The Nirvana song inspired by The Beatles’ ‘Norwegian Wood’
The writer Graham Greene once said that “there is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in“. For Kurt Cobain, as for millions of people, that Promethean moment arrived when a certain band illuminated a brighter future. “At a really early age, I wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll star. Ever since I got my first Beatles record,“ he once declared.
They broke through his rather humdrum and tough childhood with an assegai of hope, and their transcendent melodies would have a significant impact on his musical ideals, too. While what followed with his output in Nirvana might have been decidedly fresh at the time, with the heavy distortion going against the grain of what had come before in rock, if you strip away the aesthetics of the music, you often find sensibilities entirely aligned with The Beatles.
short, and as many suspect, he eventually went fully acoustic, the similarities with the Fab Four would’ve likely been readily apparent, barring an inherent ruggedness. As Cobain once explained in an interview with Mimmo Caccamo: “In my opinion, the best pop songs that were ever written were written in the ‘60s. And that’s why anything that’s simple guitar pop music nowadays is associated with ‘60s music.“
And of all the songs mustered in that period, he claims ‘Norwegian Wood’ was his favourite. According to Cobain’s manager, Danny Goldberg, the song had a particular bearing on ‘All Apologies’. He explains in his memoir, Bumping into Geniuses, that while Cobain was crafting the song, he “played the Beatles song ‘Norwegian Wood’ over and over, hour after hour,“ eventually echoing its flow into his own inspired work.
In fact, had his life not been cut tragically short, and as many suspect, he eventually went fully acoustic, the similarities with the Fab Four would’ve likely been readily apparent, barring an inherent ruggedness. As Cobain once explained in an interview with Mimmo Caccamo: “In my opinion, the best pop songs that were ever written were written in the ‘60s. And that’s why anything that’s simple guitar pop music nowadays is associated with ‘60s music.“
And of all the songs mustered in that period, he claims ‘Norwegian Wood’ was his favourite. According to Cobain’s manager, Danny Goldberg, the song had a particular bearing on ‘All Apologies’. He explains in his memoir, Bumping into Geniuses, that while Cobain was crafting the song, he “played the Beatles song ‘Norwegian Wood’ over and over, hour after hour,“ eventually echoing its flow into his own inspired work.
The melodic lushness was there for all to see, with Dave Grohl telling Harp that the song was simply “something that Kurt wrote on [a] 4-track in our apartment in Olympia. I remember hearing it and thinking, ‘God, this guy has such a beautiful sense of melody, I can’t believe he’s screaming all the time.’“ On this occasion, however, that gruffness transmuted a ’60s classic into something new, something that seemed to tap into the zeitgeist in the same way that The Beatles had done before him.
The masked pop-folk of the song typified Cobain’s guitar style, which was always heavily indebted to the Fab Four. As he said himself, “Even now I’m starting to go back to listen to The Beatles. My favourite period is the Rubber Soul period, the guitar and simple melodies are my favourite.”
Grohl himself even told Access Hollywood: “When I was young, that’s how I learned how to play music – I had a guitar and a Beatles songbook. I never had a teacher – I just had these Beatles records. Even in Nirvana – The Beatles [were] such a huge influence.”
You can watch an acoustic rendition of ‘All Apologies’ as part of the MTV Unplugged session below.
