We left Reno in a snowstorm. Nevada Neil, Steve Aramini, Earl Siamundo, and me — four guys who were deep into SoCal beach culture music, the skateboarding and snowboarding world, the X Games aesthetic before the X Games existed. Sublime. RHCP. That whole California coastal energy. We were not, at that point, what you would call grunge people. We drove over Donner Pass in the kind of weather that makes you question decisions, pointed the car toward San Francisco, and went anyway. Because it was the Chili Peppers. You went.
The Cow Palace in Daly City is a hulking old arena that smells like concrete and livestock and decades of spilled beer. General admission, $27.50. Sixteen thousand people. We did what you did in those days — a little front-loading in the parking lot, got ourselves right — and went in ready.
Pearl Jam
We didn't really know Pearl Jam yet. Nobody in our crew did. They were the opening act, some band out of Seattle, and we were there for the headliner. But then Eddie Vedder walked out and started climbing things. The set was short — maybe thirty minutes — and by the end of it he was scaling the lighting rig and launching himself into the crowd. Stone Gossard teased a few notes of Smells Like Teen Spirit before they finished, then deadpanned into the mic: "Just remember, we played it first."
That set would eventually change all of our lives. We just didn't know it yet.
Nirvana
Then Nirvana. Kurt came out in his signature green sweater, hair reddish-pink, looking like a man running on very little sleep and a lot of everything else. Nevermind had come out in September — same day as Blood Sugar Sex Magik, same day as Ten — and by New Year's Eve it had outsold the headlining Chili Peppers four to one. The opening act had technically become the biggest band in the world sometime between when the tickets were printed and when the show started.
The mosh pit ran from the stage to the back wall. Rolling Stone later described it as people being thrown in the air like clods of dirt caught up in a live minefield. When Smells Like Teen Spirit hit midset, the crowd stopped being a crowd and became something else entirely. We were in it.
The Main Event
Then midnight. Then the Chili Peppers.
Flea appeared first — lowered to the stage upside down, tied by his ankles from the ceiling, which is exactly the kind of entrance that only makes sense if you're Flea. Two fire-eaters. Naked dancers painted in Day-Glo. Sonic booms at midnight that rattled the whole building.
Somehow we had made our way down to the floor and pushed up to the front. I remember locking eyes with Anthony Kiedis at some point — I was howling for True Men Don't Kill Coyotes, probably a little unhinged, definitely committed. Anthony looked at us the way you look at people who are maybe too into it. But they played Uplift Mofo Party Plan and that worked just fine.
Things got increasingly out of control from there, in the best possible way. During the encore — Yertle the Turtle — Eddie Vedder came back out and stage-dived again, because one wasn't enough. Anthony did a full handstand during a Flea bass solo. The Grateful Dead were playing Oakland that same night, two miles away, holding their traditional New Year's Eve crown. Rolling Stone later wrote that the three bands at the Cow Palace had overshadowed them completely — that a changing of the guard had happened, right there, on New Year's Eve 1991.
"Even the most casual observer would have had no trouble deciding which side of youth culture would be more fun to belong to." — Rolling Stone, February 1992
The Aftermath
Afterwards we needed to find the car. This turned out to be more complicated than expected. We walked the wrong way down Octavia for a while — a long while — in the general direction of nowhere useful. San Francisco at 2am on New Year's Day is its own particular kind of beautiful chaos. We eventually found the car. The next morning. Probably for the best.
We drove back over Donner Pass into Nevada, hungover and hoarse, the Sierra Nevada white in every direction. I don't remember much of that drive. I remember the show.
It was an epic time to be alive. Twenty-one years old, New Year's Eve, three of the most important bands in rock history on the same stage, $27.50 general admission, and a snowstorm both ways. Some nights you don't know you're living through something historic until years later. That one you knew in real time.