Nirvana reunited for a show featuring St. Vincent, Beck, and Dave Grohl's daughter
Aux Features Music
Though 2020 hasn’t got off to the best start in most ways that matter, certain events still provide an important reminder that not everything out there totally sucks. Take, for example, a half hour set performed last Saturday during the Art Of Elysium fundraiser at the Hollywood Palladium that saw Nirvana’s Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear perform a reunion show with a little help from St. Vincent, Beck, and Grohl’s teenage daughter Violet.
YouTube channel Nirvana Lado-B uploaded a pretty decent version of the entire set, which includes performances of “Lithium,” “In Bloom,” “Been A Son,” “Heart-Shaped Box,” and “The Man Who Sold The World.”
The entire video is well worth watching not just because it’s most of Nirvana playing a bunch of Nirvana’s most recognizable songs, but also to hear how each track is transformed through the line-up of singers and extra guitars. St. Vincent and Violet Grohl (who previously joined her dad to sing Foo Fighters’ “My Hero” at the Leeds Festival a few months ago) sing the hell out of “Heart-Shaped Box” and “Lithium.” Beck, despite seeming to forget some of the words from “In Bloom” (which, considering the lyrics, is kind of funny) plays a solid solo, sings a great harmony with St. Vincent, and recounts getting fucked up in “the most insane mosh pit” at the Palladium during an old Nirvana show where they played “Been A Son” … before taking the lead vocal part on the show’s version of “Been A Son.” Each song is faithful, but tweaked by slight instrumental differences and vocal changes.
Given how rare Grohl and Novoselic’s Nirvana reunions have been, we shouldn’t hold out hope that Saturday’s show is the first of many. But, hey, even if there isn’t another Nirvana revival coming anytime soon, maybe Grohl Jr. can link up with that 9-year-old “In Bloom” drummer to make a pint-sized cover band in the meantime.
[via Exclaim!]
83 Comments
I kind of like the whole “fuck it, we’re gonna get together and jam on occasion” thing more than the idea of a full-on reunion. SEE ALSO: Queen + Paul Rodgers
You know, I completely forgot about Queen and Paul Rodgers until you mentioned them.
Good on you. Two tastes that belong nowhere near each other.
Not exactly “chocolate in your peanutbutter” is it?
Just SO goddamned bizarre.“Henry Rollins and Tears For Fears: Together At Last!”
Metallica and, oh I dunno, Lou Reed?
I did not know that existed.
Everyone bashes that album, but there are moments where you can hear what they were going for. But those moments are real few and far between. I wonder if it’ll become a cult classic like Reed’s “Berlin” album, which was despised on release. 40 years later it’s a misunderstood classic that gets live re-creations.
Metal Machine Music might be the more apt comparison.
That’s another one! Oddly enough, time has been kind to it as folks like Trent Reznor and others admit they liked it. Of course, Lester Bangs fucking loved it at the time of the release, but he’s definitely in the minority back then.
Time will tell. I like Berlin, but it can be hard to listen to.
Fully agree. I have a USB drive with all the Velvets and Lou’s albums on it that I throw on once in a while (on random) and “Caroline Says II” came on and it’s great but…FUCK it’s depressing.
“Henry Rollins and Tears For Fears: Together At Last!”I would probably check that out. Not saying I’d like it, but I mean Revolting Cocks covering Olivia Newton John worked out pretty well, so…
Megadeth ft. Michael McDonald?
Yah Mo RUN TOOOOOOO THE HILLLLLLS!
I keep… forgetting… peace don’t sell anymore..I keep… forgetting… the symphony of destru-uh-uction… Also, run to the hills is Iron Maiden but, hell, I’m down for either. =)
Ah, fuck. My bad!
Fucked that one up. Mea culpa.
i had a similar reaction to Todd Rundgren reforming the Cars.
Wait…wasn’t Paul Rodgers considered as a Freddie replacement before they took on Adam Lambert?
He all but WAS a replacement. They toured and everything.The voice doesn’t really fit Queen’s catalog, IMO.
Okay, thanks, I was hoping my memory wasn’t playing tricks on me.I agree he wasn’t completely right but, face it, the remaining members have an issue with the legend of Freddie. As the recent bio movie clearly demonstrated, they just want to be seen as a bunch of really nice blokes who love to rock and not merely backing musicians to a vocal phenomenon.
Oh, totally. I love Brian May as much as the next guy, but John Deacon said it best: “Freddie is dead.”
Well, they did overdo covering their asses and making sure they always looked like nice guys, but your last bit there is less than fair, as everyone did write, and Brian’s sound is pretty distinctive.
