When Kurt Cobain set out to create what would eventually become Bleach, he was still living in Aberdeen, Washington, and working as a janitor.

His guitar playing, coupled with his introspective songwriting, was attracting attention, however – especially when a nascent Nirvana, comprising Cobain, bassist Krist Novoselic, and drummer Chad Channing, turned Shocking Blue’s Love Buzz into their live showcase track.

A dozen letters to labels later, Sub Pop head honchos Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman decided to take a chance on a very desperate Cobain, who accepted a less-than-ideal deal that saw the band absorb all the recording costs.

Recorded in four sessions in late December 1988 that spanned roughly 20 hours, Bleach is pure rawness. It cost the band – or, rather, Jason Everman, a musician, soldier, early Nirvana fan, and briefly the band’s second guitarist – $606.17, which he fronted.

“We literally tracked it all in three days,” producer Jack Endino told Cobain biographer Charles R. Cross in an interview published in Guitar World in June 2005.

Their rehearsals carried a similar DIY spirit, as the band honed Bleach in an Aberdeen hair salon owned by Novoselic’s mother, which could only be used after hours.

“The place closed at eight, so we’d start rehearsing then and playing until eight in the morning, when it opened again,” recalled Channing.

Perhaps one of the most underrated elements of Bleach-era Nirvana is Novoselic, who not only served as a reliable friend for Cobain but also stood out as a noteworthy bassist who perfectly complemented the rising face of grunge’s angular guitar playing.

When Cobain brought forward the riff for School, Novoselic told him, “That is the most ‘Seattle’ fucking riff I’ve ever heard in my life.”

Despite the band not living in Seattle, the city’s sludge metal scene of the ’80s and early ’90s, spearheaded by the Melvins, served as a clear influence and gave them a much-needed sense of aspiration early in their career.

Novoselic even went as far as to say that “School is the ultimate grunge song,” and thus, consequentially, the ultimate Seattle song.

Bleach, released on June 15, 1989, did not chart upon initial release, and Cobain in particular was frustrated by Sub Pop’s lack of promotional efforts.

Things started to shift after the British music press began touting the band as rising stars, and Bleach became a staple on many US college radio stations.

Then, following the release of their many-times-Platinum album Nevermind in 1991, Bleach finally received the widespread attention it deserved and became a cornerstone of the grunge movement.

In more recent news, the backline used on Nirvana’s Bleach tour hit the auction block just two months ago.

With Foo Fighters fresh from the release of their 12th studio album, Your Favourite Toy, Dave Grohl is looking back on his decades-long career.

Specifically, he’s reflecting on his roots with Nirvana – and how the pain that came with Kurt Cobain’s death, plus the band’s end, led to a whole new guitar-driven chapter he didn’t necessarily expect.

“There was a time once, when Nirvana ended, where I'm like, ‘I don’t know if I want to do music anymore… that hurts,’ and I'm like, ‘No, what am I talking about?’ That's the thing that always saved my life,’” he says in a new interview with the Broken Record Podcast. “I have to do it.”

Grohl also touched on his transition to Foo Fighters and being the sole songwriter in his then-fledgling post-Nirvana project.

“Time went by where I was just like, ‘God, what do I do? If I sit behind the drums, it makes me sad. If I listen music, it makes me sad,’” he says. “Then I wrote songs – [like] when I was a kid with those stupid journals. I wrote my way through it.”

Adamant on not becoming just another drummer-for-hire, Grohl re-acquainted himself with the guitar – the instrument he had started out with and served as his companion since age 10.

“When Nirvana was on tour, I'd bring a guitar with me," he told Guitar World in a 1997 interview, “so in hotel rooms, late at night, I'd have something to do. I love playing the drums, but you can't really sit down at home with a snack and play the drums.

“So I've never been without a guitar. Eventually, I was living with a person who had an 8-track in the basement. And these songs just started coming out.”

In more recent news, Grohl revealed why he never expected Pat Smear – who, back then, was Nirvana’s touring guitarist – to accept his invitation to join the band he was going to call the Foo Fighters.

Adrian Smith might be a member of one of the most iconic heavy metal bands of all time, but the Iron Maiden guitarist – whose journey is documented in the new documentary Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition – has recently looked back on a time when the band was impacted by the explosion of grunge.

“In South America and Europe, the band was still big, but in America, I think it struggled,” Smith tells Forbes. “Nirvana came along, and that changed everything.

“It was like punk in the late ’70s. I’d been probably playing in bands for about five years, and our bands were getting to a certain level [of success].”

He continues, “You work hard and all of a sudden, bang! You couldn't get a gig unless you had spiky hair and played punk. You thought, ‘Who are these people?’ They've only been playing for a year, and they're proud of it that they can't play. And yet everyone's buying their records, and they're selling out gigs.”

Ultimately, Smith likens the grunge era to the punk movement, calling it a “changing of perspective”.

“For bands like Maiden, it was hard,” he admits. “But like I said, the driving force is still there, and you just got to weather the storm a little bit.”

As for the experience of Maiden falling out of favor in the ’90s and being forced to play smaller venues, Smith says he cannot directly comment on that, as he left the band in 1990 – right before grunge went mainstream.

“I never did it with them. I never did the club thing,” he explains. “I mean, I’ve done clubs since then. I did a club tour with Bruce [Dickinson] in the States in the ’90s.

“So I did have a taste of that, but I just like playing whether it’s in a club or in a stadium, obviously I’d rather play stadium,” he adds with a laugh.

Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition will be released in cinemas worldwide on May 7.

In more recent news, Iron Maiden will finally be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, after more than two decades of eligibility.

Dave Grohl wanted to get back making music after the tragic end of Nirvana. He had ideas and had written some songs and put them onto tape. But he needed a guitarist. The big question was, who was he going to get in the band?

Speaking to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Grohl describes his headspace in the months following Kurt Cobain’s death.

The manner of Nirvana’s ending sent Grohl and bassist Krist Novoselic into survival mode.

“I think that we all wound up in places that felt... I don’t want to say comfortable, but safe,” recalls Grohl. “And so when I went into the studio and recorded that stuff by myself, I felt safe there. And I can’t speak for Krist, but I think at that time it was like we were just trying to get our feet back on the ground. For me, that’s something that I thought, 'Okay, well, music is the thing that’s going to rescue me.'”

The Foo Fighters frontman believes Novoselic found his feet by taking a step back from music and regrouping. And Grohl didn’t push him. “We didn’t really ever have that deeper, longer conversation,” he says.

If getting a band back together was part of the process for putting his heart back together, Grohl would have to start recruiting. Everyone knew him as the drummer from Nirvana. The last full-length album he released was In Utero and that was Seattle trio at their most confrontational.

The songs Grohl was putting together, none of them sounded like Scentless Apprentice. These were, well, poppy. And he’d have asked Nirvana live guitarist Pat Smear if he wanted to play in this band he was going to call the Foo Fighters, but no way would he say yes.

“The funniest thing is like, I didn't think Pat would be our guitar player. I just sent him a tape. I sent him one of the early cassettes,” says Grohl, expecting… Well, Pat Smear is a punk at heart. Grohl expected a polite thanks but no thanks. Smear was duly shocked. But his reaction was altogether more positive than Grohl could have hoped for.

“He was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s so poppy.’ And I’m like, ‘Is it? Okay, is that a good thing?’ And to Pat, that is a great thing,” says Grohl. “I was like, and I had already started jamming with Nate [Mendel, bass guitar] and William [Goldsmith, drums] and I was like, ‘Hey if you want to play guitar… I didn’t expect that he would, you know. And then he decided that he would jam with us. And it was great.”

The rest is history. The Foo Fighters returned with their 12th studio album, Your Favorite Toy, which is out now via RCA, their first to feature new drummer Ilan Rubin. Following the death of Taylor Hawkins in 2022, Grohl recorded all the drum parts for 2023’s But Here We Are.

In conversation with Lowe, Grohl reflects on what it’s like to have a back catalog that he felt was almost out of bounds, songs that he was scared to revisit – for any number of reasons but especially the obvious one, that playing something of, say, Nevermind was going to be too painful.

But he says there is nothing quite like those occasions when he, Novoselic and Smear have got together to perform Nirvana tracks.

“It’s such a weird thing to feel afraid to play songs. And for a long time it's like I was even afraid just to sit down at a drum set and play the opening riff to Smells Like Teen Spirit,” he says “It just seemed sort of forbidden. And so the few times that Krist and Pat and I have gotten together to do it, it’s a trip… the noise that the three of us make together, you don’t really get that noise anywhere else.

“The way that Krist strums his bass lines, the bass that he uses, the equipment he uses, his sense of feel and time, it’s like all of those things combined with Pat like with that crazy Germs/Pat Smear guitar thing. And then some loud-ass drums, when it happens, you're just like, oh fuck, I remember this. Shit, I haven’t heard this in 35 years. It’s a really beautiful sound and a beautiful feeling.”

You can watch/listen to the full Dave Grohl interview on The Zane Lowe Show on Apple Music.

It was a case of ‘game recognizes game’ over the weekend as Alice Cooper surprised fans by dishing out a shock rock-ified take of a grunge classic.

Just a few gigs into his latest tour, which sees 22-year-old Brit Anna Clara handpicked as Nita Strauss’ maternity cover, the veteran rocker paid homage to ’90s rock legends Nirvana by covering Smells Like Teen Spirit at his Coopstock festival in Phoenix.

Coopstock is the School's Out songwriter's annual charity fundraiser, where he leafs through his Rolodex to raise funds for his Solid Rock Teen Centers to put on a star-laden show. Ultimately, the event is designed to help the next generation reach their full potential.

Alice Cooper and his band headlined the 28th edition of the festival at the Las Sendas Golf Club in Mesa, Arizona, with Kiss guitarist Tommy Thayer, and Rock Hall of Famer John Oates also on the bill.

The Nirvana cover was a shock, but a pleasant one at that. Kurt Cobain had drawn from the Pixies for its juxtaposition of quiet verses and loud choruses, but, though not a direct influence, a little of Alice Cooper’s teenage angst – see I’m Eighteen – also bleeds into the track.

It was long-serving guitarist Ryan Roxie who broke out into the song's unmistakable guitar riff on his Sunburst Les Paul, and Coop certainly makes its tense verses that little bit creepier. Roxie stayed faithful to the simplistic guitar solo that ices the song's bridge.

As for Cara, she’s limited to a supporting role here, but she’s taken her dream gig in her stride. Strauss has hailed her “precision and soulful, emotional playing,” as the young shredder was welcomed into the band, having previously worked with Cooper’s other guitarist, Tommy Henriksen.

In related news, Cooper’s Trash era guitarist John McCurry has lifted the lid on the iconic Poison riff’s unlikely origins.

When Kurt Cobain gear hits the auction block, it tends to fetch a pretty penny, and the grunge icon’s Bleach-era touring backline could be the next lot to do so.

For evidence, before the mega bucks auction of Jim Irsay's humongous and historic gear collection earlier this year, his MTV Unplugged Martin D-18E and Smells Like Teen Spirit Fender Mustang, which originally sold for a collective $10.5 million, were the world's two most expensive guitars.

Granted, there are some outliers: his 1989 Takamine acoustic, featured in one of the most recognizable photos of the late guitarist, was estimated to sell for ‘just’ $500,000 last year. Still, there’s an aura that surrounds Cobain-themed bidding wars.

This lot is expected to turn a few heads. It features black-and-silver-paneled Fender Twin Reverb combo amps, each kitted out with JBL speakers, and a Marshall 4x12 speaker cabinet. For good measure, bassist Krist Novoselic’s Ampeg SVT has also been thrown in.

The amps are being sold off via London’s Denmark Street Guitars today (April 10). Posting on Instagram, it tempts those with cash to spare to bid on its auction to “own a piece of grunge history,” although there is no mention of expected prices; it’s an open book.

As MusicRadar points out, Bleach – Nirvana’s ear-gratingly raw debut album recorded for just $600 – was recorded with a Utah speaker-leaden ’67 Fender Twin. Cobain pivoted to a slightly different flavor for the proceeding tour.

Released in the summer of ‘89 (not to be confused with the Bryan Adams song), Bleach initially sold a respectable 40,000 copies, but when the polished powerhouse that is their sophomore album, Nevermind, dropped two years later, the record enjoyed a retrospective glow-up. It's since been certified Platinum in the US, UK, and Australia.

Live tracks from the tour were included in the record's 20th-anniversary deluxe edition, suggesting that this backline was put through its paces at – among many other shows – the Pine Street Theatre in Portland, Oregon, on February 9, 1990. Their set included Love Buzz, About a Girl, and their Vaselines cover, Molly's Lips.

Cobain once described Bleach as “straight-ahead garage grunge”, and its raw, abrasive textures, coupled with Cobain's lyrical themes of alienation, societal standards, and mental health, made for a powerful statement. Machine Head would go on to cover the hammerblow track Negative Creep, giving the song a thrashy makeover.

The auction takes place today (April 10). Interest can be registered by emailing sales@londonvntageguitars.com.

And don’t worry, Aaron Rash has already been informed.

Aaron Rash, the guitarist who has been obsessively chasing Nirvana's In Utero guitar tones, has uncovered the amp Kurt Cobain used to track its peculiar cleans – and it was hiding in plain sight.

While 1991's chart-smashing Nevermind is widely regarded as the grunge giant’s magnum opus, it’s the record’s successor, In Utero, that has so enraptured Rash’s imagination.

He’s been on the case of its clean tones for four years now, and as his latest video explains, it's been an uphill battle.

“There are no official records,” he says, “nothing was documented. [There were] only eyewitness accounts [and] 90% of what I've been told, I believed to be false.”

Fortunately, he had the record’s producer, Steve Albini, on speed dial to help with his tireless quest, which led to one strange quirk – the Fender Quad Reverb combo amp that Cobain used for the record featured only one working power tube.

“I didn't really know what to think when Kurt told me about the Quad with one tube,” Albini states. “But when I looked in the back of it, sure enough, there were three shattered tubes and one working one pumping away.”

The issue is that a single power tube wasn't enough to produce clean tones, and that, alongside a Randall RG-120 PH Commander head, was dismissed. But there was faint hope.

“On a song-by-song basis, Kurt would decide which amp would be the main sound and which would be the overdub sound,” Albini notes. “So the Randall, Quad, and one other amp – I forget which – would be done live, the other guitar part overdubbed.”

So, what was the mystery third amp? Well, for four years, Rash hit dead end after dead end. A Marshall Plexi modded by Cobain’s guitar tech, Earnie Bailey, designed to be a clean amp, was ruled out, as was his beloved 1982 Ultra-Linear black-panel Fender Twin Reverb. And there was no evidence that Cobain used an amp belonging to Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota.

“I started to feel pretty hopeless, like I'd wasted four years trying to figure out this stupid guitar tone,” Rash sighs. “I can’t tell you how many times I was close to giving up.”

The answer came from an interview with Bailey, in which he mentions a Rivera Twin Reverb, a dramatic revamping of the Fender amp by esteemed amp builder and modder, Paul Rivera. Billed as the Twin Reverb II, and released in the early ’80s, the joyous laugh that comes out of Rash after plugging into the amp says all you need to know.

“I felt like I'd just found the cure to cancer,” he beams. “I literally cried tears of joy.”

Photos from the studio sessions show the Twin Reverb II lurking in the corner, confirming that this was the amp that produced the tones that have been turning Rash inside out for four whole years.

Rash has previously produced an IR pack for other players chasing the album's tones and vowed to update it with the new discovery.

In recent Nirvana news, Kurt Cobain’s 1969 Competition Mustang from the Smells Like Teenage Spirit video recently sold for a record-breaking sum.

For many, this is the Nirvana guitar, made iconic by its appearance in the video for Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. This week, it sold for $6,907,000 at the Jim Irsay Collection: Hall of Fame auction.

Forever associated with offset Fenders that were typically modded for extra output by various means, Kurt Cobain opted for a student model for that historic video performance, sporting the so-called ‘Competition Stripe’ that marks it out as a 1969 instrument.

However, a closer examination of its parts reveals a more complex story that reflects how Fender made guitars in the mid- to late 1960s after CBS bought out Leo Fender, especially its rarer left-handed instruments.

“So the neck is in fact dated 1966 and it is marked ‘Special’,” Amelia Walker of Christie’s observes. “The left-handed necks [from that period of Fender’s history] typically say ‘Custom’ or ‘Special’ because they were so seldom made and used. So they often had older necks [in storage] that they then would put on slightly later-dated guitars.

”The pots are ’66 as well. But that’s logical because, again, they would just reach into their box of [correct-spec] pots and grab whatever was in stock. But the Competition Stripe was definitively a ’69 thing and serial number is also ’69, so we’re calling it a ’69-made guitar with an earlier neck and earlier pots,” she explains.

Guitar historian Tony Bacon adds some further context on the slightly tangled story of Fender’s student model electrics: “The Mustang was the third model in Fender’s early line of budget ‘three-quarter-size’ electrics. It was launched in 1964 to join the Musicmaster and Duo-Sonic, which had appeared eight years earlier, and was in effect a two‑pickup Duo-Sonic with vibrato bridge.

Those two earlier models had 21 frets on a short 22.5-inch (571.5mm) scale, but from ’64 they were offered optionally with longer 24-inch (610mm) scales and 22 frets – and the new Mustang, too, was available in either style. The Mustang stayed on Fender price lists until 1981.

“In 1969, Fender offered a new finish option for the Mustang,” Tony explains, “and called the result the Competition Mustang. It had contrasting ‘racing’ stripes and came in three striking variants – Burgundy (pale blue stripes on a darker blue body); Orange (red stripes/orange body); or Red (white stripes/red body) – with the headstock finished to match the body colour. They lasted in the Fender line into the early ’70s.

“Around 1990, Kurt Cobain bought a blue (Burgundy) left-handed 24-inch scale Competition Mustang. It became a favourite, alongside a Jaguar, and was seen prominently in the video for Smells Like Teen Spirit. He had various mods done to this Mustang, including a Duncan single-coil-size humbucker swapped in at the bridge as well as a Gotoh Tune-o-matic-style bridge, with the tailpiece bar flipped.

“Further into the early ’90s, Kurt ordered 10 left-handed Mustangs from Fender, planned to be delivered in batches of two, in Fiesta Red or Sonic Blue finishes (in other words not Competition models). Reportedly, only six were supplied before Kurt’s untimely death in 1994. He played several, with similar bridge and pickup mods, though often with a regular-size humbucker at the bridge.

“Around the time of his death, Kurt was developing a hybrid Jaguar/Mustang, and Fender would release the result as the Jag-Stang in 1996 – aptly described in the company’s promo material at the time as ‘a collision of contemporary features fused together to create a combination of Jaguar and Mustang’.”

• Christie’s auctions The Jim Irsay Collection: Hall of Fame starting 12 March. For more information on the four-part sale series, visit Christie’s.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Since making its debut on October 11, 1975, NBC’s Saturday Night Live has been a pop-culture juggernaut like no other.

But before becoming a weekend staple for generations of late-night viewers, creator Lorne Michaels’ variety show began as a brash, uniquely irreverent counterculture experiment boldly pairing off-the-cuff outsider comedy with of-the-moment musical guests – for the record, the first show featured Billy Preston, Janis Ian and, arguably most memorably, Andy Kaufman miming his way through the Mighty Mouse theme song.

Indeed, while it’s a comedy-first operation, music has always been a major part of SNL’s appeal – and, obviously, that means we’ve seen a lot of guitarists grace the show’s stage.

It’s been a spot for bands to crank it up just before their careers went supernova. Others faltered spectacularly on live TV, beneath the bright lights of Studio 8H and under the watch of millions of viewers at home.

Some of the greatest guitar virtuosos showed up unannounced for once-in-a-lifetime jams. A pair of blues-loving bees morphed into the show’s breakout musical act.

While it’s all made for hundreds upon hundreds of must-see moments, to paraphrase the show’s iconic metalhead character, Wayne Campbell – a.k.a. Mike Myers, an obtuse on-air shredder in his own right – some were more worthy than others.

So, in honor of the show’s staggering 50 years on the air, ladies and gentleman, behold the 50 greatest guitar moments in SNL history.

50. The Rolling Stones – Shattered

Season 4, Episode 1; October 7, 1978

While nabbing the Stones was a major coup, the band’s lone SNL appearance isn’t remembered for being great. Mick Jagger’s voice is shot and unpretty through Beast of Burden, but Shattered taps into the sleazy urgency of the Some Girls era.

It also embodies the chaotic, anything-goes-in-the-moment spirit of live TV right about the time Jagger starts snapping his ivory sportcoat at Ronnie Wood, wet-towel style.

49. The Devil Can’t Write No Love Song sketch

Season 25, Episode 5; November 13, 1999

Garth Brooks plays a down-on-his-luck musician willing to sell his soul for a hit. Ready to make a trade, Lucifer – a horned-and-bearded Will Ferrell – bursts onto the scene with a devil-red Fender built out of a “hell-spun mixture of the bones of fornicators.” Trouble is, the dark lord is a damned terrible songsmith. Fred’s Slacks is a brittle-toned, out-of-tune geek-rock atrocity, and his originals only get cringier from there.

48. Joan Armatrading – I’m Not in Love / Down to Zero

Season 2, Episode 21; May 14, 1977

The highlight of Joan Armatrading’s SNL performances is the sound of her rich and oaken vocal – but her stately 12-string chording chimes through the mix quite nicely, too.

Whether through the dew-eyed I’m Not in Love or the yearning folk-rock of Down to Zero, guitarist Jerry Donahue also brought a waterfall-rippling wave of flanged-out fretboard elegance to the arrangements.

47. System of a Down – B.Y.O.B.

Season 30, Episode 18; May 7, 2005

The SNL censors were prepared to bleep out the F-bombs SOAD’s Serj Tankian and Daron Malakian regularly scheduled into their zany, kinda thrash/kinda ska single B.Y.O.B. The latter let loose an unscripted “fuck yeah” during a surf-zested string slide, though, which ended up putting he and the rest of System on SNL’s blacklist. They never played the show again.

46. Metallica – Fuel

Season 23, Episode 8; December 6, 1997

An argument could be made that SNL blew it by not booking Metallica during the height of ’80s thrash and that they slept on the biggest metal band in the world circa Enter Sandman.

But producers gave ’tallica fans that which they desired by finally bringing aboard the band during their Reload period. Fuel found Kirk Hammett all-gassing his wah-wah solo. James Hetfield kept on theme by strapping himself to a flame-emblazoned Flying V.

45. The Tragically Hip – Grace, Too

Season 20, Episode 16; March 25, 1995

When original Not Ready for Prime-time Player Dan Aykroyd was asked to co-host this episode, he agreed – with a caveat: fellow Ontarians the Tragically Hip had to come along with him.

Gord Downie grinned cherubically as he flubbed his first line, but Canada’s Band otherwise nailed the artfully hard-rocking Grace, Too, guitarist Rob Baker flexing a wide, flavorful vibrato into its finale.

44. Adam Sandler – The Thanksgiving Song

Season 18, Episode 7; November 21, 1992

Sandler used his Weekend Update segments to test out goofball characters like Cajun Man and Opera Man. The news desk was also where he developed his voice as a singer-guitarist, and that all starts with The Thanksgiving Song.

Coming out the gates with cheerful 7th chords and a toothy grin, he uses the quaint acoustic jazz-folk song to toast turkey dinners and serve up a side of pop-culture non-sequiturs.

