before Nevermind came out, Janet Billig took Kurt to Madison Square Garden, where Metallica was premiering their new album at a giant listening party.
Kurt liked Metallica and had a good time, yet he was also brooding about how to stave off a possible press backlash to Nirvana’s forthcoming album. Echoing the spin he’d given Montgomery and Thurston, Kurt once again brought up ‘About a Girl,’ reminding Billig that he’d always written melodic songs.
He wanted people to know he hadn’t changed just because he’d signed to a major label, and he knew that Janet was a publicist who was regularly in touch with most of the journalists who covered the indie subculture and that she would give his spin to them. She remembers, ‘Kurt read everything. He was always into straddling between the indie and the mainstream rock worlds, and he pulled it off.'”
