January 2013 – Page 2 – Nirvana Legacy

In Utero and the Second Age of Experimentation

In Dark Slivers I wrote a whole chapter, Post-Mersh, entirely about the golden age of Kurt Cobain’s musical experimentation basically centred between 1987-1989. I feel I overlooked a similar flourish in 1993, one I hadn’t even considered before.

While the earlier period saw Kurt Cobain probing and testing what could be done with sound while on a budget of bare pennies, 1993 afforded him, and Nirvana, the chance to buy in new sounds. Kurt’s increasing distain for continuing with what he was doing, the way he was doing it, had one positive consequence which is that it led to more space for the band to try new things.

A first new direction came via the addition of Dave Grohl as an active contributor of musical ideas. This began with Dave playing Kurt a demo of Alone + Easy Target recorded in 1991. Kurt responded enthusiastically reportedly saying “oh, finally, now I don’t have to be the only songwriter in the band!” The first tangible collaboration was the arrival of Dave’s ideas that became Scentless Apprentice at rehearsals in late 1992. This was a genuinely new development; Chad Channing has stated that he felt openly discouraged from having pretensions toward creative participation in Nirvana’s music. Now, in 1992-1993, Kurt even said in interview how pleased he was that some of the burden would be off his shoulders.

Of course this new potential didn’t last long. Rio de Janeiro in January 1993 saw Kurt allegedly supplying some backing vocals to the demo’ed cover of song Onward into Countless Battles, so some forward motion was being maintained. Then Dave’s song Marigold was used on the Heart Shaped Box single. The only problem there, however, was that when Dave recorded the song at the Pachyderm Studios sessions in February 1993, Kurt didn’t perform on the song at all. Rather than a fresh collaborative approach it’s more like using his band members for convenient filler at a time when he had far less to offer.

After that it’s hard to disentangle the general spiral of Kurt Cobain’s life from the specific issue of band collaboration. It’s certainly true that after the PR-friendly statements about this fresh creative input to Nirvana’s music, there was barely any studio play or rehearsals whatsoever. It’s possible the public statements were a reflection of Kurt’s famed inability to openly confront many things he was unhappy with. That would make the long absence of collaboration with his comrades in Nirvana a way of giving a hint at how welcome he found their desire to participate as equals rather than as faithful supporters of his vision. Or maybe it was simply a relief to opt-out of the music and focus on making collages and art works at home with which to decorate the music that was emerging.

A common pattern with many bands, once they’re in possession of the money and fame to get away with it, is that they seek out a wider array of musical options to toss at their recordings. As examples, think of Guns n’ Roses with the grand pianos and string quartets, or Radiohead with the wholesale move into beats and keyboards. Nirvana never went that far; it was a vestigial opening in their sound that notably shied away from electronics or from a zeitgeist-hunting dive into the latest sounds.

Instead Nirvana reprised ideas they had briefly nodded to in the past — it’s a curiously circular path, part of a wider span of evidence that I’ve pointed to in the sample chapter I placed on here in the November 18, 2012 post. The addition of a second guitar seemed a genuinely desired option with Nirvana trying Big John Duncan (formerly and most famously of punk band The Exploited) before settling on Pat Smear (formerly and most famously of punk band The Germs.) It’s intriguing that just a year after Incesticide had tied Nirvana to various strains of the underground (to be followed by the link up with The Jesus Lizard), Nirvana attempted to add such solid punk era credentials to their line-up.

Pat Smear genuinely did seem to add creative options for Kurt Cobain as well as relieving live burdens. The final known recording work by Kurt Cobain involved Pat, similarly Pat has spoken about abortive requests from Kurt to work together in hotel rooms on tour. Again, though it didn’t add to a broadening of the instrumental palette, a second guitar could potentially have added something new to Nirvana’s sound.

The Pachyderm sessions apparently saw a brief jam attempted, now known as Lullaby, utilising an organ located at the site. The three instruments listed in Gillian G. Gaar’s description of the piece are “organ, bass and drums” suggesting that, once again, Kurt Cobain had discarded his guitar and had ended up on another instrument, an increasingly common feature. The dual role of vocalist and lead guitarist always automatically made Kurt Cobain the front man and figurehead. Having a second guitarist, or these periodic switches to drums (Sao Paolo concert in January, one song in the Rio sessions, here at Pachyderm, the 1994 home demos) appear to be a way to step back into the shadows to some extent, to abdicate the central role.

Lori Goldston’s addition on cello was another repeated preference. Originally band friend Kirk Canning had added the instrument to Something in the Way back in 1991; Kera Schaley then took over and applied touches to Dumb and All Apologies in 1993. To then add Lori Goldston as a full addition to the touring ensemble was a fresh step but not an unprecedented addition to Nirvana’s music. It’s interesting that, while a perfect fit for the MTV Unplugged in New York format, Lori’s inclusion had already been decided on and had taken place earlier — happy coincidence. It was at that show also that the final new instrument, Krist Novoselic’s accordion detour on Jesus Don’t Want Me for a Sunbeam took place.

The acoustic direction has been suggested as one direction for Kurt Cobain; a few months back I suggested that the trend in his music seemed more toward the noisy with acoustic guitars remaining a feature for home practice only…Now there’s a new option, perhaps there could have been a fleshed out and fuller Nirvana, a more cluttered, yet also more orchestrated and mature sound. It’s a possibility.

