Any aspect of Nirvana songs that catches the most attention tends to return to Kurt Cobain’s work. While every member of the band brought their signature flash to the production of records like Nevermind, Cobain’s hard-hitting riffs and borderline-random approach to lyrics made for the perfect antidote to the flashy odes to nothing spread across MTV in the early 1990s. That’s not to say that Cobain didn’t have help every once in a while, though.
On the group’s first album, Bleach, it was clear that things weren’t gelling with original drummer Chad Channing. Becoming increasingly frustrated with getting the drums right, Cobain would play with various substitute drummers like Dale Crover from Melvins and Dan Peters from Mudhoney before landing on Dave Grohl.
Going into the famed Sound City to make their magnum opus, Nevermind, the music wasn’t a group effort, with Grohl and bassist Krist Novoselic only contributing their arrangement to Cobain’s songs. Being fully formed by the time they were rehearsing, Cobain knew exactly where the verses and choruses would go, making tracks pulsate on ‘Come As You Are’ and ‘In Bloom’.
Of all the group’s songs, only two mainstream tunes featured credited contributions from Novoselic and Grohl. Although the music was originally going to be credited to everyone on Nevermind, the only song that featured a writing credit from Grohl and Novoselic was ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, which became synonymous with the grunge scene once its accompanying video lit up MTV.
It’s easy to see why ‘Teen Spirit’ would be the only collaborative effort, too. As much as Cobain may get credit for writing the lion’s share of the lyrics and melody, the song doesn’t come alive until Grohl’s massive drum rolls lead the listener into the initial groove. Novoselic should also get a nod for his bass arrangement, making the initial groove sound sinister when going into the verses.
When working on the following album, In Utero, that communal spirit also bled through into one of the album’s most savage cuts. Following the clangour of ‘Serve the Servants’, ‘Scentless Apprentice’ was the closest to metal that Nirvana would ever get, born out of a jam session they had and lyrics taken from Cobain reading the novel Perfume.
Although Cobain’s bandmates may have been hurt at the time, Grohl never let his creative expression affect the dynamic of Nirvana, recalling to Lars Ulrich, “Our songwriter was pretty kickass. And there’s the old joke about ‘what’s the last thing a drummer says before getting kicked out a band? Hey guys, I got a song I think we should play’”.
If Nirvana had survived to make another studio album, though, Grohl admitted that Cobain was looking at the demos of what would become early Foo Fighters, saying that he wanted to work on the demos of ‘Alone + Easy Target’ and ‘Exhausted’. While there’s no concrete evidence of what a Cobain/Grohl penned tune would sound like, these two tracks give a subtle peak into Nirvana’s potential as a songwriting unit rather than Cobain’s vision.