43. Queens of the Stone Age – Little Sister

Season 30, Episode 19; May 14, 2005

Though drummer Joey Castillo was already clonking his plastic jam block hard-and-heavy through this segment, Will Ferrell apparently felt that Queens could use more cowbell.

The comedian reprised his famous Gene Frenkle character – ill-fitting shirt and all – and whapped to his heart’s delight, but the impromptu percussive performance wasn’t the scene-stealer. Credit that to Josh Homme putting on a clinic with his serpentine flair.

42. Big Ricky & the Minnows – “Bass Lake” sketch

Season 50, Episode 16; April 5, 2025

A lakeside potluck jam on Tom Petty’s Free Falling goes horribly awry once Big Ricky – played by an increasingly exasperated Jack Black – realizes everyone hitting the stage is hoisting a bass and the soupiest tone of all time (“The quality of sound feels like a sinus infection”).

The low-end nightmare swells into a dozen rhythm-stringers and one particularly talented basset hound trying to find their footing within the frequency, with disastrous results.

41. Spinal Tap – Big Bottom

Season 9, Episode 18; May 5, 1984

Talk about bass chops, these guys got ’em. Unlike Black’s bass sketch, Tap’s low-end monstrous performance of Big Bottom was no shit sandwich. Performed on air just two months after This Is Spinal Tap hit screens, the band’s performance of their multi-bass opus rumbled with hilarious, horn-dog fervor.

Derek Smalls lays down the initial rhythm with a double-neck bass. Nigel Tufnel hits those perfect fourths like a pro. The synth-bass is on point, too. But it might be David St. Hubbins mud-flappin’ lead bass prowess that pushes the ludicrous metal anthem into overdrive.

40. J Mascis & the SNL band – Out There

Season 25, Episode 16; April 8, 2000

It’s a travesty that J Mascis never got to chop through this Where You Been? stunner on the show with the rest of Dinosaur Jr. in the ’90s. Nevertheless, a 20-second sampling of Out There – which Mascis performed while sitting in with the house band – found the alt-rock guitar hero wham-smashing his way through a micro-sized but massive-sounding SNL moment. This performance took us to the commercial break seconds after the show staged its iconic “More Cowbell” sketch.

39. The Black Crowes – Sometimes Salvation

Season 18, Episode 9; December 12, 1992

Sometimes Salvation is a funny pick because the Crowes’ aching, extended blues ballad shares a similar feel to the SNL band’s longtime closing credits jam, Waltz in A. Where it differs is that the Georgia rockers also had Marc Ford sustaining a series of seismically reckless and romantic bends through his spacious solo. And it’s spectacular.

38. Foo Fighters – Times Like These

Season 28, Episode 13; February 22, 2003

Foo Fighters are prolific SNL guests, having hit the program nine times since 1995. Their third pop-in at 30 Rock came during the promotion cycle for One by One and began with a crunching version of All My Life.

But Times Like These is what makes the highlight reel – not just because the Foos crushed their yearning anthem with ease, but because Jim Carrey stormed the stage mid-song to air guitar his right leg like a maniac.

37. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Stone Cold Bush / Under the Bridge

Season 17, Episode 14; February 22, 1992

Dubious to include, but hard to ignore, the Chilis left a strange taste in millions of mouths with this off-kilter two-fer. Stone Cold Bush was funky, but merely fine – Flea gets appropriately slappy on the bass, but things get weird when vocalist Anthony Kiedis soccer-slides toward John Frusciante and boots his bandmate in the butt.

Under the Bridge is even more tense, with Frusciante cresting through a loose fluidity that paints a bit too outside the lines – and with a lot of brown. He ends the alt-ballad howling in falsetto like a hound from hell. The rest of the band seem stunned over their tragic Magik performance.

36. Boz Scaggs – Lowdown

Season 2, Episode 2; September 25, 1976

Elliot Randall’s wildcard solo is one of SNL’s most uproarious musical WTF moments. Halfway through the hit’s soft disco shuffle, Randall rips out to center stage for a furious hellfire of hammer-ons.

He tries to hit a behind-the-nut bend but kind of biffs it, then walks back with a huge smile to resume his soulfully rhythmic plinking.

Slang-style praise or secret diss, Scaggs jumps back in to croon with perfect comedic timing: “You ain’t got to be so bad.”

35. Prince – Partyup

Season 6, Episode 11; February 21, 1981

Prince’s most storied SNL performance arguably isn’t this one, and it wasn’t even in public – rather, a slow-jammed Let’s Go Crazy during the show’s 40th-anniversary afterparty in 2015 apparently had cast members losing their minds. But his televised Partyup in ’81 was still plenty iconic, with the Purple One parading around in thigh-high boots and sex-grinding his guitar with slinking funk licks.

34. Tracy Chapman – Give Me One Reason

Season 15, Episode 9; December 16, 1989

Here’s a good reason to have owned a VHS machine in the ’80s: Chapman’s rhythm-locked, Grammy-winning blues-rocker Give Me One Reason was performed on SNL a full six years before it made it onto an album.

Chapman anchored its television debut with subtle, staccato acoustic fingering and her soulful vocal, though the house band gets into the action, too; Tom “T-Bone” Wolk injects jumping-bean bass accents while bandleader G.E. Smith delivers Delta-ready slidework.

33. Devo – (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

Season 4, Episode 2; October 14, 1978

Devo’s subversive take on the Stones classic harnesses the palpably anxious and painfully horny undercurrent of the anthem arguably better than when it’s ever sung by Jagger.

Sweet release arrives through this performance, where Devo – deep in their matching hazmat suit-and-3D glasses era – twitch through the tune like a bunch of broken androids, Mark Mothersbaugh wilding out while using a Hagstrom 1 with boosts and overdrives duct-taped all over its cherry body.

32. Pearl Jam – Not for You / Rearviewmirror / Daughter

Season 19, Episode 18; April 16, 1994

Pearl Jam were arguably the biggest band in the world in the spring of 1994, so SNL showcased the hell out of the Seattle quintet during their second appearance on the show – even offering them a rare third song. Their Daughter performance, in particular, presented an extended Jam; the group gave the alt-rock anthem a funky two-minute outro full of vibe-heavy fretless bass and ad-libbed Crazy Horse lyrics.

31. AC/DC – Stiff Upper Lip / You Shook Me All Night Long

Season 25, Episode 15; March 18, 2000

AC/DC’s SNL debut found the band cranking into their Back in Black classic a whopping 20 years after its initial release. In a solid performance, Angus Young wails hard and goes full-Curly while spinning around the ground during the finale.

Earlier in the evening, though, the eternal schoolboy and brother Mal arguably locked in harder for the gritty, then-current and super-underrated Stiff Upper Lip.

30. Punk Band Reunion at the Wedding sketch (Crisis of Conformity – Fist Fight in the Parking Lot)

Season 35, Episode 14; February 6, 2010

What begins as a father sheepishly getting his old band back together at his daughter’s wedding reception quickly devolves into one of SNL’s most raging hardcore performances ever. Fred Armisen sneers his way through ’80s-style Reagan-punk lyrics, while the arrangement itself quotes Suicidal Tendencies’ Institutionalized.

The table-crashing, glass-smashing melee gets all-too-real once drummer Dave Grohl’s mic cuts out. A cream Strat-strapped Kutcher saves the day by lunging over with another mic – which also reveals he’s definitely not the one punk-chording through their Parking Lot.

29. The Replacements – Bastards of Young / Kiss Me on the Bus

Season 11, Episode 7; January 18, 1986

G.E. Smith was a Replacements fan and called the group when SNL needed a last-minute replacement for the Pointer Sisters. The Replacements proceeded to get drunk backstage with host Harry Dean Stanton and strolled out to deliver slapdash Tim songs while sloshed out of their skulls.

Paul Westerberg fumbled lyrics, Bob Stinson played a loaner Les Paul after he fell on his own guitar on the way to the stage. The night was best summed up by the first line of Bastards of Young: “God… what a mess.”

28. Bonnie Raitt – Thing Called Love

Season 15, Episode 11; January 20, 1990

Nearly 12 years to the day after her first SNL appearance, Bonnie Raitt returned to the show to slide through this blues-rock blazer. At one point she bats at the body of her Strat to gain some gnarly sustain. Later, she juxtaposes a fiery, near-30-second glass slide solo against the arrangement’s laidback, roadhouse-reggae breakdown.

27. Lenny Kravitz – Are You Gonna Go My Way / Always on the Run

Season 18, Episode 18; April 17, 1993

Everything went Kravitz and co-guitarist Craig Ross’ way. Sporting the rawest and most iconic rock riff of ’93, the pair brought harmonized pull-offs and Hendrix-ian sharps to a pitch-perfect performance of Are You Gonna Go My Way – and then Ross delivered a wailing solo.

They then dug into their retro-rock war chest for Mama Said single Always on the Run, expertly swaggering themselves through fuzz-funk syncopation before Ross splintered off with another heater solo.

26. Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit / Territorial Pissings

Season 17, Episode 10; January 11, 1992

Nirvana’s Nevermind dethroned the King of Pop’s Dangerous from the Number 1 spot on the Billboard chart the same week they dropped by SNL. Understandably, they played Teen Spirit, the industry-revolutionizing game-changer that got them there.

That said, Territorial Pissings was the livelier of their two performances; Cobain capped the manic track by smashing his guitar into a tower of logo-less cabs; Krist Novoselic hucks his bass into the air like loose change; Grohl rains drum hardware across the soundstage.

25. Rage Against the Machine – Bulls on Parade

Season 21, Episode 17; April 13, 1996

Interestingly, the SNL time bookers paired billionaire media mogul and Republican nominee hopeful Steve Forbes with left-leaning political rap-rockers Rage Against the Machine.

Rage tried to hang upside-down U.S. flags across their cabs as a form of protest, which led to an onstage confrontation with patriotic stagehands, who yanked away the subversive Stripes milliseconds before the band kicked into Bulls. Tom Morello crushed it with his wah work and mock-scratch technique. Then the band got booted out of the building.

24. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – You Don’t Know How It Feels / Honey Bee

Season 20, Episode 6; November 19, 1994

Petty’s fifth of eight appearances on SNL came during his Wildflowers cycle and boasted a new, temporary Heartbreaker behind the drum kit: Dave Grohl. The performance interestingly falls between the latter’s post-Nirvana, pre-Foo Fighters period, and he hits those cans heavy.

You Don’t Know How It Feels was a crowd pleaser, but the real treat is Honey Bee. The swamp-soupy garage-blues tune had Mike Campbell dripping out liquid gold guitar leads, but Petty hits an uncaged-and-uncouth, bendy solo of his own.

23. Aerosmith on Wayne’s World

Season 15, Episode 13; February 17, 1990

Satirically or not, SNL’s resident headbangers-cum-cable access hosts hoisted the flag for heavy music during a time where the show probably should have booked more metal acts.

Nevertheless, Wayne and Garth still got their party on with Aerosmith one time, with Joe Perry and Brad Whitford beefing up Mike Myers’ mock-squealing Wayne’s World theme as a basic-but-brawny basement rocker. Aerosmith also hit a pair of Pump tunes for the show, but this was their biggest bash of the night.

22. Fear – Beef Baloney

Season 7, Episode 4; October 31, 1981

Fear was brought onto SNL as a favor to fan and then-former castmate John Belushi, whom showrunners were hoping would pop back on the program for a cameo.

Fear then invited hardcore kids from across the Eastern seaboard – including members of Minor Threat and Negative Approach – to mosh out during a chaotic four-song medley. Bassist Lee Ving is constantly chasing a micstand as it gets knocked about by stage divers.

21. Phoebe Bridgers – I Know the End

Season 46, Episode 11; February 6, 2021

Phoebe Bridgers wasn’t the first person to smash a guitar on SNL, but she’s the one who got the most flak for it. I Know the End starts subtle, but the indie-rocker ended up primal screaming her way through the climax – which likewise found co-guitarist Harrison Whitford delivering quixotic scalework – before yanking off her jet black Danelectro and decimating it against a speaker wedge. The misogyny brigade tried to shame her on socials; Bridgers sold the axe for $100,000 and donated it all to charity.

20. Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band – Hot Head / Ashtray Heart

Season 6, Episode 2; December 22, 1980

Beefheart’s underrated early ’80s period found the experimental icon making music with the meanest-sounding iteration of his Magic Band. They put on a feisty performance for a shocked SNL crowd – guitarist Moris Tepper, in particular, spewing hot fire with his junk-blues sliding.

Beefheart cradled a cigarette, brilliantly rifling off a dadaist word salad through a haggard wheeze that sounded like his lungs had burnt right down to the filter.

19. Living Colour – Cult of Personality / Open Letter (to a Landlord)

Season 14, Episode 16; April 1, 1989

Living Colour’s April Fool’s appearance found Vernon Reid going off-the-charts gonzo with his inspired fusion playing.

He cut loose through a mind-bending, minute-long solo on Cult of Personality and then leaned into a vivid display of ambulance siren-styled inverted bending on Open Letter (to a Landlord).

The only thing that might’ve outshone Reid’s playing was Corey Glover’s extremely late-’80s, iridescent purple-and-yellow BodyGlove wetsuit.

18. Rihanna (with Nuno Bettencourt) – Diamonds

Season 38, Episode 7; November 10, 2012

Nuno Bettencourt never got the funk out on SNL during Extreme’s peak. Despite this, the Boston virtuoso was able to shine bright like a diamond when he popped up on the show as part of Rihanna’s backing band. The focal point is the pop star, without question, and Bettencourt begins the song with minimalist, volume pot-craning ambiance. But by song’s end, he’s soaring through the mix with a boldly prismatic vibrato.

17. David Bowie – Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)

Season 22, Episode 12; February 8, 1997

Armed with a Parker Fly, an unruly series of harmonic slides and an onslaught of out-of-control pinch-squeals, ace guitarist Reeves Gabrels (nowadays a member of the Cure) was a beast to behold on Scary Monsters.

Bowie & Co. were supposed to play something off 1997’s Earthling, but they went rogue and performed the retro cut as a form of protest after the singer objected to a sketch idea – and as a dig on Lorne Michaels, who told Bowie about a terrifying cocaine binge he’d been on while listening to Scary Monsters in the ’80s.

They were ushered out of the building ASAP. Bowie reportedly regretted not grabbing the fruit basket on the way out.

16. Top of the Pops sketch (aka Ian Rubbish & the Bizarros – It’s a Lovely Day)

Season 38, Episode 21; May 18, 2013

Fred Armisen’s SNL tenure was full of musical characters, one of his most memorable being comically hate-filled Spirit of ’77 punk eccentric Ian Rubbish.

While the U.K. snarler had many memorable lyrical barbs, Armisen’s last show as a full-time cast member found him slapping on Rubbish’s peroxide wig and a Fano Alt de Facto to deliver an earnest farewell anthem called It’s a Lovely Day.

It turns into a jam featuring Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein, the Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones, J Mascis, Aimee Mann and Michael Penn. Is this one of Armisen’s top-10 greatest TV appearances of all time? Yeah, probably.

15. H.E.R. – Hold On

Season 46, Episode 4; October 24, 2020

H.E.R. wowed guitar-heads doubly in this Season 46 standout moment. She shot melodious, mile-wide vibrato through the ceiling during a revelatory performance of R&B slow jam Hold On.

She also used her time on SNL to showcase a then-brand-new signature Fender Chrome Glow Strat, which reflected a rainbowed array of colors beneath the stage lights that was almost as resplendent as her tone.

14. Robert Cray – Smoking Gun / Right Next Door (Because of Me)

Season 12, Episode 13; February 28, 1987

While Smoking Gun was tight, we’re going to suggest that it’s Cray’s run-through of Right Next Door that left a stronger impression on the music-loving public.

There’s a sleek, clean-channel mystique coursing through the smooth-blues arrangement, Cray accenting his adulterous tale with perfect, passionately plinking accent rhythms.

By song’s end, he bait-and-switches us with a yearning backend climax of wry little wriggles and finger-snapped string work. Of course, if you're going back and watching all these, don't deprive yourself of Smoking Gun.

13. The Smashing Pumpkins – Cherub Rock

Season 19, Episode 5; October 30, 1993

The Pumpkins went in for the kill during their first appearance on SNL. The performance of loud-quiet-loud classic Today was spectacular, but the alt-rock champs went nuclear on Cherub Rock.

Billy Corgan shreds his sinewy vocal cords throughout and wails a furious solo on his modded Bat-Strat. James Iha likewise gets in a few nasty and textural bends before they put this all-out bash to bed.

12. Beastie Boys – Ricky’s Theme / Heart Attack Man

Season 20, Episode 8; December 10, 1994

The Beasties’ second muscial spot of the night began with instrumental soul jam Ricky’s Theme, where auxiliary Beasties player Money Mark’s morning glory electric piano glistened against Ad-Rock’s sly-and-wily wah-wah guitar and MCA’s lithe standup basslines.

An extended cymbal segue leads to gear-swapping and a furious aesthetic pivot, as the Boys then go buckwild with a pacemaker-exploding old-school hardcore freakout. Ad-Rock smashes an S-shape into the ground – splinters fly into the air as the screen fades to black.

11. Adam Sandler – Lunch Lady Land

Season 19, Episode 11; January 15, 1994

From Red Hooded Sweatshirt to The Chanukah Song, most of Adam Sandler’s SNL music went unplugged. But unencumbered by the confines of the Weekend Update desk, the Sandman went full-electric with a black Gibson Les Paul to strum this Bruce Springsteen-ian opus about elementary foodstuffs revolting against their maker.

Sandler sells his Jungleland rip with goofball heartland earnestness. Of course, the sight of Chris Farley’s hair-netted Lunch Lady gracefully plié-ing across the stage near Kevin Nealon’s sentient Manwich pushes the performance into all-timer territory.

10. Fishbone – Sunless Saturday / Everyday Sunshine

Season 16, Episode 16; March 23, 1991

Despite its gloom-clouded song title, Fishbone were beyond brilliant on Sunless Saturday. Frontman Angelo Moore somersaulted across the stage with manic energy and put on an acrobatic vocal performance. John Norwood Fisher flexed thick bass thwaps across the soul-metal fusion piece.

A double-strapped Kendall Jones switched between acoustic strums and flanged-out-and-frantic tap solos on an S-shape. Keeping things on-theme, they then dipped into the funkily Vitamin D-dosed “Everyday Sunshine” for their second song.

9. St. Vincent – Birth in Reverse

Season 39, Episode 21; May 17, 2014

While the Season 39 finale brought out rappers 2 Chainz and Lil Jon for a pair of sketches, Annie Clark commanded the stage with playfully panicked art-punk energy during her performance of Birth in Reverse. Early on, she’s twitching out jazz chords on a vintage 1955 M-75 Aristocrat.

By the finale, a choreography routine finds St. Vincent and guitarist Toko Yasuda harmonizing post-shred bristliness while parading the stage like a pair of nectar-crazy hummingbirds.

8. Elvis Costello – Radio Radio

Season 3, Episode 8; December 17, 1977

“I’m sorry ladies and gentlemen; there’s no reason to do this song here.” In one of the show’s most iconic moments, musical or otherwise, Elvis Costello came into 8H to play Less Than Zero but abruptly and awkwardly halted the single to re-route his band toward a spritely but unexpected Radio Radio.

The swerve had staff panicking behind the scenes. He’d later say it was because Zero was too slow; it might’ve been that its lyrics on the rise of British fascism were, well, incredibly British. Costello satirically recreated the chaos for SNL’s 25th-anniversary special in 1999, hijacking Beastie Boys’ Sabotage to once again play Radio Radio.

7. David Gilmour with G.E. Smith & the SNL Band – Song for My Sara

Season 13, Episode 7; December 12, 1987

This episode brought out two musical guests, wildly juxtaposing Buster Poindexter’s broad, brass-heavy calypso-sleaze smash Hot Hot Hot with Gilmour’s tastefully funky instrumental, Song for My Sara.

Supported by the SNL band, the latter echo-quaked melodious vibrato from his headless Steinberger GM 3T. T-Bone Wolk thumb-and-finger popped his way through the piece. G.E. Smith is all smiles while supporting the Pink Floyd legend. The song was never officially released, making Gilmour’s drop-in appearance even more unique.

6. Eddie Van Halen with G.E. Smith & the SNL Band – Stompin’ 8H

Season 12, Episode 13; February 28, 1987

Van Halen’s lone and unplanned SNL appearance arose out of boredom. As then-wife Valerie Bertinelli was rehearsing skits that week, EVH ended up in the music office trading licks with Smith, and together they whipped up a bluesy lil’ choogle named after the show’s 8H soundstage.

Eddie goes full Orca-moan on his striped Kramer 5150 before flitting between tasteful quarter-note taps and cut-throat runs. Smith is ear-to-ear grinning while chopping at his Tele. The two guitarists literally – but playfully – butt heads mid-stage, though they stood united for this memorable drop-in moment.

5. Stevie Ray Vaughan – Say What! / Change It

Season 11, Episode 10; February 15, 1986

As Double Trouble drummer Chris Layton recalled years later, host Jerry Hall’s then-husband, Mick Jagger, was around during rehearsals. Mick almost sat in with the band for their SNL debut but ultimately didn’t have the stones to go through with the team-up. Instead, a mass of Texas talent graced the stage, with SRV first hitting 12-bar instrumental Say What! as a screaming, whammy-and-wah-wild workout.

For the cocksure Change It, he strutted through flavorful blues runs alongside fellow Strat-smith, brother and Fabulous Thunderbirds co‑founder Jimmie Vaughan.

4. George Harrison and Paul Simon – Here Comes the Sun / Homeward Bound

Season 2, Episode 8; November 20, 1976

Back in the first season, Michaels went on-air to offer the Beatles a hilariously paltry $3,000 – to split however they’d like – if they appeared on his show (“You want to give Ringo less? That’s up to you”). Paul McCartney and John Lennon were apparently watching the show together in NYC and damn near took a cab to 30 Rock to collect. But it was Harrison who became the first Beatle to play on SNL, and he did it with another music icon.

In one of most stunningly tender musical moments of the early years, Harrison and Paul Simon teamed up to strum and folk-finger through the former’s Here Comes the Sun and the latter’s Homeward Bound, back to back. Outside of their acoustics and gentle vocal harmonies, it’s pin-drop silent in the studio, the audience watching history in the making.

To say the least, the performance was more than alright – it was god damned magical. McCartney would ultimately show up as a musical guest four times between 1980 and 2012, and he closed out this year’s 50th-anniversary show with another Abbey Road classic, The End. Ringo hosted in 1984.

3. Jack White – Taking Me Back / Fear of the Dawn

Season 48, Episode 13; February 25, 2023

Ever since the White Stripes bashed through a radically raw Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground on 8H in 2002, Jack White has been an SNL fixture.

On top of being a five-time musical guest, he once ripped a solo as a six-stringing wedding crasher in a 2018 sketch and also covered Rockin’ in the Free World during this year’s SNL50 concert.

While he cut a memorable double-handed tapping tribute to EVH in 2020, his mic stand-toppling, pedalboard-maximalist Taking Me Back / Fear of the Dawn medley in 2023 was a fiendishly feral display of fuzz-blown sonics and wah expressionism.

2. The Blues Brothers – Soul Man

Season 4, Episode 6; November 18, 1978

John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd prototyped their musical-brothers band in the first season with a buzzy, bee-costumed performance of Slim Harpo’s I’m a King Bee. They eventually bought some fedoras and rechristened themselves as Jake and Elwood Blues.