…But I admit it. I’ve been trying to be positive yet the evidence amounts to scraps. The addition of such punk-originated second guitar options perhaps supports the idea that 1992-1994’s turn toward noisier songs would continue. Or the permanent concert residency for the cello may mean that the mooted acoustic direction could have also ushered in a wider arsenal of ‘organic’ instrumentation. Or in a continued Nirvana either Dave or Pat might have been the source of a dilution of the Cobain-centric band creating new directions for the music. 1993 deserves to be seen as a new age of experimentation for Nirvana, but one that simultaneously shows evidence of disinterest and/or a sense of confusion about what the future should be, or whether there was a future at all.

Kurt Cobain: Such a Precious Petal

One of Kurt Cobain’s beauties was that he was simultaneously explicit about his reasons, but rarely simplistic. The matter of flowers is a case in point. I recall, back last month when I was suggesting that I didn’t find MTV Unplugged in New York a necessarily joyous occasion https://nirvana-legacy.com/2012/12/21/disquiet-mtv-unplugged-in-new-york), someone quite reasonably said “well, so what if Kurt asked for some flowers?”

Well, I feel there’s quite a big so-what. Kurt is absolutely clear that he doesn’t pick lilies as a key component of his decorative world because they’re merely ‘his favourite flower’ or because he finds them ‘pretty’. The request for MTV Unplugged in New York was very clear; lilies, black candles, crystal chandelier and as the all-knowing Oracle Wikipedia declares the show’s producer responded “you mean like a funeral?” to which Cobain replied “exactly. Like a funeral.”

But this isn’t the only reference to flowers. Within his Journals, in the sketched ideas for a video for the song Rape Me, he notes down “preferably lilies, orchids, ya know, vaginal flowers.” Wonderfully, however, this wasn’t the first time the vaginal flowers had been on his mind. Back in the spring of 1993 he had incorporated these same flowers into the artwork for In Utero with a piece explicitly entitled “Sex and Woman and In Utero and Vaginas and Birth and Death.” And again around the same time, for the Heart Shaped Box single cover, he was using the flowers again on a song that Courtney Love has stated is about her vagina. That charming comment from Courtney is backed up by the circling themes woven into the song; it was originally called Heart Shaped Coffin, it’s laced with ideas like the umbilical noose, a charming combination of woman and death all over again. And even this wasn’t the first time he’d gone with the flower angle, In Bloom in late 1992 had focused specifically on the stamen, the plant’s reproductive organs. It seems that for a period of somewhere over a year (at least) Kurt Cobain’s visual imagery was highly specific and focused. When it comes to covers and even stage decoration he loads the place with reproductive imagery and links it to death.

If we wanted to expand then it’d be easy at this point to comment on naked babies, pregnant women, seahorses too but instead I want to go in a different direction and refer to sex in the lyrics of Kurt Cobain — there isn’t much to be honest but let’s look. In total it amounts to four songs featuring rape — Floyd the Barber, Polly, Rape Me and the Fecal Matter demo track Laminated Effect — plus the song Moist Vagina, plus a mention on Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flowed Through the Strip. What I find intriguing is we’re looking here at songs involving sex and death (Floyd the Barber), an original title for M.V. which ended in “and then she blew him like he’d never been blown, brains stuck all over the wall”, rape and AIDS (Laminated Effect), oh, and Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol combines absence of sex with implied pregnancy and a missing period then has AIDS victim Perry Ellis guest-star.

I genuinely believe one of Kurt Cobain’s most unique qualities as an artist was his ability to work on multiple levels of meaning whether those combinations were humour and horror, delicacy and brutality, or in this case, the knowing use of flowers to represent sex and death, in public, uncensored, throughout that late period. Yet the association of sex and death (it’s the ol’ Doors vibe all over again) had more regular origins in his music with a long-standing issue returning to the fore in his married life. He doesn’t ask for flowers; he asks for a funeral and for vaginas – married, buried. Make of it what you will, I have.

Just as an aside, someone check me on this; Kurt chose the image of him in a Santa hat (partially obscured) for the inlay of In Utero, is it coincidence or self-parody that the frail old man in the Heart Shaped Box video (Christ pose, straggly hair, little beard, piercing blue eyes, thin, weary) also wears a Santa hat…?

Nirvana and I: A Personal Aside

I’ve been asked repeatedly – as work colleagues, friends and loved ones watched me lose a year of life to scribbling or tapping away furiously at Dark Slivers and the supporting data and notes – “why do you love Nirvana so much? Why do you care so much about Kurt Cobain?” My answer in essence is that the love of something has very little to do with the object of that love; love doesn’t float in the air to be inhaled and returned. I was ready to love music at that point in life and by chance, luck, whatever, Nirvana was the group discovered. For some people out there maybe it was NWA or Public Enemy, maybe it was the Summer of Love rave scene in the U.K. or some other manifestation of the surge in dance culture, for others perhaps Pearl Jam hooked them far more…Its all good. In my case it was Nirvana, there’s no qualitative judgement required, it just was.

