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would pay off. True would later become known as the “godfather of grunge” for his series of articles profiling Sub Pop and the burgeoning Seattle music scene. It may even have been True’s seal of approval that started the train rolling for Nirvana, which he described in an article as “the real thing. No rock star contrivance, no intellectual perspective, no master plan for world domination…. Kurdt [ sic ] Cobain is a great tunesmith, although still a relatively young songwriter. He wields a riff with passion.” The music press descended on the city to see what all the fuss was about, and grunge, as the local music paper The Rocket described it, had soon “surpassed the status of a happening regional scene to become a worldwide fashion craze.”
    The mainstream music industry began to pay attention. A & R reps swept through town, cash and contracts in hand, looking to capitalize on what everyone was sure was the next wave in music. Although a number of critics were decidedly unimpressed with Bleach—Rolling Stone described it as “undistinguished…relying on warmed over 70’s riffs”—others declared Cobain a genius. Kurt was loving every second of it, recalls his best friend, Dylan, himself a struggling musician: “He kept saying they were going to be bigger than the Beatles. Everybody knew they were getting signed, and believe me, they were getting off on it. When you dream of being a rock star and it finally happens, I guess nothing really beats it.”

    When Nevermind, Nirvana’s second album, vaulted past Michael Jackson’s Dangerous in December 1991 to occupy number one on the Billboard charts, music journalists scrambled for an explanation. How could a supposedly alternative band sell three million albums in four months? A year earlier, the band had signed an unprecedented deal with Geffen Records that gave Nirvana complete creative control. It wasn’t the million-dollar advance that other labels were offering, but Kurt and his bandmates were ecstatic. They had been spared the noose of corporate rock they all feared when the majors came courting following the explosion of the Seattle music scene during the late 1980s. They would be able to make the kind of album they wanted to make, not the overproduced commercial “crap” they had so often scorned—at least in the company of their indie rock friends. They could hand in a sixty-minute tape of the band defecating and Geffen would have to release it, Kurt joked. What they actually did instead was go into the studio and record an inspired punk ode to the band’s pop roots, an album that would soon be recognized as a masterpiece. It still sounded like noise to most people over thirty, the feedback and hard-driving guitar drowning out the catchy musical bridges unless you listened closely enough.
    “We got more attention [than other alternative bands] because our songs have hooks and they kind of stick in people’s minds,” said Kurt, attempting to explain the album’s success. Indeed, each member of Nirvana claimed the Beatles as his favorite group, and it showed. But it was the lyrics—on topics as daring and diverse as rape and religious zealotry—that tapped into the angst of an American youth alienated by a decade of Republicans in the White House and the recently fought Gulf War, which some theorize readied a generation for the rebellion of alternative music. The angry, culture-shifting single “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” played ad nauseam on rock radio and MTV, was instantly hailed as the anthem of Generation X, and Cobain its voice. “This was music by, for, and about a whole new group of young people who had been overlooked, ignored or condescended to,” wrote Michael Azerrad.
    Still, this kind of success wasn’t supposed to happen. Had Nirvana sold out? It was a question being asked by many of Kurt’s old punk rock friends, and he was acutely sensitive to it. He had a simple explanation: “We didn’t go to the mainstream, the