(Credit: YouTube / NBC)
Thu 8 January 2026 13:08, UK
In the rough autumn of 2025, Chris Murphy of Sloan made the remark that the recent rise of Geese reminded him of Nirvana’s explosion. Given that his own band gleefully clung to the grunge icon’s coattails until they were considered peers, you have to give his critique of Geese’s ascending flight some credence.
So, with the announcement that Geese are about to play Saturday Night Live, we thought we’d look back at the pivotal moment when Nirvana did just that. Why was it pivotal? Well, while Kurt Cobain and his cronies might be considered pretty close to the definition of ‘alternative’, they adroitly wove their way into the mainstream and that proved monumental.
Your gran and your milkman all knew about the groaning, grovelling band in the 1990s. They might not have enjoyed them as much as the teenagers who pored over their every word – they might have hated them, in fact – but they were confronted with them, nevertheless. Like The Beatles before them, Nirvana moved their decidedly experimental, countercultural art into the realm of the masses. It is vital that the advancing avant-garde of any movement does that.
That’s why a Saturday Night Live debut is a marked occasion for any band. And Nirvana would make sure theirs was extra special with a rendition of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and a sneaky kiss that would send the producers wild. They grasped a moment, did something legendary, and advanced a movement, welcoming the likes of Sloan in their wake.
At the time of recording on January 11th, 1992, Nirvana started to sneak up the charts at an alarming rate. Taking on the big boys was one thing, but considering their heavily underground Seattle rock beginnings, Nirvana were a brand new entity.
A triumphant performance. (Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Clipping the wings of Michael Jackson’s recent release, Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was finding its feet as the definitive anthem for Generation X. Inviting the grunge act on to SNL was a no-brainer for the show’s producers, tapping into the edginess for which the show is renowned. Still, it would cause them some headaches eventually.
Why was Nirvana’s SNL debut controversial?
There are few shows around that have such an illustrious history with music, and perhaps most notably, with rock music, than Saturday Night Live. The show made a name for itself by being the punk rock TV show for the masses, and it gathered incredible artists because of it — the kind of artists who were turned down straight off the bat by other networks. In the early ’90s, that draw and mystique had begun to die off in the sanitising wash of MTV until a relatively small band called Nirvana got their opportunity to shine on a national stage.
His hair a luminous pink after being allegedly dyed with strawberry-flavoured Kool-Aid, Kurt Cobain fronts the band with Novoselic and Grohl raging behind him with an unhinged fury. The performance saw Nirvana rip through their seminal track ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and capture the hearts and minds of swathes of a disenfranchised generation watching at home.
Performing with a ferocity and power that would only accelerate their growing mystique, Nirvana’s performance of the seminal song wouldn’t be the only talking point of the night and was largely overshadowed by one event.
The band would take to the stage for the second time at Studio 8H, as is customary with the late-night weekend show, and delivered a rousing rendition of their Nevermind track ‘Territorial Pissings’. It was a performance that ended with the grunge band’s destruction of their guitars, drums and any surrounding equipment, as was becoming customary with Nirvana. It was a show of real rock ‘n’ roll rebellion.
Though the production crew were smart enough to switch out the amplifiers from the first performance for cheaper models to avoid too much cash loss in the stunt, the image of Cobain puncturing the equipment with his guitar is one that burned across America that night, leaving it permanently changed forever. Punk did not go away. It just got stoned and went underground in the North West.
It clearly sparked a fire within the millions of disaffected youths sitting at home and, that same week, Nevermind somehow managed to usurp the very problematic ‘King of Pop’ at the top of the album charts, moving Michael Jackson’s Dangerous to the number two spot and cementing Cobain and co as worldwide stars.
If that wasn’t enough to portray Nirvana as the rock saviours they were (beyond the guff and pomp of hair metal, without the bronzed cheekbones of glam, but buoyed by intensity and authenticity of punk rock) they would leave the show with one final statement and a political one at that.
As the curtain came down on the evening’s proceedings, Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl decided they would all kiss each other to “piss off the rednecks and homophobes,” during the show’s finale. It was only until nearly a decade later, following Charles Cross’ 2001 Kurt Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven, that the saddening story that followed the famed show would come out.
In the book, Cross says that Cobain skipped the infamous SNL after-show party and went to his NYC hotel where he overdosed on heroin. His girlfriend, Courtney Love, found him the next morning in terrible shape. She remembers that she “threw cold water on her fiancé and punched him in the solar plexus so as to make his lungs begin to move air,” she managed to revive Cobain after repeating the process. It was a sobering moment for the entire group.
It concluded an evening of unstoppable highs and unfathomable lows for Cobain and would light the fuse to the Nirvana nuclear bomb, exploding across the airwaves and cementing their legend.
Watch below Nirvana’s incredible debut on Saturday Night Live as they perform ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ in 1992. Will another band ever conjure something quite as daring and dazzling on the primetime show? We’ll be watching.
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