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Krist Anthony Novoselic was born on May 16, 1965, in
Compton, California. His parents, Krist and Maria, were Croatian
immigrants, Mr. Novoselic (the name means "new settler" in
Croatian) moved to the United States in 1963, his wife-to-be the
following year. They set up house in Gardena, California, and
Mr. Novoselic got a job driving a truck for Sparklets drinking
water. After moving around to a series of apartments with Chris
and his younger brother Robert, they got a modest house and then
another, nicer one in 1973 when Chris's sister Diana was born.
"Robert and I were kind of big boys and we used to get into
trouble," says Chris of his preteen years. "Slash tires, stuff
like that. My dad would just have to whip us, because thats all
he knew how to do. We were scared of him. But it wasn't like he
was an abuser--I don't think he abused us at all. It's not like
he would slap us for anything. It was action and reaction.
"Like Robert, he got glasses and the first day he got his
glasses, he busted 'em," Chris Continues. "That's just Robert,
We'd just do shit like that. Go throw rocks at houses, throw
rocks at cars. There was a time when vandalism was really cool,
We really got into vandalism. Throwing eggs..."
Chris says he and his brother straightened out by the time
the family moved to Aberdeen in 1979, when Chris was fourteen.
Property values in Southern California were getting too high for
the Novoselic family and they could get a nice house for a little
money in Aberdeen. Besides, there were lots of other Croatian
families in the area. Mr. Novoselic got a job as a machinist at
one of the town's many lumber mills.
Aberdonians wore leather tennis shoes and elephant flares,
while Chris sported (deck shoes and straight-leg Levi's. You
were a geek if you wore straight-leg pants. "Three years later,"
says Chris, "everybody was wearing straight-leg pants. And I
suffered for nothing."
Chris was into bands like Led Zeppelin, Devo, Black Sabbath,
and Aerosmith while his peers were into Top Forty, perhaps
because that was all the local radio station played.
By June of l980, Chris's parents got so worried about his
depression that they sent him to live with relatives in Croatia,
Chris. had picked up Croatian "around the house," and is still
fluent in it. He loved living, there--he made lots of friends
and the schools were, excellent. He even heard something there
called "punk rock," and discovered the Sex Pistols, the Ramones,
and even some Yugoslavian punk bands. It didn't make too much of
a dent, however. "It was just music to me." Chris recalls. "It
didn't really mean anything" to me--it was just music that I
liked." After a year, his parents called him back home.
"I was just in a weird limbo." Chris says. He began
drinking and smoking pot heavily. "I've always been a big
drinker." says Chris, "When I drink, I just don't stop. I like
to drink because you're in some weird cartoon land where anything
goes. Your vision is blurry and nothing and everything makes
sense. It's crazy. It's a different reality and a different
world of consciousness."
Chris became well known on the party circuit. "You'd go to
parties and people would be like 'Hey, Novie!'" says Matt Lukin.
"They always knew him as the big, wacky guy because he, was
always doing weird things. They just thought he was kind of
weird. He'd go to parties and jump around."
He had some people to hang out with, but he was hard pressed
to call them friends. "I hung out with them because I had no
where else to go," says Chris. "It was kind of odd and and
uncomfortable." He finally got a job at the local Taco Bell and
threw himself into work, working every night and not socializing,
just saving money. By senior year of high school, he had bought
a car, some stereo speakers, and a guitar. He look some lessons
along with his brother Robert and told his teacher, Warren
Mason--the same guy who taught Kurt that he really wanted to play
the blues. He quit after a few months and then woodshedded
intensively in his bedroom, patiently working out the licks to
old B.B. King records with bis brother.
Around this time Chris's brother Robert brought his friend
Kurt Cobain over to the Novoselic house. When Kurt asked about
the racket emanating from the upstairs stereo, Robert replied,
"Oh, thats my brother Chris, he listens to punk rock." Kurt
thought that was very cool and filed the information away.
Chris graduated from high school in 1983. Soon after, his
parents got divorced. It was a rough enough time as it was, but
he also had some plastic surgery done on his face--doctor's cut a
small section of bone out of Chris's jaw and moved some teeth
forward to correct a severe underbite ("I looked like 'Jay Leno,"
he says).
Chris's jaw was wired shut for six weeks. He still went out
to parties, except he had to carry a pair of wire cutters with
him in case he threw up or something got caught in his throat.
"He'd go out and get all fucked up." Lukin recalls. "and he'd be
puking and it would be draining through his wires. He said he
never did have to cut them, but all the food was like milkshakes
anyway, no solid food. Still, it was somewhat reckless of him."
"Then the swelling, went down." says Chris, "and I had a
new face."
One day during his senior year in high school, he had been
walking behind two junior girls in the hall hall who were raving
about the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols.
"Yeah, they're really great!" he piped up. Shelli remembered him
as a "class clown-type guy, always joking." They talked a little
and made friends.
Shelli dropped out her senior year and took a job at
McDonald's and got her own apartment on Market Street, across
from the fire department. On her way to work, she would walk
past the Foster Painting company where Chris worked and she would
talk to him. She got his phone number and started calling him
up. They had a lot in common--Shelli had been an odd-ball in
school, too--and by March 1985, they had started hanging out as
friends at Shelli's apartment, listening to punk rock records and
going to shows. Soon they started going out.