Flanked by members of the SNL band (blues vet Matt “Guitar” Murphy and Stax session all-stars Steve Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn), this Season 4 cold open is the Brothers’ defining moment – and it led them toward a hit record and a blockbuster film.

After smashing into a sweat-box vamp of Otis Redding’s I Can’t Turn You Loose, they choogle through a cool-as-ice cover of Sam & Dave’s Soul Man. Cropper steps into the spotlight with sleek vibrato waggling while Elwood honks his harmonica.

1. Frank Ocean with John Mayer – Pyramids

Season 38, Episode 1; September 12, 2012

Pop-bluesmith John Mayer’s earnest-but-animated performance style was roasted on the show several times, via squinty-eyed, fat-tongued and faux-ripping impersonations from Bill Hader, Jimmy Fallon and host Ashton Kutcher. Mayer got the last laugh with his staggering 2012 guest solo for Frank Ocean.

The R&B singer walks over to a vintage arcade cabinet and starts gaming once Mayer unearths deep, atmospheric bends on a finish-obliterated Strat. A fighting game plays on in the background, but Mayer delivers the knockout blow.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

We knew Dublin’s SPRINTS were going to be an interesting proposition the day they told us they’d been tackling stadium shows with Liam Gallagher using a backline of Boss Katanas.

Since we last spoke in 2024, they’ve continued to surprise. They’ve lost a guitarist in Colm O’Reilly, gained a guitarist in Zac Stephenson, released second album All That Is Over, signed to the venerable Sub Pop label, toured relentlessly and made the leap to full-time musicians.

“There’s still the fear every single day – ‘Are we going to pay our bills?’” says guitarist and vocalist Karla Chubb. “But you have to find calmness in the chaos: the fact that not every day is going to be the same.”

Stephenson had to get to grips with such weirdness pretty quickly. Initially drafted in as temporary cover, he proved a surprisingly good fit and was soon asked to join.

“I went from being in an office one day to playing a main festival stage to 20,000 people the next day – then back in work three days later,” he says. “I was like, ‘Oh, that was strange.’ And then it just kept happening!”

Chubb credits Stephenson’s arrival as one of several factors, including a break-up and a new relationship, that gave the tour-battered group a shot in the arm. “So much had changed in the year since [2024 debut] Letter To Self that I almost couldn't relate to the music anymore,” she says.

“Zac came in with fresh energy and a childlike innocence and wonder for it all. We went, ‘Nah what we’re doing is cool! We need to get a grip on ourselves.’ Now we’re like, ‘Let’s go!’”

How have you evolved as players since album one and, in your case Zac, joining the band?

Chubb: As a guitar player, the main thing I’ve had to struggle with is confidence, and accepting that to be the best player for a track does not mean having the most impressive solo or riff. I probably consider myself a songwriter much more than I consider myself a guitarist.

Stephenson: I’m similar – I really fell in love with the guitar again in the pandemic. I’d been fronting and producing a band, but I was sharing a house with six people, so I couldn't make any noise, and I couldn’t leave! So I got into playing really softly. One of the biggest things I learned was the importance of dynamics and your picking hand.

I spent a few years trying to learn scales and things, which can be good. But I don’t think you get better from learning scales – it’s like a reference you can go back to if you’re stuck on a puzzle. When you’re playing you don’t necessarily think in scales.

We hear a surprising amount of guitarists say, “I don’t think of myself as a guitarist” like it’s a loaded term.

Chubb: I think it’s like a self-preservation thing. If I label myself as a guitarist, someone can be like, ‘Well, she’s shite at it!’ I remember vividly when I was first playing, I went to a lesson and I wanted to learn a Nirvana song. The teacher was like, “Kurt Cobain is one of the worst guitarists in the world!”

I was like, “First of all, fuck off! Secondly, that is objectively not true.” What a way to put someone down when they wanted to learn. You get a lot of that online too. There’s a lot of trolling, and calling yourself a guitarist opens you up to more of it. Maybe we just need to own it a little more.

One of the most notable elements of All That Is Over is the way you’ve worked in acoustic guitar and some gothic feel. Where has that come from?

Chubb: It’s pulled from flamenco and Spanish influence – that chromatic scale thing adds a lot of tension – and it’s all because I bought a nylon-string guitar. A music shop in Dublin was having a closing-down sale, and I picked up this nylon-string and it just felt right.

I wrote three or four songs within a week or two. It’s just so accessible. You make the art with the tools you have at your disposal. There’s no plugin. There’s no “get the interface.” The phone’s voice note app starts recording and it’s just like, “Go!”

You worked with producer Daniel Fox again. Last time you spoke about him, there was talk of fingers bleeding. How did he push you this time?

Stephenson: This time there was olive oil on the fingers!

Chubb: Yeah – we were playing the nylon-string and we were recording it so close to the fretboard, but we wanted to stop all the squeaking when you shift. It really worked.

How much olive oil are we talking?

Stephenson: A tiny ramekin thing that you dip your fingertips in. Not enough for your bread in a restaurant – just dip them in, rub a little bit of it off and play.

When it came down to gear on the album, what made the cut?

Chubb: My main instrument is the Jagstang. I’ve always loved a short scale, and I think it has a lot more bite than the Mustang. So we brought the Jagstang, a Jazzmaster, and a Gretsch to have that double humbucker grit on some of them. Then we had the nylon-string and a standard Fender Dreadnought acoustic.

Stephenson: My workhorse is my Italia Rimini 6, a Trevor Wilkinson brand. I got it second-hand years ago and they’ve gotten more expensive since then. It’s got two humbuckers; it’s kind of like a Rickenbacker style, but it’s so versatile.

I use the neck pick up a good bit on it. It’s quite warm. For anything kind of spikier I used the Jazzmaster. I used a lot of the Jazzmaster tremolo arm as well. For Desire, it was just feedback from the amp and I was moving the pitch around with the trem bar. Then Dan just did some magic and made it sound not-terrible!

What are your guitar highlights of the record?

Chubb: I have a few. Zac’s little spaghetti Western riff on Desire. The riff for Something’s Gonna Happen originally was a very simple one I wrote; drop D, and Zac added a slide into the first note. It added so much texture – I was like, “Oh, he’s a genius!”

Stephenson: In the intro to Better; there’s a rising feeling [from Karla’s Boss Harmonist] that’s like you’re being pulled from the depths of Hell. Then the solo in Rage, which was not an intentional take. I was messing around on a guide track – I don’t know what effects I had on and I hit a wrong note as well! But Dan was like, ‘You’re not doing that again!’

What was the song that set the amp on fire, Karla?

Chubb: That was Coming Alive, on the Fender Princeton. There were two of them, and they both looked absolutely battered – the front shell was coming off the one I used. We were always bringing coffee and food into the control room, so I thought it was someone burning their toast when the amp went up. We had to extinguish it, a little bit!

Speaking of risky amps, I caught a gig recently and it looked like you were plugging in your nylon-string acoustic into your amp.

Stephenson: The sound engineers are always so confused when Karla plugs the nylon-string into the amp through all the pedals. But 99.9 percent of the time it sounds unbelievable. They’re like, “Where’s that coming from? I can’t see it on the thing!” And it’s like, “That’s the amp!”

Chubb: It’s class! I also lovebeing able to put the chorus on, like on Desire. I think when you put a guitar straight through a DI, it just doesn’t have the same effect. I want the warmth of the Deluxe Reverb.

On the next tour we’re going to have a second amp with its own pedalboard, because we’ve struggled with levels. Playing through the pedalboards is fun. A nylon-string in a cowboy song with a Fuzz War? C’mon!

You previously talked about playing Liam Gallagher stadium shows with Boss Katana practice amps. You seem to have a happy disregard for the tonal “rules.”

Stephenson: All new tones were made by people breaking the tonal rules. What's Jack White's entire career been based on, other than doing things that were considered weird at the time?

Chubb: I don’t know any of the tonal rules anyway. And also, we’re poor! I’m like, “I’m gonna plug this into that! Why not?” Zac and I are rebuilding our pedalboards and our sound engineer is such a frequency and voltage nerd. He’s like, “You should get this equalizer pedal, then I can knock out some of these frequencies.” I’m like, “No, it’s fine – let there be noise!”

• All That Is Over is out now on SubPop (US) and City Slang. SPRINTS tour the UK in November and the US in January and February.

Wolfgang Van Halen’s Mammoth have just released their third album, The End, and, understandably, fans have been poring over its guitar solos – owing to Wolfgang’s guitar hero lineage descending from the late, great Eddie Van Halen.

Across his records – and with a little advice from his old man about how to make solos memorable – Wolfgang has proven to be a very safe pair of hands when it comes to sizzling leads. And one of the best takes from the new record takes its cues from Nirvana’s smash hit, Smells Like Teen Spirit.

“I tend to compose my solos,” he tells MusicRadar when asked about his lead cut on Same Old Song. “I like writing them almost as if they’re these little songs or movements in themselves.”

The solo has its roots in Take a Bow, which is from his second album. It’s laced with tapping licks in a virtuosic tribute to his late father, whose passing inspired the multi-instrumentalist to kickstart the project in the first place. It was even tracked using the Frankenstein Strat.

“Take A Bow is another good example of that, where the solo section just ebbs and flows and crescendos,” Wolfgang agrees. “I’ll write solos like that by looping the chord progression, spending hours trying to figure out what works best.”

However, penning the solo for the grunge-driven Happy was a little more straightforward.

“I wear a lot of my influences on my sleeve. There’s a magical dissonance to the stuff Jerry Cantrell tends to write,” he says of the Alice In Chains influence behind the song’s barre chord foundation. But it’s Kurt Cobain that he channels for the solo.

“We basically said, ‘Shall we do the Smells Like Teen Spirit thing?’” he confesses. “I loved my vocal line, so I decided to follow it on guitar with some crazy-ass effect just like the Nirvana song.

“It’s fun to have shreddiness, but at the end of the day, the melody has to come first,” he admits. “Even my dad would say the best solos are the ones you can hum and sing.”

The solo on the 1991 banger isn’t the most technical, but it’s undeniably memorable – and the song’s influence and cultural significance is underscored by the fact that the Lake Placid Blue Fender Mustang Cobain played in its music video sold for $4.5 million, making it the second most expensive guitar ever auctioned.

“Of course, there are moments for fun and tapping,” Wolfgang extends, “but if you can play something that people can sing and it sticks in their heads, that’s what it’s all about.”

His dad’s Frankenstein features again on The End, cropping up for the slapping riff of its title track. But despite its mythical status, it’s a guitar that has its limitations, he’s revealed.

And for all his dad’s soloing advice, it turns out that Eddie Van Halen was a terrible guitar teacher – and he once reached out to Paul Gilbert to show Wolfgang the ropes instead.

A Jim Dunlop guitar pick used by Kurt Cobain during Nirvana’s iconic MTV Unplugged show is being raffled off for charity.

The orange .60mm pick shows clear wear from where Cobain’s thumb started to rub off a little of the ink. At £5 (approx. $6.74) a pop for a raffle entry, this is perhaps the cheapest way fans can potentially come to own a fragment of the grunge icon’s history.

“Ever dreamed of owning a piece of Nirvana’s legacy?” a post on the Royal College of Music (RCM) Instagram asks. “Now’s your chance.” All proceeds from the prize draw directly support students and the Future Music Fund at the RCM.

Some readers may look at the pick nestling in its black-rimmed frame as a fairly unremarkable museum piece. But perspective can change things.

After all, a guitar pick that Cobain is believed to have used to track Nevermind demos sold for a staggering $14,678 in 2023. It too an orange Dunlop pick, that plectrum features his joke 'Kurdt Kobain' signature on one side – which he also scrawled on a Boss DS-1 pedal that ultimately sold for $75,000 – and his attempt at drawing the Dunlop tortoise on the other.

The truth of the matter is that Cobain-owned gear carries a staggering mystique at auction. Indeed, the two most expensive guitars to ever sold at auction were his. There are notable other entries in the top 10, with David Gilmour's Black Strat and Eddie Van Halen's Hot For Teacher Kramer among them.

But even the $4 million the Gilmour Strat fetched at auction is dwarfed by the eye-watering $6 million that Cobain's Martin D-18E acoustic guitar – another star of the MTV Unplugged set – eventually sold for.

Interestingly, the RCM’s raffle prize pick was found inside the guitar case that housed the D-18E. It is currently on display at the Royal College of Music Museum, London, but won’t be much longer.

For the curious, Cobain's Smells Like Teen Spirit Fender Mustang claims second spot in the list. It sold for $4,550,000 in 2022.

Suddenly, £5 feels like a drop of the ocean. We crunched the numbers, and it amounts to just 0.035% of that whopping $14,000 outlay.

There is one Cobain-played guitar, however, that is not for sale. The 1953 Martin D-18 acoustic he affectionately named "Grandpa” was gifted to him by singer/songwriter Mary Lou Lord. That six-string now calls the Martin Museum in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, its home.

Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt and Fredrik Åkesson recently played the guitar as their tour bus rolled through the state, and Åkerfeldt revealed another interesting tidbit about the acoustic.

“Someone told us that guitar was haunted, like people who had that guitar had accidents,” he said. No wonder it has no recognizable owner these days.

Guitar World believes the MTV Unplugged pick is not haunted, but some sage could always be bought with some of the leftover $13,995. Just to be sure.

The Royal College of Music Kurt Cobain Plectrum Prize Draw prize competition draw will be conducted on 18 November 2025.

Tickets can be bought from RCM.

Back in 1991, just before Nirvana suddenly broke huge on MTV, rock fans and musicians alike were in a bit of a holding pattern – mainstream '80s hard rockers (see Guns N' Roses) and muso shredders were hanging on for dear life, and more aggressive funk-rockers (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fishbone, Faith No More) were going along for the ride.

So when grunge first hit it big, in the name of Nirvana, I did what many others did: I scoffed, ignorantly, and looked away. If I'd been paying closer attention, I would have noticed a genre that was redefining rock, and the hidden gem of a melody-driven trio in which influences as disparate as the Beatles and Black Flag somehow coexisted to create songs every bit as classic as Led Zeppelin's finest.

While guitarist and singer Kurt Cobain was the band's primary songwriter and drummer Dave Grohl added huge drive and dynamics to the sound, bassist Krist Novoselic was responsible for more of Nirvana's success than you might think.

This tall, gangling Washingtonian made the most of the melodic opportunities presented to him by virtue of being in a power trio, with space not just for his bass parts to move around, but also to lend melody to the chords and riffs.

Cobain's thick sludge easily took up the space of two guitarists; Drummer Dave Grohl brought a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist's perspective to his boulder-heavy grooves; and there was Novoselic holding it all together while generating counter-melodies of his own.

“I was really fortunate that I got to work with Kurt,” Novoselic told Bass Player, “He was such a talented songwriter and he had a real ear for a hook, so as far as I was concerned playing bass with him was super-easy.”

Novoselic's picked playing style gave his basslines a staccato presence that cried out to be mixed high in any given Nirvana song: see Lithium for example, where his almost funky line carries the vocals along with great character.

Closer scrutiny of Lithium reveals a purposeful, song-oriented, melodic bassline that employs an unexpected reharmonization as a key factor. Since many Nirvana tunes used the same basic chord progressions for both quiet verses and heavy choruses, it was up to Novoselic to create a line that filled out Cobain's often thin and clean verse sound.

Tone was a major part of it, and by using a pick on a Gibson Ripper bass guitar through an Ampeg SVT-400T head, he achieved a meaty punch with just the right amount of edge and attack to complement the guitar in both clean and dirty sections. Armed with the right sound, Novoselic created three distinct lines for Lithium and pounded them into rock history.

Novoselic's drop-D-tuned bass comes crashing in for the chorus. First, he follows Grohl's kick-and-snare pattern along with Cobain's first three power chords, throwing neat little register and rhythmic hooks into beats three and four.

Then at 00:45, in the song's defining bass moment, he substitutes the 5th for the root in two successive changes, hammering eighth-note F's under a Bb5 and eighth-note G's under the C5 chord.

Cobain's vocal “yeaaaaah” on an F for the entire bar increases the tension, mirroring the bass for the first half of the bar and screaming against it in the second half before everything resolves to A.

This harmonic tension repeats throughout the song's verses and subsequent choruses, and it's a huge part of Lithium itself.

Novoselic plays a repetitive line in the second verse, using the same 5th-as-root reharmonization as before. The four-bar verse phrase is played exactly the same thrice over, and then varied on the fourth repetition to set up the chorus.

To achieve this, Novoselic descends under the G5 at 01:31 to set up the notes we’ve been waiting the whole song to hear: roots under the Bb and C power chords at 01:33. That's the stuff of pure pop and song-oriented thinking, and it's what separated Nirvana from so many other bands at the time.

During the bridge, Cobain throws down G and Bb power chords every two beats for 16 bars, and it's up to Novoselic to provide the harmonic movement. He doesn't disappoint, ascending a pure G minor pentatonic scale for the first two bars, and descending a G blues scale for the next two.

Once again, he plays it exactly the same three times through, and then plays a variation in the fourth ending to set up the C and A chords that serve as a bridge back to the main progression.

Like any good pop song, the rest of the tune simply hammers (or, better put, bludgeons) home the three main sections. Cobain practically hands the whole song over to Novoselic at 02:33 for a bass interlude, and lets him carry it all the way into the heavy chorus at 03:14.

Finally, true to form, Novoselic rips off a lick in the second half of the final bridge to let us know that the tune is heading for home.

Kurt Cobain’s iconic Martin D-18E acoustic, which featured during Nirvana’s legendary MTV Unplugged show, is to be put on display in the UK.

Cobain’s D-18E became the most expensive guitar ever sold at auction when it went under the hammer in 2020, fetching a whopping $6,010,000.

Now, the guitar will go on show at the Royal College of Music Museum in London, starring as part of what's been described as “a landmark exhibition exploring Nirvana’s groundbreaking MTV Unplugged performance”.

Interestingly, Cobain's Smells Like Teen Spirit Fender Mustang ($4.55 million) takes the second spot in the most expensive guitars list, with the pair out-selling infamous axes including David Gilmour's Black Stratocaster ($3,975,000) and Eddie Van Halen's Hot For Teacher Kramer ($3,932,000).

That shows just how revered Cobain’s legacy is (even if the deep-pocketed guitar collector Jim Irsay reckons the acoustic in question isn’t worth such a sizable figure). Rode Microphones owner, Peter Freedman, however, didn’t think twice as he placed the winning bid five years ago.

As a founding supporter of the Royal College of Music’s Australia Commonwealth Scholarship, Freedman has now happily loaned the guitar for the exhibition. He hasn’t spent millions of dollars on the guitar to decorate his living room, after all.

“When I purchased this guitar, my intention was to have it begin a worldwide tour of exhibitions, to support performing artists,” he says. “I am delighted that this intent will be premiered at the Royal College of Music, London, with the first exhibition of its kind and will support talented musicians worldwide.”

Renowned music journalist and Guitar World contributor Alan Di Perna has been tasked with curating the exhibition, which includes a series of events from family-friendly workshops and concerts to performances from RCM students inspired by the guitar.

He’s “delighted” to bring the college’s first-ever rock music exhibition to light, and has championed the legacy of Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged set, saying it was “a stand-out performance by a group that changed the course of rock history in the 1990s”.

RCM's Professor Gabriele Rossi Rognoni hopes the guitar will “open cross dialogues with students of different backgrounds and create bridges between historical and contemporary music”.

The college is already home to the world's oldest guitar – a build that dates from 1581 – and so Cobain's iconic Martin will be a worthy stablemate.

The green sweater Cobain wore that night will be displayed alongside the guitar for the first time. Other points of interest include a selection of Nirvana posters, collectible vinyl records still in their original shrink wrap, and the top portion of a soundboard of another guitar from the same series as Cobain’s fabled Martin.

Taking palace June 3-August 17, tickets to the exhibition will cost £5 and will go on sale on April 30 at 10 am GMT.

Visit the Royal College of Music Museum to learn more.

Nearly 15 years have passed since the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind on September 24, 1991. As of this writing, the record has sold tens of millions of copies, and continues to sell some 2,500 copies per week – proof that Kurt Cobain’s music and his world-weary lyrics still resonate deeply.

But consider this: those teens whose lives were changed by Nevermind are now parents themselves. 10-year-olds who bought the album when it first came out are now deep in the throes of adulthood. And twenty-somethings who picked up on Nevermind have either just passed the Big Four-O or are rapidly approaching it.

Which is to say, Nevermind has attained classic status. It is one of those rare albums that will accompany its original fans on their journey through life, while continuing to attract new generations of listeners.

If Nevermind doesn’t seem like an old record, it’s partly because over the past 15 years, the rock scene has been entirely remade in its image. But the world into which Nevermind was born is one that a present-day rock teen would hardly recognize. Alternative rock and heavy metal were still very distinct, mutually hostile genres. Nirvana invaded both camps, converting troops from both sides to the army of flannel-shirt-wearing grunge rockers.

The trio from the rugged Northwest altered the world of mainstream pop as well, knocking Michael Jackson from his perch atop the charts. In doing so, they paved the way for “alternative mainstream” success stories like Pearl Jam, Alanis Morissette, Bush, Stone Temple Pilots, and Rage Against the Machine.

Like Frampton Comes Alive or Meet the Beatles, Nevermind is one of those records that gets incredibly successful in a way no one could have predicted or can ever quite explain. Its explosion into the mass culture firmament surprised Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and Dave Grohl just as much as it did anyone else.

“You want to know why we’ve taken off?” Grohl told Circus magazine in 1991. “We have no idea. We had no idea it would ever get this insane.”

“I’m constantly feeling guilty in ways,” Cobain told journalist Michael Deeds shortly after Nevermind’s release. “Our music, especially on this album, is so slick-sounding. A few years ago, I would have hated our band, to tell you the truth.”

Nevermind represented a quantum leap for Nirvana, both musically and career-wise. Their previous album, Bleach, was recorded in three days and cost $606.17 to make. Their initial budget for Nevermind was $65,000 – 100 times larger than the budget for Bleach. They ended up spending twice that amount. And while Bleach, which was Nirvana’s debut album, came out on the then-little-known indie label Sub Pop, Nevermind had the major-label clout of Geffen Records behind it.

The two-year period that separates Bleach from Nevermind was a time of tremendous growth and upheaval for the band. They went on their first national and international tours. Cobain started up and broke off a relationship with Tobi Vail of the band Bikini Kill. What’s more, Nirvana went through several personnel shifts.

Guitarist Jason Everman, who joined shortly after Bleach, exited the band nearly as quickly as he’d come aboard, once it became clear that his tastes were more hard rock/metal than his bandmates’. He later joined Soundgarden.

Chad Channing, who played drums on Bleach, left the band. Nirvana’s original drummer, Dale Crover, filled in for a seven-date West Coast tour. Dan Peters of Mudhoney played drums on a Nirvana single called Sliver and did one gig with them before Dave Grohl finally settled into place as the group’s permanent drummer.

The frequent personnel shifts and extensive touring seemed to have honed the band’s songwriting, as such experiences often do.

The process also seems to have sharpened the band’s pop sensibilities, which are in far greater evidence on Nevermind than on the sludge-guitar heavy Bleach. But Nirvana biographer Michael Azerrad suggests that those same pop sensibilities existed all along, and that Cobain deliberately suppressed them on Bleach in an effort to conform with Sub Pop’s retro Seventies metal agenda of that time.