Ummmm. “Nirvana” didn’t reunite at all since the main songwriter/lead guitarist/frontman wasn’t there.
Beck?!?!Hey, wait.I’ve got a new complaint.
Wake me up when “Them Crooked Vultures” gets back together
The “Violet take the stage” thing would have been cute if it was their house, in public I didn’t like it at all. The thing doesn’t come across the right way. And Beck fuc*ed up In Bloom, it was embarrassing.
Jason Everman is sitting by the phone…
Too busy fighting in wars!
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/magazine/evermans-war.html
Wow, excellent read. Thanks for posting!
Glad they and their fans had a good time. This ain’t Nirvana. This is some of the members of Nirvana with a little help from friends and family. No offense intended but, let’s keep it 100 and not pretend otherwise.
Yes, great point, I don’t think most of us had realized that the real lead singer of the band is dead.
Forvina? Nirgrohl? Pat Smears NirvanaTribute Band?
They’re not really claiming otherwise, though.
I’m speaking more to the AVClub headline than about what the actual band up there has done.
Krist Novescelic ft. The guys from Scream and The Germs and friends?
First place I ever saw Nirvana was at the Hollywood Palladium. I might’ve gone through my entire life ever since having no knowledge that I may have kicked Beck’s ass in a mosh pit if it weren’t for this article.Great show, too. Hole opened, Dinosaur Jr. headlined. Good times.
That’s awesome. If I remember correctly, I think there’s a Beck song that references “bloody hands” a couple of times. It’s possible that you violenced that lyric into being. Neat. I’m kind of surprised at how good he sounds with them here. He does have a touch of that grungy mealy-mouthed singing that Kurt used to do anyway, so I probably should’ve expected it.
So jelly.
I only got to see them once and it was pure luck. There was a Mudhoney show on campus at Western Washington University in ‘91, and Nirvana was the surprise opener. The place went crazy when people realized who was on stage. And as an added bonus, for every show on campus for the rest of the year there was always a rumor about what band would be a surprise opener.
That show was on one of their first tours for Nevermind, too, and it was only a few months before they blew the fuck up. None of my friends or anyone I knew had any idea who they were, and I kept telling everyone how great they had been. I distinctly remember being at Tower Records with some people telling them about Nevermind, and no one listened to me. They did a few months later.I just looked it up, and the show I was at was on June 14, 1991, and it was the only show on that whole tour they did with Hole. Nevermind wasn’t even released until September.
If I remember correctly, Nevermind had been out for about a month and was already pretty popular in Seattle. The place blew the hell up when everyone realized who it was.
God, that seems like a narrow window, to see Hole exist meanwhile Nirvana goes on before anybody, even Dinosaur Jr. Is Barlow still with em at that point?
I don’t believe so. It was the Green Mind tour for Dinosaur Jr and one of the first tours for Nevermind, if I’m not mistaken, so Lou was gone by then. Probably either Van Conner or Mike Johnson on bass at that point. (Thanks, Wikipedia.) Hole only played one show with them in LA on that tour.All I remember about Dino Jr’s set is the place going berserk for ‘Freak Scene’. It had been used in a popular skateboarding video called Speed Freaks in 1989, and it was such an anthem by then anyway. It was so goddamn loud. Just so goddamn loud.
That was cool. They really should do this more often. Not playing Knott’s Berry Farm and Six Flags, but jamming with friends in small clubs from time to time. And maybe a session on SNL…I really like St. Vincent and musically a good fit with what remains of Nirvana. Beck was a bit of a surprise but blended in nicely as well.I hadn’t seen Novoselic in a while and didn’t know he’d finally gone bald. I think the last time they did this he was wearing a hat.
I think it kinda works for him. He looks like a punk rock claims adjuster.
NAILED IT!I was trying to find a label for the look—yours fits it to a tee!
I thought St. Vincent and Lorde were both inspired choices for the HoF numbers they did… until they did them. That was one of my biggest musical disappointments ever. I could practically hear a fantastic Lorde-ed up version of All Apologies in my head, and then they just oozed out a really lazy cover of it.It’s good to read that St. Vincent, at least, is doing better this time around.
I thought Sr. Vincent did a good job in the HOF induction. I agree Lorde stunk it up—but then I’m probably biased because I’ve never been a fan of Lorde. She’s a bit shrill and her stage presence is basically doing a spastic Thom Yorke impression.
