Nirvana is almost universally held up as one of the greatest bands in rock history. Much of that esteem can be attributed to their lead singer, songwriter-in-chief and sole guitarist, Kurt Cobain.
That the band was able to make as much noise as they did, channelling punk rock at its best as they defined the sound of grunge with just one solitary guitar player, is a testament to Cobain’s ability with the instrument.
But it also demonstrates how much attention he paid to the guitar sound they were aiming for and to writing songs that could work for a three-piece punk outfit with only a bass providing harmonic support for a solo guitar, which often combined lead and rhythm parts.
Cobain learned to play the guitar after receiving one as a second-hand gift from his uncle for his 14th birthday, and within eight years, he’d mastered the instrument to the extent that his playing was a key feature of the new musical genre coming out of Seattle in 1989. Here, we delve deep into the making of an alternative rock icon…So, how did Cobain’s guitar influence Nirvana’s sound?
While Nirvana is commonly referred to as the definitive grunge band, Cobain detested the term. He had grown up on a healthy dose of hardcore punk and had complete disdain for the hair metal bands of the late 1980s with their glossy, radio-friendly guitar sound.
And so, for him, Nirvana’s debut album Bleach was more about delivering a punk rock ethic than it was about the ear for melody he was already displaying. The song ‘About a Girl’ aside, the album bleeds distortion at every turn, its sound covered in white noise and grit. Cobain’s guitar gnaws away incessantly at the verses of most songs, plunging occasionally into a chunky power chord whenever a chorus line appears as if by accident.
This sound was achieved by putting various customised Univox Hi-Flier guitars “through 2×10 Soundtech cabs with a Randall head,” according to former Nirvana drummer Chad Channing. He also distorted the sound with DS-1 and DS-2 Boss pedals.
The Univox Hi-Flier was a relatively cheap guitar to buy second-hand and was easier to get hold of than others for left-handed players like Cobain. Which made it a good choice of guitar to smash up on stage as well.
“He broke a lot of those guitars,” says Rick King, who owned the Tacoma-based guitar shop Cobain frequented. “We sold him several of them for an average of $100 each over the course of five years.”
The role of the guitar in Nirvana’s songwriting
Particularly as Nirvana’s music progressed, though, it became as much about the melody and song structure as the sound. Kurt Cobain increasingly crafted his songwriting around melodic instrumental hooks which worked despite there only being two tonal instruments in the band – one of them a bass.
It was sometimes left to Krist Novoselic, a hugely underrated bassist with an approach to counter-melody not unlike Paul McCartney’s, to play a song’s main hook. We hear this in Bleach’s ‘Love Buzz’ and in the intro to ‘Lounge Act’ on its follow-up Nevermind.
In these cases, Cobain’s guitar would add meat to the bones with thick, fuzzy rhythm parts. In other circumstances, most famously on ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’ and ‘Rape Me’, the guitar provides both the riff and the melodic rhythm part at the same time. With that, many Nirvana songs incorporate both rhythm-only sections of guitar and lead-rhythm combination parts into their structure, ‘Come as You Are’ being a great example. This method of structuring compositions was key to the quiet-loud variations in Nirvana songs that Cobain suggested he’d borrowed from Pixies.
However, both Nevermind and In Utero include quiet songs, too. ‘Polly’, ‘Something in the Way’ and ‘Dumb’, in particular, were all written and recorded on acoustic guitars. For the first two of these songs, Cobain uses a 12-string Stella acoustic, inspired by the blues player Lead Belly, who was one of his music heroes. While recording Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged special, before playing a rendition of Lead Belly’s song ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night’, Cobain claimed: “This guy… wants to sell me Lead Belly’s guitar for $500,000.”
This story was actually true. What’s more, Cobain had agreed in principle to buy the guitar, Lead Belly’s custom Stella Auditorium with five nylon strings. Had it not been for his suicide in 1994, he would likely have met a relative of Lead Belly in Nashville, where Nirvana were due to tour later that year, and completed the deal in person.
The song ‘Dumb’ may have been written and/or recorded on the 1953 Martin D-18 ‘Grandpa’ acoustic guitar lent to Kurt Cobain by his then-girlfriend Mary Lou Lord in 1991. This very guitar later ended up in the hands of singer-songwriter Elliott Smith after Lord toured with the artist.
Cobain would use a semi-acoustic version of this same guitar model, the Martin D-18E, for the MTV Unplugged set.
What was Cobain’s go-to guitar?
The guitar for which Kurt Cobain is best known is the one he used for most of Nirvana’s Nevermind recordings and the one he deemed his favourite.
It’s the Fender Mustang, which is one of several Fender models Cobain collected. Fellow grunge guitarist Kim Thayil of Soundgarden confirms that Nirvana were “really into” these models because of the “single coil pickups”.
Alongside the Mustang, Cobain also enjoyed using Japanese versions of Fender Stratocasters because they were widely available (and therefore readily smashable) and had smaller frets than other versions. The frontman liked to have Japanese Fender Stratocasters to destroy at shows. Cobain preferred Japanese Stratocasters because of their availability and smaller frets. They had two all-white Strats with three white single-coil pickups.
Thayil calls Cobain’s preference for these models “punk rock and probably seriously doing your craft on a budget”. These guitars were relatively inexpensive grunge guitarists could get a dirty, less “radio-friendly” sound out of them.
What is Fender’s “Kurt Cobain” Jaguar guitar?
The Fender Jaguar is the guitar model Kurt Cobain used for most of the recording of In Utero, Nirvana’s third and final album. The guitar features on some Nevermind songs as well.
To celebrate the model’s association with him, Fender brought out a special version called the Kurt Cobain Jaguar. It features the 3-Tone Sunburst finish of his original guitar and his own doodle of the Fender logo from his notebooks.
The Nirvana guitar Kurt Cobain got from Courtney Love
Cobain’s wife Courtney Love gave him a Fender Telecaster guitar at the end of 1991. He sprayed the guitar body with blue latex paint and carved Love’s first name and a heart symbol into the body.
It seems he was particularly taken with the guitar in the two months after receiving it, as it was his guitar of choice while touring in January and February 1992 – Cobain is also playing it in the video for ‘Come as You Are’.
Which guitar did Love gift to Chad Cobain?
Kurt Cobain’s younger brother Chad was just 14 years old when the Nirvana frontman committed suicide. His abiding memory of his older sibling was at a gig in Seattle during Nirvana’s last tour, playing a Fender Skystang guitar.
By chance, it was this same guitar that Courtney Love handed over to Chad as a gift a few months after Kurt’s death. Last year, the guitar sold for over $2million at auction.
To finish, we’re sharing with you a selection of our favourite Kurt Cobain guitar riffs.
This shortlist for his best hooks as a guitarist doesn’t only feature signature staples such as ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’, ‘Come as You Are’ and ‘Heart-Shaped Box’. There’s room for the anguished shredding of ‘Scentless Apprentice’ and the flippant arpeggio of ‘Love Buzz’ too.
And the relentlessly driving ‘Mr Moustache’, the raw garage sound of ‘Aneurysm’ and the throwback piece from In Utero ‘Very Ape’. Not forgetting the lick that introduces the album in almost proto-Oasis fashion on ‘Serve the Servants’ and the softer but even more iconic final number ‘All Apologies’.
‘Love Buzz’
‘Mr Moustache’
Aneurysm’
‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’
‘Come As You Are’
‘Heart-Shaped Box’
‘All Apologies’
‘Serve the Servants’
‘Scentless Apprentice’
‘Very Ape’
