The Nirvana song Kurt Cobain called “kind of wimpy”

In the early days of grunge, Nirvana was a beautiful contradiction. Even though Kurt Cobain might not have wanted to be considered a commercial sellout and preferred to keep most of the arrangements on their material sparse, the sheer level of hookiness behind their songs was enough to get many fairweather indie fans dancing along regardless. While all rock and roll benefits from being rough around the edges, Cobain admitted that one of the band’s beloved deep cuts needed work before it was released.

Before the group had even secured a record deal, many of Cobain’s songs featured various genre clashes that no one had heard before. Being inspired as much by The Beatles as he was by Melvins and Flipper, much of Nirvana’s early material revolved around melodic versions of dissonant punk pieces, making for a unique rub when working on early tracks like ‘School’ and ‘Floyd the Barber’.

Even though the band had worked out a backlog of material in the late 1980s, the indie label SubPop wasn’t exactly impressed with the group at first. Upon hearing them for the first time, CEO Bruce Pavitt admitted that he didn’t know if the band could turn over a profit with them, only signing them to release a single at first.

Instead of Cobain’s originals, the band elected to record a cover version of the Shocking Blue B-side ‘Love Buzz’. Keeping the bassline from the original, they turned the moody 1960s romp into one of the most caustic rockers they have ever made, featuring the studio debut of Cobain’s trademark scream.

While Cobain was happy to be on vinyl for the first time, he admitted to not liking how the song initially came out. Though the band may have been able to turn over a massive profit and earn enough goodwill to release their debut album Bleach a few months later, Cobain thought that the studio take was far from the group’s best performance of the track.

When talking about the track later, Cobain thought that ‘Love Buzz’ could have benefited from sounding a bit heavier in the mix, saying, “I wish we could have recorded it a lot heavier. It was one of our first recordings. We weren’t sure just what we wanted to do so it turned out kind of wimpy compared to our most recent recordings”.

While the track would be included with the rest of the songs on Bleach, it’s easy to see how Cobain wanted to fatten up the sound. Considering the band was making sludgier material like ‘Blew’ and ‘Paper Cuts’, Cobain was most likely envisioning a version of the piece that sounded closer to what they could when they tuned down their guitars a little more.

For all of the problems he had with the recording, Nirvana did not disappoint when they performed the songs in a live setting. By the time they had sacked Chad Channing and acquired Dave Grohl, the band had turned the track into a feral beast live, with Cobain lashing out in anger and Grohl giving a booming sonic pulse throughout the track.

Then again, the band were in for another shakeup when recording their following album, Nevermind. Taking the melodic pieces of their debut, Cobain would change the rock landscape by making an album that could please both the alternative fans as well as the mainstream. While that achievement may have been a mixed blessing for Cobain, ‘Love Buzz’ is still a great time capsule of Nirvana’s melodic potential before everything went off the rails.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HIrENjkAiU