Chris Anthony Novoselic

May 16, 1965 –



       Born in Compton California to croatian immigrants, he grew up as one of the trouble makers of his area. Chris and his brother Robert constantly got into trouble with their father and authorities for such things as vandalism, and property damage. Chris continued to live in southern California with his parents and younger brother and sister until 1979 when the family moved to Aberdeen. This change in surroundings was not easy for him to adjust to.

      Bringing with him the southern California styles and attitudes that he had grown into, Chris was outcast by the social scene in Aberdeen and became very self confined at first. Often sitting at home listening to the radio and picking up stations from as far away as Portland OR., due to his house being on the tallest hill of the area.

      During this time Chris became quite depressed and cause his parents to worry, prompting them to send him to Croatia to live with relatives for awhile. Having a little knowledge of the language from around the house, he fit in nicely and made lots of friends and found the schools to be excellent. It was also during this extended stay that he found his first tastes of “punk rock” in the form of The Sex Pistols and The Ramones, as well as some Yugoslavian punk bands.

      On his return to the USA, he began to drink and smoke pot heavily, and quickly became popular on the party circuit because of it. Still without a solid base of friends, he had gained people to hang out with none the less. Chris also turned to taking guitar lessons, from the same teacher as Kurt, but then quit after a few weeks and went back into seclusion in his house and worked out blues songs on his own.

      Working a job at the local Taco Bell proved to be a beneficial part of his life, and through it he made the acquaintance of Buzz Osborne of The Melvins. Osborne turned Chris onto more punk rock, and this time it stuck with him. He began to get more and more into the musical genre, as well as the mentality by starting to read about other kinds of views and political points. A group of him and his friends would drive 2 hours to a nearby city, just to hear punk rock shows. In his senior year of high school, Chris met Shelli while walking in the hallways and commenting on her conversation with another girl about the Sex Pistols. They began to talk and hang out more and more until they eventually started to date.

      Chris and Osborne had worked on projects musically together more and more over time as well, eventually leading to Chris being the lead singer of a Melvins side project called The Stiff Woodies. The rotating lineup would eventually include Melvins members, and even Kurt Cobain as their drummer. This side project would eventually dissolve and fail for various reasons. Chris’s interest began to focus on Shelli more and more as they got closer and moved in together.

      Chris, Shelli and Kurt all became close friends, bonding over their similar troubles dealing with the rest of Aberdeen’s citizens. Fighting off the narrow mindedness of their peers was always difficult, especially when centering around Chris’s increasingly different views politically, than those of the rest of the town. In 1986 Chris and Shelli moved to Arizona in search of work, and then shortly after moved back to the same apartment they had shared, and then into a new one in a nearby town. Both became vegetarians and simplified their lives together.