“Half of the songs on Nevermind were written at the time of Bleach, but didn’t make it onto the album,” Cobain told journalist Roy Trakin. “So there really isn’t an obvious change. We’ve always been fans of pop music.”

A major milestone along the road to Nevermind came in April of 1990, when Nirvana began recording with producer Butch Vig at Smart Studios, his recording facility in Madison, Wisconsin.

Now perhaps best known as the leader of the band Garbage, Vig was then an up-and-coming indie producer whose credits included well-regarded records by the Laughing Hyenas, Smashing Pumpkins, Firetown, Tad, and Killdozer, among others.

In the week Nirvana spent at Smart, they recorded six songs that would later turn up on Nevermind: In Bloom, Dive, Lithium, Breed (originally titled Imodium), Stay Away (originally titled Pay to Play), and Polly. They also made an unsuccessful stab at another tune, Sappy, which they’d attempted to record at an earlier date, also with unsatisfactory results.

The Smart sessions were originally intended for release as Nirvana’s second album on Sub Pop. But a series of events led the band to change their plans. First, Chad Channing left Nirvana in May 1990. And then the prospect of major-label interest started to become more than an idle rumor.

“We lost Chad and there was uncertainty with that,” Novoselic told a radio interviewer in Australia.

“We didn’t want to release [the Smart sessions]. If we did anything, we wanted it to be with a new drummer. [Also] Sub Pop was doing some wheeling and dealing. They were going to sign a licensing deal with a big label, and that kinda scared us. There were so many variables to consider; it wasn’t wise to put out a record at all.”

Polly is the only song on Nevermind that was recorded at Smart; all the other tracks were re-recorded (although the final versions are said to be very similar to those laid down at Smart).

As for Polly, the band and producer realized there was something special in Cobain’s solo acoustic performance of this disquieting rape scenario, which was based on an actual newspaper account he’d read. The dramatic twist was that the very anti-violence, pro-woman Cobain sang the song from the attacker’s point of view.

“Just because I say ‘I’ in a song doesn’t necessarily mean it’s me,” Cobain later commented. “A lot of people have a problem with that. It’s just the way I write, usually – taking on someone else’s personality or character. I’d rather just use someone else’s example, because, I dunno, my life is kinda boring. So I take stories from television, and things I’ve read and heard.”

“Polly was done with a really cheap acoustic five-string guitar that Kurt had,” recalls Vig. “It had this plunky sound. The original strings were still on it. He never changed them, and he never tuned the guitar either. It was down about a step and a half from E.”

Earlier on, Nirvana had attempted to record a full-band electric version of Polly for their Blew EP. The acoustic performance on Nevermind is no doubt closer in spirit to the song as it sounded when Cobain first wrote it. It also sheds light on the dynamic between Cobain as a songwriter and the rest of the group as interpreters of his material.

“It [songwriting] is usually done on an acoustic guitar, sitting around in my underwear, just picking out riffs, pieces of songs,” Cobain said on Australian radio.

“Krist and Dave have a big part in deciding on how long a song should be and how many parts it should have. So I don’t like to be considered as the whole songwriter. But I do come up with the basics of it. I come up with the singing style and I write the lyrics, usually minutes before we record.”

Grohl became a member of Nirvana in September of 1990, joining them from the Washington D.C. hardcore band Scream. His muscular yet agile drumming took Nirvana’s power trio sound to a new plateau.

Grohl’s arrival also sparked a fresh burst of group songwriting. In a Tacoma, Washington rehearsal space that they shared with a local bar band, Nirvana embarked on a regimen of daily, 15-hour band practices for a period of four or five months.

“We came up with so much stuff where we’d go, ‘God, this is the best thing we’ve ever done!’ Then we’d forget how to play it,” Grohl told Circus magazine. “So many songs got thrown away, until we finally said, ‘Maybe we should start recording them on a cassette.’ So we’d record them, then lose the cassette.”

Two songs that didn’t get away were Smells Like Teen Spirit and Come As You Are, tunes that would prove to be cornerstone tracks of Nevermind. The attention-grabbing title of Teen Spirit was born on a typically relaxed evening at the Cobain residence, as Kurt explained to Australian radio listeners.

“A friend of mine and I were goofing around my house one night. We were kinda drunk, and we were writing graffiti all over the walls of my house. And she wrote, ‘Kurt smells like Teen Spirit.’

“Earlier on, we’d been having this discussion about teen revolution and stuff like that. And I took [what she wrote] as a compliment. I thought she was saying that I was a person who could inspire. I just thought it was a nice little title. And it turns out she just meant that I smelled like that deodorant [called Teen Spirit]. I didn’t even know that deodorant existed until after the song was written.”

Geffen Records had been taking an active interest in Nirvana since April 1990, when Gary Gersh – then an A&R man for Geffen and currently head of Capitol Records – saw the band play at the Pyramid club in New York.

Gersh had been brought to the show by Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. This set in motion a chain of events that would lead to Nirvana’s signing with Geffen. The deal was formally consummated on April 30, 1991. In May, the band arrived in Los Angeles to begin recording what would become Nevermind.

According to Come As You Are, Michael Azerrad’s 1994 Nirvana bio, it was at the suggestion of Gary Gersh’s that the band re-recorded their six Smart session tracks for Nevermind. But it was Nirvana’s own call to use Vig as a producer. They chose him over several bigger name producers, including Scott Litt, Don Dixon, and David Briggs. Apparently, Vig’s work on the Smart sessions had impressed the band.

“Butch was just easy to work with,” Novoselic told Australian radio. “Laid back and really attentive to what’s going on. He works hard but he doesn’t work the band hard.”

Butch Vig says that the band, glad to be in sunny Los Angeles, were generally in good spirits for the Nevermind sessions.

“Kurt was enjoying himself when we made that record. That was before they got really big, and they had kind of a casual attitude toward making the record. There wasn’t a lot of pressure – I felt more pressure making that record than they did, because it was really the first major-label record I had made.”

With an initial budget of $65,000, the band could certainly take a more leisurely approach than they’d taken with Bleach. They began with three days of preproduction, running down the tunes with Vig in a North Hollywood rehearsal hall. One of the first things Vig noticed was the huge impact Grohl’s arrival had made on the band’s sound.

“Kurt had called me up and said, ‘I’ve got the best drummer in the world!’ I thought, ‘Yeah, right. I’ve heard that one before.’ But the first time we went in that rehearsal space and started running through the songs, it was just amazing. Dave was incredibly powerful and dead on the groove. I could tell from the way Kurt and Krist were playing with him that they had definitely kicked their music up another notch, in terms of intensity.”

The preproduction chores were fairly light work: Nirvana had already recorded half the material with Vig once before, and they were well rehearsed on most of the newer tunes.

“Frankly, I didn’t want to beat the songs into the ground,” says Vig. “I just wanted to hear the arrangements and maybe tighten things up a little bit.”

Vig had already heard a rough rehearsal cassette of Teen Spirit but he was knocked out the first time he heard Nirvana play it live in the rehearsal room. “I kept having them play it over and over again, because it was so fucking good! I was literally pacing around the room, saying to myself, ‘This is amazing!’

“There wasn’t much that needed to be done with the song. I think we did a little arranging. At the end of each chorus, there’s a little ad lib thing Kurt did with the guitar. Originally that only happened at the end of the song; he did it a whole bunch of times. I suggested moving that up in to each chorus and cutting the choruses down a little bit. Just some minor tweaking of the arrangements.”

From there, the band moved over to Sound City Studios in nearby Van Nuys. A funky old place in a poor, largely Hispanic part of the San Fernando Valley, Sound City has a good classic rock and metal track record (Fleetwood Mac, Foreigner, Petty, Dio, Crazy Horse, Ratt). Most importantly, the studio has what Vig and the band felt they needed in order to get the primal rock sound they were after: a large recording room and a vintage Neve console.

“At that point, I’d never done any work in Los Angeles,” says Vig. “But I knew that was where the band wanted to work, and I knew of Sound City’s reputation. I worked out a deal so it was cost-effective for us to go there. It was sight unseen. We just booked it and went in.”

On a typical day, says Vig, “we’d be in the studio by around noon or one and we’d leave around midnight or one in the morning.” The band set up in Sound City’s large room, Studio A, to record basic tracks.

“When we cut basics, it went pretty fast,” Vig recalls. “I think it took five or six days in all. Dave was set up in the middle of the room. We built a big drum tunnel on the front of his bass drum, so we could mike it from a distance and still isolate it from all the bleed in the rest of the room. Chris had his SVT bass rig off to the side, but he could play in the room. His headphones were set up next to the drums.

“Kurt’s amps were in a little isolation area, but he was also in the room and he could sing into a mic. We’d start running a song down and they’d usually get the basic track in two or three takes. If there was a missed chord or a bad bass note, we’d go back and punch in [the correct notes] right away.

“Territorial Pissings was basically a first take. Lithium was a little harder. That was the only track we used a click track on at the start of the song, because, for whatever reason, the band kept speeding up really fast. We decided that we wanted to keep it at a real even tempo. Dave had never played with a click track before, but it was not a problem for him at all. After three or four takes with the click, we nailed it.

“After the first couple of takes of Territorial Pissings, that’s when they did that song, Endless Nameless [the surprise noise track that kicks in 13 minutes and 51 seconds after the end of the album’s ostensible final song, Something in the Way].

“Kurt got really frustrated because the song kept speeding up and they were just not playing particularly tight. And he launched into that bonus track on the CD and just totally went off. In the middle of the song, he smashed his guitar to bits. So we spent the better part of the rest of that day driving around Los Angeles trying to find a left-handed replacement guitar.”

Another problematic track was Something in the Way.

“They originally wanted to cut it as a full-on band,” Vig explains. “But that proved difficult to record. It just was not happening. Kurt was not very happy. Finally he came over to me and said, ‘It needs to sound like this…’ And he picked up his old five-string acoustic guitar [the same one used on Polly]. He sat on the couch in the control room and started to sing and play.”

Realizing he was on to what could be a master take, Vig quickly set up some microphones.

“I turned off the air conditioner and everything else and had the phones shut off. He was playing and singing so quietly. But we got it down on tape. Later on, we overdubbed drums and Kurt added some harmonies. But it was all built around the acoustic track.”

Vig remembers Cobain as someone who was generally willing to let others share in his creative processes.

“He was pretty open to all sorts of ideas. He had different lyrics he would bring in and show me. And he’d say, ‘I got a couple of melodies here. Which one do you like better?’ And he’d sing the song in a couple of different versions and I’d give him some feedback on it.”

After basic tracks were completed, Nirvana moved over to Sound City’s other, smaller room, Studio B, for overdubs.

“We started adding the second rhythm guitar to songs,” says Vig, “and Kurt started working some more on his vocals. Dave did some harmonies.”

Lead vocal sessions were generally done in a one-on-one setting, with just Cobain and the producer present. The vocal mic was set up in the main studio area, “but it was basically like a lounge area,” says Vig.

“There were candles in there, and a big rug on the floor. A pretty cool vibe. Dave and Krist were around, but they’d be off playing pool or watching TV. They’d pop in to the control room and listen every now and then, but Kurt kind of wanted to be left alone when he was doing his vocals. He also didn’t really like to use headphones when he sang, so we set up a fairly elaborate system where he could use speakers.”

Cobain’s legendary impatience with multiple takes came to the fore at this time.

“He really wanted to do everything on the first or second take,” says Vig. “He’d do a couple of takes and say, ‘That’s it. I’m not gonna do it anymore.’ The tricky part was trying to figure out how to motivate him to give really good performances. Sometimes his first or second takes were brilliant, but sometimes they needed work. They needed to be more focused.

“What I ended up doing was recording everything he sang, even the warm-ups. A lot of times, I’d actually be going for a first take, but he would think it was just a warm-up. Then I’d have the engineer flip to a new track and I’d tell Kurt, ‘Okay, you’re ready for your first take.’ If I was lucky, I could get as many as four takes out of him. Then I’d take the best pieces of each one and make a master out of it.”

Cobain’s painful, undiagnosable stomach condition would sometimes bring sessions to a halt, Vig remembers.

“He was very sensitive to certain foods. Sometimes we’d eat dinner and he’d get sick half an hour later and end up spending 45 minutes in the bathroom. He was constantly taking Pepto Bismol and things to relieve some of his pain.”

But for all that, the mood in the studio was generally upbeat.

“Kurt and Krist were really happy that Dave had joined the band,” says Vig. “They were in L.A., they’d just signed a record deal with Geffen, they had a bit of cash, so they’d go out and do a little partying. I know they used to go down to Venice and stay up all night.

“After we’d finish working in the studio at midnight or one, they’d go and stay out 'till the sun came up. So sometimes I’d get to the studio at one and they wouldn’t show up till three because they’d slept in. But basically, they showed up when they needed to show up. There wasn’t any real serious partying going on in the studio. They were there to work.”

While in L.A., the band stayed at the Oakwood Apartments in nearby Universal City.

“A couple of times I went to pick them up there and they had definitely turned their place into a bachelor pad. There were cans of food lying open everywhere and clothes thrown all over the place and acoustic guitars lying around the room.

“I know they were getting a big kick out of staying there because the band Europe was staying next to them. That was the band that had a big hit in the Eighties with The Final Countdown. The guys in Europe would all go sit out with their girlfriends by the pool everyday. And I remember Krist and Dave and Kurt making fun of them. They were not big Europe fans.”

Working at Sound City at the same time as Nirvana were the Sidewinders, an Arizona band Vig had recorded that was now working with David Briggs (whom, embarrassingly enough, Nirvana had rejected as a producer for Nevermind).

Vig recalls that the guys in the Sidewinders “kept coming by and asking, ‘Wow, can you play us some stuff that Nirvana’s doing?’ That was the first sense I got that there were people out there who were really totally obsessed with Nirvana.”

The band reached the end of the 16 days booked at Sound City before they had finished overdubbing. Vig booked an additional four or five days at Devonshire Studios in nearby Burbank, where Nirvana completed their overdubs and did some preliminary mixing.

One of the very last overdubs to be completed was the cello part on Something in the Way, the track that had given them difficulties all along. The cello part was played by Kirk Panning.

“That song really wasn’t even written until a week before we went into the studio,” Cobain told Australian radio. “I knew I wanted cello on it, but after all the music was recorded for it, we’d kinda forgotten about putting a cello on. We had one more day in the studio and we decided, ‘Oh geez, we should hire a cellist, you know, and put something in.’

“We were at a party and were asking some of our friends if they knew anyone who could play cello, and it just happened that one of our best friends in L.A. is a cellist. So we took him into the studio on the last day and said, ‘Here, play something.’ And he came up with a part right away. It just fell in like dominos.”

From a technical standpoint, however, it wasn’t all that easy.

“Kirk is a good cello player,” says Vig, “but we had a hard time getting his instrument in tune with Kurt’s guitar. That old five-string acoustic of Kurt’s was tuned down a few steps and wasn’t really tuned to any standard pitch. I remember I fretted over the whole track. It was tricky getting Krist's bass in tune with the guitar, too. You couldn’t use any kind of a standard tuner.”

While at Devonshire, Vig and the band also took a first stab at mixing the record.

“I mixed three or four tracks with the band,” says the producer, “but none of us were very happy with how they came out. To me, they sounded too rough. Kurt would say, ‘Take all the high end off the guitars.’ And I would say, ‘I don’t want them to sound muddy.’ There was also a tendency to bury the vocals more. The mixes sounded more punk rock that way, but the songs didn’t sound as focused to me.”

Ultimately, they decided to call in someone else to mix the album. Geffen’s Gary Gersh sent over a list of possible names.

“Scott Litt was on top of the list,” Vig recalls, “but Kurt said, ‘No, I don’t want to sound like R.E.M.’ Ed Stasium was also on the list. To which Kurt said, ‘No, I don’t want to sound like the Smithereens.’ He went all the way to the bottom of the list and Andy Wallace was there. It said ‘Slayer’ next to his name. And Kurt said, ‘Get this guy.’”

The mixes were done at Scream, another San Fernando Valley studio.

“Basically, I’d let Andy go over the tracks by himself for a few hours,” Vig recalls. “When he got everything up, he’d call me in, and I’d bring in the band and we would nit-pick stuff. Basically, we mixed a song or two a day. The whole record took nine or 10 days to mix.”

Despite the fact that Wallace was Cobain’s own choice and that the band participated in the mixing process, Cobain would later complain to the press that Wallace’s mixes made Nevermind sound too slick, and that it was “closer to Mötley Crüe than a punk rock record.”

“But I think part of that was just Kurt’s reaction to having Nevermind be so successful,” Vig speculates. “If it had only sold 50,000 copies, he probably wouldn’t have had any comments on whether it was too slick or not slick enough.”

By the time the finished masters were handed to the label, the band had spent $130,000, which, despite being twice their initial budget, is still a relatively small amount for a multi-Platinum album. With the music out of the way, attention turned to the cover art.

“One day Dave and I were sitting around watching a documentary on babies being born under water,” said Cobain in his Australian radio interview. “I thought that was a really neat image, so we decided, ‘Let’s put that on the album cover.’ Then when we got back a picture of a baby underwater, I thought it would look nice [to add] a fish hook with a dollar bill on it. And so an image was born.”

The back cover of Nevermind features a photograph by Cobain taken some years earlier, with a background comprised of a collage he made from photos of raw meat, vaginas (according to some accounts), and figures from a painting of Dante’s Inferno. In the foreground is Chim Chim, his toy monkey who’d appeared in earlier Nirvana artwork.

“I was in a bohemian photography stage, you know?,” Cobain later said. “If you look real close, there’s also a picture of Kiss, in the back, standing on a slab of beef.”

Nevermind was released on September 24, 1991. Like all rock albums, it documents the artists’ world at the time the record was made. This momentous recording happened to catch Nirvana at a high point: in the midst of a creative groundswell, somewhere between obscurity and superstardom.

“We’re experiencing the typical independent-band-going-onto-a- major-label punk rock crisis,” Cobain said in 1991, shortly after Nevermind was released. But he also acknowledged the existence of something more important than passing musical fashions and fickle perceptions of “credibility” and “authenticity.” On a level beyond all that, he appeared to realize that the songs on Nevermind could stand the test of time.

“People have opened up to an appreciation of hard rock in punk, and it’s great that they’ve fused together,” Cobain told Monday Morning Replay in December 1991. “Now it’s time to appreciate the pop side. Attitude is one thing. But a good song is the most important thing. It’s the only way to really touch someone.”

This feature was originally published in Guitar World in 2005.

Saturday Night Live! celebrated its 50th anniversary last Friday (February 14) with a Homecoming Concert that saw Nirvana reunite for the second time in two weeks – but this time they drafted in another guest musician to front the band.

For the show, Pat Smear, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl linked up with underrated electric guitar player Post Malone, who helped the band through an infectious rendition of Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Introduced by actor/comedian Adam Sandler, the quartet put on one of the celebratory concert’s standout performances, which has drawn plaudits from artists and Nirvana fans alike.

For the show, Post Malone brought grit and angst to the vocals, and proved once again he is one of the guitar world’s most under-appreciated talents as he absolutely tore through the main progression.

He was also given the chance to flex his familiarity with the fretboard of his Gibson Les Paul, blasting through the lead hook as a Gibson CS-6-toting Smear duly took on rhythm duties.

Post Malone is certainly no stranger to Nirvana’s catalog – he previously performed a 15-song set of Nirvana classics during lockdown – nor is he out of touch with the wider guitar world.

After all, while many may be quick to point to his rap, hip-hop, and R&B background, the singer-guitarist has continually proven himself to be a criminally underrated player, one that’s wholly dedicated to his six-string craft.

Last summer, for example, he surprised Bonnaroo with a pyro-fueled guest spot alongside Billy Strings. Previously, he's nodded to his rock roots with covers of Alice in Chains’ Them Bones and Eric Johnson’s Cliffs of Dover in a guitar battle with Andrew Watt. Oh, and he’s apparently written a “phat jam” with Tom Morello.

“A special rendition,” writes broadcaster Peacock of the performance on Instagram, and many spectators are in agreement.

“How crazy would an actual tour be with this lineup,” writes one fan. “This is my dream lineup for a Nirvana reunion tour,” gushes another. “Sick!” offers Machine Head’s Robb Flynn.

As mentioned, it was the second time in two weeks that Nirvana reunited with the help of guest musicians to fill the role of the late Kurt Cobain. On January 30, the band teamed up with St. Vincent, Kim Gordon, Joan Jett and Violet Grohl for an unannounced FireAid performance concert.

Last night (January 30), a remarkable assembly of all-star musicians came together in LA for FireAid, a massive benefit concert that aimed to raise money for those affected by the devastating fires that tore through Los Angeles earlier this month.

The bill was stacked enough as it is, but one of the biggest performances of the night came from a band that wasn't even on it: Nirvana.

The three surviving members of the group – guitarist Pat Smear, bassist Krist Novoselic, and drummer Dave Grohl – played four Nirvana classics, each with a different singer in the captain's chair.

The band started off with a ferocious take on Breed, featuring St. Vincent accessing her inner punk growl.

Naturally, the alt-rock A-lister also, with a sleek, black-finished version of her Ernie Ball Music Man signature guitar, highlighted the performance with a noisy, free-spirited solo that would almost certainly have made Kurt Cobain proud.

Wielding one of her favored Jazzmasters, Sonic Youth legend Kim Gordon then took the reins for School, a scrappy highlight from the band's debut album, Bleach, using the offset's whammy bar for all it's worth.

After that it was Joan Jett's turn, for a break-neck version of the band's ultimate thrasher, Territorial Pissings, for which Jett used her sticker-adorned Gibson Melody Maker.

The mini-set was then rounded out by a powerful All Apologies with Grohl's daughter, Violet, on vocals, and Gordon returning to the stage to fill in for Novoselic – who picked up the accordion – on bass.

But for Lorde, it was the same group of frontwomen the surviving Nirvana trio played with at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction performance in 2014.

“We thought, ‘Wait, it has to be all women,’” Grohl told Rolling Stone of the lineup of singers that same year.

“‘Don’t even ask anyone else. If we can fill the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame performance with these incredible women singing Nirvana songs, then we’ll have achieved our own revolution.’ It also added a whole other dimension to the show. It added substance and depth, so it didn’t turn into a eulogy. It was more about the future.”

“Joan Jett, who formed the Runaways, changed rock & roll for women,” Grohl continued. “Kim Gordon, from Sonic Youth, was this beacon of light in the predominantly macho, male underground punk rock scene. St. Vincent is a wicked musician that’s pushing boundaries now.”

Yet another eyebrow-raising best guitar riffs of all time list has been published, and – as is usually the case with such round-ups – it has drafted up some rather interesting results.

The 40-strong list comes from uDiscoverMusic, which is part of Universal Music Group’s stable. With that in mind, it's noting that, in the list, the top five riffs all come from Universal artists or bands signed to one of its numerous subsidiaries.

Other notable caveats are that some big hitters and popular Guitar World poll-toppers are questionably relegated to more humble positions (or omitted entirely, in some cases) and the most ‘modern’ offering of the compiled list dates back 22 years to 2006.

That means that none of the riffs of our best riffs of the 2010s poll feature, as the likes of Tool (7empest), Arctic Monkeys (Do I Wanna Know?), and Gary Clark Jr. (Bright Lights) all miss out.

