Ex-Nirvana Bassist Krist Novoselic Discusses Axl Rose Incident At 1992 MTV VMAs In His Seattle Weekly Blog

In this week’s edition of his weekly blog on the Seattle Weekly Web site, former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic discusses the famous incident with Axl Rose at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards. He also writes about tossing his bass into the air and being hit by the bass as it came down at the same VMA show.

Novoselic relates the Axl Rose incident as follows:

I eventually made it to the food service area, where Kurt and Courtney were at a table with their newborn daughter, Frances. They told me that Axl Rose had walked by and Courtney started teasing him. She yelled, “Axl, Axl—you’re the godfather!” Upon hearing this, Axl apparently got very annoyed, walked over to Kurt, and demanded that he keep his woman in line. Kurt turned to Courtney and sarcastically asked his woman to keep in line and left it at that. Axl then split. Of course, Kurt and Courtney were musing over Axl’s response in the context of society’s patriarchal tendencies. My thought was that Rose shouldn’t have gotten bent out of shape. He should have walked over and asked to kiss the baby or something!

On the bass-tossing incident, Novoselic states:

I was now even more shook up. One should take the stage in a good frame of mind, but I wasn’t there. Nirvana gets introduced, and we start playing our prank, then switch into “Lithium.” I’m plugged into some awful bass rig that’s distorting terribly. I can barely hear what I’m playing, and the tone deteriorates into an inaudible mess. Fuck it—time for the bass-toss schtick. Up it goes!!!!! I always try to get good air—I bet I hit over 25 feet, easy! But no matter how high it went, I was not on my game— the only time I’ve ever dropped it was then in front of 300 million people. Ouch! I was fine, but I faked like I was knocked out, perhaps expressing my inner torment over a taxing evening. (Maybe I was just embarrassed.)

To read this week’s edition of Novoselic’s blog on SeattleWeekly.com, click here.

To read an article on the XFM London Web site about Novoselic’s blog, click here.

To watch Nirvana perform “Lithium” at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards (complete with the bass-throwing incident), click below:

I love the bit after the song where Dave Grohl breaks Axl Rose’s balls by saying, “Where’s Axl? Where’s Axl? Hi Axl! Hi Axl!”

To watch Dave Grohl discuss the bass-throwing incident and other topics in a 2001 interview with Dennis Miller, click below:

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