When Krist Novoselic announced that he’d be performing at this Tuesday’s Nevermind tribute concert at the Experience Music Project in Seattle, some hoped for a reunion of the surviving members of Nirvana‘s 1991 lineup?but it was not to be (although PROMO ALERT thanks to VH1 Classic we will be premiering unseen 1991 concert film Nirvana: Live At The Paramount Friday, September 23 at 11PM ET/PT on VH1, VH1 Classic, and Palladia). But Novoselic, Dave Grohl, and producer Butch Vig did reunite recently, for at least the second time in the last year (the first was in the studio for the recording of “I Should Have Known” for Foo Fighters album Wasting Light), to talk to Jeff Weiss for Britain’s NME.

“My life was split in two by Nevermind,” Grohl tells the magazine, noting that he doesn’t remember the recording sessions or album release that well?and recalls plenty of time after its release but before it really broke: “In our own little world, things stayed the same for a while.” Of course, all three spend the interview alternately downplaying the content of the album as particularly revolutionary (chalking its success up to timing and pop sensibilities) and giving any credit for what might be special about Nevermind to the late Kurt Cobain. “You can’t forget what an artist Kurt Cobain was,” Novoselic insists. “He would draw, he would do sculpture, and he would write songs. He was really gifted.” (When later asked what would have happened if Cobain had not died, he only responds, “You can’t downplay what happened at the end, so that’s a really hard question to answer. It’s just too monumental.”)

Butch Vig, who would later form Garbage, mostly stays quiet (though if you’re interested in his comments on the album, check out the documentary Classic Albums: Nirvana: Nevermind, in which his extraordinarily obvious-in-retrospect observations about his production technique belie his real talent as a producer). Of course, there was little to add about the experience of recording because, as Vig reports here, “There was no drama.”
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“Rehab” singer Amy Winehouse was found dead in her London apartment today. The cause has not yet been determined. For those who have followed her longstanding battle with depression, eating disorders and substance abuse (a constant source of fodder for tabloids), this sad news may not come as a huge surprise. In August of 2007, Amy came close to death after overdosing on a cocktail of heroin, ecstasy and cocaine – and later that year was found wondering barefoot outside in nothing but a bra and jeans. These incidents were preceded by Amy’s marriage in May of 2007 to Blake Fielder-Civil, who was quoted by a British tabloid as saying he introduced Amy to heroin and crack cocaine. Earlier that same year, Amy performed for VH1 Unplugged. Blake and Amy divorced in 2009.

The singer dominated the 2008 Grammys with five awards for Back to Black, her sophomore album, winning in the categories of Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Known for her singular voice and unorthodox retro look (tattoos, extreme cat-eye makeup and beehive hairdo), Amy is said to have paved the way for artists who wouldn’t previously have fit into the mainstream. Lady Gaga, for one, famously told AOL: “Because of Amy, very strange girls like me go to prom with very good-looking guys. She’s a different kind of woman. I don’t believe that what I do is very digestible, and somehow Amy was the flu for pop music.” Regardless of whether this is true, Winehouse certainly seemed to pave the way for fellow British songbirds Adele and Duffy, both of whom share Amy’s ’60s soul vibe.

In June, YouTube videos surfaced of an intoxicated and discombobulated-looking Winehouse forgetting her own lyrics and getting booed off stage in the first stop of a European tour, which subsequently had to be canceled. Amy was reportedly working on a third album. She joins a long list of musicians who have died at 27. A phenomenon known as The 27 Club, Brian Jones, Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain are among those who died at the same age. Let her legend begin.

Today marks the seventeenth anniversary of the death of Kurt Cobain. The music he and his bandmates in Nirvana created helped to catapult the indie rock underground of the 1980s into the public spotlight and forge a new rock mainstream, inspiring and influencing millions of listeners.

But Cobain, who never found an effective way to cope with that spotlight, would likely prefer to be remembered as a person, not as an icon of sadness, forever moping over his guitar on the set of Unplugged:

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