However, there is never an exact science behind compiling such lists, and while the resulting run-down leaves plenty of room for commenters to swing an argument, it’s still an interesting list nevertheless – even if there are some totally bizarre absences.

Kirsten Hersh’s acoustic-led Your Dirty Answer creeps in at the 40th spot on the list, hailed for its “pulsating main guitar riff” and deemed more worthy of a spot than White Stripe’s Seven Nation Army, which is left out entirely.

Eddie Van Halen and Van Halen make one sole appearance with Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love peaking at a fairly lowly 25, one place behind Johnny Marr's spangly This Charming Man riff, and two behind Mark Knoplfer's dancefloor-filling antics on Money for Nothing.

Led Zeppelin’s hip-shaking Whole Lotta Love, which topped Guitar World’s poll of the 50 best guitar riffs of all time in 2023, has to settle for 7th place, not even making it into the top 10. AC/DC’s Back In Black, triumphant in NME’s 2012 poll, falls to 16th.

They weren't the only world-conquering riffs to be humbled here, either. Crazy Train (15), and Enter Sandman (14), both nestle outside the top 10, while The Kinks' You Really Got Me (10) just makes the top bracket.

ZZ Top's ever-cool La Grange (9), Hendrix's Purple Haze (8), and Link Wray's hugely influential 1958 cut Rumble all follow, before Guns N' Roses Sweet Child O' Mine – which Slash says did not come from a warm-up routine, despite popular belief – kicks off the top five.

But it's Nirvana's '90s-shaping Smells Like Teen Spirit that reigns supreme, edging out Smoke on the Water (4), The Rolling Stones' (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (3), and Chuck Berry's Johnny B Goode, despite the poll describing the four-chord smash as “unoriginal”.

UDiscoverMusic notes: “The four-chord pattern of the riff is unoriginal but the quiet-loud dynamic contrasts of the song, and Cobain’s visceral delivery, add to the potency of one of the best guitar riffs of the ‘90s”.

As reported by Guitar World, “while the Studio preamp, Boss DS-1, and Small Clone provide the essence of Cobain’s guitar tones on the song, several other production flourishes influence the finished recorded sound.”

Luckily, replicating the song's iconic tones can be done on the cheap. Check out Guitar World's guide to nailing Smells Like Teen Spirit's tone.

Check out uDiscoverMusic to see the riff list in full.

In 2020, the guitar universe was left slack-jawed by the blockbuster sale of the Martin D-18E Kurt Cobain used for Nirvana's seminal MTV Unplugged set. Headlining a Julien's Auctions lot, the guitar fetched an incredible $6,010,000, making it by far the most expensive guitar ever sold at auction.

One of just over 300 of its kind produced, the Martin D-18E in question was a rare guitar in anyone's hands, but its association with the haunting apex of Nirvana's final chapter gave it legendary status in guitar lore, even before its record-shattering sale.

Cobain, though, wasn't precious about the D-18E – a model that Martin discontinued in 1959, only a year after its unveiling – during his lifetime. According to Nirvana guitar tech Earnie Bailey, Cobain was far from a vintage guitar fiend, and was likely more drawn to the eccentricities of the short-lived model than its potential value.

He even, inspired by one of his guitar heroes and with the assistance of his tech, modded the six-string to better fit his tonal needs.

Reflecting on the D-18E, which Cobain purchased at Voltage Guitar in Los Angeles in 1993, Bailey told Guitar World in 1995, “I don’t believe he had any idea how rare it was before he bought it.

“Kurt was neither a collector nor a connoisseur of rare guitars,” he explained. “I think he saw [the D-18E] as an oddity, hoping it would sound as good as it looked.”

Cobain was a great admirer of alt-rock trailblazers-turned arena conquerers R.E.M., and, struggling with the D-18E's tone, he turned to the band's guitar hero, Peter Buck.

“Unfortunately, the [D-18E's] DeArmond pickups were designed with nickel strings in mind, so hearing it with bronze-wound strings was pretty disappointing,” Bailey recalled. “Our solution was to attach yet another pickup – a Bartolini model 3AV – to the top of the Martin.

“Kurt first became interested in [the Bartolini pickup] when he saw Peter Buck using one and really liked the sound.”

From there, Cobain was insistent on running the vintage acoustic through his Fender Twin Reverb amp and his usual effects.

Not thrilled with how that particular setup would look on camera, Unplugged producer Alex Coletti came up with a deceptive cover.

“I built a fake box out in front of the amp to make it look like a monitor wedge,” Coletti told Guitar World in 1995. “It was Kurt’s security blanket. He was used to hearing this guitar through his Fender. He wanted those effects. You can hear it on The Man Who Sold the World [the David Bowie song covered by Nirvana on Unplugged].

“It’s an acoustic guitar, but obviously he’s going through an amp. There’s no trying to pull the wool over anybody’s eyes. I actually fought pretty hard to leave that song out. Because I felt it wasn’t as genuine as the rest of the songs. But I’m a huge Bowie fan, so I couldn’t fight too hard against the song.”

To this day, Cobain's MTV Unplugged D-18 remains, by far, the most expensive guitar ever sold publicly. Incidentally, #2 on that list happens to be another one of Cobain's guitars, the Fender Mustang he used in the era-defining Smells Like Teen Spirit video.

On September 25, 1993, Nirvana appeared as a quartet on Saturday Night Live. As the story goes, the band’s new guitarist, Pat Smear, had received a call from Kurt Cobain inviting him to join the group as a second guitarist for an upcoming tour. The SNL performance served as an opportunity for the public to witness the updated lineup and experience select songs from Nevermind's follow-up, In Utero.

However, before joining Nirvana, Smear had been playing with German singer-songwriter and actress Nina Hagen, and had been coaxed into acquiring a 1982 Charvel for that particular gig.

When it came to playing with Cobain and co, though, the Charvel – which Smear considered to be his “good guitar” – raised a few eyebrows.

“She had a musical director, and they were snobs, and they hated that there was a fucking punk rocker in their band. They hated it so much,” Smear recalls in a conversation with Dave Grohl and Chris Shiflett for Premier Guitar. “I mean, she didn’t, but the band did, and they’re like, ‘You need to get a good guitar.’ So I end up buying this Charvel.

“It was gorgeous,” he goes on. “I mean, this thing was so pretty. I thought, ‘Okay, now I have a good guitar.’ So we’re doing my first-ever gig with Nirvana [on] Saturday Night Live. And I’m like, ‘Well, better play my good guitar. I’m gonna play my Charvel.’

While he had considered playing his Hagstrom instead, Smear thought his newly acquired Charvel would make more sense for such a highly anticipated appearance with, as he referred to Nirvana, “professional musicians”.

“And what I didn’t know at the time – I don't even know if you [referring to Dave Grohl] were involved – but there was a discussion about me and that guitar like, ‘No, no, no, we can’t let him on stage.’”

“Kurt ended up giving me this rad fucking guitar [referring to the Mosrite Mark V in blue he ended up playing], which is not a Charvel.”

During his (albeit brief) tenure with Nirvana, Smear played several models, primarily Fender Strats purchased for him by Cobain.

According to Nirvana’s longtime guitar tech, Earnest Bailey, three of the main ones were an American Strat in Midnight Blue with a maple fretboard, another American Strat nicknamed ‘Glossy’ – featuring a black DiMarzio pickup and a locked-down Floyd Rose bridge – and ‘Flopsy’, a Mexican Strat in black that Smear further modified throughout the tour by adding nail polish in different colors.

He also played a Hagstrom III in black, a blue Hagstrom I, and a black Hagstrom XII, plus the colorful Harmony Buck Owens American acoustic, which actually belonged to Krist Novoselic, and that stood out during Nirvana’s iconic MTV Unplugged concert.

However, his relationship with that Charvel guitar didn’t end there. Fast forward to 2023, and a serendipitous, full-circle moment occurred during a Foo Fighters SNL appearance with H.E.R “I noticed she was playing a Charvel,” Smear says. “She goes, ‘Yeah!’ [and I said] ‘I have a perfect guitar for you,’ and I sent her that guitar.”

In 1992, Page Hamilton appeared to have won the music lottery. The jazz-trained guitarist’s alt-metal/post-hardcore band, Helmet, darlings of the New York City downtown music scene, had signed a whopper of a deal with Interscope Records (worth a reported $1.2 million, staggering numbers at the time) and released their major-label debut, Meantime, which went gold in a matter of months.

Helmet’s music was easy to digest: the guitar riffs and rhythms were brutal and direct, the grooves were pummeling and unrelenting, and Hamilton’s vocals were perfect if you were into the “Ozzy Osbourne as drill sergeant” thing.

It all worked like a charm. MTV played the video of the attack-mode single Unsung in regular rotation, and the band’s touring dance card was checked off for the next year.

Any other rocker would have pressed “repeat” for the follow-up record, but Hamilton had other ideas. The band’s 1994 album, Betty, packed a few sure-fire bangers, most notably Milquetoast and Wilma’s Rainbow, but the rampaging pace was dialed down throughout most of the record, and there were even forays into jazz and avant-garde funk. For buzz-cut headbangers lusting for the hard stuff, Betty felt soft.

“The funny thing is, everybody who slagged the record now thinks it’s great,” Hamilton says. “That’s happened so many times with me, especially with critics. They write a review and kill an album, and 10 years later they re-review it and say, ‘I was wrong.’

“Here’s what I believe: If you’re trying to repeat what you did last time because it was successful, that’s kind of weak. That’s why I’m such a fan of [the Replacements’] Paul Westerberg and [the Kinks’] Ray Davies. They made it okay to shoot yourself in the foot, as long as what you’re doing excites you. I’m not doing this to please an audience. I only try to please myself.”

Even though Meantime went gold, Helmet had signed to Interscope for a huge sum at the time. Was the label expecting platinum or double platinum? How much pressure did that put on you?

“I never gave it a thought. I didn’t give it much thought when we signed, either. I remember talking to [Interscope co-founder] Jimmy Iovine around the holidays. I said, ‘We’re thinking of putting the album out sometime next year.’ He said, ‘Get into the studio as soon as you can and do it now.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, shit. I better finish these songs.’ Which I did.

“We went into the same studio where we did our first album, Strap It On, and worked with the same engineer, Wharton Tiers. The only difference was we had a larger budget, so we got Andy Wallace to mix. I loved him.

“People from the label would come around the studio and say things like, ‘This smells like another ...Teen Spirit,’ which was absurd. But I remember Jimmy saying, ‘I’ve worked with Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen and U2. You have your own vocabulary that you came up with. I’m not going to tell you what to do.’ Nobody was doing what we were doing when we came out, and he got that.”

Was the label okay with you deciding to produce yourselves on Betty?

“They didn’t frown on it. After we had just won a fucking Grammy nomination and had a gold record, Jimmy Iovine asked me who was going to produce the new record. I said, ‘Uh, me.’ I thought we had done okay. We were on MTV and had sold something like 650,000 records.

“Before Betty, we did that song Just Another Victim with the House of Pain guys for the Judgment Night soundtrack. T-Ray remixed it, and the album went platinum, so our manager said, ‘Maybe we should have a hip-hop guy do the Helmet record. Let’s throw people a curve.’ I was open to it.

“The problem was, T-Ray worked his own way. He made tracks and would have guys come in and write words over them. Whereas I write the words, I write the tracks, I sing the lead vocal, I play the lead guitar, and I write the arrangements. I do everything myself, and then my band turns it into music.

“T-Ray said to me, ‘Your shit is so together. I don’t have anything to do.’ And I was thinking, ‘Why are you here then? Why am I paying you money?’ He’s a sweetheart of a guy, and eventually we did some other stuff, but he comes from a different world. People tell me, ‘You’re a control freak.’ I’m like, ‘Yes, I am. So be it.’ I put in the time because it’s my music.”

How did you come to work with Butch Vig on Milquetoast?

“We had met when we did the Led Zeppelin tribute album, Encomium, with our old pal David Yow from the Jesus Lizard. I was a big fan of Killdozer and other things Butch produced. Of course, after he did Nevermind, everybody wanted him.

“But we hit it off and talked about working together. He had just finished the album with his own band Garbage, and he said, ‘It probably won’t do anything, so I’ll be available.’ Then the thing went multi-platinum, and he became unavailable! [Laughs]”

Ultimately, Butch had time to work on that one tune with you.

“Right. And it came out on The Crow soundtrack, too. I loved working with Butch. I adore the guy. I remember he said, ‘How about a guitar dropout for the first verse?’ I was like, ‘Whoa, what a great idea!’ He said, ‘Let’s do a far-away vocal thing.’ Every idea he had sounded fantastic.

“He couldn’t do the whole album, which is probably for the best, because it would have been Butch Vig and Andy Wallace – the same people who did Nirvana. Don’t get me wrong: We loved Nirvana, and we were friends with them. We played together with their old drummer, Chad [Channing], and later with Dave Grohl, but we didn’t want to be Nirvana. We were a completely fucking different band.”

Before cutting Betty, your other guitarist, Pete Mengede, left.

“He was let go. Let me clarify a few things. We have some kind of non-disclosure agreement or whatever bullshit is probably passed at this point after he sued us. He was let go for reasons that are absolutely viable and significant, and I care for him as a former member of the band. But I knew at that point that I didn’t need him to play on the albums.

“There were songs that he’s not even on because I’m a much better guitar player than he is. I was writing stuff to my ability, not his. Early on it worked, and then it stopped working. We let him go and it turned into a big dramatic thing.

“Then Rob Echeverria came in. He was a really good guitarist and a great guy. It just got to the point where I was tired of holding another guitar player’s hand. Rob learned all the songs and played on Betty, but after a couple of years I said, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ I need another guitarist live, but I don’t want to deal with anyone in the studio.

“So I let Rob go, and it was amicable, and then I read all this shit about how he quit to join Biohazard. I’m like, ‘Please. Leaving Helmet to join fucking Biohazard?’ And then he was like, ‘I got tired of playing math equations.’ I’m like, ‘Math equations? Give me a break. It’s not math equations, bro. It’s called groove.’”

What was your guitar setup on Betty?

“My ESP Horizon Custom. It was my first endorsement guitar that I paid $600 for, and they never charged me again. The amp was my Marshall JCM800 2204S. I believe I used a 1960s greenback Marshall cabinet, which I stupidly sold when the band broke up. I had found it in a pawn shop in Cleveland sometime in 1990.”

Did you use a different guitar and amp setup for the jazz number, your cover of Beautiful Love?

“I did. For that song, I used my 1986 Fender Super Champ, and the guitar was my 1986 Les Paul goldtop that I bought from Sam Ash in Queens. It was always my dream to have a goldtop, and I bought it when I was 19 and went into deep credit card debt.”

After Betty, the band didn’t release another album for three years. Was it a difficult period? Did you need to reassess and regroup?

“Yeah. We had gone from playing to 10 kids at CBGB or the Pyramid Club to headlining Roseland. Money changed everything. The other guys were chilling when they were home, but I was writing songs. They were like, ‘You’re getting more money than us,’ and I was like, ‘I’m spending months writing these songs for us, and I’m doing all this work that I love and have to do to not go crazy. But at the same time, I get compensated for that.’ That created tension.

“Plus, we were constantly going and going. Everybody was trying to make as much money off of us as they could, and we were oblivious. We were like, ‘Yeah, great, okay. We’re playing, we’re touring.’ I look back on it now, and it’s like, ‘Yeah, milk these guys for all you can.’

“There were great people that I still respect and am still friends with, but there were a lot of shitheads that didn’t give a rat’s ass about us and didn’t know the first thing about our music. I thought everybody was getting it. I thought everybody understood what we were doing. We weren’t trying to be Nirvana. It’s never what I set out to do.”

• Betty is out now via Interscope.

Nirvana fans attending the FooVana gig last week were treated to a special guest appearance from Krist Novoselic, who joined the Foo Fighters/Nirvana tribute act to play a handful of the band’s songs.

FooVana were performing at Georgie's Garage & Grill in Vancouver, Washington, on Thursday, July 18. Novoselic’s presence was teased ahead of the gig, as the band posted an image of the bass player on their Facebook with the caption: “Show’s about to start! Oh yeah that’s right… Somebody else is here!”

The Nirvana legend accompanied the band for three of the Seattle icon’s hits – Blew, Lithium, and Smells Like Teen Spirit – as the tribute band suddenly got that much closer to the real deal.

Notably, it was the first time Novoselic had played Blew live for three decades, with the Nirvana co-founder telling the audience: “The last time I played that song was 30 years ago”.

FooVana’s guitarists were armed with a Dave Grohl Epiphone DG-335 and a Fender Jaguar, respectively, as they looked to nail the vibes and tones of both bands. Novoselic, meanwhile, opted for his signature Gibson RD bass.

Novoselic recently said he loves Gibson basses “because they're so dense”, as he unveiled his new band The Bona Fide Band with a rendition of Nirvana’s first-ever single.

Between that band and 3rd Secret – his project with Soundgarden's Kim Thayil and Matt Cameron – he's keeping himself plenty busy, but not too busy so that he didn't have time for this surprise celebration of Nirvana's everlasting legacy.

Nirvana tone obsessive Aaron Rash has spent the last few years tumbling down the rabbit hole of Kurt Cobain’s feral In Utero electric guitar sound. Now, he's produced a painstakingly put-together pack of Impulse Responses that lets guitarists harness the iconic In Utero tone "without touching a single physical amp".

Nirvana’s Nevermind follow-up (which Steve Albini offered to produce for free, so long as they beat him at a game of pool) was released in 1993 to great acclaim. It saw Cobain take his guitar tones in a wiry new direction – a sound Rash has been determined to recreate.

As such, the Utero Sessions IR Pack follows years of investment into research and gear-chasing to nail the record’s distinctive sound. Even if at times he felt it was a fruitless endeavor.

“I have bought and sold probably seven different [Fender] Quad Reverbs to find the perfect sounding one, because – news flash – they don’t all sound the same, even with the same speakers,” he says of the process. “They really vary all over the place.”

“Every amp is different and it's going to affect the tone,” Rash said of his tone hunt to MusicRadar earlier this year. “I found speakers make the most difference, especially for distortion tones – it’s night and day.

“I’ve always thought about it like this: if you take white noise and you run it through a speaker, every speaker is going to have its own profile. Distortion is just like white noise, really – if you hear it without going through a speaker, it just sounds like trash. The speaker is really important.”

The problem Rash faced was that the speaker he longed for – one made by legacy speaker brand, Utah, specifically for the Quad Reverb – is extremely rare. Only a few were made.

But he couldn’t cut corners, saying: “With its undersized magnets, and 16 ohm voice coil, nothing else sounds quite like it.”

Away from the speaker intricacies, Rash endeavored to use the same 1940s ribbon mics Nirvana used, despite them coming at an “astronomical” cost.

Says Rash: “I sourced all the original microphones that were used on the record, preamps, literally everything. I honestly don’t want to know how much I’ve spent to do this, but it’s done! And I am so happy to share it with you guys.”

Rash also points out that the room in which the IRs were created was crucial, adding that Steve Albini and Cobain’s guitar tech, Earnie Bailey, helped guide him on his mammoth journey.

The software is compatible with amp guitar plugins, with Rash personally recommending the Softube Vintage Amp Room. However, he says any kind of Fender Twin Reverb-emulating plugin will do the trick.

“The amp’s not really important,” he confesses. “What’s important is the IR pack.”

The Utero Sessions IR Pack is available now for $49.99.

Head to Aaron Rash to learn more.

Bassist Joe Preston may be best known for playing with the Melvins and Earth. However, he is also one of the most prolific bassists to come out of the early-’90s grunge and the Washington underground scenes, before hitting his stride with Sunn O))), High On Fire, and Thrones. 

In a new interview with MusicRadar, he reveals how a message from Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl served as the catalyst that led him to join the Melvins. 

“There was no audition, and I already knew them. And I’d gone on tour with Nirvana [with Earth] and stuff. I’d also interviewed them for a magazine I was writing for, so I’d known them for several years by then,” says Preston. 

“But I had just moved to Olympia, and I heard some ruckus outside my house outside in the street, and then on my porch, and it was Kurt and Dave from Nirvana, who had a note for me with a message from Buzz, saying, ‘This is not a joke, call Buzz about playing with the Melvins.’”

The Nirvana connection doesn't stop there. Elsewhere in the same interview, Preston talks about touring with pre-fame Nirvana while he was a member of Earth. 

“It was exciting and weird, because when things started getting going for them, it all happened quickly, from being broke punk rock guys to being able to buy stupid stuff or whatever,” he recalls.

“In the spring or summer of '91, we went down there, and they were recording Nevermind. It was just really weird to see them get to that level. 

“I got to be with them when the A&R guys would take them out, and it was really weird, because they went from being a band they’d never heard of to wanting to talk to them. It was a weird time because it was the beginning of all this brown-nosing from labels.”

Back in 2023, Buzz Osborne also recalled the post-grunge A&R era that saw The Melvins themselves courted by major label executives. 

“We thought Atlantic would take one album from us, hate it and be done,” Osborne told Guitar World. “But they did three, which is still surprising to us. People told us they were surprised, but trust me, no-one was more surprised than us...”

To read the full interview with Joe Preston, head to MusicRadar.

Nirvana bassist and co-founder Krist Novoselic's new group, The Bona Fide Band, have just played their first few shows in the Washington area, including Kurt Cobain's hometown Aberdeen. As fitting for the occasion, they paid tribute to Cobain with their own rendition of Love Buzz, a song that launched Nirvana's career.

The Bona Fide Band, which, aside from Novoselic on bass, consists of vocalists Jillian Raye and Jennifer Johnson from the grunge supergroup 3rd Secret, former Screaming Trees drummer Mark Pickerel, guitarist Kathy More from The Kathy Moore Super Power Trio, debuted at Easy Street Records in Seattle on June 20. The band performed at the Make Music Day celebrations in Aberdeen, Washington a day later.

While their set heavily skewed towards tracks from the 3rd Secret's repertoire and Novoselic's former band Giants in the Trees, the band covered psych-rock band Shocking Blue's Love Buzz.

This performance served as a nod to Nirvana, who famously released a cover of Love Buzz as their debut Sub Pop single in 1988. A slightly different mix later appeared on Nirvana's debut album Bleach.

Speaking of his new band and this performance to Seattle's KOMO News, Novoselic said he formed The Bona Fide Band partly to raise awareness of his new political party, the Cascade Party.

“It's moving. I'm really looking forward to playing in Aberdeen, and that's on June 21st on World Music Day. We're just going to make music and try to make people happy and entertain people.”

“If it brings back memories and feelings for people, that's the magic of music,” he asserted. “We're not going to contaminate that with politics. We're not going to make these political speeches.”

For the occasion, Novoselic brandished an Alpine White Gibson Thunderbird bass. In a 2011 interview with Bass Player, he commented on his career-long affinity for Gibson basses, particularly the Gibson Ripper he used during his Nirvana days.

“I’m six foot seven,” he commented, “which is lucky, because it’s a big bass. Check one out when you go to a music store. Try it on, because it’s big and heavy, it’s a big gun, but it’s got that sustain that I really like. You just let the note ring. That’s probably why I stuck with Gibson basses the whole way through, because they’re so dense.”

Along with Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana’s Come As You Are is routinely voted one of the greatest guitar riffs of all time – and that makes it essential learning for any guitarist.

