Gary James' Interview With Kurt Cobain's Teenage Friend
David Portnow



Imagine if you will, knowing someone who is on the verge of stardom, someone who is not quite there, but moving up fast. David Portnow was in such a position. As publisher of Subway magazine, a publication which this writer used to contribute to, David Portnow knew Kurt Cobain. David Portnow spoke with us about his friendship with Kurt Cobain.

Q - David, you knew Kurt Cobain. How well did you know him?

A - I knew Kurt very well. I talked to him probably when we were both, I don't know what his exact age was, but we were very close in age. He used to live in Aberdeen and I used to live in Seattle. We'd speak like every two or three nights.

Q - When did you first meet him?

A - I first met him in Tacoma, (Washington). I don't remember the name of the club. He was acting as kind of a roadie for The Melvins, or he was kind of hanging our with The Melvins. He and I had already been talking on the phone for quite some time. That's when I first met him. He was an interesting cat in that when I first met him he wasn't on any drugs. Well, he might have been on marijuana or acid, but he certainly wasn't on heroin.

Q - Did you ever see Nirvana performing in clubs?

A - I saw Nirvana many times. I had a friend in the band named Jason Everman, who was actually a room mate of mine. And this guy had an interesting story. He was in Nirvana and Soundgarden for their first records. He fished in Alaska and every time it came up fishing season he'd quit these great bands. (laughs)

Q - What did you think of Nirvana when you saw them? Did you think these guys have a different sound and they're going to go places?

A - I had been into both Punk and Metal at the time. I didn't know what Grunge was. The Melvins and Green River were starting up. I didn't even know the term Grunge. I didn't think of them as Grunge. I thought they had a really good sound. To me, I thought it was Metal. I was putting out Punk and Metal at the time. (Note: David Portnow had his own record label) I did try to sign Nirvana, which is actually detailed on page one of his diaries that are published.

Q - I'm going to get to that in a minute. But first, what kind of a guy was Kurt Cobain? What was his personality like?

A - We had talked on the phone. I'd met him seven or eight times at various shows. He was a young kid. I recall smoking pot with him. He was actually genuinely a nice guy. (laughs) He wasn't an ass hole. I mean, he was really a nice kid. I knew him as a teenager and he was still basically in school.

Q - You tried to sign Nirvana to your record label. Are we talking Pig Records?

A - My current record label is called Pig. At the time I had two record labels, Subcore and Ever Rat. I'm not sure if I was trying to sign him to Subcore or Ever Rat. Whichever one he mentions in the diary is the one I was trying to sign him to. Oddly, he was also talking about signing with Alchemy, which was Victor Hayden, who was in Captain Beefheart and lived with me the last thirty years. We were kind of competing against each other. Kurt made the right choice. I don't know if it was his choice. I think the first record came out on Sub Pop (Records), which was able to do a hell of a lot more for him than I would've been able to, or Victor. I don't know if they would've achieved the same success had they been on my label. I did try to sign them.

Q - Why didn't Nirvana sign with your label?

A - I was talking to him very early on. It was just one of those things that never really worked out. We had many discussions about it. Sadly, it didn't happen. I wish it did. (laughs) My financial status would've been quite a bit different. I never did try to sign Soundgarden, but I put on many, many Subway magazine or Ever Rat shows that did feature Soundgarden.

Q - Did Kurt ever read Subway magazine?

A - You bet! I sent him every issue. That's when I knew Kurt, when I had Subway when I was younger. I still knew him when I was older, but we didn't talk much.

Q - I'm just wondering if Kurt Cobain read one of my interviews in Subway.

A - Probably. I've read just about everything about Kurt. We might have talked about you. We're going back thirty years. (laughs)

Q - Doesn't it take a lot of money to start a record label?

