The Nirvana song Kurt Cobain thought would sound boring: “They forget about the rest”
Nirvana was never one for being the most subtle band in the world. No matter how many slower songs they had in their catalogue, they will continue to go down in history as the group that woke everyone up with a band the minute that ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ set the world on fire in the early 1990s. When they were still cutting their teeth on Sub Pop records, though, Kurt Cobain thought many listeners would be turned off by some of the slower material that turned up on Bleach.
Then again, comparing their Sub Pop years to Nevermind feels like reviewing two separate acts. While Cobain’s knack for pop hooks was still there, not having Dave Grohl behind the drumkit does kneecap the record a touch, with Chad Channing sounding closer to what a 1960s-style drummer would play on poppy material like ‘About A Girl’.
But even for an indie label, Nirvana were far more eclectic on their debut than people give them credit for. They already had the beginnings of Nevermind started, but how do you describe their reinterpretation of Shocking Blue’s ‘Love Buzz’ or the pure Seattle-style rage of ‘School’ or ‘Mr Moustache’?
While Cobain always called this part of their music their ‘new wave’ side, it’s not exactly Devo in that department. This was the result of him listening to The Beatles on one day and Melvins the next, which is probably why the heaviest songs on the record, like ‘Sifting’ and ‘Paper Cuts, ’ could put Black Sabbath to shame.
Whether the frontman knew what the genre was called yet, a lot of the slower numbers could fit right in within the context of stoner rock, especially when the tempo starts dragging and the guitars get crunchier. There’s no mistaking his voice, but if you took all of the vocals off these tracks, you’d get a pretty convincing Sleep B-side or maybe even the beginnings of Kyuss.
Each of those cuts may have been cathartic for Cobain to sing, but he thought that fans would get the wrong impression if they went to those tracks first, saying, “They take a song and think that the whole album is like that. On Bleach, there was ‘Sifting’ and the other slow, boring song ‘Paper Cuts,’ two very slow songs, with less feedback, so they stick in people’s minds, and they forget about the rest of the album.”
Then again, that kind of heaviness fit right in with what Grohl loved, even hyping up fellow stoner rock acts like Kyuss during the In Utero era. But when he was asked to join the group, his role was to treat every track as if he were playing a children’s song, which meant keeping things as simple as possible and serving the tune rather than using it as a vehicle to create a John Bonham-style drum solo.
So when Cobain eventually lamented that Nevermind sounded too slick, it was all in an effort to move away from that “boring” material. It was far from terrible, but when looking at how ‘In Bloom’ started off, it makes sense why the frontman wanted a bit of a shakeup when they started crossing over.