Just two frets are required to play the riff, so it’s an ideal song for any players who have just picked up their first beginner electric guitar.

Kurt Cobain’s intro is played in D standard tuning (DGCFAD from low to high), so you’ll need to lower each string by a tone – that’s the same as two frets.

This tuning gives the guitar a darker tone, perfect for the brooding mood of the song – complemented by the use of an Electro-Harmonix Small Clone chorus pedal.

The riff only uses a handful of notes, yet is instantly recognisable – surely the mark of a true classic. These notes outline a two-chord progression, moving from Em at the 2nd fret to D5 in open position, with the root notes appearing on the sixth string.

Remember, this is a single-note line so the chords are implied, rather than played in full. The chords are joined together with an Eb note between them. Eb doesn’t really belong to either chord, so think of it as a momentary ‘passing note’. Use ‘down up’-style alternate picking, moving your hand from the wrist.

To nail the timing, it's worth noting that the first three notes come before beat 1, and the first 2nd fret E note lands on beat 1.

Key facts

• Appears at: 0:00-0:16
• Tempo: 120bpm
• Key/scale: E minor
• Main techniques: Alternate picking / passing notes

A new study has identified The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army as the world’s most Googled guitar riff.

For Wood and Fire Studio’s statistics, the studio analyzed a total of 271 songs and 2,314,336 Google searches to discover the world’s most-played riffs, and Jack White’s iconic 2003 foot-stomper has claimed the crown. The rest of the list is rather predictable, too.

“This is where the famous ‘forbidden riff’ joke on the guitar comes from,” the studio observes. “The first 4 songs are played so often that the staff in the guitar departments of music stores can no longer hear them.”

The White Stripes song, which sees a Kay K6533 archtop put through an octave-down DigiTech Whammy pedal, racks up 39,750 Google searches every month, scoring higher than guitar store staples Stairway to Heaven (30,375), which comes in second, and Smoke on the Water (15,750), which sits in 10th.  

Interestingly, Nirvana claims the third spot, with Come As You Are (28,750) out-Googling Heart Shaped Box (14,000) and Smells Like Teen Spirit (13,625), which come in 11th and 12th, respectively.

Metallica prove to be the most popular riffmeisters collectively, with four tracks – Nothing Else Matters (4th), Enter Sandman (7th), Master of Puppets (9th), and Fade to Black (20th) – ranking in the top 20, more than any other artist. 

When it comes to players wanting to strum along to their favorite chord progressions, Jeff Buckley's version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah outranks the rest. 

The cut, covered by everyone from Buckley to Michael Bolton, tops the Google search charts for songs in the USA, Australia, France, and Sweden with 163,453 searches per month. The fact it's been covered so often no doubt had a big impact here. 

Ed Sheeran's Perfect (147,479) ironically has to settle for second best, while Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here makes it onto the podium with 135,979 searches.

The study has highlighted that nearly all the songs share a similarly romantic theme, arguing that love songs are the most universally appealing.

The Beatles’ classic Let It Be tops the UK (21,877) and German (24,026) listings, but has to settle for 4th place on the global scoreboard with 131,336 searches per month.

Elvis Presley, meanwhile, has proven to be a force to be reckoned with in South America. Can’t Help Falling In Love is the most-played song in 12 countries, including Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia. 

Head to Wood and Fire Studio to dissect the full survey results.

Kurt Cobain’s 1993 Fender Mustang electric guitar – known as the Sky Stang I – sold at auction on Saturday (18 November) for more than $1.5 million. 

The Nirvana frontman’s name has previously been associated with several of the highest-value guitar sales of all time and the price fetched by the Mustang comfortably places it among those ranks.

Indeed, the latest sale means that Kurt Cobain’s instruments now occupy three of the top 10 spots in the list of the most expensive guitars sold at auction. Previously, he and David Gilmour had two apiece on the list.

Cobain’s sales also eclipse that of Gilmour when it comes to value, with Gilmour’s sales worth a total of $5,790,000 – a figure that is more than doubled by the $12,147,500 raised for Cobain’s three guitars.

When we first reported on the Sky Stang I auction, we mentioned it could be a prime candidate for Jim Irsay’s billion-dollar guitar collection, but in the end the auction was won by Japan-based businessman Mitsuru Sato – who paid a final price of $1,587,500.

Irsay won’t feel too hard done by, however. A portion of the sale price has gone towards his Kicking the Stigma non-profit (which campaigns to raise awareness of mental health conditions). In addition, Irsay also scooped up Eric Clapton’s iconic 1964 Gibson SG ‘The Fool’ for $1,270,000.

The Sky Stang I is one of 10 Fender Mustangs that were ordered by Cobain in the summer of 1993. The guitars were built in Japan, by Scott Zimmerman, a luthier based at the Fujigen factory. At that point, the brand did not have the capability to produce left-handed models at their US custom shop facilities.

The instrument then became Cobain’s go-to guitar for much of the In Utero tour, seeing use in 53 of the tour’s 63 shows, including the band’s MTV Live and Loud appearance and, most poignantly, Cobain’s last Nirvana show on March 1, 1994 at Terminal 1 in Munich, Germany.

Its provenance is also unquestionable, with the distinctive V-shape mark on the scratchplate being clearly visible in numerous images and video footage from the period. 

Following Cobain’s death, the Sky Stang I passed to his brother Chad Cobain, who held onto the guitar until putting it up for auction last month.

The final price fetched in this latest auction also vastly exceeds that of its sibling, the Sky Stang III, which went up for auction in 2019 and sold for $340,000. That instrument also saw use on the In Utero tour and was later gifted to a fan by Courtney Love.

However, even the Sky Stang I remains a relative minnow when you compare it to $4.5 million price fetched by the Smells Like Teen Spirit Mustang, or the astonishing $6 million fetched by Cobain’s MTV Unplugged Martin.

We’re not sure what the Nirvana frontman would have made of the extreme prices commanded by his instruments nearly 30 years on from his death, but we do know that when it comes to guitar auctions, Cobain remains the undisputed king.

For more information on the Sky Stang I, head to Julien’s Auctions.

“AAARRRRRGGGHH!!! THIS IS so flippin’ AMAZING! Hahahaha. Hmmm, what should I do first? Burn my guitar … or light MYSELF on fire! Give me MORE, but GOD ALMIGHTY, MAKE IT STOP!”

Does that sound insane? Yes, indeed. But that was the kind of crazy talk many guitarists engaged in during the ’80s. And who could blame them? George Lynch, Vito Bratta, Steve Vai, Nuno Bettencourt, Reb Beach, Yngwie Malmsteen, Kirk Hammett, Eric Johnson, Paul Gilbert, Marty Friedman and about a billion other handsome virtuoso shredders just kept getting faster and better until all you could scream was, “I surrender! Fuck playing the guitar, I’m gonna join the Marines.”

Then suddenly on September 10, 1991, a date that will live in infamy, everything changed. Nirvana, a melodic punk rock band from Seattle, released a simple four-chord slugfest titled Smells Like Teen Spirit and sparked a musical revolution that blew all the fleet-fingered pretty boys out of the water. 

Nirvana and their charismatic singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain championed gritty “authenticity” over the glamorous excesses of the hair metal of the ’80s, and their disheveled presence suddenly made bands like Winger, Warrant and Whitesnake look like dolled-up saloon girls in comparison. And just like that, the guitar virtuoso crazy train was completely derailed like the Norfolk Southern locomotive in Ohio. 

As shredder extraordinaire George Lynch recalled in Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock’s excellent 2021 book Nöthin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the ’80s Hard Rock Explosion, “Unfortunately, [’80s hair metal] worked its way to an apex, and then we backed ourselves into a corner. There was no place to go. Because you could only play so fast and then what did it really matter? Nirvana came along and said it all with one nasty, dirty, attitude note. You go, ‘Ah, that’s rock and roll!’”

In a purge that would’ve made a Russian dictator green with envy, anything to do with ’80s guitar hair metal – the Spandex, the decadence, the pointy guitars, the makeup, the tapping, the whammy dives – was put up against the wall and shot. And whoever managed to escape was sentenced to live out the rest of their days doing hard labor at the bottom of the charts or playing 400-seaters in Poughkeepsie.

While some Guitar World readers mourned the loss of their well-coiffed heroes, many more breathed an audible sigh of relief. You no longer had to be genetically superhuman to play rock ’n’ roll or get a record deal; being a talented schlub was just fine. 

You still had to play well, but you didn’t have to lock yourself in a room like a Benedictine monk and practice arpeggios in three octaves for 10 hours a day. A good song with a solid riff was all you needed, and you were good to go.

The myth of grunge guitar #1

One of the biggest myths of the ’90s was that the alternative musicians of the day were as primitive as cave-dwelling mud people. The truth is, there were many imaginative, if not downright sophisticated guitarists during that era, including Nirvana’s great insurrectionist, Kurt Cobain. 

While Cobain’s primary gift was writing spectacular vocal melodies over surprising chord changes like on Lithium, he was also a ferocious rhythm guitarist who rarely lost the groove, even when hurtling himself across the stage with total abandon or screaming the choruses to any of his memorable anthems.

“All the years I spent practicing scales and virtuoso-type riffs, [Cobain] was locking onto these chords in a very connected way,” shredder icon Steve Vai once observed. “When you saw Kurt strumming chords, it was virtuosic in a sense because it sounded like an orchestra when he slammed that guitar. Every string had its own ZIP code, if you know what I mean.”

Even if you don’t buy Vai’s assessment that Kurt was a “virtuoso,” there were plenty of other alternative rockers that deserved the title during the Great ’90s Reset. Seattle’s Kim Thayil and Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, for example, created daring textures via unorthodox drop tunings and unusual time signatures on many of their biggest songs.

In 1994 the duo used a bizarre E-E-B-B-B-E tuning over an unconventional 5/4 time signature on their single My Wave, a song made even more unusual by the fact that Ben Shepherd used a wah pedal on his bass.

And there was no denying the greatness of Thayil’s wild-ass solo on the band’s chart-topping Black Hole Sun. Sounding like it was being played forwards and backwards at the same time, it was perhaps the most avant-garde lead guitar break on a Number 1 song in the history of rock. (It’s interesting to note that Black Hole Sun also went to Number 1 in Iceland, because if I had to guess what Icelandic rock music sounded like, it would probably resemble the alien splatter-art guitar solo on Black Hole Sun.)

In addition to Soundgarden, there were other groups and guitarists serving up more great riffs and solos than you could shake a Led Zeppelin at. Hard rock bands like Alice in Chains (Man in the Box, Them Bones), Red Hot Chili Peppers (Under the Bridge, Give It Away), Stone Temple Pilots (Interstate Love Song, Plush), Smashing Pumpkins (Bullet with Butterfly Wings, 1979) and Green Day (Longview, Basket Case) kept mainstream rock radio humming for the next decade with ballsy, memorable guitar rock.

And it could be argued that the ’90s was superior to the ’80s when it came to top-notch, up-your-nose-with-a rubber-hose heavy metal. Just skimming the surface, you had Ozzy Osbourne (with Zakk Wylde), Tool, Korn, Deftones, Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down, Meshuggah, Machine Head and Napalm Death releasing brilliant and innovative albums.

Come as you are

Not only did attitudes regarding guitar playing shift, but so did just about everything else. Lyrics became more introspective, and attitudes toward the opposite sex and gay people became more enlightened. 

Seattle punk rock also introduced a more relaxed dress code, which also came as a relief to many guitar players. To be a guitar hero in the ’80s you had to have chiseled cheekbones, washboard abs and look good in tight pants. 

You also had to know how to apply hair dye and eye makeup with the expertise of supermodel Cara Delevingne. It was exhausting. While it was hard enough to play like Whitesnake’s John Sykes, it was even more difficult to look like him!

In the ’90s, being a slob was no issue. You could wear jeans or baggy shorts, a thrift-shop T-shirt and a flannel shirt or hoodie and be done with it. That was a fantastic development if you had a gut and would rather pound a beer (or seven) rather than spend a week’s pay on a line of cocaine. And if you were balding and sorta ugly it didn’t matter that much… you could just grow a beard, get some tattoos and shave your head. That was awesome, too!

That development was particularly good news for Pantera and their incredible metal guitarist Dimebag Darrell. Pantera had struggled throughout much of the ’80s because, frankly, they looked ridiculous in the Spandex. But once fashion trends shifted, and they were able to become who they really were – a bunch of drunk, lovable dirtbags from Texas – the world became their öyster. 

Unplugged

Another interesting manifestation of the Great ’90s Reset was the enormous success of Unplugged, the MTV music series that showcased musicians performing acoustic versions of their songs. What could be more “authentic” than stripping your biggest songs down to their bare essentials than playing them on a Gibson Hummingbird with no amplification?

New-school bands who performed on the show like Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Hole, Stone Temple Pilots and Oasis took great pleasure in demonstrating that they didn’t need big-ass amps to bring drama and intensity to their songs. 

At the same time, the show allowed classic rockers like Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Kiss to reemerge, while showing “the kids” how big boys played “real” guitars. 

Superfuzz Big Muff

Guitar gear also went under some major transformations in the ’90s. During the ’80s, players took pride in performing with shiny, candy-colored, custom instruments tricked-out with things like locking tremolos, scooped fretboards, pointy headstocks and unusual pickup configurations. 

Whereas in the ’90s, even being seen with a guitar that had any of those qualities could get your grunge card revoked permanently (unless you could prove you were being ironic!).

Most new-school guitarists gravitated toward vintage models, like Foo Fighter Dave Grohl who could be seen playing a Pelham blue 1967 Gibson Trini Lopez guitar. But really, almost any guitar would do as long as it had some wear and tear and didn’t look like it cost an arm and a leg.

In a hilarious Guitar World interview conducted with Cobain by our ne’er-do-well Seattle correspondent Jeff Gilbert, the Nirvana iconoclast summed the general aesthetic and attitude of the era perfectly. 

After proclaiming his love for Fender Mustang guitars, he counterintuitively explained why. “They’re cheap and totally inefficient, and they sound like crap,” he said. “They are also 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 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.”

And that was why it was his favorite instrument!

Pedalboards also shrank in size and ambition. Just a few years earlier, elaborate Bob Bradshaw rigs that allowed you to control a bunch of rack-mounted effects were all the rage, but in the punk rock ’90s, a few pedals seemed to do the trick.

Even Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, a man known for his innovative use of effects, pulled most of what he needed out of a modest four or five pedals and a Marshall amp.

Speaking to Guitarist, Morello laughed off any assertion that he had a gargantuan pedalboard.

“I’ve been accused countless times of using a ton of effects – but I’ve used the same four pedals for the last 30 years: a wah, a [DigiTech] Whammy, a delay and a phaser. It’s just about finding different applications for the same old shit. The electric guitar is a relatively new instrument on the planet. It’s just a piece of wood with six strings and a few electronics. But you can manipulate it.”

He continued by explaining his unique hip-hop approach to his place in the band: “As soon as I had that revelation in Rage, it was like, ‘I’m the DJ in the band, but rather than sampling, I’m gonna use my bare hands to create this new vocabulary for the electric guitar.’ ” And he did exactly that.

But perhaps the most hilarious irony of the ’90s came when Korn released their debut album in 1994. Guitarists James “Munky” Shaffer and Brian “Head” Welch raised more than a few eyebrows when they each appeared on stage with the ultimate tricked-out ’80s guitar – a Steve Vai seven-string Ibanez Universe.

But instead of using it to shred, they took advantage of the low seventh string to produce some of the dirtiest, most bone-rattling power chords the world had ever known.

According to the duo, they stumbled upon the axes at a local California pawn shop. During the early days of the ’90s, no guitarist wanted to be caught dead with one, so the price of the instruments had fallen through the floor. 

Although the two guitarists were broke, the guitars were so cheap they decided it was worth buying a couple of them as an experiment. To their amazement, they discovered the gleaming seven-string guitars were actually incredible for creating the ugliest of sounds.

“I knew that somewhere, some kid was going to get the concept of the seven-string and do things with it that were beyond what I was doing,” Vai told Ultimate Guitar in 2020.

“Then, I’m driving down the street and this song comes on the radio and I’m like, ‘What the heck is that?’, and I pull the car over. It sounded so heavy, I instinctively knew it was a seven-string and somebody was doing something with it that was much different than what I was doing. And that band was Korn. That was sort of the rebirth of the JEM Universe.”

The myth of grunge guitar #2

Which brings us to perhaps the biggest myth about the ’90s. Grunge and alternative rock did many things, but one thing it didn’t do was kill shredding. A number of brilliant guitar technicians came of age during that era, including Dimebag, John Petrucci, Ben Weinman, Adam Jones, Buckethead and Jeff Loomis, to name just a few.

The real difference was in the ’80s, you had to be one of the attractive “popular kids” to play in a rock ’n’ roll band. The genuinely awesome thing about Seattle punk rock was it knocked down those walls and gave everyone permission to participate. 

You could be tall, short, fat, bald, hairy, pretty, ugly or even wear a bucket on your head, but as long as you had soul, wit and imagination, you could at least jump on stage without everyone laughing at you. Like a rock ’n’ roll sequel to the Revenge of the Nerds, everyone laughed, cried and learned.  And that, as the great philosopher Miley Cyrus once said, “was pretty cool.” 

A new four-part docuseries, Geddy Lee Asks: Are Bass Players Human Too?, is set to premiere on Paramount Plus on December 5th – and you can watch the first trailer below.

Highlights include snippets of Lee fishing with Les Claypool, flying a plane with Krist Novoselic, and surfing with Robert Trujillo. “The idea for this show was born out of interviews I did for my first book, The Big, Beautiful Book of Bass,” says Lee. “I was struck that these accomplished musicians also lived incredibly interesting, multifaceted lives offstage.”

The series follows Lee as he travels to the homes of four bass legends: Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic, Metallica’s Robert Trujillo, Primus’ Les Claypool, and former Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf der Maur.

“I’m trying to show the world that a bass player can do many things,” Lee says in the trailer. “Join me as I try to answer one really important question: are bass players human too?”

Another neat takeaway from the trailer that’s bound to get bass guitarists raving include Trujillo’s rendition of Portrait of Tracy on what appears to be Jaco’s Bass of Doom. Trujillo helped the Pastorius family to recover Jaco’s infamous 1962 Fender Jazz Bass back in 2010.

As well as glimpses of Lee trading bass licks with Auf der Maur, the trailer also pays tribute to Lee’s world-conquering curiosity, with the Rush frontman stripping his coveralls following a tour of Claypool’s “Rancho Relaxo” home in Sonoma County, before defiantly asking, “Is this what they call good TV?”

Aside from the new series, Geddy Lee is also gearing up for a book tour in support of his upcoming memoir, My Effin’ Life, which is set to arrive on November 14th. The tour starts in New York City on November 13th, and runs through to December 7th in Toronto. See below for a full list of dates.

• November 13 – New York, NY @ Beacon Theatre
• November 15 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Met Philadelphia
• November 17 – National Harbor, MD @ The Theater at MGM National Harbor
• November 18 – Boston, MA @ Orpheum Theatre presented by Citizens
• November 19 – Cleveland, OH @ State Theatre at Playhouse Square
• November 21 – Montréal, QC @ Théâtre Maisonneuve
• November 23 – Vancouver, BC @ The Centre in Vancouver
• November 24 – Seattle, WA @ Moore Theatre
• November 26 – San Francisco, CA @ The Masonic
• November 28 – Los Angeles, CA @ Orpheum Theatre
• November 30 – Denver, CO @ Paramount Theatre
• December 03 – Chicago, IL @ Auditorium Theatre
• December 04 – Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore Detroit
• December 07 – Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall

Geddy Lee Asks: Are Bass Players Human Too? premieres on Paramount+ on December 5th. My Effin’ Life is out 14th November via HarperCollins.

Just when we think we’ve seen the last of the Kurt Cobain mega auctions, something else comes along that blows our minds. Now Julien’s Auctions has announced that a made-in-Japan Fender Mustang electric guitar used by Kurt Cobain at his final public performance with Nirvana is going under the hammer.

Known as the The Sky Stang I, Cobain reportedly used the guitar extensively throughout his final tour dates with Nirvana, following the release of In Utero.

“Former Nirvana guitar technician Earnie Bailey refers to this Electric Blue Mustang as the Nirvana front man’s ‘workhorse,’” reads the Julien’s Auctions listing. 

“From its In Utero stage debut on October 18th, 1993 at the Arizona State Fair Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum, to the band’s final performance on March 1, 1994 at Terminal 1 in Munich, this storied guitar was used during 53 of the 63 In Utero tour performances and the band’s final chapter.”

The Sky Stang I was one of 10 left-handed Mustang models reportedly bought by the guitarist ahead of the tour, but clearly became one of his go-tos as the shows progressed.

It is distinguished by the combination of its Electric Blue finish, a unique yellow ‘V’ shape on the tortoiseshell-style pickguard and a white humbucker in the bridge position. There is also a sizeable crack on the rear of the instrument, running from the neck heel to about half way down the body.

Of course, provenance is everything in celebrity gear auctions and the Sky Stang I has that in spades.

There is official footage of Cobain playing the Sky Stang I at the Munich show for a tongue-in-cheek cover of The Cars’ My Best Friend's Girl. 

It was also used for nearly all of the band’s MTV Live and Loud show in December, 1993 and has previously been on display in Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture. 

And, if all that’s not good enough for you, it is currently owned by one Chad Cobain –the late frontman’s brother.

In Kurt Cobain’s final interview with Guitar World, back in 1993, the Nirvana man discussed his reasons for playing the Mustang.

"I don’t favor them – I can afford them,” Cobain joked to Guitar World, at the time. 

“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.”

At that point (February 1992), Cobain only owned two of them. The aforementioned order of 10 lefties came in July 1993.

The current estimate on the Sky Stang I is $1,000,000 – $2,000,000, but other notable Cobain instruments have far exceeded that. Cobain’s Smells Like Teen Spirit Fender Mustang fetched $4.5 million and his MTV Unplugged Martin D-18E went for over $6 million – placing it at the top of the pile when it comes to the most expensive guitars sold at auction.

This, along with Eric Clapton’s iconic Gibson SG ‘Fool’, which is also going up for auction, would seem to be prime candidates for Jim Irsay’s billion-dollar guitar collection. 

Regardless, let’s hope they both go somewhere we can see them… To register to bid, head to Julien’s Auctions.

On the surface, you wouldn't think Nirvana – with their anarchic live performances, and the crunchy distortion and blistering volume of their studio recordings – had much in common with the Beatles.

The Fab Four, however, were a major influence on Nirvana's frontman and electric guitar player, Kurt Cobain, from his childhood through his development of Nirvana's world-altering catalog.

“I remember years ago asking [Cobain's hometown friend] Eric Shillinger, ‘How successful do you think a band could be if they mixed really heavy Black Sabbath with the Beatles?,” Cobain once recalled to journalist Michael Azerrad. “What could you do with that?”

If only Cobain could've seen – decades later, and almost 20 years after his tragic death in 1994 – all three of his Nirvana bandmates create, and perform, an original song with Paul McCartney.

2012 was an especially unlikely time for McCartney to join forces with the grunge legends, fresh as he was off the back of that year's Kisses on the Bottom, a stately album that saw the Mount-Rushmore-of-pop songwriter tackle standards of the '30s, '40s, and '50s – a far cry from Territorial Pissings, for sure. 