I was on a school trip, shared a room with the older crew who were along as supervisors, ended up running a group after my supervisor decided that trying to strip out of his trousers to his cycling shorts was a great idea while still riding the bike. It was a bit of a growing up experience basically. On the boat home from France the guy opposite had tapes tucked in a hat on the chair, I fished through, found his Nirvana tape (Nevermind one side, Bleach the other) and was hooked. He was surprised I hadn’t heard of them but genuinely I’d never even heard of Nirvana.

Then came the coolest family holidays. My mum rocks at coming up with cryptic clues – so each year, at Christmas, there was always a treasure hunt in the afternoon and this particular year my parents had decided to really bust the bank and ship the whole lot of us to Florida while we were all still young enough to enjoy it (heck, I’d go now! Disneyworld is FUN and I don’t care who says otherwise!) We went in 1993 and they decided to do it one more time in 1994. So, Kurt Cobain’s demise came tied to this absolutely wonderful and happy time – it’s like in a genuine top-quality comedy where the laugh is greater because of a moment of sadness or vice versa, that a heightening of emotion in one direction makes the opposite emotion even more intense. It gave the timing a significance, last day in Florida equals day they announced Kurt Cobain was dead – coincidences matter because they bind things together, particularly in a young mind.

It was my first real experience of death. I had no memory of older relatives dying, so this was the first time I’d felt engaged by the loss of another person – maybe the first time I was old enough to comprehend the idea that someone had gone. The fact I’d bought, that very morning, the final Nirvana album I didn’t already possess – I can’t recall if it was Bleach or Incesticide but I genuinely do remember forcing my parents to stick Incesticide on the car stereo during that vacation, an odd choice given I never made them listen to Nevermind. Naturally, having no idea how to react, one just makes up an approach from observations of the world around – typical kid – so my reaction was to institute a daily Nirvana listening plus a fairly permanent layer of black clothing. I admit though I never bought or owned a Nirvana t-shirt, it seemed ostentatious and fake as if declaring my allegiance to other people was the important bit, it felt like trying to gain reflected glory. Hate the idea.

Shifting schools was another real upheaval – guess it was my turn to have a teenage blues phase. I snapped out of it eventually but music was a good way of gaining a touch of credibility with the already settled social cliques of school (no criticism of either school, schools are just like that.) It formed a good social glue and a declaration of taste before the audience wanting to figure out the new boy. Naturally Cobain’s disaffected ennui fitted the mood beautifully – I’m sure it had never even occurred to him that everyone feels a bit divorced from things sometimes and that he’d soundtracked and expressed it to perfection. I had a bit of a ritual of listening to a Nirvana song (at one point a whole side of an album) each night before bed – think it helped me get good sleep too, music before bedtime, a recommended relaxation technique. At university it didn’t work quite that way, it was more a differentiator than a unifier – but it did put me nicely in contact with my dear Norwegian punk musician friend who I’ve lost contact with but still retain a huge love for, that’s nice.

Behind all of that, Nirvana provided a starting point, a genuine Ground Zero when it came to my interest in music. I could draw you a graph showing how one discovery led to another, all leading back to Nirvana. Sonic Youth and Swans are the most important bands in terms of the connections I then made, but coming to love SY started via Nirvana and Swans came from SY in turn. I also spent years loving how special it felt tracking down and locating Nirvana rarities. It gave the music a value, a sense of miraculous discovery each time I hauled something off a shelf and got to consider whether I was looking at a new song or just a misnaming. To indicate how deep that enjoyment went I’d sadly like to confess to having a recurring dream where I’m at a record fair picking through a stack of Nirvana bootlegs riddled with unknown songs (yes, I even invent song titles in my head to fit the dream – each one coming with a subtitle explaining the song’s meaning or origin) and working out whether to buy one, or two – if they’re worth £10 each, whether I could swap something else back and get an extra one…This is seriously something I dream 5 or 6 times a year and have done for over a decade.

Are there other reasons I adore the band and Kurt Cobain? Hell yes. My preference, when it comes to ‘heroes and idols’ has never been for stereotypical perfection, it doesn’t inspire me at all. I’m inspired by conflicts, by individuals who achieve much despite flaws, or who were simultaneously great and flawed at the same time. That felt more human, less like admiring a marble statue and less of an unattainable propaganda image. Kurt Cobain fitted perfectly. People think of his life as a depressing one…I never did – his suicide made me appreciate how great and valuable my life was, how much luck I had been given in so many ways. It also made me appreciate the power I had, that if he could do all he did despite the burdens he carried then what excuse did I have? Plus the music was (and is) a comfort, like a well-worn and familiar jumper. Oh, and did I mention I really enjoy the music too? Plus I genuinely admire him, in a world where people seem less and less able to even imagine not wanting money, money, more money, that he stood on top of the world and said no. It’s still the rarest thing, someone who had won over the world to such a degree to hand it back despite all the pressure, the nay-sayers, the criticism he was bound to receive – he went his own way. That’s strength, that’s a true willingness to focus on what one genuinely believes. He told an industry that it was faking and lying and he didn’t want to take part. Brilliant.

The Path to an Album Part Two

With only three sets of comparable data trying to state a definitive and rigid prediction is simply impossible. What yesterday’s post and today’s post are presenting aren’t in anyway scientific measures — it’s just as easy to say Nirvana had releases in 1989, 1991 and 1993 so they’d obviously pump an album out for late 1995. Reemphasizing the difficulty in such a clumsy rule as the gap between first and last song played live from an album, if Talk to Me was to feature on a mythical fourth Nirvana album then taking its Nov 1991 appearance as the start date, Nirvana were overdue for an album as early as July 1994 — that’s the problem with limited data…

Let’s try it another way. In Dark Slivers I tried to pin down Kurt Cobain’s writing to likely periods of six months, it’s impossible to go further and naturally a few songs will shift period if new information appears. This meant working from known demos, live dates, likely evidence (i.e., the news story Polly was based on.) While not as precise as the live appearance data it’s still possible to attempt to measure the first and last songs being developed prior to an album to show how a Nirvana album evolved over time. Let’s start with Bleach:

Gillian G. Gaar argues convincingly for Fecal Matter having been recorded around March 1986 but still it’s unclear if Downer’s origins were in late 1985 or early 1986. I’m also shy of placing Downer here simply because it wasn’t Kurt Cobain’s choice to include it on Bleach, it was Sub Pop’s. Now Nevermind:

Some of the first half 1991 songs may have already been sketched out in 1990, hard to say but the overall pattern is still clear. Again, note the one ‘early riser’ then the clicking into place over the two years prior to an album. Finally, In Utero:

A far more ramshackle pattern and with a few provisos. Firstly, Krist Novoselic believes Tourette’s was first written in late 1989, but the earliest evidence for it is a ten second run-through of the main riff during soundcheck in November 1991 so either it stays where it is or it fills that gap between Rape Me and Heart Shaped Box. The consequence would be to shorten the album’s development down to three years.

As it stands, and compared to yesterday’s fairly sturdy pattern in the live performances, what we’re looking at is a greater span of potential. Eliminating Downer brings the development of Bleach down to a mere two years. Shifting Tourette’s into the 1991 slot makes In Utero a three year process. Nevermind, however, remains a four year project. Returning to the attempt to estimate when a fourth Nirvana studio album may have arrived, let’s take You Know You’re Right’s appearance in October 1993 as the de-facto starting point, seeing as we have so little else to work from. We’re hitting second half of 1995 all the way to first half of 1997 to finish writing meaning an album release anywhere between first half of 1996 to the last half of 1997.

There’s nothing unexpected here in predicting a wider gap between In Utero and the next Nirvana album. To get In Utero out just two years after Nevermind Kurt (and the record label) had needed a further year and a half, even leaning on the half-a-dozen songs already in place. By comparison, to create Nevermind, Nirvana had started from scratch with just one song dating before late 1989 and it had taken a full two years to get the rest done. Following In Utero we’re looking at a situation comparable to the latter example; there was next to nothing in the vault the band could kick off from, they were starting from scratch.

The only hope would have been scraping together Opinion, Talk to Me, Verse Chorus Verse, together with You Know You’re Right and Do Re Mi to make a bedrock of five songs up to first half 1994. Even then, however, staying true to form, Kurt Cobain would likely have needed a crucial year and a half to wring another seven songs out. He admitted himself he was never a prolific writer, he was neither a miracle worker, nor blessed with the equally divine ability to pull songs out of his ass — he would have needed free time and inspiration to get more out.

In conclusion, if we extrapolate from the gap between first and last song for an album to appear live, we’re talking an album sometime December 1995 to July 1996. If we look at the overall developmental path for Nirvana albums, the earliest date is still on track, first half 1996, but the potential late date is pushed out as far as second half 1997…

…But then again, it’s art, not science. Nirvana may have bucked the trends of their album development, and the trends of 1993-1994 in general. Rebirth and rejuvenation were possible. But there are quite a few ‘ifs’ involved. Either way, a longer wait was likely.

The Path to an Album Part One

While examining the live sets over the past month, arranging data and seeing how it fell, one noticeable element was how strangely regular the development pattern toward each album was if judged according to the live record. For comparison, here’s when the songs on Bleach first appeared at a live show:

Ignoring the weird outlier of Swap Meet (it’s unlikely this was its first performance), the span from the time the first track for Bleach appeared live to the last is 27 months. Then again, to be fair, Downer was Sub Pop’s inclusion in 1992 not Kurt Cobain’s, so perhaps we could start in May 1987 with Floyd the Barber as the first song for Bleach; 25 months. Now Nevermind:

Nevermind is almost precisely the same, a grand total of 26 months from first song to last to appear in the live record. Finally, In Utero is a little different:

A total of 33 months between the first live appearance of its first song and the last. The result is three albums, each whipped into shape over the course of two years, one month up to two years, nine months.
Prediction is the art of making oneself look a fool but at least it can act as a guide. In this case, if Nirvana had stuck to the norm, a new album would have been likely around two and a half years after its first song made a live appearance. The problem is, after each of Nirvana’s first two albums, the first songs attempted straight after were explicitly intended for stop-gap recordings and singles — it suggests perhaps You Know You’re Right would be for that same purpose.

On the other hand, as a counter-argument, during the Bleach sessions Nirvana didn’t record any leftovers for singles which is why there was the pressure around whacking songs out in 1989 (Do You Love Me, Dive, Been a Son, Stain). Similarly the Nevermind sessions didn’t yield any B-sides, Nirvana had to reach back and grab Aneurysm from the previous January, then further back to the BBC session that yielded Turnaround, Son of a Gun and Molly’s Lips, and then they ran out forcing them back into the studio to crank out some quick-fire material in April 1992. For In Utero the band, for the first time, deliberately made sure they had enough in reserve they wouldn’t need to come near a studio for a good length of time; February saw them record Sappy, I Hate Myself and I Want to Die, Moist Vagina as full band compositions, then Marigold without Kurt. So, maybe, for the first time, the band wouldn’t have been putting together throw-aways, perhaps the gap to the next album would have been shorter and You Know You’re Right may have had a place in a greater piece of work.

Taking You Know You’re Right as performed in Chicago on October 23, 1993 as the first live rendition of a song for the next Nirvana album, even then the trend would suggest the last song for the album wouldn’t have made it on stage until some point between Nov 1995-Jun 1996. Of course, that last song, in the case of Bleach, Nevermind and In Utero, had only made it on stage one-two months before the release of the related album suggesting an album, at the earliest, in December 1995 to July 1996.

But, of course, the data is flawed…Let’s talk more tomorrow because the pattern is worse not better than the live data would suggest.

Ownership of Nirvana Part Two

Kurt’s death set in motion the next spell of Nirvana as a legal entity rather than a living band; the Nirvana Limited Liability Company. Krist’s response to the law suit brought by Courtney Love in May 2001 stated that it took three years to negotiate the precise legal status of Nirvana L.L.C. and that Courtney retained full control over Kurt Cobain’s publishing share alongside use of his image and name. In amidst this, on July 2, 1996 an amendment to Nirvana’s contract with DGC came into effect requiring them to handover a Nirvana archive box set by June 2001.

June arrived…And with it, the infamous court case with Courtney asking that Nirvana L.L.C. be dissolved claiming that Dave and Krist were repeatedly block-voting against her in all matters related to Nirvana; that she’d been railroaded into the arrangement; and that You Know You’re Right shouldn’t be included on the planned box set. She received an injunction preventing that song’s release by the end of the month. A further effort in October to gain full control for the estate of Kurt Cobain of Nirvana’s masters led to Dave and Krist counter-suing in December — which led to Cobain’s mother weighing in on Courtney’s side of the debate. A ruling in April 2002 refused Krist and Dave’s request that Courtney undergo psychiatric evaluation and everything rolled toward the December court date…And was resolved in September.

On the record company side, the DGC label was folded into the reorganisation of Universal Music Group from 1999 with its autonomous status removed. Geffen and A&M became part of Interscope and its subsequent travails are beyond the scope of this chat. At the turn of the millennium though the status of the label was unclear, personnel were shifting so relationships were lost — Courtney Love’s legal case was fair in stating things were uncertain.

Nirvana’s story became increasingly entangled with larger wars. Courtney was involved in a case accusing Universal of corrupt business practices in tying artists to contracts longer than those signed by other employees. That was part of a wider effort known as the Recording Artists Coalition to try to overturn these kinds of contracts. She was simultaneously being sued by Universal from 2000 onward for failure to deliver the required five Hole albums and had countersued in March 2001 claiming that Universal had defrauded Hole. It concluded with the label agreeing to free Hole from their contract, to return rights to unreleased Hole music to her. In return she agreed to give Universal a cut of revenue from subsequent releases, removed restrictions on reissuing previously released Hole material…And let Universal release the subsequent Nirvana archive projects as part of the Nirvana L.L.C. settlement.

Since then, things have become ever more tangled and ever more arcane.

Courtney’s control over Kurt Cobain’s publishing rights meant she was entitled to go ahead, in April 2006, with the sale of 25% of those rights to Primary Wave Music Publishing, who would seek out potential uses of Kurt Cobain’s music (that figure subsequently seems to have hit 50% either through a further agreement or initial misreporting.) The deal also included complete rights to distribute Nirvana’s music. A court case in 2008 included a document stating the sale was for $19.5m not the wild estimates ranging up to $50m. The results weren’t great for Primary Wave with estimates in early 2009 being that use of Nirvana’s music had resulted in only $2.3m in royalties at that point in time. It doesn’t seem an entirely happy marriage given the 2012 spat over Courtney’s annoyance at Smells Like Teen Spirit being used in The Muppets’ new movie — something agreed by Primary Wave and approved by Dave and Krist. Courtney subsequently claimed she hadn’t signed over ‘synchronisation rights’ —money paid related to the combination of music with visual images (i.e., film, TV, computer games.)

Courtney received a substantial advance on the Nirvana greatest hits release in 2002 and also on the publication of Kurt Cobain’s Journals — then was subsequently sued by the law firm who had represented her to secure this. Hendricks & Lewis demanded $340K in unpaid fees on top of the cool $1.15m they’d earned representing Courtney throughout the earlier Nirvana disputes. This case was settled in Autumn of 2007. A further law suit was settled in late 2010 related to the rights to Cobain’s music. The accounting firm, London & Co. claimed at the start of their case in July 2008 Courtney had agreed to pay them 5% of any earnings from The End of Music LLC and therefore claimed a share of the sale to Primary Wave.

The next twist came this year as it turned out that from sometime in 2010 Courtney handed over control of her share of Kurt Cobain’s estate to Frances Bean Cobain in return for a loan from the money that had accrued in Frances’ trust fund; this came after a turbulent time in which Frances got a restraining order against her mum and had Kurt’s mother and sister named her legal guardians until she reached age eighteen. As far as can be told this hasn’t made any waves in terms of new releases or deviations from established anniversary plans.

Meanwhile, in late 2012, control over Virgin Music Publishing passed to BMG. Sony bought EMI Music Publishing but was made to sell various catalogues of songs as a condition of the sale. Again, it makes little difference beyond being another piece of the endless folding and unfurling of music companies, legal ownership, percentage shares and business obscurity building up around the band as it moves further and further away from a living breathing entity and deeper into the realm of paper concepts.

Ownership of Nirvana Part One

Nirvana as a business, as a commercial product, has been quite a saga in itself. The first time the whole subject reared its head was right back in 1992 with a significant argument between Cobain and his partners in the band. The royalties and money due to the band consisted of a direct percentage of sales, then an additional percentage consisting of the publishing royalties.

The band’s contract with Sub Pop, signed in early 1989, was a fairly basic effort offering $6,000 in 1989, $12,000 in 1990 and $24,000 in 1991…To be split between the three band members. The band relied on their cut of sales plus touring income (the band’s descriptions suggest that even in 1990 the latter amounted to only a few hundred dollars each at the end of a couple months of touring.) Sonic Youth talk about how it was only the success of Daydream Nation, eight years into their career, that allowed them to quit their day jobs — Nirvana in 1989-1990 were living barely above the poverty line and only a relatively ascetic life made this liveable.

The contract signing with DGC sometime around April 30, 1991 certainly made life a lot more comfortable. The band described speculation about the size of their advance as “journalism through hearsay…The numbers kept getting bigger so that a lot of people believed that we were signing for a million dollars.” The amount they actually signed for, an advance of $287,000 split between the three of them and spread over two albums, was certainly a huge step up on their previous situation but, on the other hand, hardly immeasurable wealth; circa $95,700 each. The money was also whittled down by the 20-25% that had to go to their management company amid other expenditures including a group accountant from the firm Voldal-Wartelle & Co. In terms of the benefit to Sub Pop, there was a payment of $75,000 made, but an equally useful stream of secured revenue via two percent on Nevermind’s sales and then on Incesticide’s.

In a smart move, however, the band decided to take a higher percentage of sales rather than a higher advance. Subsequent successes made this a substantial money-spinner, enough to earn the band comfort but at the time the band still needed to repay the advance before they’d make any further money from this source — there was also the matter of taxes being due on all this. Money from merchandise would also be of surging importance for Nirvana though the sums earned are unknown. Revenue from live performance was a further source, the festival appearances in 1992-1993 undoubtedly netted the band above average sums for one-off shows helping to explain their ability to stay off the road for most of a year and a half.

Separately there was the matter of publishing royalties. The deal is that the record company pays for making a copy of the recording of the published music which is why publishing is significant. Nirvana received a reduced rate consisting of 75% of the compulsory publishing royalty rate, and only on ten songs on each album, because as they were the recording group as well as the songwriters they were deemed to have control over the length of recording (meaning otherwise they could inflate the royalties due by including more or longer material.)The publishing company’s duty was to chase payments due from use, performance or broadcast of Nirvana’s music, to maintain the full accounts of the money due and received, and, having taken their percentage (in the 30% region) to pay the band. 1991 saw Cobain set up ‘The End of Music’ under Virgin Publishing with each member receiving $1,000 a month on top of the advance — again, good money, not regal sums of stacked cash. The even division of royalties from this source was because, with the sales figures the band expected (remember DGC only printed 50,000 copies of the album initially), and given they had to repay their advance, it was the publishing that was expected to be their main source of income. This sum formed an additional percentage on top of the direct amount the record company would pay the band on each sale — again, minus management fees, taxes, and so forth.
The brawl in 1992 related entirely to this amount. The ill-tempered result was that Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl receive a cut on only eleven Nirvana songs including 12.5% each on Smells Like Teen Spirit — Kurt receiving the remaining 75% on those songs, plus 100% of those deemed to be entirely is creation.

An amount went to Chad Channing for his involvement in Polly and some songs on Incesticide. This made Krist and Dave entirely dependent on their direct cut of record sales plus live performance and merchandise sales. It’s easy to look back and think “wow, but they were on the road to being millionaires!” At the time, in mid-1992, it was impossible to know how high Nevermind would rise, whether they’d have worthwhile income in two, three years time. In a career path that doesn’t come with a regular salary, to have someone bite the lion’s share of that publishing royalty was understandably unnerving.

A Nirvana Cover on the Nerd Table

Turns out that Adam supplies vocals to a rather intriguing band called Nerd Table (www.nerdtableonline.com) with quite a remarkable cast of collaborators on their 2012 album release Chasing the Bronco…

Aaron Burckhard and Dale Crover both play on a cover of Floyd the Barber (drums and backing vocals respectively), on a track called Noise of Earth Part 4 (drums and guitar respectively) and Dale also provides guitar on Terri Schiavo (Reprise.) Further adding to the universe of Nirvana-circling figures, Cris Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets contributed to the artwork.

