The Vaselines: The group Kurt Cobain called his “number one favourite band”
The musical taste of Kurt Cobain was always a beautiful contradiction. As much as he loathed the idea of being part of the glam rock movement and sharing screentime with Poison or Warrant, he would also be the first to admit how much he loved The Beatles and learned his first chords by practising hits by AC/DC and Aerosmith in his basement. Once he got exposed to underground music, though, The Vaselines helped turn his entire world around.
Because for all of the great licks that Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith had to offer, they would always be at arm’s length for Cobain. The heavy misogyny in some of their lyrics would never sell him, but when punk rock exploded onto the scene, the grunge icon knew that he found his calling rebelling against the commercialised side of rock and roll.
Even in the indie music world, though, The Vaselines were a bit odd. If punk was the true sound of the underground, this seemed to be too much in the opposite direction by playing the most jangly guitar pop ever conceived. From interpolating hymns to writing tracks that sounded like they were destined to soundtrack commercials, many of the Scottish duo’s best moments could never be considered heavy.
But that didn’t seem to matter to Cobain. He had always loved the jangly sounds of REM, and when combing through his favourite songs of all time, he would always reference Terry Jacks’s ‘Seasons in the Sun’, which is enough to give anyone a sugar high if they listen to it more than twice in one sitting.
Even when Nirvana took part in their interview package to go along with Nevermind, Krist Novoselic was the first to bring up The Vaselines, saying, “Kurt and I were totally into the Vaselines,” to which Cobain replied, “[They’re] definitely our number-one favourite band.”
While it’s crazy to think that the same person responsible for ‘Paper Cuts’ and ‘Territorial Pissings’ would be into something so twee, it’s important to look at how they approached recording Nevermind. They still wanted to make something heavy, but when reminiscing on those sessions, Dave Grohl would remember their goal of making the equivalent of children’s songs and keeping every track as simple as possible.
And at the risk of losing major hipster points, I’d argue that every one of Nirvana’s covers of The Vaselines far outdoes anything that the original group did. Their version of ‘Son of a Gun’ off Incesticide sounds so much better with Cobain’s disaffected growl behind it, and even when taking a swing at their interpretation of ‘Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For a Sunbeam’ for MTV Unplugged, Nirvana’s inclusion of the accordion is one of the most satisfyingly weird choices that a grunge act ever made.
More than anything, Cobain’s love of The Vaselines speaks to how he looked at most bands he came across. As far as he was concerned, a good song could transcend its genre no matter what it sounded like, and even if The Vaselines were a bit lightweight for their time, modern acts like The Lemon Twigs may have indirectly taken their entire aesthetic from a handful of their best singles.
