With 100,000 fans packed into Sao Paulo’s grand Estádio Cícero Pompeu de Toledo on the evening of January 16, 1993, the biggest show of Nirvana’s career should have been a cause for celebration, an affirmation of the band’s status as the pre-eminent act at the vanguard of a new rock revolution. In reality, depending upon your perspective, the Seattle trio’s performance at the Hollywood Rock festival was either one of the greatest punk rock shows ever or a pitiful display of petulance from a band whose view of their audience often skirted perilously close to contempt.
Onstage, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl knew that something was amiss from the moment Kurt Cobain stumbled through the opening riff of School, the set’s opening number, at quarter pace. Nirvana’s frontman’s decision to mix alcohol with painkillers pre-show had ensured that he was, in Grohl’s recollection, “high as fuck.”
