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.