Jason Everman shares how Kurt Cobain had trouble letting others contribute musically to Nirvana
“Initially, I thought I was going to be able to contribute to the band creatively, and then it got to the point when I realised that wasn’t going to happen.”
Image: Frank Micelotta Archive / Getty Images
Former Nirvana guitarist Jason Everman has opened up about his struggles with the band’s creative dynamic in a new interview with Joe Rogan.
Everman, who was fired from the grunge band in 1989, the same year he had joined, told Rogan: “With Nirvana, I guess initially when I came onboard Kurt wanted a second guitar player for the live show basically — have a heavier sound live and take some of the responsibility off him so he could concentrate on vocals and that kind of thing.”
“Initially I thought I was going to be able to contribute to the band creatively, and then it got to the point when I realised that wasn’t going to happen. And the same thing happened with Chad [Channing] the drummer, I think.”
“Everyone in the band, including myself, were poor communicators — a lot of passive aggression,” he added. “We were kids.”
As for how working the man Cobain himself was like, Everman said: “On the rare times where we actually rehearsed as a band, which was not a lot, Kurt kind of half-heartedly [asked], ‘Who has ideas?’ and I’d throw a couple of ideas out.”
“And Chad, a very accomplished musician in his own right, would throw some ideas out and then it would just be glossed over and [Kurt] would be like, ‘Well here’s the new song I wrote’ and we’d start learning that.”
“So it was very cursory. He kind of like threw it out there but it wasn’t going to go anywhere.”
Listen to the full podcast below.