And yet, 2012 was also the year that saw McCartney, Dave Grohl, Pat Smear, and Krist Novoselic create Cut Me Some Slack, a blues-grunge howler that featured McCartney riffing – and even, for the first time, showing his slide guitar skills – on one of the strangest guitars he's ever slung over his shoulder.

McCartney first played Cut Me Some Slack – a studio version of which would be released on the 2013 Grohl-led Sound City: Real to Reel album – live at the 12-12-12 Hurricane Sandy relief benefit concert at Madison Square Garden. 

His mini-set was loaded with Beatles, Wings, and solo classics, for which McCartney – among other instruments – used a couple Gibson Les Pauls, and, of course, his trademark Hofner bass guitar.

For Cut Me Some Slack, though, McCartney was armed with a “Resofiddle,“ a “paint can lid resonator“ cigar box guitar built by Matty Baratto, a luthier whose incredible clientele list includes – aside from McCartney – Prince, Josh Homme, Joe Perry, Jack White, Slash, Keith Richards, Zakk Wylde, and Johnny Depp, among many others.

According to Baratto, it was Depp who got the Resofiddle (and a Baratto wine box guitar amp, featuring a 6” Jensen speaker, to go with it) into the Beatle's hands. As soon as McCartney picked it up, it led his playing in entirely new, and fascinating, directions.

In an interview with Guitar World, Baratto recounted meeting McCartney, and the latter's wonder at the Resofiddle, and where it took him, artistically. 

“You know, I've never played slide before, but it just started doing things on its own,” the Beatle told Baratto. “I didn’t even have to try, the sound... it just did things.“

“As a guitar maker,” Baratto tells Guitar World, “you don’t really need much more of an endorsement.”

“I never, in a million years, would have thought that I’d [one day] be talking about Resofiddles one-on-one with one of the most influential musicians ever,” Baratto says. “But there I was, listening and feeling like I was watching from above in a dream state – just hoping to remember everything.”

Baratto – who, before starting his own company, cut his teeth at Ibanez's LA Custom Shop from 1994 through 1999 – outfitted his four-string (tuned D, A, D, F#) Resofiddle with a lipstick pickup and brass nut. 

Just days after the 12-12-12 concert, the Resofiddle (examples of which would eventually go on display at the Grammy Museum, after Cut Me Some Slack picked up the 2014 Grammy for Best Rock Song) made another prominent appearance during McCartney and Nirvana's performance of Cut Me Some Slack on Saturday Night Live. 

The considerably more intimate SNL stage allows for some killer, up-close looks at the cigar box four-string, particularly its beautifully retro body.

Baratto says that he told McCartney, “I always wanted to be on SNL.” To that, the Beatle smiled, playfully hit the luthier on the shoulder, and said, “You were all over it, man!” 

A Teisco Del Ray EV-2T electric guitar engraved by Kurt Cobain has sold at auction for $153,000.

The electric guitar was never actually owned by Cobain, but had an interesting provenance, given the Nirvana man reportedly played it and inscribed the word ‘sick’ on the body when he stayed with previous owner, Johnny Cooper.

The guitar came with a letter of provenance from Cooper and carried a minimum bid of $10,000. 

That figure was comfortably exceeded by the close of the sale, with a winning bid of $120,000 (which was then subject to a 25% sales premium and other fees, making for the final $153,000 price tag).

As we have previously reported, guitars associated with the Nirvana frontman repeatedly rank among the highest-value instruments in the world. 

A Martin D-18E played by Cobain during his iconic MTV Unplugged performance is currently the most expensive guitar sold at auction, having gone for $6 million. 

Meanwhile, the Fender Mustang used by Cobain the Smells Like Teen Spirit video occupies second place, with a price tag of $4.5 million.

It seems that some of that stardust has rubbed off on the Teisco. However, the same cannot be said for the Franciscan acoustic guitar that featured in the same sale and appears to have gone unsold. 

That instrument hailed from the 1996 Kurt Cobain estate sale and, while we hate to be that guy, GW’s initial observation that the auctioneer’s minimum price of $50,000 was optimistic appears to have rung true. 

Indeed, it proves that merely being a Cobain-associated acoustic is not enough to command the big bucks, if there’s no evidence of particular usage or interaction. Rather, if there’s one clear trend, it’s that personality counts when it comes to Cobain auctions. 

In comparison, the MTV Unplugged Martin has distinctive control knob mods, was used extensively in arguably the most iconic acoustic performance of the last 30 years – and has the advantage of being a vintage Martin build, to boot.

The Teisco certainly has character and a good story, too. In addition, as GW reader Teja pointed out to us following our previous story on the Teisco, Cobain’s ‘sick’ engraving also appears to have contained the frontman’s initials – note the small ‘C’ that appears to follow the K on the close-up.

On that point, some of the songwriter’s otherwise indistinct gear has also fetched huge prices thanks to his graffiti adornments. Not least, Cobain’s ‘Nirwahna’ Boss DS-1, which fetched $75,000 at auction last year.

2023 marks 30 years of Nirvana’s In Utero, and ever since it was released guitarists have obsessed over how to best replicate Kurt Cobain’s incendiary, unsanitary electric guitar tones. But the secret behind Cobain’s tone might finally have been revealed by a YouTuber with a serious In Utero obsession.

Aaron Rash has made a series of videos about Nirvana but in this latest video, in which he concludes that the secret behind Cobain’s In Utero tone is not just in finding a vintage Fender Quad Reverb – in itself quite a feat, for the company only made them for four years or so – but finding a Quad loaded with what he describes as one of the rarest speakers in the world.

Rash admits that it might be “a little weird” that every video he makes is about Nirvana or Kurt Cobain but he promises he is not obsessed. He is not going to grow his hair out, dye it blond and wear oval-framed Christian Roth sunglasses. It is In Utero that fascinates him. Savage, untamed, wild and electric and yet somehow organic, as though Cobain exhumed those tones from the dirt.

While it would seem as though we already have everything we need to understand Cobain’s In Utero tone, and thus everything required to replicate it, it’s always out of reach. It is remarkable we have got this far, with In Utero long since immortalized in the pop-cultural firmament, that the album still holds such mystery. It’s like the Zodiac Killer of guitar tones. Rash, for his part, is our Robert Graysmith.

We know, thanks to Cobain’s guitar tech, Ernie Bailey, in conversation with Reverb in 2014, that Cobain favored his Competition Blue Mustang, a Jaguar and producer Steve Albini’s aluminum Veleno for the sessions. 

Rash is aware of this, and even built a replica of the Veleno in search of the Holy Grail. We know there was a Quad Reverb. What Rash has discovered, however, from A/Bing different Quads, is that the speakers don’t just matter – the speaker is everything.

“Fender was on this speaker train way before anybody else was,” he says. “They understood. They knew that, ‘Hey, different speaker, different tone.’ You can use the same amp head and still get a lot of different tones with different speakers.”

Which is why just getting any old Quad Reverb won’t necessarily get you the exact same tone – even accounting for the usual caveats that tone is in the fingers, a consequence of how we as individuals touch the guitar, the pressure we exert on the strings, and so forth.

As Rash tells it, Bailey turned Cobain on to the Quad Reverb and they picked one up from a listing in Tacoma, Washington. Up to ’74, Quad Reverbs packed Oxford speakers, with blue stickers on the back. Rash says there was the one year where things changed for the Quad; Fender reverted to Utah speakers, with the orange stickers on the back. And this, 30 years on, is the secret sauce.

“That’s really the missing ingredient to the sound of In Utero, this Utah speaker,” says Rash. 

To prove just how critical these speakers are on the tone – not the tone stack, not the tubes, not the guitar amp per se – Rash runs the signal from his Randall combo out through the Utah speakers, and it is uncannily accurate.

“What is really crazy about this speaker, like, I thought it was the Filter Matrix [from the Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress], and it actually wasn’t,” says Rash. “It’s just these speakers. They have like a natural Filter Matrix sound built-in. They just sound like that.”

So there you have it. Forget the amp. After all, the schematics for the Quad Reverb and the Twin are the same. It’s the speakers. Maybe someone should make an IR of these Utah speakers. 

Oh, Rash is already on it, and through a Tech 21 SansAmp pedal and a home captured impulse response, it already sounds pretty good. His next step is to take the Quad to a studio, mic it like In Utero, and make “an exact digital copy” of the tone. Will it work?

Technically, yes. But as Bailey said to Reverb in 2014, in the grand scheme of things, the gear didn’t matter much to Nirvana.

“They were a rock band that used both good and bad equipment, but in the end, it was the songwriting that made them important,” he said.

You can follow Aaron Rash on YouTube, and check out his In Utero Quad Reverb speaker conclusions above.

GWS Auctions has announced that its forthcoming Artifacts of Hollywood and Music sale will feature a Teisco Del Ray EV-2T electric guitar that was played and signed by Kurt Cobain, as well as a Franciscan acoustic guitar from the Nirvana man’s collection.

Kurt Cobain gear auctions have become increasingly regular fixtures in recent years, and it’s not surprising given the premium prices fetched by guitars associated with the Nirvana frontman.

Having never been owned directly by Cobain, the Teisco has a more tenuous association with the songwriter than the likes of the Smells Like Teen Spirit Mustang, so we don’t think it will bring in the mega-bucks.

However, as mentioned previously, frankly, any instrument with a Cobain attachment commands a serious price tag and this one certainly has a few endearing features.

Firstly, Cobain altered it, carving the word ‘SICK’ on the guitar’s body and signing the rear. It’s not the same level of doodling found on Cobain’s characterful Boss DS-1, but the personalization element has gone down well in previous sales – including the world’s most expensive guitar pick – and offers a direct connection to the guitarist.

Secondly, there’s a nice tale of provenance from the original owner, Johnny Cooper.

“[I] did a lot of jamming with Kurt Cobain of the band Nirvana,” writes Cooper. “We spent a big part of the younger years on the road up and down the West Coast doing what we loved, playing music. This Teisco Del Ray EV-2T in Lake Placid blue was used and played and signed by Kurt Cobain.

“In 1985 while Kurt stayed at my apartment here in Olympia WA. Kurt took the guitar and carved the word 'SICK' at the bottom of it and then after that I had Kurt sign it on the back. There are some nicks on the guitar and one string missing.”

At that point, Cobain had formed a band called Fecal Matter, which at various points featured future Melvins members Dale Crover, Buzz Osborne and Mike Dillard. A demo of that band would later persuade Krist Novoselic to collaborate with Cobain in what become Nirvana.

Finally, it’s a novel design. A $50 catalog guitar that was produced in the late-’60s and inspired by the look of the Vox Phantom, the Teisco Del Ray EV-2T, like many of its peers, has been reappraised by players in recent years.

As such, it’s now increasingly sought-after, particularly by indie players seeking out the guitar industry’s 1960s freaks and geeks and, like many Teisco/Silvertone designs, the quirks in playability are compensated for by its chiming single-coil pickups.

The Teisco carries a minimum bid of $10,000.

Elsewhere in the same sale is a Kurt Cobain-owned Franciscan CS-19 acoustic guitar, complete with case that was purchased from the 1996 Cobain estate sale, which features a Dean Markley sticker on the lower body – the brand of strings Cobain was known to use.

That one is a Japanese-made model that did not go under Cobain’s carving knife, but does come with the original auction invoice.

The auctioneers seem more excited by the acoustic, giving it a minimum bid of $50,000 – no doubt with one eye on the $6 million price tag of Cobain’s MTV Unplugged Martin D-18E.

We’re not convinced that the fact it is an acoustic lot is enough to justify such an increased minimum bid – we’d be more tempted by the Teisco, frankly. However, if we’ve learned one thing from Cobain gear auctions, it’s that someone is always willing to pay more than you’d expect…

Bidding for the Kurt Cobain Teisco and Franciscan acoustic opens on August 26 at 10am PT, so we’ll have to wait to find out final sale prices.

We wonder if these, like the Mustang, will wind up in Jim Irsay’s billion dollar guitar collection.

For now, you can head over to GWS Auctions to see the Cobain guitar lots.

Nirvana and Aerosmith are two bands that would not necessarily be seen as natural bedfellows. Indeed, the grunge rockers are often positioned as the force that obliterated the ’80s rock and hair metal scene.

Now, in a recent interview with Classic Rock magazine (via Louder), Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry has discussed the time he met Cobain backstage after a show in Seattle in the early ’90s.

“He was pretty quiet. He just wanted to hang out,” recalls Perry. “He came in the dressing room with Courtney [Love] and kind of just sat around with us. He was a normal guy.

“When he went off to the bathroom, Courtney – who was very verbal – said: ‘He loves you guys. He doesn’t like anybody, but he loves you guys.‘ I had nothing but respect for the guy. He was an amazing songwriter and performer, and to hear that was great.”

Love’s reported comment tallies with what we know of the Nirvana man’s musical tastes. Cobain included the band’s 1976 album Rocks in his top 50 albums of all time – a list that was documented and reproduced in the Kurt Cobain Journals book. 

He also named an early Nirvana demo Aero Zeppelin, noting – again, in his journals  – that the song was not about the groups themselves, but was named in homage to “a couple of our favorite masturbatory ’70s rock acts”.

However, Cobain’s feelings towards both of those bands were more complex than Love – perhaps being a little diplomatic – appears to have let on in her conversation with Perry.

In 1993, in a candid interview with legendary UK music journalist Jon Savage, Cobain revealed he’d later grown annoyed with the classic rockers’ lyrical content.

“I listened to Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, and I really did enjoy some of the melodies they'd written,” Cobain told Savage. 

“It took me so many years to realize that a lot of it had to do with sexism. The way that they just wrote about their dicks and having sex. I was just starting to understand what really was pissing me off so much, those last couple of years of high school. 

“And then punk rock was exposed and then it all came together. It just fit together like a puzzle. It expressed the way I felt socially and politically. Just everything, you know? It was the anger that I felt. The alienation.”

So there it is – it may not always have been a straight case of hero worship, but Aerosmith (and ’Zeppelin) ultimately shaped the Nirvana sound in more ways than one.

Speaking of hero worship, Perry took on one of his own icon’s tracks when he performed Jeff Beck signature tune Beck’s Bolero in New York, recently.

A guitar pick that previously belonged to Kurt Cobain sold at auction last month for a final price of $14,678.

The sale concluded on June 10 and the price fetched by the orange Dunlop Tortex pick represents – as far as we can verify –  the highest ever paid for a guitar pick. So what makes it worth the money? 

Well, the pick has a few unique features. Firstly, it’s signed by Cobain using his joke ‘Kurdt Kobain’ misspelling (similar to the 'Kurdt' signature found on the Cobain-used Boss DS-1 that sold at auction last year). It’s also been heavily worn and, in the place of the original Tortex tortoise logo, features a recreated tortoise doodle drawn by Cobain.

More important, though, is the context within which the Nirvana man used it. The pick was acquired on Friday April 6, 1990. This marked the end of the week that Nirvana spent demoing Nevermind material at Butch Vig’s Smart Studios – including the version of Polly that would make the final album – and it very likely saw use on those sessions.

The auction was won by Shaun Ertischek – a longtime Nirvana fan who describes himself as “an eclectic collector” and “product of the 1990’s alternative and grunge rock scene.”

“I knew this piece was special when I saw it come up at auction,” Eritschek tells Guitar World. “Guitars and other equipment used by Kurt Cobain have gone for exorbitant prices. 

“I often try to get my hands on guitar picks during live concerts, but there is usually no way to authenticate them because they are so generic. How can anyone prove that a particular pick was used by a musician?

“This pick, however, was signed by Kurt on one side and he drew on the other side. His personality comes through in this little doodle.”

It’s not the first Cobain pick to come to auction. Another orange Tortex pick, used during Nirvana’s 1991 John Peel session, sold last year for $5,760. At the time, we remarked it was a huge amount for a pick. At three times the value, this latest sale comfortably eclipses that. 

However, in this case, the context, the personality and the provenance – with multiple experts authenticating the signature – all persuaded Ertischek to stay the course in the auction. So how did it feel to win? 

“It feels surreal to own this piece of music history,” responds Ertischek. “I haven’t seen anything like it before and it is truly one-of-a-kind. Kurt was obviously an incredible singer, songwriter and guitarist. It is beyond rare and special to have something played by his hand and subsequently signed.”

Ertischek says he hasn’t yet decided “if or how” it will be displayed, but for now there will be “occasional excursions to show off to friends that share my love and passion of rock music [and] I look forward to sharing its story with others.”

As Ertischek rightly asserts, Kurt Cobain is by some margin the most valuable celebrity name when it comes to record-breaking guitar gear auctions. 

The Nirvana icon’s Fender Mustang (as used in the iconic Smells Like Teen Spirit video) sold last year for $4.5 million, making it the world’s most expensive electric guitar. 

A few years prior, in 2020, Cobain’s Martin D-18e sold for $6 million, making it the most expensive guitar (and, by the same token, the most expensive acoustic guitar) ever sold. 

The aforementioned Boss DS-1 pedal used by Cobain in a John Peel BBC radio session went for $75,000 – making it very likely the most valuable guitar pedal ever sold at auction. Meanwhile, a Cobain-owned, stage-smashed Stratocaster fetched almost $600,000 earlier this year – likely, the most expensive smashed guitar ever sold. 

Now, it seems, the world’s priciest pick can also be attributed to Cobain’s legend. Just go easy on the pick slides, eh, Shaun?

A stage-smashed Fender Stratocaster played by Kurt Cobain has fetched almost $600,000 at auction, which could well make it the most valuable smashed guitar ever sold. 

We are, by now, used to seeing Kurt Cobain-associated guitars fetch a premium at auctions, but even regular observers and participants will have been shocked at the $595,000 price tag fetched by a broken Strat that once belong to the Nirvana frontman.

The 1990 Japanese Fender Stratocaster was signed by all three members of the band and features a notable inscription to the late Mark Lanegan, then frontman for The Screaming Trees. 

“Hell-o Mark!” reads the message. “Love, your pal, Kurdt Kobain [sic]/Washed up rockstar.”

The guitar was reportedly played onstage and met its end during the band’s 1992 Nevermind tour, before being gifted to Lanegan. As such, the instrument is missing half its headstock and a slice of the neck down to the third fret, where it splintered off during its onstage reckoning. 

Clearly, the context of the Strat’s use, the signatures and its previous owner(s) all seem to have contributed to the final price. 

The instrument carried an initial estimate of $60,000 - $80,000, but that always seemed a little low, particularly given two Kurt-smashed Strats sold for $150,000 in 2020 and, just last year, a stage-smashed 1973 Fender Mustang owned by Kurt Cobain sold at auction for $486,000. By our calculations, that Mustang now has the honor of being the second most expensive stage-smashed guitar sold at auction. 

Other contenders include Noel Gallagher’s 1960 Gibson ES-355 (famously smashed by his brother Liam Gallagher during the argument that led to Oasis splitting up in 2009), which sold for $403,000.

If you were to broaden the criteria to ‘stage damaged’, then you can mention Jimi Hendrix’s 1965 Stratocaster, which was the instrument he set fire to onstage in London in 1967. That one fetched around $497,557 at auction in 2008 – though the recent Cobain sale still comfortably exceeds that sum.

Regardless, there is certainly a premium associated with the Nirvana man’s gear. This is likely down to the ever-growing legend around the late Cobain, alongside (we suspect) demographic forces at play – as Gen X’ers hit the wealthiest stage of their lives. 

Indeed, the most expensive guitars sold at auction both belonged to the Nirvana frontman. Kurt Cobain’s Smells Like Teen Spirit Fender Mustang (as featured in the song’s promo clip) fetched over $4.5 million last year, while his Martin D-18E (aka the MTV Unplugged acoustic guitar) was sold in 2020 and still holds the top spot, raising over $6 million.

As a founding member of Nirvana, bassist Krist Novoselic helped create some of the most beloved and endearing guitar music of all time. While Kurt Cobain was the band’s primary songwriter and drummer Dave Grohl added huge drive and dynamics to the sound, Novoselic made the most of the melodic opportunities presented to him by virtue of being in a power trio, always a bassist’s dream.

However, he never hogged the limelight or indeed the full frequency range; his basslines were definitely an important part of each song’s melodic content and often an actual hook, but the songwriting remained the trio’s main focus rather than each members playing skills. Or as Krist once told BP, “I’ve approached bass playing as a bridge between the rhythm section and the guitar/vocal melody.”

Today, we’re looking back at the five basslines that made Krist Novoselic so essential to Nirvana. 

1. About A Girl (Bleach, 1989)

Novoselic delivers a warm, almost metallic bassline on this early classic, when Kurt Cobain was still referring to himself as ‘Kurdt Kobain’ and which was released at a time when people thought that Extreme and Warrant were like, totally cool dude. For 1989's Bleach, Novoselic deployed a variety of basses, including a Fender Jazz, an Ibanez Black Eagle and even a borrowed Hohner.

2. Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nevermind, 1991)

An anthem for a generation of slackers it may be, but Smells Like Teen Spirit is usually underestimated as a performed piece of music. It devolves during its verses to Novoselic’s simple four-note bassline. It’s the simplest pattern of eighths possible, and Novoselic performs it with total skill, playing microscopically behind the beat to lend it extra weight. The solidity of this classic bass guitar part is still gobsmacking to this day.

3. Lithium (Nevermind, 1991)

“I’m so happy,” lied Kurt Cobain over Novoselic’s snappy, almost cheeky bass part – one of those little licks that you tend to hum to yourself without ever really realising that it actually exists. His choice of notes is generally economical; you won't hear any extended runs despite Kurt dropping out before the song’s final verse, at which point Novoselic carries the entire arrangement.

4. On a Plain (Nevermind, 1991)

Perhaps more than any other song recorded by Nirvana, On a Plain sounds like big-hair arena rock, from it’s full-fat opening chords to the fists-aloft chorus. Novoselic's tone here is crunchy and warm, with sufficient top to give it definition, but a world away from the traditional, scooped metal bass sound that stood for everything that Nirvana were against. Keep an ear out for that nifty three-second bass solo after each chorus.

5. Serve The Servants (In Utero, 1993)

After the happy-clappy stadium sounds of Nevermind, Nirvana sought a darker place from which to operate, and found one with In Utero, one of the most lyrically miserable albums ever recorded. Sonically, it was a heavier, subtler experience than its predecessor, with Novoselic laying down a bass part that coupled perfectly with Cobain’s riffage on this opening cut.

Nirvana - The Bass Guitar Collection is available on amazon.

A Fender Stratocaster that was played onstage (and subsequently smashed) by late Nirvana frontman and electric guitar player Kurt Cobain is headed to the auction block.

Put up for sale as part of the latest Julien's Music Icons auction, the guitar is autographed by all three members of Nirvana and, notably, bears an inscription – written by Cobain – addressed to Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan. 

"Hell-o Mark!" the inscription reads. "Love, your pal, Kurdt Kobain [sic]/Washed up rockstar."

A Japanese-made model built around 1990, this particular Strat features a white pickguard, Gotoh tuners, and a Hot Rails pickup in the bridge position. Another inscription on the instrument's neck plate, "Boddah Lives," references Cobain's childhood imaginary friend.

Of course, the guitar is a little, well, banged-up. Its rosewood fingerboard is broken from the third fret to what would have been the fourth tuner. Three tension springs, however, are still attached to the tremolo block and three Gotoh tuners are still affixed to what remains of the headstock. The Strat's pickups and electronics, Julien's says, still work.

