Kurt Cobain’s greatest guitar moment: “I never get tired of playing it”
In the few years between Nirvana’s debut LP and mammoth sophomore effort, frontman Kurt Cobain’s songcraft seemed to just bloom tenfold as they passed from underground punk band to Billboard conquerors.
The sonic leap forward must have helped. Firmly planted in the fringes of Seattle’s music community, 1989’s Bleach reflected the sonic character of the city’s Reciprocal Recording, the site of everybody from Soundgarden, Green River, and Screaming Trees all passing through to seek Jack Endino’s lo-fi production chops. But DGC Records’ pull away from Sub Pop brought bigger budgets, affording Nirvana Los Angeles’ Sound City studio upgrade and Butch Vig in the producer’s chair.
Even before the eventual Nevermind sessions, Cobain’s writing was coming into its own. Hooky pop was flashed on Bleach’s ‘About a Girl’ and the interim ‘Sliver’ single, but as Nirvana were working out new material in Vig’s Smart Studios across 1990, the emerging repertoire immediately began to gleam with a sharper confidence, numbers that eventually found life as ‘Breed’, ‘In Bloom’, and ‘Lithium’ marking the arrival of a dark horse in the incipient alternative explosion fast become its leading force.
After the initial Vig demos, Cobain wrote ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, the single that would go on to lead Nevermind and catapult Nirvana to Top Tens all over the world and finally pop the swelling grunge dam behind them. Yet, it’s well known that Cobain was fatigued of his surprise smash, deeming their breakthrough single’s success to be too much MTV spins rather than standing on its own merits.
“I think there are so many other songs that I’ve written that are as good, if not better, than that song, like ‘Drain You’,” Cobain reflected to Rolling Stone in 1994. “That’s definitely as good as ‘Teen Spirit’. I love the lyrics, and I never get tired of playing it. Maybe if it was as big as ‘Teen Spirit’, I wouldn’t like it as much.”
While admitting to a little contrarianism aversion to mainstream popularity, ‘Drain You’ indeed hits the same pop bullseye as Nirvana’s signature song. Dwelling in the same power riffage, Cobain conjures his signature piquant verse chorus spark coated in a cynical vocal drawl, spiked with an extra twist of noise rock desecration via the cavernous interlude, which breaks in midway.
It’s classic Cobain lyricism, too, depicting two lovers’ passionate embrace as akin to an uneasy parasitic relationship: “It is now my duty to completely drain you / I travel through a tube and end up in your infection.”
Originally titled ‘Formula’, ‘Drain You’ is thought to have been penned following Cobain’s relationship with Bikini Kill drummer Tobi Vail, and fleshed out during his and Dave Grohl’s hang-out plus four-track recording jam with Melvins’ Dale Crover and then-girlfriend Debbi Shane. Eventually finding its home on Nevermind, Cobain’s skewed love song glows amid its anthemic songbook, standing as one of the best gems among Nirvana’s body of work that never made it to a single, albeit seeing some life as a minor promo.
While ‘Teen Spirit’ would be absent from the setlist, Cobain’s fondness for ‘Drain You’ would ensure its place in their final ever show on March 1st, 1994, played third for their show at Munich’s Terminal Eins.
