As is well-known, towards the end of his life, as his heroin addiction and the trappings of being the voice of a generation took their toll, Kurt Cobain was not himself. This is something that his longtime friends, the members of Melvins, found out first-hand.
The story is a well-known one. It was the Melvins who provided Nirvana with the final piece of the puzzle in the form of drummer Dave Grohl after striking up a connection with him when touring with his old band, Scream. Grohl would give the band the elemental rhythm section they had always required, and Nirvana’s first album with the drummer, 1991’s Nevermind, would go on to be lauded as their masterpiece and the most essential album of the decade.
The release of the album’s hit single ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ firmly put Nirvana on the map. They became the biggest group of the era overnight, with Cobain and bandmates Grohl and Krist Novoselic thrust into the spotlight, something they were deeply uncomfortable with. During the following period, which would see them produce their 1993 third and final studio album, In Utero, Cobain would become increasingly withdrawn as his heroin addiction and mental health struggles exacerbated each other.
Melvins enlisted Cobain to produce their album, Houdini, after an A&R rep at Atlantic Records, who also ran Cobain’s management company, suggested the collaboration. However, it turned out to be a disaster. Deeply ensconced in his relationship with heroin at the time, Melvins have claimed on numerous occasions that they fired the Nirvana leader due to being completely unable to produce the record. Despite this, though, he is given co-production credits on six tracks, for guitar on ‘Sky Pup’ and percussion on ‘Spread Eagle Beagle’.
When speaking to Loudwire in 2022, Melvins leader Buzz Osborne was asked if his band fired Cobain for being “so out of control”. He responded: “100% true. It’s been said by higher-ups, certainly at Atlantic, and people who knew Cobain that they wouldn’t have allowed that to happen; that’s bullshit, you know. Nobody there was telling me anything; that’s total bullshit. I did whatever I wanted, and if they want to pretend like they had some say in what we were or weren’t gonna do, that’s just fiction. That’s fiction, total fiction. We fired him because he was too screwed up to finish working on the record. That is the truth.”
Looking back on what the heads of the label tried to claim in the media, he continued: “They said that, ‘Well no, he left, he couldn’t do it anymore.’ They came up with all this bullshit about how we wanted him to help us write something. It’s like, ‘What are you talking about? I’m a songwriting machine,’ like it’s somehow our fault he felt pressured. It’s like, ‘Fuck you, whatever. You wanna blame me because your guy is doing dope? Okay, fine, I did it. You’re right. I was the one that was putting pressure on him, not the drugs.’ Whatever.”
