The Nirvana song Dave Grohl never connected with: “It was filler”
Dave Grohl always knew that his number one job in Nirvana was to never get in the way of Kurt Cobain. The frontman had his formula for writing aggressive rock hooks down to a science, so why try to disrupt the flow by speaking up and claiming that you want one of your ditties on the record? That didn’t mean that Grohl had to love every track that he played, and he considered ‘Lounge Act’ one of the few Nirvana tunes that he never enjoyed playing.
Then again, it’s hard to say anything negative about Nevermind. There’s been such a halo put around the record as a major turning point in rock music that half of the record has been solidified as a stone-cold classic these days. But even with Cobain’s compositions, Grohl is the real muscle behind everything.
Just listen to how ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ kicks off. Cobain’s opening guitar stabs already have a lot of energy to them, but if Grohl hadn’t added that trademark drum fill at the top of the track, it would never have had the same impact as before. This may explain why he thinks ‘Lounge Act’ is dull by comparison.
When talking about his time in Nirvana after Foo Fighters were well underway, Grohl became a bit more candid about which tunes he didn’t care for. Going through the Nirvana cut he didn’t like to play at all, Grohl singled out ‘Lounge Act’ as completely faceless, saying, “My least favourite would probably be ‘Lounge Act’. I never liked that song. It was basically filler.”
From a drummer’s perspective, though, it’s easy to see why Grohl wouldn’t see it in the most positive light. Since he would be doing his massive drum rolls on ‘Stay Away’ and beating the life out of his kit on ‘Territorial Pissings’, having a track that’s just the standard new wave style of pop will always feel tame.
As talented as Cobain was writing pop melodies, he was still relatively new to the concept of that kind of hook, and ‘Lounge Act’ is still one of his more feeble efforts. It’s still miles better than anyone else would be able to do, but when put next to their debut record, this is the closest Nevermind sounded to having a Bleach B-side in its ranks.
If anything, they could have replaced the tune with some of the tracks Cobain had in the backlog. ‘Rape Me’ had already been written when they played their legendary gigs at The Paramount, but since this was their proper debut on a major label, it was probably smart of them not to shake the boat too much and use ‘Polly’ as their landmark song about the gross reality that women have to go through at the hands of abusers.
Even with a handful of chords to work with, though, ‘Lounge Act’ is still great for being a lowlight of Nevermind, especially when Cobain adds some flair in the final verse where he starts screeching. Nirvana were almost incapable of doing wrong in their time, but any lesser version of their music is still probably closer to a decent Stone Temple Pilots song.
