Krist Novoselic was terrified of playing bass with Paul McCartney
When Krist Novoselic was asked to play bass with Paul McCartney and old Nirvana bandmate Dave Grohl, he got cold feet. However, Novoselic and fellow Nirvana bandmate and Foo Fighter Pat Smear eventually joined Grohl and McCartney when recording the song ‘Cut Me Some Slack’ for the documentary Sound City.
Recalling his time playing bass on the track, Novoselic admitted feeling terrified to play in Macca’s presence, telling Bass Player magazine, “I kept thinking, ‘Please don’t make me play bass guitar; please don’t make me play bass. That’s like being asked to do karate with Bruce Lee – you’re going to get your ass kicked”.
Novoselic went on to say that the jam wasn’t going well at first until he used a grunge rock trick, continuing, “I realised we were playing in D, so I did the old grunge trick, and I drop-tuned my bass to D. I played some riffs and boom! Then Paul shot me a riff, and I shot him a riff, and everything started clicking perfectly”. The song would also go on to win a Grammy for ‘Best Rock Song’ in 2014.
McCartney would work with The Foo Fighters later as well, playing drums on the song ‘Sunday Rain’ off of their 2017 album Concrete and Gold. When looking back, Novoselic caught wisps of Nirvana in what they were playing as well, recalling, “We had the old band back together, and we had this cool left-handed guitarist, who was actually Paul McCartney, and he was doing vocals. I had to pinch myself”.
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