{"id":802307,"date":"2026-03-04T00:32:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T00:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/802307\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T00:32:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T00:32:13","slug":"nirvanas-mischievous-record-of-lying-about-their-own-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/802307\/","title":{"rendered":"Nirvana\u2019s mischievous record of lying about their own history"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pivotal<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Tue 3 March 2026 21:30, UK <\/p>\n

If you ask an AI bot how Kurt Cobain<\/a> and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic first met, you might get a very detailed and bizarre story about their time as art students at a school called the Grays Harbor Institute of Northwest Crafts. <\/p>\n

Cobain, a young \u201csawblade painter specialising in wildlife and seascapes\u201d, struck up a friendship with Novoselic, whose passion was \u201cglueing seashells and driftwood on burlap\u201d. If that sounds like a bonkers example of one of those artificial intelligence \u2018hallucinations\u2019, it\u2019s actually representative of an even bigger problem with trying to learn about history from AI: it doesn\u2019t understand satire.<\/p>\n

Regardless, when Nirvana signed to the major label DGC before the release of their monstrous breakout album Nevermind, and the existence of AI, they found themselves confronted with very different promotional demands from what they\u2019d known as small-time artists with the indie label Sub Pop. <\/p>\n

DGC wanted to build an identity and image around the band, to craft a narrative that would help would-be fans better connect with Cobain, Novoselic, and drummer Dave Grohl, and unsurprisingly, the band, Cobain in particular, was not very enthusiastic about this part of the job. They didn\u2019t even feel qualified to tell their own story, as Cobain freely admitted that he wasn\u2019t an expert on his own work. <\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t even tell you shit like when Bleach was released,\u201d he told Spin in 1992, referring to Nirvana\u2019s 1989 debut album on Sub Pop, \u201cI couldn\u2019t even name the songs on the album\u201d.<\/p>\n

Despite this professed disinterest in Nirvana history<\/a>, however, Cobain and his bandmates were eventually tasked with re-writing their own official origin story, a brief band biography that DGC wanted to send out with press releases ahead of Nevermind\u2019s release in 1991. The original version of the bio, written by somebody at the label offices, was \u201creally lame\u201d, according to Kurt, who also said:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIn the end, they just turned it over to us to write. So we made most of it up. Our record-company bio is nothing but a huge lie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kurt Cobain<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That bio, as you might have guessed, is the origin point for that nutty story about Kurt and Krist meeting each other in an arts and crafts class. It includes an amazing quote from Novoselic, explaining how he first bonded with his lead singer: \u201cI liked what Kurt was doing. I asked him what his thoughts were on a macaroni mobile piece I was working on. He suggested I glue glitter on it. That really made it!\u201d The bio goes on to explain that this macaroni incident \u201cformed the basis of Nirvana\u2019s musical magic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fabricating one\u2019s origin story is an appropriately cheeky and mischievous thing for a band like Nirvana to be doing in the early \u201890s, but it was hardly an isolated incident. \u201cWe lead such boring lives,\u201d Cobain explained to Spin in the midst of Nevermind-mania, \u201cthat we start to make up stuff\u201d. <\/p>\n

Famously, this could include things as trivial as the correct spellings of band members\u2019 names (Cobain repeatedly misspelt his own name as \u2018Kurdt\u2019, \u2018Curt\u2019, and \u2018Kobain\u2019) or Grohl supposedly giving out Chris Cornell\u2019s personal phone number in a live TV interview (it was actually the number of the Sub Pop offices). <\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s Grohl\u2019s description, also from that infamous DGC bio, of how he first met his bandmates<\/a>: \u201cThey wore berets, sunglasses, sandals and had goatees. Chris [Krist] walked around with these poetry books by Rod McKuen, and Kurt would do interpretive dances while Chris recited McKuen\u2019s poetry. It didn\u2019t take Grohl too long to fit in. Now they all enjoy collaborating on burl clocks and latch hook rugs in their off time.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Tue 3 March 2026 21:30, UK If you ask an AI bot how…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":802308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[12285,77,12286,269,4159,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-802307","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-dave-grohl","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-kurt-cobain","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-nirvana","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116168094241072739","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/802308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}