Kurt Cobain’s two favourite albums of the 1960s
When Nirvana released their debut album, Bleach, in 1989, Kurt Cobain and his early lineup joined a host of recording outfits operating in Washington state’s blossoming grunge scene. The genre is most directly rooted in alternative rock and post-punk of the 1980s, with prominent bands like R.E.M., Pixies and Sonic Youth among the significant luminaries. However, tracing the sound back, we pass by the work of the so-called ‘Godfather of Grunge’ Neil Young and wind up with the unrefined guitar sounds of 1960s garage rock bands.
After breaking through as a global behemoth in 1991 with Nevermind, Kurt Cobain became swamped by the media. As we now know, fame didn’t sit on the troubled musician’s shoulders all too comfortably. In a bid to satiate the press for one second, Cobain took it upon himself to list his 50 favourite albums of all time up to that point. Understandably, his list was dominated by albums of the 1980s, including Black Flag’s ‘My War’, Fang’s Landshark! and Pixies’ Surfer Rosa.
Alongside Cobain’s 1980s selections was a scattering of 1970s classics, including The Stooges’ Raw Power, which ranked as his number one favourite, and just two selections from the 1960s. Supposedly, Cobain loved plenty of music from rock’s most encouraging decade and had the list extended to 100, we likely would have seen a few more.
It perhaps comes as no surprise that Cobain listed a Beatles album as one of his two favourites from the 1960s, but few would have guessed that he’d pick the comparatively obscure early album Meet the Beatles! The album was the British band’s second studio album in the US and consisted mostly of songs from the two first UK records, Please Please Me and With the Beatles.
With early hits like ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, and ‘All My Loving’ in its ranks, the album is beloved by many. However, one would expect an edgier choice from the Nirvana singer, such as Revolver or The Beatles (The White Album). Undoubtedly, he enjoyed most of the band’s eclectic discography, but Meet the Beatles! clearly had a personal resonance. Famously, Cobain claimed to have written ‘About A Girl’ after spending an afternoon listening to the classic 1964 album.
In an interview with Mimmo Caccamo, Cobain once declared that he was also a huge fan of The Beatles’ Rubber Soul era and reserved special praise for John Lennon’s revelatory song ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’. “I would say the biggest influence I’ve ever had would be The Beatles,” Cobain added in the conversation. “Because I listened to The Beatles since I was five years old up until I was in 4th Grade – the same three records over and over every night.”
The second album Cobain listed from the swingin’ ’60s was a veritable curveball. Instead of shuffling through classics by The Who, The Kinks or Led Zeppelin, the zany grungemaster turned the spotlight on The Shaggs, a band the contemporary press humorously likened to a lobotomised Trapp Family. In a word, the band was awful. But this lack of technical ability appealed to Cobain in the way Never Mind the Bollocks – as opposed to, say, Yes’ Going for the One – resonated with thousands of youths in 1977.
When Austin Wiggin, a New Hampshire father of four, was just a boy, his mother took a palm reading in which she predicted his future. He was to marry a strawberry-blonde woman with whom he would have two daughters that his mother wouldn’t live to see. The final twist to the prophecy was that these daughters would form a popular music group. Austin didn’t read too much into the prophecy at first, but one day, he indeed fell in love with a woman of strawberry blonde hair.
Memories of his mother’s palm reading came flooding back after he met his wife, but the game changer was yet to come. Several years down the line, after the birth of his two eldest daughters, Austin’s mother died, after which he and his wife had another two girls in line with the prophecy. This was enough for Austin to drop everything and force the final piece of his mother’s puzzle into place. Making the rash decision to pull his four daughters out of school, he bought a few guitars and a drum kit and arranged some music and vocal lessons.
After what Austin deemed enough practice, he named his four-piece The Shaggs and took them touring around the state. Derisory audience reactions did little to discourage him from his path to providence, and he financed the recording of The Shaggs’ first and only album, 1969’s Philosophy of the World. The album was famously endorsed by Cobain and the experimental icon Frank Zappa, who allegedly deemed The Shaggs “better than The Beatles” with not a hint of irony.