A - It certainly does take some money. That's the worst thing about a record company. It takes a lot of money. I had Subway magazine and our slogan was "Ride The Subway Express To Hell", and I was very happy that you wrote for it. Actually, one of my favorite interviews in the magazine was the interview you did with Stephen Davis, author of Hammer Of The Gods. So, I had the magazine. The magazine did Metal Meltdown Volume One. I was also managing bands and getting them signed. I had Enemy, which I got signed to Dutch East India. I was doing a lot of that. I kind of decided I wanted to do my own record label. So, I started Subcore Records, which got off to a bang with The Accused, The Dehumanizers and State Of Confusion. I had a pressing and distribution deal with Relativity. I put out a seven inch "Kill A Guzzo" record by The Dehumanizers and The Accused "Return Of Martha Splatterhead", which is rated as one of the Top 25 Thrash albums of all time. So, we put those two out and that's kind of how I got the money and the start.

Q - You not only own a record label, but you're a producer as well?

A - Yeah.

Q - Do you believe Kurt Cobain was murdered?

A - No. I'm not saying he wasn't murdered. They got most of it right in that English pager (The Sun), but I never said he was murdered. They misquoted me a little bit. I did not say he was either murdered or it was assisted suicide. By my book it's impossible for him to have killed himself.

Q - Who would want to murder Kurt Cobain? For what reason?

A - Well, a lot of people have implied that I said Courtney Love. I never said that. There is nothing in my research that leads me to believe Courtney is more guilty than anybody else in America. Anybody could have killed him. Once again, I'm not saying he was killed. It was either assisted suicide or murder. One of the two.

Q - In this Sun article (from July 3^rd, 2019) the name El Duce is mentioned. He was in a group that was signed to one of your labels?

A - Yeah. So El Duce was the front man of The Mentors. They had two big records on Metal Blade and they had some records on Mystic. I did one with 'em, "Sex, Drugs And Rock 'n' Roll" and the El Duce broke off and went solo. His death is also questioned. I don't see any foul play there. He was hit by a train three days after the filming of the movie Kurt And Courtney.

Q - By Nick Broomfield.

A - Yeah. He was interviewed in the movie and I think he said he was paid $50,000 to kill Kurt Cobain.

Q - And you just have to ask yourself, who would admit to something like that?

A - Well, El Duce, certainly. El Duce certainly knew all the players. But El Duce, number one was not the smartest guy. Two, he was a hard core alcoholic. And three, El Duce would say or do anything to get press.

Q - Did Kurt know El Duce?

A - He did. So did Courtney. Let's put it this way, everybody in the Punk scene in L.A. and Seattle knew El Duce. He's quite a famous character. There's a company that's making masks of him now.

Q - El Duce showed you a lot of money, but never told you where it came from?

A - Yeah. So, El Duce actually made probably $80,000 to $90,000 a year from his music, but he drank and snorted it all up and prostituted it away. He was kind of a homeless guy. His mother actually lived in Seattle, but he wasn't allowed to stay with her when he was drunk or high, which was pretty much all the time. He called me up and said he was coming to Seattle. Whenever he came here I would drive him around. At the end of the night I would either drop him at his Mom's house or there's a famous troll under the bridge here, the Aurora Bridge, that he'd go sleep behind if he was drunk. He'd even go to the extent of having me hiding liquor behind the bushes of his Mom's house. (laughs) He was a hard core alcoholic.

Q - You would not let him stay at your house?

A - I would not let him stay at my house. I've had many, many artists stay at my house. El Duce and GG Allin were two that I would not.

Q - Why would that have been?

A - Because of their history, the things they did. El Duce would have foul strippers doing foul things on stage.

Q - You were afraid then if they came to your house a wild party would ensue and the police would be called?

A - Well, that would be kind of nice, but I was like seventeen at the time. At no point in my life would I let El Duce stay at my house, nor GG Allin. It's sad they're both dead. They were both interesting, unique kind of shock artists. Bands on tour still stay at my house quite a bit. But I was driving El Duce around and I had given him a thousand dollar advance. He bought, do you remember those trolls with the wild hair?

Q - I remember them.