According to Julien's, Cobain gifted the guitar to Lanegan in the fall of 1992, during the North American leg of Nirvana's Nevermind tour. 

The guitar's value is estimated at $60,000 - $80,000, with a starting bid of $15,000. Given, however, that a 1973 Fender Mustang that Cobain smashed to smithereens in 1989 sold at auction for an incredible $486,400 last November (not to mention the fact that the two most expensive guitars ever sold at auction both belonged to Cobain) we wouldn't be surprised if its final sale price ends up being significantly higher. 

Accompanied by a signed letter of provenance from its previous owner, Tony Palmer, a stage-used white Ernie Ball guitar strap, and a black Fender hard case with the inscription "Abort Christ," the Strat is currently set to go under the hammer on May 19. 

For more info on the guitar, visit Julien's.

It’s impossible to deny the sea-change brought about by Nirvana’s Nevermind. Even if grunge lasted no longer than vocalist Kurt Cobain himself, who drew a line under his career in the most permanent way possible in April 1994. The album's enormous presence also drew attention to the melodic pick playing of bassist Krist Novoselic, which cried out to be mixed high in any given Nirvana song. "I was really fortunate that I got to work with Kurt: he was such a talented songwriter and he had a real ear for a hook, so as far as I was concerned playing bass with him was super-easy."

Cobain once described his songwriting as a combination of his favorite influences – the Beatles and Black Sabbath – and purportedly asked engineers to make him sound like John Lennon. All of which made Paul McCartney a pretty solid choice to front a Nirvana reunion at a charity concert at Madison Square Garden in December 2012.

Speaking from the stage before introducing Dave Grohl, Pat Smear and Krist Novoselic, McCartney said: “So recently, some guys asked me to go and jam with them. So I showed up ready to jam, and these guys kept saying they hadn't played together for years. The penny finally dropped and I finally understood that I was in the middle of a Nirvana reunion.”

The Nirvana bandmates performed Cut Me Some Slack – the original song they had recorded for Grohl’s Sound City documentary. So what was it like collaborating with a living legend? “Incredible,” said Novoselic. “Dave had sent me an email asking if I wanted to record with Paul McCartney in L.A., and I said, 'Dude, I’ll walk there from Washington if I have to.' So I flew down and we were standing around figuring out what to do, and I kept thinking, please don’t make me play bass guitar, please don’t make me play bass. That’s like being asked to do karate with Bruce Lee – you’re going to get your ass kicked. 'Yep, I’m going boxing. Who’s your sparring partner? Muhammad Ali. Good luck with that!'” 

“So of course he asked me to play bass. Paul had this slide guitar that he was playing, and Dave was playing drums, but it wasn’t working for us. Then I realized we were playing in D, so I did the old grunge trick and I drop-tuned my bass to D. I played some riffs, and boom! Paul got into it, Pat Smear was feeling it, and Dave laid down some serious grooves. Then Paul shot me a riff and I shot him a riff and everything started clicking perfectly. We had the old band back together, and we had this cool left-handed guitarist, who was actually Paul McCartney, and he was doing vocals. I had to pinch myself. We ended up winning a Grammy for that song, too.”

Cut Me Some Slack was an immediate hit with critics and won a Grammy award for Best Rock Song in 2014. “There was speculation that Nirvana was reuniting, with Paul taking over for Kurt, but it was just fun,” says Krist. “He said he liked my basslines. Paul McCartney said that! You can put that in a pull quote.”

It was a successful evening for guitar-based artists at the 65th Grammys ceremony this past Sunday (February 5), with the likes of Ozzy Osbourne, Bonnie Raitt, Edgar Winter, Wet Leg, Madison Cunningham and Molly Tuttle all scooping awards.

And though the event was dominated largely by pop artists – including Beyoncé, Harry Styles, Adele, Kendrick Lamar and Lizzo – a number of six-string-wielding artists also received Lifetime Achievement Awards.

They included Nirvana, Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson and Nile Rodgers, who were given the accolade alongside Bobby McFerrin, Ma Rainey, Slick Rick and The Supremes.

Those presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys are recognized for their “creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording” throughout their careers.

Krist Novoselic, who accepted Nirvana’s award alongside Dave Grohl and the band’s touring rhythm guitarist, Pat Smear, recalled Kurt Cobain's quip that “teenage angst has paid off well," adding that Nirvana’s fan base continues to grow with each generation.

“I do fan mail – old-fashioned fan mail – and I get letters from around the world, like, [from] Nirvana fans,” he said. “A lot of young people. There’s a new generation of Nirvana fans and I’m just very grateful for that.”

In his acceptance speech, Nile Rodgers said: “When I was informed by the Academy that I was to receive this honor, I didn’t see this shit coming at all. I sincerely appreciate the hundreds of folks who've helped me get to this moment, and I know I can’t thank them all, because it would be longer than all the sequels of Star Wars combined.”

“In 1974, I followed my calling which pulled me out of my college dorm room to capture this dream I had with my sister since we were little kids,” Nancy Wilson said in her acceptance speech. “The dream was to be The Beatles. We followed our muse through the decades, we blazed a few trails and broke a few glass ceilings along the way for both men and women.”

Further highlights from the 2023 Grammys included Ozzy Osbourne winning Best Rock Album and Best Metal Performance for his 2022 album Patient Number 9 and single Degradation Rules (with Tony Iommi), respectively, and indie rockers Wet Leg winning Best Alternative Music Performance and Best Alternative Music Album with Chaise Longue and their eponymous debut album, respectively.

We’ve heard about artificial intelligence creating code for virtual pedal plugins, but what if machines could do more than just create gear? What if, in some not-too-distant future, robots could actually play the gear they create?

It’s a hypothesis that’s currently being loosely tested by One Hacker Band on Instagram, who is assembling a burgeoning clan of ragtag robotics components to become a fully functioning, entirely human-less cover band.

Before you start worrying that an army of angry Terminator-style robots hell-bent on overthrowing the guitar charts is in the works, there are some caveats to this particular project. Namely, these “robots” aren’t AI robots at all – just wired and programmed servo parts, curated in order to play their respective instruments.

So far, One Hacker Band’s group comprises electric guitar, bass guitar and drums, with each custom, streamlined instrument relying on an assortment of animatronics, custom-made picking mechanisms and moveable drum stick holders to perform their respective parts.

As a musical creation, it’s something special indeed, but as a feat of engineering it’s truly eye-opening. It’s perhaps the most technologically oriented “band” of today – which is saying something in this age of digitally enhanced performance – but one that connects the worlds of futuristic technology with basic tools of rock ‘n’ roll.

If, however, the project does get out of hand and guitar-playing robots are unleashed into the wild, we can at least rest easy knowing they’ve got fantastic taste in music – because One Hacker Band has programmed them to play some of rock’s biggest and best hits.

These include Metallica’s Enter Sandman – which the three-piece tackles with impressive ease – as well as Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water, Aerosmith’s Walk this Way, Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust and Michael Jackson’s Beat It. Yes, the robot guitar does play the riff, and yes, it nails it.

One Hacker Band’s crew has also smashed Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, with the robot guitarist excelling at the grunge-y powerchord progressions.

The most glaring issue, though – other than it threatens to put human musicians out of work if they start getting too good – is that, as the old saying goes, ‘tone is in the hands’. In our minds, it’s hard for such creations to have any nuanced tone if… well, if they don’t actually have hands. 

Having said that, the point here doesn’t seem to be to painstakingly recreate a human instrumental touch, merely explore what’s possible when the worlds of robotics and music come together. And, regardless, the robot trio massively outperforms in our estimation of what they should sound like on paper. For that, we give kudos.

Covers aren’t the only thing this tech band is good at. Not only can the robotics be triggered to accompany One Hacker Band’s own guitar playing – via a wearable, ingeniously crafted control glove – the band can also play its own original material.

Using the Magenta Studio plugin in Ableton, which uses machine learning techniques for music generation, the intrepid engineer curated a range of artificially generated riffs and hooks, which the band had no issue performing.

We have to admit, the “band” is already at an impressive level, but according to One Hacker Band, it’s only going to get better. Currently, only three guitar strings are available for use, owing to the various mute mechanisms in place to stop the guitar from strumming out of control.

As such, a V2 guitar is on the way, which will give an expanded servo set access to 12 strings. Hopefully that means some robot guitar solos are on the way…

To see the robot band in action and to follow its development, head over to One Hacker Band’s Instagram page.

Nile Rodgers, Nirvana and Heart’s Nancy and Ann Wilson are all set to be honored with Lifetime Achievement Awards at the 2023 Grammys. 

The ceremony is scheduled for February 4 and is due to take place in person for the first time since 2020. The list includes a diverse array of artists, including The Supremes (meaning Diana Ross joins a rare list of two-time inductees), Slick Rick, blues icon Ma Rainey and Bobby McFerrin. 

Chic guitarist and serial hit-making producer Nile Rodgers already has multiple Grammy awards, alongside inductions to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame to his name, so his inclusion is arguably overdue. 

Elsewhere, Nirvana will be honored for their role in sparking a “seismic shift in global youth culture” in the early '90s and returning “rock 'n' roll integrity and passion to the top of the charts.”

Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson, meanwhile, are no poor relations – celebrated here for their mammoth rock anthems like Alone and These Dreams, both of which were Billboard number ones – though, shockingly, their galloping riff-fest Barracuda only got to number 14 upon its initial release. They also had a run of 10 top 10 albums in the ’80s, which remains the longest by a female-fronted band. 

All the honorees will join a list of previous Lifetime Achievement Award winners that includes some of guitar music’s most iconic names – among them Jimi Hendrix, The Allman Brothers, Chet Atkins, Cream, Buddy Guy, George Harrison, Lightnin' Hopkins and the Rolling Stones.

In addition to the performers, the Recording Academy also issue Trustee and Technical Awards to individuals and organisations of particular merit. In 2023, this will include photography Henry Diltz, who shot Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and The Eagles, as well as landing the plum job of official photographer for the 1969 Woodstock Festival. 

Stax Records founder Jim Stewart is also honored for his role in bringing us Booker T. And The MGs, Albert King and many more, while Dr. Andy Hildebrand is celebrated for developing Antares’ groundbreaking auto-tune technology.

“The Academy is proud to celebrate this diverse slate of influential music people spanning numerous genres and crafts as our 2023 Special Merit Awards honorees,” says Harvey Mason Jr., the Recording Academy CEO. 

“Each creator on this list has made an impact on our industry – from technical to creative achievements – representing the breadth of music’s diverse community. We’re excited to celebrate this group of legends next month that continues to inspire and shape the music world.”

The full Grammys ceremony takes place on February 4, 2023, at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles. Head to the official Grammys site for more information.

Despite taking home two awards for New Artist and Alternative Video for Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana’s night at the 1992 MTV Awards was largely one to forget for bassist Krist Novoselic.

Having already found himself in the middle of a fracas with Guns ‘N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan, the Nirvana bassist went on to accidentally knock himself out with his bass. Lauded as the worst bass guitar throw in rock history, the resulting head wound eventually led to a shared glass of champagne with Queen’s Brian May.

“Oh, that was mega!” says Krist Novoselic. “We started playing this song and my amp just didn’t work. So I thought, ‘I’m gonna do this bass toss and walk off’. Well, the bass got caught in the TV lights, and then boom! It fell on my head. So I storm off stage, and these paramedics come and take a look at me and put a bandage on and I had to sign all these release forms so I’m not gonna sue anybody. It was in front of 200 million people, right?" 

Having been signed off by the onsite paramedics, Novoselic was surprised to receive some additional treatment from Queen guitarist Brian May.

"So I’m all annoyed, right, and I’m like ‘What the hell!’ and behind them there is this amazing fellow, with a glass of champagne. It’s Brian May! Just standing there politely. He says ‘Here you are, my good man’ and he hands me this glass of champagne.

"I was like ‘You’re Brian May! How are you?’ and he said, ‘More importantly, how are you?’ Moments later Dave Grohl burst in. He'd been looking all over for me, only to find me enjoying a calm glass of bubbly with Mr. May."

Anyone familiar with Nirvana’s albums, or even solely with Nevermind – their biggest seller – will know that Novoselic made a point of laying down simple, effective bass parts with a tone to die for.

“I’ve learned that countless people have learned to play bass from listening to those records," he says. "They’re simple, melodic basslines, which is what you need when you’re starting out.”

30 years later, it’s impossible to deny the sea-change brought about by Nirvana. Even if grunge lasted no longer than Cobain himself, who drew a line under his career in the most permanent way possible in April 1994. These songs are his lasting legacy.

“I was really fortunate that I got to work with Kurt: he was such a talented songwriter and he had a real ear for a hook, so as far as I was concerned playing bass with him was super-easy.”

The army’s Eleventh Airborne Division has shared a clip of one of its officers performing Smells Like Teen Spirit on guitar, with soliders from the Indian army on bass and drums.

The footage captured a moment of R’n’R for the commander of the Denali squadron and soldiers from India’s ASSAM regiment, who performed the track at a reported 9000-foot elevation in the Himalayas.

Though admittedly, the footage and audio quality is a little brief and shaky, you can hear the outline of the Nirvana riff weave in and out, as far as the breeze allows.

The two forces had been working together as part of the 18th Yudh Abhyas, an annual event in which the US and India collaborate in a series of military exercises aimed at improving cooperation and strengthening the US and India defense partnership.

The Denali squadron are reported to be the first US forces to have deployed to the Himalayas. While they deserve congratulating on that accomplishment, Guitar World would like to offer a particularly firm slap on the back to whoever thought to take their electric guitar and amp up there with them…

Smells Like Teen Spirit contains one of the greatest rock riffs ever written, so it’s not surprising that it’s a long-established go-to cover option. Everyone from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Tommy Emmanuel and Ty Dolla $ign have taken on the Nirvana classic.

It’s even been done by the 1000-strong rotating band of volunteers that is the Rockin 1000. So, er, we’d like to see that kind of military resource thrown at the next effort, please…

For those of you not familiar with Aaron Rash, he’s a producer and musician who runs a channel on YouTube that is largely dedicated to Nirvana’s guitar tone. 

In his latest video, Rash explains that there had been a sound that had long eluded his tonal investigations, something he heard on Kurt Cobain’s home demos but was unable to replicate using the usual distortion pedals associated with the Nirvana icon.

A resourceful, hands-on type, Rash took to his soldering iron in an effort to build a box that captured the sound. The result is a pedal he calls The Engine, because “to me it sounds like an engine, revving to the max, about to explode into a million pieces… it’s a really weird sound.”

Rash admits the design and the sound are both unorthodox, but that’s largely the point. 

“If some smart, super-awesome designer guy came in here and saw this pedal, he would slap me in the face,” explains the guitarist. “Everything from a technical standpoint is wrong. I biased it wrong. I wired things up really strange. It’s all super old stuff, wired point-to-point, ‘70s-style.”

The controls are limited to Volume and Roar, and when cranked up it has an appealingly growly, serrated tone, but back it off and the effect comes very close to the static-y asymmetrical clipping sound of Cobain’s gnarly Heart-Shaped Box tone – captured using a Fender Quad Reverb guitar amp with only a single power tube.

In the clip, Rash explains that he believes he recently found the source of his pedal mystery – pointing to Univox Super Fuzz from the ‘70s that Cobain once owned. However, the prohibitive price point ($1,000) will put many fans off that particular purchase.

Instead, Rash says he’s now considering producing The Engine for sale and perhaps even tweaking it to better incorporate the Ring Modulation-like tone of the Quad Reverb rig, too. 

Nirvana tone hounds will also be interested in another pedal that Rash teases at the close of the clip – a Red-X Ring Modulator built and hardwired by Mr. Bill. It is a direct clone of the one used by Cobain on Nirvana's In Utero.  

Rash claims (and Mr. Bill’s markings on the pedal innards would seem to confirm) that this makes it the “second one that exists in the world… the first one belongs to Steve Albini.”

In other Nirvana-based distortion news, Kurt Cobain’s Boss DS-1 pedal recently sold at auction for $75,000, which makes that Univox Super Fuzz price tag seem almost reasonable…

Earlier this week, we learned that Cobain’s stage-smashed Mustang fetched nearly $500,000 at a November 13 auction. Now it has emerged that in the same sale a battered Boss DS-1 stompbox belonging to the Nirvana frontman fetched an eye-watering sum of $75,000.

The remarkable figure is higher than that of Jimi Hendrix’s Roger Mayer-built Octavia, which was used on his iconic Band of Gypsys album and sold for $70,400 in December 2020. Cobain’s stompbox could well have set a new record for a guitar pedal sold at auction.

The 1980s distortion pedal, one of history’s best-selling effects units, was clearly heavily used by the guitarist, but we suspect the price may largely be down to the characterful decoration.

On the bottom of the pedal is a sticker reading, “It's only right and natural/ The Frogs”, while Cobain scrawled marker pen on the surfaces: the side reads “Kurdt was here”, while the top panel foot pedal is inscribed with the word “Nirwahna”.

This adds great value, as does the fact that it comes with a letter of authenticity confirming its use in a session for legendary BBC DJ John Peel on September 3, 1991 – approximately three weeks before Nevermind landed and changed the band’s fortunes forever.

Elsewhere in the same auction, an orange Dunlop Tortex pick belonging to Cobain and used in the same Peel session fetched a huge $5,760.

Another of Cobain’s DS-1 pedals sold for $9,000 just two years ago. This recent sale marks yet another major rise in the value of the Nirvana leader’s gear, which for all its workaday charm, seems to obtain record-breaking prices at auction – and with increasing regularity.

In May, Cobain’s Smells Like Teen Spirit Mustang fetched $4.5 million, while the Martin D-18E used in Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance was sold for $6,010,00 in 2020 – making it the world’s most expensive guitar.

Kurt Cobain’s 1973 Fender Mustang – which was smashed onstage in 1989 by the Nirvana frontman – has sold at auction for $486,400.

It’s a staggering sum for a guitar that was destroyed effectively beyond repair when a young Nirvana took to the stage on July 9 at the Sonic Temple in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. Still, the six-figure price tag can be offset by the guitar’s history and the role it played in developing Cobain’s guitar-smashing showmanship.

Played only twice, Cobain wielded the sunburst offset amidst Nirvana’s first-ever US tour, which was conducted in support of the band’s ‘89 debut album, Bleach. It was one of the first signs of Cobain’s guitar-smashing tendencies, and a time when such activities were championed by the grunge legend.

Indeed, Cobain’s wrecked guitars are quickly becoming the stuff of legend – you need to look no further than his two smashed Fender Stratocaster and destroyed Univox for confirmation.

The Mustang in question met its maker when Nirvana made their way through a set-closing rendition of Blew, which saw Cobain batter the sunburst beauty beyond repair.

Four days later, Cobain smashed another guitar – that previously mentioned Univox, which sold at auction in 2016 – thus leaving him without an electric guitar for Nirvana’s forthcoming tour dates.

As such, Cobain famously completed the band’s nine-song set in Boston on July 15 without a guitar, leaving short-lived second guitarist Jason Everman to pick up the slack and deliver both guitar parts as best he could.

In attendance at that gig was Sluggo Cawley – member of a band called Hullabaloo – with whom Cobain stayed after the show. While in Cawley’s apartment, Cobain spied a smashed Gibson SG hung on one of the walls.

The two then brokered a deal that saw Cawley receive the wrecked Mustang and Cobain obtain the slightly less-smashed and easily repairable SG, which the Nirvana frontman went on to play at future gigs.

As a sign of his gratitude, Cobain also signed the Mustang, which has since carried the message, “Yo Sluggo, Thank for the trade, If its illegal to Rock and Roll, then throw my ass in jail, Nirvana.”

Just as we had anticipated when news of the auction first broke, the ‘73 Mustang didn’t make it onto the list of the most expensive guitars sold at auction, but it’s fair to say it exceeded most expectations by reaching almost half a million dollars.

Again, why the guitar carries such value is understandable: not only was it a right-handed guitar played upside down by Cobain, it comes from an era where Nirvana were starting to make an impact and when Cobain’s guitar-smashing antics took off.

One of Cobain’s instruments also tops the list of most expensive guitars sold at auction, which is currently headed up by his $6m MTV Unplugged Martin D-18E.

For more info, head over to Julien’s Auctions.

Cobain's Mustang was just one of a number of instruments sold by Julien's over the weekend, and was joined by guitars signed by Dave Grohl, Nile Rodgers, Brian Johnson, John Paul Jones, Krist Novoselic and more, which were auctioned in honor of Taylor Hawkins.

A 1973 Fender Mustang that was once owned, played and smashed onstage by Kurt Cobain in the late 1980s has hit the auction block at Julien’s Auctions.

The guitar itself was used by Cobain during Nirvana’s first-ever US tour, which took place following the release of their debut album, Bleach, in 1989. Throughout the tour, Cobain made guitar smashing a regular occurrence, with many of his now-infamous smashed guitars – such two played-and-smashed Fender Stratocasters – having already made their way to auction.

The ‘73 Mustang is an especially notable six-string, though. Played on two occasions – at the Club Dreamerz in Chicago, Illinois on July 8, and the Sonic Temple in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania on July 9, 1989 – the guitar was later exchanged for a Gibson SG when Cobain needed an instrument, after his guitar-smashing antics had left him without a guitar to play. 

As per Julien’s Auctions, Nirvana brought the July 9 show to a close with a raucous performance of Blew, which saw Cobain batter his Mustang beyond repair. Four days later, in Hoboken, New Jersey, Cobain smashed another guitar – a Univox, which was sold by Julien’s Auctions in 2016.

That meant for Nirvana’s show on July 15, Cobain was without a guitar, and had to perform the whole nine-song set in Boston without one. Jason Everman was left to play both his and the frontman’s parts.

After the show, Cobain stayed at the apartment of Sluggo Cawley, who at the time played in a band called Hullabaloo. Hung on one of walls was a smashed Gibson SG, which caught Cobain’s eye.

Cobain offered Cawley a trade: his unsalvageable Mustang for Cawley’s slightly less-battered SG. In Cobain’s mind, the Gibson would be easier to fix, and so could potentially be used for a future gig.

Recalling the story in 2020, Cawley wrote (via Innocent Words), “Kurt asked me if he could have the smashed Gibson SG I had hanging on my wall. I asked him, 'Why?' and he replied that it didn’t look broken too bad, and he could fix it up and smash it later. 

“So I said, ‘Sure, but now I won’t have one for my wall.’ Kurt replied, ‘I’ll be right back.’ He went out to their van and presented me a 1973 Fender Mustang that he deemed beyond repair.”

Cobain also signed the Mustang, which carries the inscription, “Yo Sluggo, Thank for the trade, If its illegal to Rock and Roll, then throw my ass in jail, Nirvana.”

At the time of writing, two of Kurt Cobain’s guitars – his Smells Like Teen Spirit Mustang and MTV Unplugged Martin D-18E – currently occupy the top two spots in the list of the most expensive guitars ever sold at auction.

While we don’t imagine it will fetch anywhere near the seven-figure sums those six-strings did – you know, on the account of it being totally unplayable – the guitar’s history will no doubt lend itself to a fairly hefty price tag.

Not only is it a right-handed Mustang that Cobain played upside down, it also heralds from Nirvana’s early days, during a time when the band were perfecting their craft and when Cobain’s guitar-smashing antics took off.

As such, Julien’s Auctions expects it to sell for somewhere between $200,000 and $400,000.

For more information, head over to Julien's Auctions.