I’ve never seen Lorde live, and I think her brand of music tends to negate any particular draw to seeing her perform live.But that’s really no excuse. Like, do the work ahead of time. Don’t want to hire and rehearse with a live choir? Do up the cool layered vocals with all the effects you want, and put it into the sampler. Likewise, record the main riff as a piano line in advance and put it on the sampler if you’re not good enough to play it live. Grohl will manage the drums live just fine. Novoselic will *probably* manage the bass, because christ, it’s like two notes. That’s the two surviving members on stage making their contributions. You can sing a bit and have the pre-recorded backup vocals carry you through most of it.The final product, even though it’d be largely pre-recorded and tweaked, would still sound good. It’d sound like a good, engaging Lorde cover of a Nirvana song.My objection to St. Vincent’s take on Lithium was far, far milder. I just think they stuck it in the wrong key, probably because she opted to spare her voice instead of really trying to capture the essence of Kurt’s performances.Alternatively, she could’ve tried to make it a bit weirder, like her own music. I would’ve dug that too. But I wouldn’t have minded the straighter, cleaner cover if only they’d forced her to really get raw and primal with the vocals.
I can see your criticism on St. Vincent’s performance, but I think the expectation that she sound like Kurt Cobain might be a little unrealistic.I think we have to keep in mind that Cobain pretty much sang outside his natural vocal range throughout his brief career. He sounded painful and tortured because he was literally shredding his vocal cords. Had he lived, he would have eventually been locked into a few keys he could comfortably accommodate and would have ended up sounding like a post-First Edition Kenny Rogers.The reality is most of Nirvana’s big hits are solidly in St. Vincent’s range and thus sound much smoother when she sings them.
Yeah, and that’s not really a good thing. “Smooth” makes the loud/manic/tortured parts of Lithium sound lethargic, which isn’t great when the song’s entire concept is soft/loud/soft, and when the verses and choruses share the exact same chord progression.
I don’t know how badly Kurt was actually shredding his cords, though yours is a totally reasonable prediction. But I hope we can at least agree that he leveraged his technique – as formally horrible as it might have been – to tremendous synergistic effect with the content and emotion of his songs.While we might not be able to blame St. Vincent for not wanting to take any risks with her own voice, that doesn’t change my opinion that that decision resulted in a lesser performance. I think the exact same criticism could be applied to Jett’s SLTS performance – and, again, my followup question is “why not put in some effort to make it a less faithful, more innovative cover, then?”Of course with Jett that raises the question of just how much of a different spin she’d even think to put on it. In terms of my question being a damning one, I’d say it falls heaviest on Lorde’s head, and least heavily on Jett’s. Annie’s somewhere in between – though in my opinion she’s probably the best musician and composer out of the three, so I am a bit more disappointed in her comparatively.
Everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion. I think she did a good job with it. They’d have had to drastically rearrange the songs, pushing them far out of her range, for her to get a similar vocal effect to what Cobain was doing.
He wasn’t. I recall reading(either Kurt said this or Leland, can’t remember) that he used to scream to strengthen his vocal chords very early on, years before Fecal Matter, so probably 13 or so. And he did that lying on his back on the muddy banks of the Wishkah River, which is why that live album is called that, as opposed to the usual explanation which is because he used to sleep under the bridge in Aberdeen, which is also (supposedly) incorrect.I’ve consumed every Nirvana bootleg in circulation and there is only one instance that I can think of where it seems as though he is pushing his voice to the point of damage, I don’t remember the show but I believe it was Nevermind tour and his guitar kept fucking up and he screamed an entire song so freaking loud that he didn’t even need the microphone and p.a. system. It sounded like he was going to explode his throat. It sounds like he gets close to this level during “Come On Death” as well, but the sound quality is so bad it’s hard to tell. Thing is, you’re probably thinking “he overdid it all the time, what is this guy talking about?” but he really was just great at screaming, and what sounds to most as straining and damaging methods were just his comfortable range. As someone that’s screamed a whole lot for about 20 years, I can tell when someones blowing their throat out.The only time I remember Kurt directly referencing this was when talking about the Nevermind sessions and how he screamed his throat raw because of the sheer amount of takes he had to do in a short period of time.He screamed a whole lot for about seven years, but his speaking voice really didn’t change at all. Even towards the end of tours his voice was still just fine. Now, take someone like Marilyn Manson, that screamed a whole lot without years of practice first and he completely shredded his voice after about the same period of time, and he didn’t scream nearly as hard as Kurt. Manson sounds like a wounded animal now, it’s crazy how bad he destroyed his voice.This weed is strooooonnnnnnnnng.
I want to knee drop the person in this video yelling for people to sit down.
Also it doesn’t seem like Beck didn’t know the words, he just started singing a few bars too early. then got flustered.
One of my most favorite bands, but I’ll never be able to un-hear “She should have… venison.”.
