About a Girl
And what Chris Cornell means to me
I’m in the process of moving many of my blog posts to Substack from my old website, as well as producing new content. This post was first published on my website just after Chris Cornell died in 2017, and it examines how my experiences in the late 80’s and 90’s shaped who I am now. I have made a few minor changes, and added an additional note at the end. I hope you enjoy it.
Reading Festival 1992
It has been raining heavily all weekend, the sky grey and low, the grass now invisible under large pools of mud. Our clothes are wet, tents are flooded, and people have been reporting to the first aid tent with trench foot. I can smell wood smoke, cannabis, damp earth, and curry.
We stand in the heaving damp crowd, steam rising into the darkness, gazing in anticipation towards the illuminated stage; white light against the dense black of the heavy, cloud filled sky. There are thousands of us pressed together, pushing forward, jostling for position, good natured, excited, drunk, stoned, clutching plastic pint glasses of lager, hurriedly finishing the dregs. We know that in minutes they will be dropped and crushed underfoot, or hurled high overhead, as the surging crowd moves as one once Nirvana appear on stage. We decide to get closer, and edge forward through the densely packed bodies, squeezing into non-existent gaps until we stumble into space, the stage looming large above us. Figures move across it, and guitars emit strange squeals as they are tuned. We become still. We watch. We wait.
It’s a powerful feeling when you find your tribe; the sense of belonging that this manifests is all encompassing, but also grounding. You’ve found your place in the world, and it now makes a little more sense. The Reading Festival in 1992 was the sixth time I’d been, a regular occurrence on the calendar, but my journey to the festival and the sense of belonging that connected me to those people and the friends I went with, started years before, in the late 80’s when I walked into a club called JB’s. I was on the cusp of adulthood and I was thinking how very boring I was, how conventional, predictable, and how unless I did something interesting my life would slide into banality and I would begin my decline into a boring middle age, regretting lost opportunities. This probably sounds dramatic, but I remember it distinctly.
And then JB’s happened
As I pay my entrance fee and push into JB’s I get a weird rush of excitement. I’ve never been anywhere like this before. JB’s is a small squat building on a dishevelled car park behind an abandoned store called Pathfinders. Outside I heard the muffled thump of the bass guitar and drums, but inside the sounds are clearer and I hear a deep voice singing. The corridor beyond the entrance runs alongside the main room. It’s wide, with alcoves for people to stand and talk, and there’s a kiosk at the end selling chips and burgers. We push through groups of people, and I smell patchouli oil as I squeeze past. I’m here with my friend Jen, who follows close behind me. The bar stretches along the back of the main room and it’s crowded at the counter. There’s a band playing on the stage at the far end of the room, the air is smoky, and the floor is sticky with spilt beer. Although the corridor is brightly lit showing the peeling paint and patchy floor, the main room is dark, the corners lost in shadows. Everyone looks different. Interesting. There are punks, hippies, and the odd rocker in the crowd, and they all look unkempt. Some Goths are standing in front of the stage clad in lots of black, paisley shirts, and chelsea boots, and the women and men are wearing bold make-up. They are watching the band, Fields of the Nephilim, but I watch them. Wide-eyed I look around the room at people talking and laughing as they lean against the walls, casually holding cigarettes and beer. It is completely unlike any other club I’ve ever been to. I have come home and found my future all at the same time.
I had found what was to become over the course of the next 10 years, my JB’s family, a term that we all use for that particularly special time in our lives. I was 18 or 19 at this time, and my sister’s boyfriend - who I knew from school - was forming a new band, and he asked me if I wanted to sing, a sort of backing singer, in a sort of punk band. Had I ever wanted to be in a band and sing? No. However I saw this as something I would regret not doing, so I said yes. Soon it seemed that everyone I knew was either in a band or knew someone who was, and I was surrounded by music. One of the first gigs we played was in JB’s. After 2 years, numerous gigs, and a double-life of work and touring, I felt disillusioned. We weren’t playing the type of music I wanted to, and it seems they were disillusioned with me. I left the band, liberated to be out of it, able to immerse myself in Grunge.
Grunge – defined by Wikipedia as a sub-genre of alternative rock which is characterised by a sludgy guitar sound, and in which the performers and fans wear second-hand clothing and look generally unkempt - had an energy that was incredible, the antithesis of other things happening at that time. It was birthed out of the eighties - the big shoulder pads, eighties hair, glossy make-up, Dynasty, Dallas, and all that seemed false and unnatural. In 1987 a band called Green River broke up and former members went on to form Mudhoney, and Soundgarden released the Screaming Life EP. 1988 saw the release of Mudhoney’s Superfuzz Bigmuff EP, and 1989 saw the release of Nirvana’s first album Bleach.
