“Just a glorified T-shirt salesman”: Ben Shepherd’s bizarre stint with Nirvana
Ben Shepherd is best known as Soundgarden‘s secret weapon, whittling fresh tunes out of his bass, but before all that, he booked the easiest gig in his career as a lead guitarist for the iconic grunge band, Nirvana, with the kicker being that he never played a single show.
We’ve all endured the uncomfortable feeling of being in over your head at work; leading on a project you really have no idea about, or managing a team who look to you for answers you’re making up on the fly. But, in the fall of 1989, Shepherd experienced quite the opposite of this, as an overly qualified musician who never got to play a single show on tour.
Speaking to Weld about the bizarre experience, Shepherd didn’t mince his words over the lost opportunity. He recalled, “It was all a set-up. It was a scam, just appeasing me to see if I’d fit or not”.
It started off with a cryptic comment over instrumentation, as Nirvana told Shepherd not to bring his own guitar with him. Though strange, this wasn’t enough to raise alarm bells; Nirvana hadn’t released Nevermind yet, so touring was bound to be expensive and strenuous, with the group cutting costs and extra logistical steps wherever they could.
As the slew of performances kicked off in Minneapolis, Shepherd at least managed to make it on stage at one point, though admittedly, when the venue was void of an audience. He recalled, “So we went on tour, and then I wound up only playing the soundcheck in Minneapolis, which was the first stop on the tour, at some little bar.”
Shepherd took over frontman Kurt Cobain’s responsibility for the soundcheck alone, as the illustrious figure was too busy “out back being sick”. As it turns out, this is as close to glory as Shepherd would reach. Though his turn in the limelight was in touching distance, the band forced him to pick up miscellaneous roadie duties until he became “just a glorified t-shirt salesman. That’s all they really wanted,” he added, dejectedly.
However much this put a dampener on Shepherd’s personal career, he believed in the trio enough to respect what was right for the story of Nirvana. “All of us in Seattle think you should just stay a three-piece,” he recalls urging them, a decision they’d, somewhat annoyingly, come to on their own in Ann Arbour around halfway through the tour.
It was, all at once, both a triumph and a setback for their friend and fan, who had, after all, made sacrifices to be out on the road, Kerouac style, with the on-the-risers. Shepherd admitted that he “wasn’t hurt at all, but the only thing that bothered me was that I’d skipped my brother’s wedding to go out on that tour. But who cares, you know?”
In a clandestine move of calvinism from the universe, this freed up Shepherd’s schedule. Luckily, before his not-so-successful foray as quote-unquote lead guitarist for the ‘Marigold’ musicians, he had been asked to play bass in a band called Soundgarden. All of a sudden, he found himself with a free schedule and a renewed appetite to get up on stage and play music. And thank God for that.
