Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic shed light on his time with the band and helping formulate Kurt Cobain‘s musical ideas. During a chat with Rick Beato‘s on his podcast In the Room With Nirvana And Soundgarden, Novoselic explained, “He’d have these riffs, and he just kind of started playing them. And we would just say, ‘Okay, that’s a cool riff.’ Then I’d have an idea, an impression of the song like, ‘This is what the song needs. This is not me as a bass player. This is what I want to do for the song.’ What the song is demanding of me, or asking.”
He went on to say, “It’s all for the song. ‘About A Girl’ for example — (Kurt) listened to Meet The Beatles. He was in his little apartment in Olympia, and he listened to that record over and over again one night, and he just wrote that song. And I go, ‘Well, I know what that needs on bass. It’s as plain as day.’ I just played this little bouncy bass thing.”
He offered up some advice to aspiring bass players, telling them to hone in on the song’s lead vocals: “I would just follow along on it. I didn’t necessarily follow what the guitar is doing. I’d listen to the vocal melody and just kind of triangulate, play off the vocal. And then you’d get a bigger sound that way.”
FAST FACTS
THE TOP 10 NIRVANA SONGS – according to the readers of Loudersound.com:
1. “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
2. “Lithium”
3. “Heart-Shaped Box”
4. “Come As You Are”
5. “All Apologies”
6. “Aneurysm”
7. “Drain You”
8. “Breed”
9. “In Bloom”
10. “You Know You’re Right”
CHECK IT OUT: Nirvana on November 18th, 1993 performing “About A Girl” live on MTV Unplugged: