"Kurt was Nirvana, period. Anyone else who says they were in the band is lying," she insisted, as Los Angeles Times reporter Chuck Phillips cradled Love in his arms on the Austin Convention Center stage.
A few weeks ago, Love, Grohl and Novoselic settled their lawsuit, which paved the way for the release of "You Know You're Right," which made its way to the Internet and rock radio well before its intended release. The song, which sounds like trademark Nirvana -- or, as Grohl said in Spin recently, "Like everything else we ever did, like, ever" -- has also spawned a much-requested MTV video, culled from previously unseen concert and backstage footage, much surreptitiously filmed by Love, who secreted a tiny video camera in her then-ever-present "medicine kit."
"You Know You're Right" remains but a single song amid hundreds of Nirvana recordings alive in the Geffen Records vault and Love's garage apartment. Collectors have long hoarded the five-disc Outcesticide series, which contain studio sessions and live covers, as well as the six-disc Into the Black boxed set, which comes with a dazzling 24-page booklet. But there are recordings so rare they don't appear on any illicit compilation. Here are the rarest of the rare, along with whatever limited session information we could find using the ultrasecret members-only Nirvana fan club discography site theneedleandthedamagedone.co.uk/boots/rare/whatever/nevermind.html.
"Narcoleptic, Neurotic" (alternate title: "Little Pissant") and "Jesus Hello": These In Utero discards sound like many other Nirvana songs: soft, loud, soft, loud, etc. They're most notable, however, for Cobain's use of chain saw and harmonium, the latter at the suggestion of producer Steve Albini, who once told Guitar Player magazine, "I was doing everything I could to make Nirvana as uncommercial as every other band I've worked with, except the Breeders, because I wanted to fuck Kim Deal."
"Squeezin Teezin": Nirvana was fond of whipping out the oddball cover song, but this one is disquieting. The story goes as follows: In 1991, BBC disc jockey John Peel asked the band to appear on his radio show. Nirvana agreed, but asked to perform a set of covers, to which Peel agreed. The set list featured several Nirvana favorites -- including The Who's "Baba O'Riley," The Doors' "The End" and Terry Jacks' "Seasons in the Sun" -- but also some bizarre choices, among them Cher's "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" and this little-known 1989 bit of hair metal written by Harry Cody, otherwise known as the guitarist for the band Shotgun Messiah.
"Violet"/"Miss World"/"Plump"/"Asking for It"/"Jennifer's Body"/"Doll Parts"/"Credit in the Straight World"/"Softer, Softest"/"She Walks on Me"/"I Think That I Would Die"/"Gutless"/"Rock Star": Otherwise known as Hole's second album -- the first on a major label -- Live Through This, released in April 1994. According to Internet gossip, this very tape is the reason Courtney Love settled her suit with Grohl and Novoselic: The Foo Fighters front man owns it in its entirety -- it was scheduled to be Nirvana's fourth studio album, after In Utero, and Grohl and Novoselic play on all the sessions -- and threatened to release it if Love didn't settle the suit. In fact, test pressings of the Foos' new One by One contain a "hidden track" that appears to be a 92-second montage of the Nirvana "Won't Live Through This" sessions, as they've come to be known.
"I Don't Wanna Be Your Yoko, Oh No": Taken from the band's sound check before its last American performance on January 8, 1994, at the Seattle Center Coliseum, this song was given to Cobain as a birthday present from Love. That would explain why it's so awful -- although it would later appear on Hole's third album as "Malibu," with slightly altered lyrics. Grohl and Novoselic refused to perform it in front of an audience, record it or even say its title out loud. In the legal papers, it is referred to only as "I.D.W.B.Y.Y.O.N. (Human Nature)."
"Rape Me"/"Too Shy": Recorded at the Palaghiaccio in Rome on February 2, 1994 -- the night Cobain tried to kill himself with pills and champagne -- this odd coupling featuring the Kajagoogoo hit likely stemmed from Cobain's feelings that "in 10 years when NIRVANA becomes as memorable as Kajagoogoo that same very small percent will come to see us at reunion gigs sponsored by Depends diapers," as he wrote in his diaries in 1992.
"Pine Tree Janitorial Service": This is a fake ad jingle, recorded on a home studio four-track, for a company Cobain wanted to start with Novoselic. "We purposely limit our number of commercial offices in order to personally clean while taking our time," he sings, to which Novoselic responds, "We will suck up all manner of filth, muck, grease and grime." It would later resurface during the Nevermind sessions as "Shoot Up While You Work," with drastically reworked lyrics -- "suck up," for instance, becomes "shoot up."
"Losing Nirvana": Originally intended for inclusion on Nirvana's first single for Sub Pop in 1988, this song was Cobain's passive-aggressive attempt to inform drummer Dave Foster that he had been replaced by Chad Channing. Cobain and Novoselic decided to write Foster a letter instead -- which appears in Journals, the forthcoming collection of Cobain's diary entries, drawings and grocery lists -- though Cobain ended up using many of the lyrics to "Losing Nirvana" in his kiss-off to Foster: "We feel really shitty that we don't have the guts to tell you in person/But we didn't know how mad you would get."
"Get Free": Think this Vines song sounds like something Kurt Cobain might have written? Well, there's a good reason: He did, in 1991.
"My Stomach Hurts": This song, from the planned double album Cobain's Disease, is a 15-minute symphonic experiment in Neu!-like prog, and its lyrics, like so many other Nirvana songs, hint at the agony Kurt was constantly enduring -- the "burning, nauseaus [sic] pain in my upper abdominal cavity," as he wrote in Journals. Among the lyrics: "My stomach hurts/My head hurts/My arm hurts/My leg hurts/My back hurts/My front hurts/My hurt hurts."
