“Nailed it”: The 1989 song that landed Nirvana a record deal
At the very beginning of my music journalism career, I flew out to Canada to see a local band, who stumbled through a set of cloddish, but half-inspired, original songs, before they reached their magnum opus: a shimmering cartwheel of a single, punctuated with echoing keys and tinny percussion.
I rushed over to the band after the set, proclaiming that I was a London music critic, and they truly had something there, that one song, the penultimate of the set, which shook with magnificence that none of their other tunes even came close to. After a confused, pregnant pause, the vocalist opened his mouth: “You mean the Radiohead cover?”
It was, dear reader, one of the most mortifying moments of my career, for both on both accounts that I had insulted them profusely, and I had never heard ‘Weird Fishes’ by Radiohead before. I brashly tried to run back the comment, my only armour the fact that, as I reassured them desperately, Nirvana landed their record deal after a music mogul saw them performing a cover.
Though the band I had accidentally insulted never quite reached the big leagues, and never quite forgave me for my sin, what I had reassured them of was true: Nirvana really did land a record deal through a cover. They opted for a band less well-known than Radiohead, instead dripping their scuzzy gloop all over ‘Lady Buzz’, a song by a Dutch band called Shocking Blue. Their 1967 version didn’t ever make it to the charts.
Seeing the song as fertile ground to display the very best of their sonic talent, Nirvana shopped it around the setlist of their gigs, including on their very first show in Seattle at the Central Tavern. It was there that Sub Pop co-owner Bruce Pavitt came across the Kurt Cobain charm.
In an interview with Song Facts, Pavitt recalled that fateful night, sharing, “In listening to their whole set, that song was the only one that really jumped out, and it was a cover. But the hypnotic feel of that was kind of an indicator of some of their direction in songwriting. And it’s just an incredible recording. They totally nailed it.”
Cobain ended up having a different perspective on the song, which starts with a playful bass line before rambunctious drums and a flirtatious guitar riff come into the fold, as he told NME, “I wish we could have recorded it a lot heavier. It was one of our first recordings. We weren’t sure just what we wanted to do so it turned out kind of wimpy compared to our most recent recordings.”
It’s an issue that Nirvana would have time and time again across their short-lived career as a signed band. Their label was up in arms about their third and final album, In Utero, after they hired Steve Albini to tease out an abrasive, uncommercial sound at odds with the glossy sheen of Nevermind.
We see both of these forces at play on ‘Love Buzz’, with Cobain singing seductively, “Would you believe me when I tell you you are the queen of my heart?” in an address to the audience that was certain to send them into a hot, delirious frenzy. No wonder the cover landed them the deal.