I love being an old and dropping a casual “Oh, I saw them at X in 19xx” around my millennial friends & co-workers
I remember one of the old, good-era AVC writers saying something like “I can’t even imagine having seen Bowie, it’s such a distant, impossible idea,” made me feel pretty old.
I’m an old, and I saw Bowie during his Sound+Vision tour in 1990. Sadly, it was in Orlando, not some cool venue.
I saw that tour too, it was pretty awesome (Adrian Fucking Belew, holy shit), including him doing “Rock n’ Roll Suicide” the way I’d always imagined, with him reaching out his hand at the “Give me your hands!” line and a multitude of hands shooting up to try to touch his.
Violet Grohl is this generation’s Wolfgang Van Halen.
Except for Nirvana being good, Foo Fighters being OK, and Van Halen being shit.
That’s absurd and Van Halen’s s/t is a flawless rock n roll masterpiece.
“Dreams” by Van Halen is something akin to an antithesis of Nirvana, but it is also pretty good. I pick that song as being the most Van Halen-ey Van Halen song I know of. Good and very bad in their catalog. But how dare you call Nirvana just “good”.
I love them, and spent a summer with Nevermind in heavy rotation in my car’s cassette player, but my hurdle for “great” is pretty high.
Nah, Van Halen’s great (Dave-era, that is) – spent a few weeks revisiting those first six albums recently, and they’re a ton of fun. The band is killer, Dave brings it on every song, and EVH is basically inventing rock guitar sounds that would influence rock sound for decades to come (including some proto grunge). Plus (unlike the Hagar-era), they rarely sing straight love songs, but cover a wide range of subjects in the lyrics.
Nirvana karaoke is fine but, as this exists, why not tour with Kim Gordon:
I like Kim Gordon and I dig the energy she brought to that performance, but I still wish that they’d brought in Kim Shattuck instead. Beyond having a scream that would’ve fit the music like a glove, she also would’ve been in key.
Yeah, I need my grunge in key.
I mean… kinda? It is usually in key. It’s not 100% required or anything, but it definitely helps. As I said, I like Kim Gordon and she did great. I wasn’t trying to be super critical of her. I just loved Kim Shattuck.
Alas, now we’ll never know. RIP Kim Shattuck.
I once watched Fugazi from that very spot.
Insert joke about wholesome straightedge good time here.
Well, Pearl Jam, L7 and Lunachicks had just opened for them, so I really didn’t give too much of a shit about cracking a brew at the time. It was a Rock For Choice show celebrating the 19th anniversary of Roe v Wade.A ticket at the door that night was $8. Fuck Ticketmaster forever. https://www.dischord.com/fugazi_live_series/los-angeles-ca-usa-12492
Fugazi > Nirvana.
Woah, the drummer for Nirvana kind of looks like the lead singer for Foo Fighters!!!
/s
*watching “I’ll Stick Around” video*Butthead: “Look, it’s that guy from Nirvana.”Beavis: “That’s not cool. He’s no longer with us.”Butthead: “No, I mean the drummer.”Beavis: “What are you talking about? I’ve never seen that drummer before in my life.”
This is cool and all, and the proceeds to get in are supposed to go to a charity that helps artists…but holy shit did the cost of getting in raise my eyebrows quite a bit. This was technically a “black tie event” before the Globes, so yeah the audience was basically intended for rich people, but those rich people were asked to put down between $10,000 and $100,000 for various packages and avoid “normal” people, who instead got to spend $250 to get stuck in the balcony and risk an obstructed view, without having full access to the Palladium…or for $500, you could sit(!) in the balcony area instead. Either way, unless they didn’t give a shit once the show started and anyone could go up to the gate, your only realistic choice to attend was to spend $250-500 to be shoved off to the side.While I hope whatever money was collected goes to good use (I’ve never heard of this charity before, and I’m admittedly cynical of any charity asking for $100K for anything), maybe the surviving Nirvana members, and friends like Annie Clark, Beck, and others, should consider reuniting more frequently and garner big bucks from rich people for other charities/org.’s that could really use it (Planned Parenthood, groups working for social justice or legal reps for immigrants), OR maybe do it at an event that non-rich folks could theoretically attend without being restricted to only part of the venue. At least we got some Youtube videos out of it this though.
Nirvana have three proper albums and half a compilation’s worth of original music. Doing only five songs, did they have to go with “The Man Who Sold The World”? I get that most Gen X’ers and Millenials are more familiar with Nirvana’s version than David Bowie’s version. But they really should’ve stuck to Kurt’s songs.
Hey so in this article you shared a full reunion video from the show. This video was stolen from my YouTube channel and re-uploaded. I’ve contacted YouTube for them to take it down. You can compare it to my page and see that I posted it first and that it’s the exact same video.