The cover of Floyd the Barber is available at the band’s homepage, definitely worth a listen — I like how good the tune sounds even shorn of its murky grunge, late Eighties sound. What I like about this, and about Deervana (see last week’s post) is that in each case the band simply enjoys playing the music they love, they’re not mimicking or trying to forcibly press their own sound into a Nirvana-shaped mould. The fact Adam has a more snarling voice sounds great with these lyrics, no karaoke pretence of ‘becoming’ Kurt Cobain, just taking the song on, making it less glowering and dank (Kurt always made it sound so seedy and rundown), more of a razor, more ‘metal’.

Sliver = Rug Burn: Nirvana and Renamed Songs

Credit for this post goes out to Adam Harding — a true gent. Having written to say he’d received his copy of Dark Slivers he took the time to drop me a line about a scanned newspaper article that can be seen in the Mudhoney Documentary “I’m Now.” The article basically suggests that a different name was publicised for Sliver prior to its release; Rug Burn. It’s also fascinating to see how, at twenty years distance, this spell of miscellaneous drummers and multiple options (Patty Schemel, J Mascis, Dan Peters…) now looks like just a ‘blip’, a pause before the arrival of Dave Grohl. The article gives a sense of confusion, of uncertainty, with Dan Peters genuinely under consideration for a longer stint.

The wider point that Nirvana songs existed under a multiplicity of working titles is old news. What intrigues me, however, is the window those working titles often gave onto what was on the mind. This song follows quite a regular pattern in terms of the shift in titles; from the specific to the generic. Rug Burn, as a title, has a very precise domesticity and childhood connection — Sliver could mean just about anything. Two other fair examples from the same phase were the shift from Immodium — a diarrhoea medicine, pointing to the on-the-road experience of Tad Doyle’s extreme stomach problems during the 1989 spell when the song was being written — to the universal Breed. Pay to Play also relates to touring experiences, the practice of bands being forced to buy tickets from a venue then sell them on in order to make any money, and changes to the generic Stay Away. Other examples would be Formula/Drain You, Memoria/Come as you Are. The key exception is New Complaint’s evolution into the highly personal Heart Shaped Box — it emphasises the love song aspect of it, the song as a gift to Courtney Love, named after one of the gifts they had given one another.

The following list, based on the information compiled at LiveNirvana (with thanks to what is an amazing website), lists all the known previous names:

What the list emphasises is that Kurt Cobain did put thought into the details of his music, it wasn’t all just on-the-spot inspiration. It’s also interesting to see him regularly modifying his tendency to make lame quips, opting for more palatable, often more deftly and poetically phrased, titles. There are still further habits and tendencies present.

Firstly, a simple (and not uncommon approach) was to simply refer to a song by a line from its lyrics until it was fully formed; I Think I’m Dumb, New Complaint, Memoria, Knows Not What it Means — they’re all fairly obvious matches. With more visible evidence of the full evolution of songs from first demo to final recording it’s likely that a lot more songs traced this path from namelessness, to lyric-naming, to a final statement.

Naming a song after it’s sound, or feel, was another clear approach. My favourite example is Scentless Apprentice with its over-elaborate working titles mimicking the core riff beautifully. It’s a delightfully humorous example too, I mean, taking the time to write Buck Buck bo Buck, Banana Fanna fo Fuk — fun! There’s no other example as explicit as that one, where the title really is the tune, but, there are a few examples of naming the song after how it felt; All Apologies seems to align with the 1991 Nevermind sessions’ Song in D (this is unconfirmed as yet) then became La La La La which also fits the mood of the song.

As an aside, Dope Hippie/Hairspray Queen is an unusual switch — they’re not necessarily targeting the same audience unless my understanding of the U.S. rock scene is flawed and the last remnants of the Grateful Dead hippy crowd were morphing into the big-hair and androgynous glam metal crowds around Mӧtley Crüe and their ilk. The initial title reeks of Kurt’s later comment about “I wouldn’t wear a tie-dyed tee shirt unless it was dyed with the urine of Phil Collins and the blood of Jerry Garcia.” The latter title seems to shift to a separate target of his ire. It’s a real one-off.

The rapid fire writing around the Rio de Janeiro recording sessions in January 1993 yields a spell of such titles with Very Ape simply being called Perky New Wave Number while I Hate Myself and I Want to Die’s heaviness fits the Two Bass Kid line well (with the later titles both being far better.) Scentless Apprentice only evolved in rehearsals at the end of 1992 so, again, a scribbled down name until it really has to be thought about in February. The nicest example is Tourette’s being listed as New Poopie; pure and simple, “new shit”, how much more blunt can you get? No time for naming, they knew they’d get round to it. In Utero was certainly the most visibly interesting spell of song renaming what with Sad/Sappy/Verse Chorus Verse making its long transition from 1988 acoustic demo name (Sad) describing its mood, to its mid-period shrug (Sappy) before finally pickpocketing from a now discarded song to take on its final glum, bored with standard pop trope, title (Verse Chorus Verse.)

