The R.E.M. and Nirvana supergroup that was an attempt to save Kurt Cobain’s life
Although Nirvana and R.E.M. are completely different in their musical output, this does not account for the fact that both outfits shared a close bond. This bond was formed by Kurt Cobain, a longtime fan of the jangly indie of the Athens, Georgia group, which led to him striking up a close friendship with R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe.
Famously, in the list of his 50 favourite albums of all time, Cobain included R.E.M.’s 1998 opus Green, which featured alt-rock classics such as ‘Orange Crush’ and ‘Stand’. However, this was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to Cobain showering love on Stipe and Co.
In 1992, R.E.M. released what to many is their masterpiece, Automatic for the People, which boasted numbers such as ‘Man on the Moon’, ‘Everybody Hurts’ and ‘Nightswimming’, and in a 1994 interview with Rolling Stone, Cobain praised the album heavily. “If I could write just a couple of songs as good as what they’ve written,” the Nirvana leader said. “I don’t know how that band does what they do. God, they’re the greatest.”
In that same interview, Cobain revealed the connection between the early Nirvana fan favourite ‘About a Girl’ and the work of R.E.M., sharing that the song was inspired by the sound of Michael Stipe’s band. He explained why he wrote it: “I was heavily into pop, I really liked R.E.M., and I was into all kinds of old ’60s stuff”.
Cobain continued: “But there was a lot of pressure within that social scene, the underground-like the kind of thing you get in high school. And to put a jangly R.E.M. type of pop song on a grunge record, in that scene, was risky.”
Unsurprisingly, Cobain and Stipe became very close. They were such kindred spirits that Stipe is the godfather to Cobain and Courtney Love’s child, Frances Bean. Stipe also did all he could for Cobain during the last stages of his life, a time when his drug addiction and struggles with mental health were starting to weigh heavily.
To help his friend out, Stipe put forward the idea of a collaboration with Cobain, hoping to assist him in stemming the tide. When speaking to Interview Magazine in 2011, Stipe discussed the prospect of the Cobain-Stipe supergroup: “I was doing that to try to save his life. The collaboration was me calling up as an excuse to reach out to this guy. He was in a really bad place”
“I sent him a plane ticket and a driver,” Stipe continued, “And he tacked the plane ticket to the wall in the bedroom and the driver sat outside the house for 10 hours. Kurt wouldn’t come out and wouldn’t answer the phone.”
The ending of Cobain’s story needs no more discussion, but Stipe’s efforts were heroic, to say the least.
