The night the 'Nirvana rocket ship' took off in Seattle

Nirvana was Seattle famous when they took the stage at the Paramount Theatre on October 31, 1991. The band was on the verge of disrupting the music industry, but it was not as well known outside of the Northwest music scene. That changed, quickly, after the Paramount show. A year later, Nirvana performed in front of 18,000 people in Seattle.

But according to one local biographer, it was "more important that you were at the Paramount than any other Nirvana show probably in history."

A 30th anniversary screening of that concert was shown at the Paramount Theatre on Dec. 12, 2021.

KUOW’s Kim Malcolm spoke with Charles R. Cross, author of Heavier than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain. He was present for the Nirvana concert on October 31, 1991.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Charles R. Cross: I was in Row G, which I think translates to the ninth row, seat three. It was loud. It didn't really matter where you sat because almost as soon as the lights went down for Nirvana, everybody rushed the stage and it was crazy stage diving

Thankfully, I did not have any major injuries at that show, but I have to admit that there were multiple times during the event that I thought, I'm going to get hurt here. I might have actually moved back a little bit at some point because it was that out of control

Nevermind had only come out six weeks prior to that, and Nevermind was a slow build. It didn't actually go to number one in the charts until the early part of 1992, in January. So in the fall of 1991, Nirvana were stars in Seattle, but pretty much stars nowhere else. The Paramount ended up being the single biggest venue they played on that fall Nevermind tour.

It was a huge thing in Seattle. There probably never was a show in the history of Seattle that so many people wanted to be at that weren't at. The irony is that the show was sold out, that's what the marquee said, but my friend Carl went with me and he bought a ticket for $10 outside. It was not a hard ticket to get. It had only sold out right before the day of the show. So, you could have gotten in for 10 bucks to see Nirvana on Halloween 1991.

I think the other part of it being legendary is just that the expectations of Nirvana later on changed the relationship that fans had to who they were. In 1991 in the fall, you were on the Nirvana rocket ship if you were at that show, and it was a limited group of people that were able to see that rocket ship take off. They played in 1992 at the Seattle Center Colosseum before 18,000 people, but it was more important that you were at the Paramount than any other Nirvana show probably in history.

There are a couple of people I talked to who bought tickets for this that were too young then. For them, getting a chance to see this film in that place is essentially as close as they're going to get to actually seeing Nirvana, which of course ended with her Cobain's death in 1994.

In some ways, this is trying to put lightning back in a bottle to bring this film back to the place that it was shot, but there is something special about being in that same place once again. I think it every time I walk into the Paramount. I'm sure I will this weekend.

For me, and for many people that were there, the show is a reminder that we really are 30 years older, and that Kurt Cobain has been dead for longer than he ever was alive. But it's also a reminder that there was a point where music felt vital, and it felt like the whole world was being recreated on one night, Halloween 1991, in Seattle's Paramount.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.