The band’s final spell offered two fun cases. Firstly, You Know You’re Right seems to have never made it further than a tape marked Kurt’s Tune #1 — a total lack of involvement similar to the way Pennyroyal Tea was the first single since Smells Like Teen Spirit that had no Cobain involvement. On the other hand, the demo known on With the Lights Out as Do Re Mi, and potentially actually called Me and My IV or Dough, Ray and Me, has a different interest. In this case, all three potential names are equally normal Cobain naming approaches — a simple repeat of the chorus line, or rhymes based on the chorus line; or, again, a random snatch from the song or two personal references (Me and My IV a reference to increasing familiarity with hospital stays, the latter potentially about a real person according to http://shutuplittleman.com/history.php?idd=19) that, if they followed the usual Cobain trend, would have been revised into something less personal.

Nirvana Live: Missing From Action Part Two

It’ll be no surprise to learn that a lot of Incesticide’s early material suffers from the limitations of our vision at twenty years distance. Yet, what is noticeable is more the centrality of some songs to Nirvana’s live identity in the early days. Mexican Seafood is remarkable, it’s present in every fully known set-list from March 1987 when the band first perform, until February 1989 just days before the band departs for their first gigs in California. Hairspray Queen and Aero Zeppelin have a similar dependability which elevates these three songs above the rarities described in Part One of this piece, as well as above a number of the dashed off last-minute additions to Bleach. It certainly looks like these three songs were held in higher affection than the barely performed Scoff or Swap Meet.

As an aside on those two songs, it’s fascinating how deep Nirvana’s collective memory was; they seem never to banish a song from mind; Scoff and Swap Meet are reprised in September 1991 and June 1992 respectively as cases in point. It’s a fascinating working practice specifically related to the way they play their live performances; songs are stashed away, like Vendetagainst, then after a year, two years, out of favour, they’re given an airing. It suggests that, at least from 1987-1992, there was substantial practice going on behind the scene to keep a solid grip on the lesser songs. On the one hand, it gives credibility to the rumours about songs like Clean Up Before She Comes, Opinion and Talk to Me springing to life in the Cobain basement in 1994 — no song seems to have been forgotten if there was any use that could be made of it. On the other hand, it makes one wonder why Mrs. Butterworth, utterly unseen, invisible, unknown (and actually unnamed) until the With the Lights Out box-set was erased so thoroughly alongside, according to Gillian G. Gaar, two other 1987 compositions. The song stands alongside Big Long Now as a genuine ghost in the catalogue; a song with a murky past, a gossamer thin presence, and no future.

Similarly, Beeswax looks ever more like a lucky addition to the January 23, 1988 session and doubly-lucky to still merit a place on Incesticide. The song receives just two work-outs in 1988 with only one intervening show at which its presence is therefore likely. This is a no more impressive record than Annorexorcist or Rauchola, Downer, If You Must and Pen Cap Chew are all given more visible shots as part of the Nirvana live experience.

While all of Nevermind gets its day on stage, the higher percentage of available set-lists makes the rapid fall off in appearances from certain songs at least noteworthy. Lounge Act is the very last of the Nevermind tracks to make it on stage and the quickest to depart; after that one show in Ireland it crops up just once more that year, returning only in 1992 to make inconsistent appearances in sets throughout the year.

When it comes to In Utero, the drawn out nature of the album’s creation is the greatest point of note. The first appearances of Milk It in January, plus Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol’s only known appearance, is slightly misleading given it was only a soundcheck appearance, it’s April before the band really give it a full live shot. There’s still an ‘outlier’, however, on the album just as Scoff and Swap Meet were on Bleach, just as Lounge Act was on Nevermind. Very Ape doesn’t make an appearance until late July, it serves a purpose on the album but fades from the live set only to be brought back in to pep things up for 1994. It’s curious that the song should follow the exact same trajectory as Lounge Act, again, it’s a positive feature that even on the In Utero tour there was some apparent desire to add at least some freshness to playing, the reappearance of Sappy after a long absence also bearing this out.

There is a persistent tendency to trial songs live, for a month, two months, at a time then move on. Thus tracks like Curmudgeon, Sappy, Talk to Me, Oh The Guilt, Verse Chorus Verse receive brief flurries of activity then either vanish permanently, or vanish until the next time the band are considering the need for songs for future releases. This fits with Kurt Cobain’s method of writing; most lyrics seem to be written in a flurry of inspiration, tweaked for a short period, then concluded – potentially with later rewriting before a recording session. He never seems to have mused on a song for lengthy periods (six months, a year…) even if a song remained unused for that long. Thus the appearances and disappearances mark renewed enthusiasm, keeping a song in mind, then putting it away again. He doesn’t seem to have ever wholly forgotten many songs though, especially after 1989.

On the other hand, in the late spell, the enthusiasm for working songs over seems to vanish. As someone commented the other week, there’s a rumour that I Hate Myself and I Want to Die, but no definitive confirmed sighting in 1993-94. You Know You’re Right appears once in full form (plus its main riff appears in an on stage noise jam), M.V. doesn’t appear at all, Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol makes it into a soundcheck apparently but that’s it. These songs were functional items fulfilling a need for extra material to be used wherever. Their absence from setlists simply confirms there B-Side status.