Love and War: The Battle Behind the Lost Nirvana Recordings

On Sunday January 30, 1994. Kurt Cobain walked into Robert Lang Studios in north Seattle for what would be his last recording session. During the next five hours, Nirvana cut a handful of their songs, most of them rough demos. At the end of the day Kurt, pleased with the results, scheduled a return visit when Nirvana’s European tour ended. That session never took place: some nine weeks after the January 30 session, Cobain was dead and Nirvana was history.

            For the past seven years, those tracks, and scores of other, have remained tucked away in the vaults and shrouded in mystery. In that time, one official live album has come out (From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah), but no new studio material has been released and nothing from the January Robert Lang session has surfaced publicly. Jimi Hendrix died at the same age as Kurt Cobain and with roughly the same size catalog; yet, in the seven years since Kurt’s death almost one dozen Hendrix repackagings, box sets or remastered albums have been released. The absence of a Nirvana box set, or even greatest-hits album, is an anomaly in an industry that thrives on reheated leftovers.

            Much of the problem is due to the fact that Kurt’s life –and the business of Nirvana- was a mess prior to his suicide. At the time of his death, no legal agreement existed that specified how Nirvana would be run as a business.. Furthermore, Cobain died without leaving a valid will, thereby giving control of 96 percent of Nirvana’s publishing to his widow, Courtney love. In 1997 Novoselic, Grohl and Love signed a partnership contract which requires that all three vote unanimously one decision such as the release of Nirvana songs. But Love recently filed a suit against Novoselic and Grohl to break up the partnership of Nirvana and gain control of the band’s business affairs. She argues that since the 1997 contract grants veto power to each of the three members parties, it has essentially “deadlocked…decision making”. In court papers filed in Seattle in May, 2001, Love claims that Nirvana’s catalog has languished due to the dearth of new releases and that the band’s reputation has been damaged as a result. Her lawyers argue that since she owns most of the publishing rights (and thus wield ultimate veto power over any new release), decision making should be consolidated under her control.

Ironically, this is not a legal case about money, or so Love argues in the opening paragraph of her petition with the court. She doesn’t seek to change the percentages the various parties collect from Nirvana sales, and her attorneys have argued that once the case is settled, all sides will benefit financially from future Nirvana releases.

While the issue of who controls Nirvana is still being decided by a court, the parties are working on an out of court agreement that will see the release in the meantime of the often-talked about Nirvana box set. Universal has planned the set for the late fall, and most observers predict that it should still arrive by then. Among the tracks planned for the box set is “You know you’re right”, one of the tracks Nirvana cut during the January 1994 session at Robert Lang Studios and the band last complete recording.

Aside from the songs recorded at the January 1994 session, fewer then a dozen Cobain tunes exist that have not been issued in any form, and only a handful of them are more than demos. Most likely a multi-CD box set would have to include some of the band’s many alternative takes and live oddities since there isn’t a wealth of unreleased studio material.

All of which makes “You Know You’re Right” that much enticing. Similar in structure to “Heart-Shaped Box”, with quiet verses and a loud chorus, the song was performed only once in concert, in October 1993, and apparently forgotten until that January session. Adam Kasper, who produced the track, describes it as a “pretty cool tune”, while Krist Novoselic goes so far as to call it a “great song”. Even Dave Grohl, who rarely talks about Nirvana to the press, told the BBC it was a gem and should be on any new release.

On that matter, even Courtney Love is in agreement with Novoselic and Grohl. Her petition calls “You Know You’re Right” “an unpublished potential hit of extraordinary artistic and commercial value”. The fact that the two sides agree upon anything is at least one small ray of hope in a seven years war.