Teacher shares 1991 interview with Nirvana's Kurt Cobain

A physics teacher in London, Ont. has shared a 1991 interview with Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain.

"By all metrics, I think he was an absolutely brilliant musician and 100 per cent inspiring for me,” Roberto Lorusso told CTV London. “People miss him, and for good reason, because he was a great artist."

The Sept. 20, 1991 interview happened less than four days before the release of Nirvana’s sophomore album, Nevermind -- a record that would fuel the grunge rock band’s imminent stardom and make them a voice for Generation X.

Back then, Lorusso was a budding musician himself and student host at Western University’s campus radio station.

"Nirvana wasn't huge at that point, so I hadn’t heard any of the new record," Lorusso, who was 21 at the time, recalled. “(I had) no idea that it was going to be such a meteoric rise of the artist at the time, but nonetheless for me, it was a big deal and I was remarkably nervous."

Lorusso’s nerves are definitely palpable in the nine-minute interview, which took place backstage before a show at Toronto’s storied Opera House venue. Their conversation covers everything from the then-burgeoning rock legend’s opinions on rap music to signing to a major record label -- a deal, Cobain claims, “left us with about $20,000 to buy equipment. I don't have a place to live at this moment.”

“I’m getting really bored with the same questions all the time,” Cobain adds at one point. “You know, it’s understandable… We don’t have much of an image, so there’s not much story behind our band, and so what people can grasp, you know, they base their interview off of that.”

Despite that, Cobain is still gracious enough to record a station I.D. for Lorusso: “You're listening to Left Wing Radio, 94.7... Radio Western… And this is Kurt from Nirvana.”

Although fame and fortune was on Cobain’s immediate horizon, Lorusso still remembers the musician -- who publicly struggled with drug addiction and mental health issues -- as troubled. Cobain would die of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in April 1994.

"Maybe what I saw was actually what I thought I saw, and that was maybe a sort of a deeper melancholy,” Lorusso said.

The interview ends with Lorusso asking Cobain about major future plans.

“Whatever, I don’t know,” Cobain replied. “Televisions out the window, red snapper, fire extinguishers, sparklers, fireworks.”

With a report from CTV London’s Sean Irvine

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