The bass that “stuck with” Nirvana founder Krist Novoselic
The music of Nirvana has been obsessively catalogued over the last 30 years. You don’t have to search for very long if you want to find, say, a complete list of guitars that Kurt Cobain played in his lifetime. The same goes with Dave Grohl, whose legendary status as one of the 1990s greatest drummers has led to plenty of gear dissection. But one member who seems to get the short end of the stick from gearheads is bassist Krist Novoselic.
Novoselic himself isn’t ignorant of this reputation. “I’m never in any bass magazines!” Novoselic wryly observed to Guitar World in 2012. In fact, it took a signature model from rock instrument icons Gibson for Novoselic to start really opening up about the gear he used to make some of the most famous songs in rock history. Shockingly, it took two decades for Novoselic to be approached.
“No, I’ve never been asked!” Novoselic explains. “I was blown away when Gibson approached me, because I really loved that bass. Even if they’d just reissued it rather than made one for me, I would have bought one. You can’t even find these old basses on eBay: they go really fast on there, for like 2500 bucks. You can buy this new RD and keep it your whole life, it’s like a member of the family. You don’t have to bid on eBay for one, and it doesn’t have someone’s sweat all over it!”
Novoselic is talking about his classic Gibson RD Bass, the same bass that he played on most of Nirvana’s most famous songs. The RD bass wasn’t a major hit – it was only manufactured for one year and isn’t a widely used or collected model compared to other Gibsons. But that lack of major appreciation has made it singular to Novoselic.
“I’m six foot seven,” he explains, “Which is lucky, because it’s a big bass. Check one out when you go to a music store. Try it on, because it’s big and heavy, it’s a big gun! But it’s got that sustain that I really like. You just let the note ring”.
“That’s probably why I stuck with Gibson basses the whole way through, because they’re so dense,” Novoselic added. “I played a blonde Ripper on Nevermind. I had two that got stolen, actually: the blonde one sounded different from my other black one. You just gotta try them out and see what works for you.”
Those basslines soon became iconic, and Novoselic still gets props from fans today. “I’ve learned that countless people have learned to play bass from listening to those records,” Novoselic humbly concludes. “They’re always coming up to me and saying ‘Those records taught me how to play’. They’re simple, melodic bass-lines, which is what you need when you’re starting out on bass.”
Check out some of that simple melodic work on ‘Polly’ down below.