A - Yeah. We went to a store called Chubby And Tubby and bought a little bit of camping equipment and they had these troll slippers and he bought like thirty pairs. We went to Hickory Farms where he bought salamis and pepperoni so he had something to eat. We went to the liquor store, which I was surprised he only bought five bottles of Wild Turkey, but then again he had to get everything to fit in his backpack. Then we went to the train station and bought a train ticket and I was gonna pick him up at his Mom's house the next day and drive him to the train station. I picked him up and he had a few errands to do. I did these things for him, one, because he couldn't, and I think I sold seven thousand copies at the time (of the record), which was quite good. And today, I think that number is closer to 14,000 or 15,000. The second day I pick him up and we're supposed to go to the train station, he had a few errands. He wanted to stop at a house. He came out of the house like twenty minutes later and he's bragging about this wad of cash he has. He shows it to me and says it's $5,000. I've also been misquoted as saying it was $50,000. No, it was $5,000. I didn't count it. He said it was $5,000. It was a stack and I kind of took his word on it, mostly $20 bills, and it was a huge stack. Then he told me at the time it was an advance to kill Kurt Cobain. This is all as we're driving away. The house was somewhere in the Green Lake district of Seattle. I believe that would be west of Aurora. I don't remember the exact house. But yeah, we're driving away. I took him to lunch. But yeah, he's telling me it was an advance to kill Kurt Cobain. Now, I didn't take him serious. I wouldn't take El Duce serious about most things and most things he said were made up in his head at the time. I had assumed it was something to do with a drug deal. I had assumed that until that movie we mentioned earlier, Kurt And Courtney, came out. Once again I believe he said it was $50,000, which is a long stretch from the $5,000 I saw, and three days later he was dead. I mentioned this after I saw the movie to a few people and a couple of people over the years have interviewed me. So, I did see a lot of cash that El Duce said was a $5,000 advance to kill him. Another reason I didn't take it serious was I knew El Duce would never kill Kurt Cobain. El Duce may have been a drunk and had all sorts of problems, but he's more like a Teddy Bear than the type who would kill people.

Q - It all goes back to what you said about El Duce saying anything to the press.

A - Yes, El Duce will say anything for publicity. When I saw that movie I'm still questioning, did he say that just to be in the movie? The only connection I have is that he did say that to me and I did see the money. The other connection I have to the case is I was down at the King Country Records, and I've got all the police reports. I got everything at the time. I don't have them anymore. I'm assuming they're still public domain. I've called the Seattle Police Department many times, saying they need to reopen the case.

Q - You read two different coroners' reports that stated Kurt was passed out before the bullet went through his head. I've never heard that before. If that's true, it would seemingly be impossible for Kurt to have pulled the trigger, right?

A - Well, I'm going off a very old memory. I believe there was two coroners' reports. I am pretty sure that in those reports it says he was passed out on heroin at the time the bullet went through his head. If I also recall correctly, the angle at which the bullet went through his head, he couldn't have pulled it himself. I gotta be careful what I say, but I believe there were two different coroners and I believe both of them said the angle of the bullet and the amount of heroin in his system, he was out at the time he was killed.

Q - Was that conjecture on the part of the coroners or factually based?

A - I don't know. Those were licensed King Country coroners. I got to see the reports again. The coroners did not think it was suicide from what I read. They seemed to think there was more to it.

Q - What should happen is any questions surrounding this case should be answered by going to the people in question and clearing the air so Kurt Cobain can be remembered for the great artist he was.

A - I want to go back to Kurt and the great artist he was. Let's not forget he was a hard core drug addict. Really fucked up. When we celebrate these histories and musicians there was a lot of dark stuff behind Kurt near the end. Fantastic musician. We should support him, but he should also be an example of heroin is no good. Unfortunately a lot of youth have picked up heroin because he did it. I think he was one of the greatest artists ever.

Q - I think he was the last of the great, original, American artists.

A - That's a very good way to put it.

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