The story of Nirvana is about as famous as they come. A band formed by high school friends Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic, they took years to iron out their sound. After making waves on the underground, drummer Chas Channing left and was replaced by Dave Grohl, the missing piece of the puzzle.
What ensued after the former Scream drummer joined was Nirvana taking the world by storm with their 1991 sophomore album Nevermind. It kicked off the grunge tidal wave, made guitar bands cool again, and reset the course of popular culture ad infinitum. Tragically, the group ended when Cobain took his own life in 1994, only months after their dark third album, In Utero, arrived in September of the previous year.
People often forget that after Nirvana formed in 1987, they had a cast of ephemeral band members. Before Channing’s stint between 1988 and 1990, they’d had numerous drummers, including Aaron Burckhard, Dave Foster and Melvins powerhouse Dale Crover. Furthermore, the elemental 1990 single ‘Sliver’, which acted as a bridge between their 1989 debut Bleach and what was to come, featured Mudhoney drummer Dan Peters.
Yet, aside from the subplot surrounding Channing, the most intriguing supporting cast member of Nirvana’s saga is guitarist Jason Everman. When their debut album Bleach was stuck in production hell due to label Sub Pop’s oversight and the band’s artistic misgivings, it was Everman who saved them. He was a fan of the takes of the record the band had already captured with Crover, so he fronted the $606.17 producer Jack Endio billed them for 30 hours of his time.
Everman then joined Nirvana in February 1989 as the second guitarist and is even credited on the album sleeve, although he did not perform on it. Later, Novoselic would state that it was a means of the band making their new member feel welcome. In the summer of 1989, he toured with the group on their first national stint supporting Bleach, with one performance heard on the live bootleg album Trust No-One. He can also be viewed in their iconic in-store session at Los Angeles’ Rhino Records from June of that year.
Unfortunately, things ended abruptly for Everman and Nirvana. Indicating just how fast-paced the times were, the last few dates of the tour were cancelled due to an increasingly fractious relationship with the guitarist over sonic preferences. In a situation cloaked by a touch of mystery, the band claimed they fired him, with him later maintaining that he quit. Either way, he was out within months.
Everman has a pretty remarkable story. In the fall of that year, he joined fellow Seattle grunge pioneers Soundgarden following founding member and bassist Hiro Yamamoto’s departure. Following his leave, he played in OLD and Mind Funk, the latter a shortlived supergroup. Then, in one of the most astounding turnarounds in music history, in 1994, he joined the US Army as a Ranger and eventually became a Green Beret, serving tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When speaking to WOZQ in 1990, Cobain shed light on Everman’s departure the previous summer. Unsurprisingly, he maintained that they ejected him. Echoing the popular narrative, he outlined the creative differences that arose: “We kicked him out, ’cause he didn’t like to do the songs that we like. He wants to play slow, heavy grunge, and we want to write pop songs.”
Asked if he was sick of the emergent grunge sound, Cobain said he was, explaining: “There’s only so much distortion you can take. A lot of bands now are going in different directions and writing different styles of songs. Everyone’s experimenting. We don’t want to milk the sound as far as we possibly can.”
In his typically confusing approach to interviews – which would only become more pronounced as time and fame wore on – Cobain erroneously claimed that the band had only gone through one member change, Everman. That was quite clearly not the case.
Despite the fallout, Cobain described the former guitarist as “a really nice guy”. He said the group really liked him when they met him a couple of months before Bleach was made. At the time, he was debating whether he should concentrate more on the craft of singing and not worry about playing the guitar as much, so they took the plunge and invited him in.
However, Cobain caveated his point by saying that this experimentation wasn’t the greatest idea they’d had and that Nirvana had to practice more because of it. Alas, it’s decisions such as these that pushed them further towards their later success. As they say, you have to break a few eggs.
