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In 1991, as Nevermind topped the charts, Kurt Cobain tried to explain why Nirvana were suddenly the hottest band in the country.

“We’re just musically and rhythmically retarded. We play so hard that we can’t tune our guitars fast enough. People can relate to that.” So said Kurt Cobain when he sat down for an interview with Guitar World in late 1991. At the time, Nevermind, the Seattle trio’s majorlabel debut, was one of the hottest out-of-the-box albums in the country. Fueled by the contagious hit single “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the spirited album turned Gold a mere five weeks after its release and, one month later, leaped past both volumes of Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion. Nirvana’s sudden, multi-Platinum-bound popularity said much about the mood of pop fans: bored with the slick, flamboyant music that had dominated much of the Eighties, they embraced the comparatively raw sounds (driven by cheap second-hand guitars, no less), infectious dirty riffs and wry lyrical hooks that were “Teen Spirit”’s hallmarks. None of that, however, prevented Cobain from postulating his own reasons for Nirvana’s rapid ascendancy.

“We sound like the Bay City Rollers after an assault by Black Sabbath,” he continued in his nasty smoker’s hack. “And we vomit onstage better than anyone!”

It was a light-hearted side to the guitarist that would become rarer over the following two years as Nirvana’s fame grew and Cobain’s psyche spiraled out of control. During this Guitar World interview, Cobain’s first, he showed no evidence of his dark side. Moreover, we certainly had no idea that the brash young man in our presence would influence a new generation of rockers and change the course of music. To us he was just Kurt Cobain, Nirvana’s guitarist, singer and songwriter, and teen idol of the moment. In this brief but breezy interview, he waxes humorously on the pros of cheap guitars, the perils of twang bars, and why Leo Fender was a dork.

GUITAR WORLD MTV thinks Nirvana is a metal band.

KURT COBAIN That’s fine; let them be fooled! I don’t have anything against Headbanger’s Ball, but it’s strange to see our faces on MTV.

GW Metallica’s Kirk Hammett is a huge Nirvana fan.

COBAIN That’s real flattering. We met him recently and he’s a real nice guy. We talked about the Sub Pop scene, heavy metal and guitars.

GW Speaking of guitars, you seem to favor low-end models.

COBAIN I don’t favor them; it’s just that I can afford them. [laughs] I’m left-handed, and it’s not very easy to find reasonably priced, high-quality left-handed guitars. But out of all the guitars in the whole world, the Fender Mustang is my favorite. I’ve only owned two of them.

GW What is it about the Mustang that works for you?

COBAIN They’re cheap and totally ineffi- cient, and they sound like crap. They are also very small and don’t stay in tune, and when you want to raise the string action on the fretboard, you have to loosen all the strings and completely remove the bridge. You have to turn these little screws with your fingers and hope that you’ve estimated it right. If you screw up, you have to repeat the process over and over until you get it right. Whoever invented that guitar was a dork.

GW It was Leo Fender.

COBAIN I guess I’m calling Leo Fender, the dead guy, a dork. Now I’ll never get an endorsement. [laughs] We’ve been offered a Gibson endorsement, but I can’t find a Gibson I like.

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