I travelled on the train to London, with my mate Ferg, to see some bands we were just starting to hear about - Mudhoney were headlining, and Soundgarden were supporting (I think) - it may have been Nirvana - sometimes I lose track. And there was a third band whose name escapes me. Regardless, it was brilliant. The gig, like many others, was played in a dark, cave-like venue, where the sounds of soaring guitars bounced off the walls and moved right through me, branding my core. I could smell the excitement; we all knew this was something big, something new. For four years only the initiated knew about these Grunge groups, and then in 1991 Nirvana released Nevermind, Pearl Jam released Ten, Soundgarden Badmotorfinger, Mudhoney Every Good Boy deserves Fudge, and Hole Pretty on the Inside. What a year. I nearly starved because I spent all my money on gigs.
I threw myself into life, wanting to experience everything. These years are a floating mirage of images, places, and people, and my memories of them are mixed up in no particular order, layered one on top of the other -
Being awake all night and seeing the dawn rise in shades of violet and lemon in a cloudless sky over the fields of Glastonbury Festival, a few hundred people straggling across the landscape, as if survivors of an apocalyptic event. Black coffee sweetened with honey warming my hand in a plastic cup, a blanket draped over my shoulders for warmth, my friend Adele saying, “Where can we go now?” Finding a tent with tribal drummers sitting cross legged in the middle, their rhythms moving through my feet and into my heart. We follow the smoke rising on the hill. It drifts lazily from the fires which smoulder in front the teepees in the Greenfields, the air so still, so calm, I feel I am trespassing on sacred ground.
Driving through the Black Mountains in Wales to a free festival, the sky full of cloud, mournful with mist, wind, and steady rain, sinking into the grey and green of the hills which rise menacingly on either side of the road. A man suddenly lurching onto the bonnet of my car, all dreadlocks, boots, and army jacket.
Running unleashed with my friend Jen around the streets of Ludlow, a small market town in Shropshire, both dressed as old blind women, with wild hair, blacked out teeth, and ragged costumes, leading a pantomime donkey, drumming up trade for our small theatre group of nine, all money raised going towards camping and beer.
Turning up at my parent’s house, my mother in despair. My hair is pink, I’m wearing stripy tights, a short skirt, very large jack boots, and a fake leopard skin coat. She rages, “I haven’t brought you up in a lovely house and fed you and sent you to school to have you looking as if you had been dragged up on the streets. What will people think?!” I yell, “I don’t care what anybody else thinks, and neither should you!”
Me dancing wildly on many dance floors in many clubs, shaking my hair, my limbs, my beads and bangles, feeling unfettered.
I marvel at my energy levels, I certainly don’t have them now, because for years I never stopped going out. I survived on sometimes three hours sleep a night, napped in the afternoon, and settled into a weird circadian rhythm in which I would sleep for a day and half every ten days. I did so much I’ve lost track of what I did when. The only thread of normality was my job as a nurse, around which everything else fitted. My aim was to live life to the fullest, as it is meant to be lived; to be grabbed, embraced, and celebrated. Grunge was our source. We dived in and kept swimming to the energy-filled vortex at the centre, and like a dark star it kept us there, entranced, for years.
And for thirty years those musicians have stayed with me; we have grown together. Our rough edges have perhaps smoothed, and that raw energy has ebbed a little, but still the sentiment remains. This brings me to Chris Cornell. Lead singer of Soundgarden, Audioslave, and solo artist. I’ve seen him play with Soundgarden a few times, and also perform his acoustic shows in Wellington, New Zealand. Hearing Jesus Christ Pose for the first time was electrifying. I had goose bumps. I clearly remember thinking, this is what music is supposed to be. Mudhoney’s Touch Me I’m Sick had that same grab-you-by-the-throat energy. While other band’s popularity (for me), have ebbed and flowed, Chris Cornell has been a constant. His quality, sincerity, vulnerability, and that incredible voice, have stepped doggedly along beside me, so to hear of his suicide the other day was devastating.
I have always known what a privileged youth I had. The luck of being in the right time, at the right place, that enabled me to have these fantastic experiences. This weekend has been one of introspection, reflection, celebration, and sadness. RIP Chris Cornell, missing you already xxx.
Reading this again now, February 2025, I am reminded by how much our experiences shape us, and how strongly mine inform my writing. They are there in every sentence, every character, every plot, every mystery, every wonderful myth or legend that I weave into my own stories. My experiences infuse and enrich (I hope) everything I write, even when it’s not apparent in the slightest. I follow my own path, and eschew the obvious, the predictable, and the expected, because, quite honestly, it’s far more fun. I’m sure you think so, too.
Thank you for reading this. I'd love to hear your thoughts or experiences that have shaped you, so please comment below.
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Ah those were the days ! I think I followed a similar musical trajectory, after leaving Art college, though with some variations. I saw Fields of the Nephilim, Sisters of Mercy, Nick Cave and a lot of those late gothic bands play when I was first in London, then got into some weird 60's psychedelic revival stuff and Grunge too, Who knows we may have crossed paths and never knew it! Great fun and don't know how I managed it really - fuelled on late night coffee and stumbling home from the Night Bus to crash for a few hours before work.
Thanks for the memories !
Absolutely loved this. What a time for music.