(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
When we talk about worldwide rock and roll exports, the order typically goes a little something like this: The Beatles were the 1960s, David Bowie was the 1970s, Bruce Springsteen was the 1980s, and Nirvana were without question the 1990s. It’s a lineage that practically rolls off the tongue, without any real thought or consideration as to the bucketloads of potential other contenders, because some artists are just unbeaten in their sonic successes, right?
Well, as it turns out, the latter addition to that golden league may unfortunately be a bit of a ruse. It’s not for the fact that Nirvana weren’t undeniably the biggest rock export of their decade – because, of course, they were – but when you actually hold a mirror up to their prolific songbook, the similarities to other artists and songs are too many and suspicious to simply ignore.
While Kurt Cobain was hardly the first artist to ever sample a song or take inspiration from his rock and roll heroes over the years, some of his influences stand more like rip-offs when you really tune into the litany of Nirvana riffs that bare a remarkable likeness to many other tunes that came before them, both from bands of a similar world-beating stature and those scraping by to make it big.
Cobain and Co may be revered as sonic visionaries, but it seems a lot more of that credit should be attributed to rock bands near and far whose influences proved to be more overt on the band than they would perhaps have cared to admit. The illustrious discography of Nirvana will never be tarnished, no matter how liberal they became with their homages to other tunes, but this is an exposé to prove that their original ideas were certainly not always ‘in bloom’.
Five songs Kurt Cobain ripped off for Nirvana:
‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’
It’s only right to begin in the most blazing place – and that could be with none other than the trio’s storming breakout hit, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. It’s no exaggeration to claim that the tune redefined the airwaves when it first took flight in 1991. In fairness to Cobain, he was never exactly a huge fan of the song once it took on an almost ethereal success – “Everyone has focused on that song so much,” he told Rolling Stone in 1994 – but it still didn’t stop him nabbing ideas from a very familiar place when it came to penning the riff.
Cobain openly admitted to writing the tune to emulate the Pixies, and the titular lyric was derived directly from a phrase Kathleen Hanna used to describe him, but lyrics apart, the sonics of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ are undeniably close to the 1977 track ‘Godzilla’ by Blue Öyster Cult. Bizarrely, however, in the very same week Nirvana released their biggest hit, rival outfit The Smashing Pumpkins began to play a cover of the original tune at their gigs and soon committed it to record, meaning the feud between Cobain and Billy Corgan could have gone much deeper than just a love interest.
‘About a Girl’
Yet the likenesses don’t just stop there when it comes to Cobain’s frankly maddening list of musical inspirations. There was never any secret on the frontman’s worship for The Beatles, with him regularly citing ‘Norwegian Wood’ as one of his top tunes, but after listening to the Fabs’ earliest efforts one afternoon in 1988, Cobain decided to commit his own version to the page, and thus, ‘About a Girl’ was born.
Much as he may have openly divulged the song’s source material from the Liverpudlian legends, once again the riffs come into play as being an unshakable carbon copy of two other tunes from a much more recent era than when the song was written. For starters, there was ‘M’ by The Cure, the pacy strums of which bore a searing resemblance to the track that Cobain would produce some eight years after its release. Subliminally or not, the gothic punk overtures of Robert Smith and Co were evidently a guiding light to Nirvana, but this manifested more overtly than they perhaps wanted to let show.
‘Come As You Are’
For Nirvana diehards, these explanations of tunes the band seemingly ripped off may come as a dressing down or a rebuttal of grunge greatness. This is certainly not the case – we all know that the modern history of rock music would be nothing without the presence of the trio to shake up the status quo – but even still, the tendency to lift sounds from other artists in their biggest hits was pretty bold, to say the least.
That occurs again in ‘Come As You Are’; however, in this instance, Cobain was all too aware of the similarities between it and another seismic tune, and was feared to have the repercussions thrown back in his face. Although it never materialised in the end, rumours abounded that a lawsuit was being filed by Killing Joke for how close the song sounded to their 1985 track ‘Eighties’ – but ironically Cobain had already anticipated this, and shoved ‘In Bloom’ in front of it in the order of single releases to try and soften the blow. It may not have worked, but at least he was still able to climb the ladder of rock iconoclasts because of it.
‘Polly’
‘Polly’ is one of the rarer tracks that Cobain and the band could have possibly got away without anyone widely knowing that it was yet another rip-off, but like many of the tunes on Nevermind, it also follows suit. Lyrically, it was a marker for the frontman into new territory – delineating him as an unexpected martyr for women’s rights – but sonically, there was a whole other story to tell.
The 4-Skins were hardly a match to Nirvana in terms of fame, but nevertheless, in many ways, their back catalogue was more prolific with the sheer volume of records they managed to churn out over the course of the 1970s to the 2000s. Within this, their song ‘On the Streets’ from 1983 was an obvious sonic precursor to ‘Polly’ and as such, even though they were in different leagues of acclaim, it proved that Cobain was always watching his rock contemporaries – even if it was often to nab their ideas.
‘Breed’
Coincidentally or not, ‘Breed’ is a song which demonstrates a direct through-line from the likes of ‘Polly’, as the pair were both written at the same time in the late 1980s, although the former didn’t reach the light of day until the band’s much-vaunted second album. That said, however, it is a tune which also possesses one of Cobain’s most explicitly labelled influences, from a little-known Seattle band who completely altered his punk rock orbit.
As a whole, Wipers were a significant component of the rock god’s musical worldview, as Cobain had no qualms about admitting: “They’re another band I tried to assimilate,” because “Their songs were so good.” But this comes to the fore most overtly on the band’s song ‘Potential Suicide’, the roaring riffs of which Cobain plainly lifted to create ‘Breed’ and subsequently lavished all the rapture it brought him.
But there was also a certain full-circle poignancy that Wipers’ influence on ‘Breed’ brought about, as the song was played at Nirvana’s final ever gig on March 1st, 1994 – a mere month before Cobain’s own death. It turned out to be well and truly the closing of an iconic tenure for a man whose musical inspirations were so many and massive that he couldn’t help but take leaves out of their books.
Related Topics
