About this item
I Found My Friends re-creates the story of Nirvana, from its earliest days in 1987 to its sudden end seven years later, through the words of the musicians and producers who played and interacted with the band. Soulsby interviewed over 200 musicians from bands that played and toured with Nirvana, including well-known alternative bands such as Hole, Mudhoney, Meat Puppets, Buzzcocks, Butthole Surfers, and the Jesus Lizard, as well as countless others from the alternative rock revolution. Readers get a more personal history of Nirvana than ever before, including Nirvana's consideration of nearly a dozen previously unmentioned candidates for drummer before settling on David Grohl; a recounting of Nirvana's famously disastrous South American shows from never-before-heard sources; and recollections from their first manager, who hosted the band's first ever gig.
About the Author
http://www.nirvana-legacy.com
Back in January 2012 I saw a contest in a magazine; a publisher open to record-related book proposals. The little angel on one shoulder said "you could do that," while the demon on the other said "yeah, right, go on then..." I thought it was time to tell the demon where to go - so I gave it a shot...And I wasn't selected - "you're up against people who have been writing about music for decades," polite and true. But I already had so much material flooding out I kept going: a friend's little press put out my first book - 'Dark Slivers: Seeing Nirvana in the Shards of Incesticide', an evaluation of Nirvana's 1992 Incesticide compilation.
This led onto writing a quite extensive blog about Nirvana: nirvana-legacy.com. I wound up curious about all the little unknown bands Nirvana played with 1987-1994 and began tracking them down. I interviewed 210 musicians from 170 bands to create "I Found My Friends: the Oral History of Nirvana" (St Martin's Press, 2015) . I then worked with Soul Jazz Records on the double album "No Seattle: Forgotten Sounds of the North West Grunge Era" (Soul Jazz, 2014) , a compilation of rare music from that era. I was then asked to contribute to a series called 'musicians in their own words' for which I sourced rare, significant, revealing interviews with Kurt Cobain. "Cobain on Cobain: Interviews & Encounters" (Chicago Review Press, 2016) represented the end of my focus on Nirvana after four years, three books and over a million words on the blog - what more could I say?
I moved on. My next work celebrated an artist whose enduring creativity and ability to expand his reach and range, without pastiche or dilution inspire me: Thurston Moore. "We Sing A New Language: the Oral Discography of Thurston Moore" (Omnibus Press, 2017) provided a narrative built around the thoughts and memories of over 150 musicians who worked with Moore on over 200 of his releases outside of Sonic Youth.
My latest volume is "Swans: Sacrifice and Transcendence - the Oral History" (Jawbone Press, 2018) . Why Swans? Again, I think it's the life philosophy that awes me: how does one stay creative across an entire lifetime without repeating oneself, ceasing to strive for the amazing, always creating art rather than just 'product'? My feeling is that Michael Gira, Jarboe and a number of the 30 individuals to be official members of Swans 1981-1997/2010-2018 have found answers...
My desire, ultimately, is to never write about anything that is not a mark of respect to something I consider exceptional, that I do not find profoundly meaningful. I have a normal day job and there's next to no money in writing - and a few extra pennies would never make me devote the long night-time hours and weekends to making these works happen if I could not fi
