Before Kurt Cobain uttered their name during the 1993 taping of MTV Unplugged, most people had never heard of the Meat Puppets. Even fewer people would have recognized brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood sitting on stage with Nirvana, had Cobain not shouted them out specifically. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Curt Kirkwood looks back on the seminal performance, which he surprisingly describes as “pretty casual.”
“I knew it was really good when it was happening,” Kirkwood says. “I was privileged to sit through the whole thing and be able to watch it until I had to go play, myself. It was like a real show with a real vibe. There were no retakes or anything. What you see is what happened.”
What happened was that Nirvana, then at the height of their powers, played an intimate set of fourteen songs, nearly half of which were covers. They were one tour with the Meat Puppets at the time and when the band sat down to plan out their set, including some of their tourmates songs seemed like a no-brainer.
“Kurt’s like, ‘We’ll do some Meat Puppets songs because they would sound good unplugged,’” remembers Nirvana bassist Kris Novoselic. “And I’m like, ‘Yeah, quite frankly, if we could get Curt and Cris to join us, then we would really nail it because they know the songs.’”
After a quick rehearsal that allowed the band to “learn the songs enough to not fuck ‘em up,” the Kirkwoods joined Nirvana on stage for covers of “Plateau,” “Oh Me,” and “Lake of Fire,” thus exposing a wider audience to their specific brand of twangy, psychedelic punk. Despite having a friendship with Cobain at the time, Curt doesn’t deny the thrill of seeing the Nirvana frontman perform his songs on stage. “Really the coolest part was, if anybody from the rock scene is gonna sing that stuff, that would have been one of my choices,” Kirkwood tells Rolling Stone, adding that if he could get George Jones to cover his songs, “that would be cool, too.”
Read the whole interview here and take a listen to the Meat Puppets’ new track “Warranty” of their upcoming album Dusty Notes.
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56 Comments
I fell in love with the Meat Puppets after that show.
Do they really not know George Jones died in 2013?
That’s why getting him to cover their songs would be cool.
“Where do country folks go when they die? / They don’t go to heaven where the angels fly / They go to Branson, Miss-ouuu-raiii / You can see them perform any day that ends in Y”
So Branson is Hell.Checks out.
Kirkwood tells Rolling Stone, adding that if he could get George Jones to cover his songs, “that would be cool, too.”Oh, no, buddy. I got bad news about George Jones.
At least we still have Bowie.
Oh. Oh, Math. Sit down, we need to talk.
I’ve seen a few things over the past year or so reflecting on this historically great show but has it ever been publicly disclosed why ‘The man who sold the world’ was picked. Very unconventional choice but I’ve always wondered if there was more to it than that.
Kurt had good taste for the deep cuts.
IIRC it was simply because it’s one of Kurt’s (or maybe Dave? Can’t remember which) favorite songs. I’m not a rock star, but you can be damn sure if I was an did a bunch of covers, there’d be at least a couple of Police tunes in there just because I want to do it.
All I know is that Nirvana was playing the song in their live performances around that time. Or so I thought, after this Wikipedia entry implies they started playing it live after the Unplugged. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Sold_the_World#Nirvana_versionOther interesting tidbits:-David Bowie also would’ve liked to know why they chose that song. -There’s an electric guitar version in Live & Loud: https://open.spotify.com/track/6wbuQr8VIbgXHXp1hedMkD?si=AXAlMd5hQaiCl-oQsJ8Pvg
I love the Brothers Kirkwood and I love the Meat Puppets and I love Kurt Cobain for giving them a big boost at that time. Ween has been pushing Meat Puppets for some time, as well. That’s how you know they rule.And Backwater is a perfect rock song.
Second on Backwater.
Second on Backwater.
I second your second second on Backwater.
I think Kurt doesn’t get enough credit for using his fame to champion lesser known bands. He covered Meat Puppets, Vaselines, and the Wipers. He often wore a Daniel Johnston shirt. And he wrote about his love for the Raincoats in the liner notes to Incesticide.
Is this where I talk about how Forbidden Places is really underrated? Because it is.
This is the place!And you’re right: criminally underrated.
It’s underrated because if you ask Siri to search it on an Apple TV she puts for bidden places.
Such a great album! That song is particularly underrated.
I think Pat Smear is the best part of the whole show.
The thing I love the most about this is that Nirvana asked Curt and Cris to join them simply because they new the songs better. Nirvana was arguably the biggest band in the planet at the time, and they didn’t think twice about deferring to some relatively unknown guys, because they placed the quality of the performance ahead of their own egos.
best band on the planet? and by best you mean most popular in a very niche market? and not that they were actually the best musicians on the planet? Because they weren’t great musicians (some would argue the remaining members still are not), not by a long shot.
I wrote that they were arguably the biggest band on the planet, not the best band on the planet.
“AaAaAcCcTtTuUuAaAlLlYyY…”
Yikes you missed
Jesus Christ shut the fuck up. If you’re gonna be a pedant at least be right instead of the stupid dick you are.
Nevermind sold 30 million copies. Niche indeed.
Oof. That didn’t go the way you thought it would, huh?
Probably went better on whatever guitar forum he regularly posts on, where dudes who can play a bunch of Steve Vai solos backward have pissing contests. “DUDE DO YOU EVEN SHRED DUDE”
Upvoted for the Dude bookends.
Man this was just a bad take, and you should feel bad.
Reading comprehension, and capitalization, are both things.
Just keep listening to your Frank Zappa bootlegs, knowing that you’re the only person in the world who TRULY APPRECIATES AND UNDERSTANDS MUSIC
Frank Zappa is a musician? I thought he was a professional talk show guest in the 70s.
f&^*#@! obviously.
this is some lazy trolling.
If by very Niche, you mean change the face of Pop music for the next 10 years, then yeah. They had their Niche.
To settle the debate, I suggest that rock music should have an nfl-style combine to determine the “best” musicians. 40 note dash, stamina holding a single note, etc etc etc. Then the Mel Kiper’s of music can really have something to debate about the “best.”
There’s always one of you.
I stand with TinCanFury – n0ne of them are great musicians.
I once read an article about Nirvana’s Unplugged and how the MTV execs were freaking out because Kurt told them he wasn’t going to play any of the hits. Then when he said he was going to bring in the Meat Puppets, one of the execs supposedly said, “Great, not only are they not playing any hits, they’re bringing guys who don’t have any hits to play.”
Kurt, it is Kurt who was egoless.
I immediately bought the Meat Puppets current release at the time after I saw them on the Nirvana Unplugged. And I’m certain I wasn’t the only one that did this. I can’t recall any of the songs from that album other than “Undertow”, but I sure as hell remember “Lake of Fire”, “Plateau”, and “Oh, Me”. That Nirvana Unplugged was truly something special.
Fuckin’ Nirvana!This line still runs through my head whenever I hear any Nirvana song.
I wonder if Dave Grohl regrets his choice of wardrobe and hair styling.
I’m guessing “yes”.
My guess is that Dave Grohl doesn’t experience regret. He’s Dave Grohl.
Went back and listened to a bunch Nirvana recently. It was better than I remembered. Unlike Green Day which was much much worse than I remembered.
It really is just a magical performance. Everything comes together perfectly. There are all of these layers of, ‘who knew that Nirvana would sound all ethereal acoustically?’ and ‘who knew that Kurt’s voice would accompany Meat Puppets, Bowie, and old spiritual songs perfectly?’ and ‘who knew that he could pull himself together so gracefully during a period where Pat Smear had to be brought in because he was habitually forgetting lyrics and losing his place on guitar parts?’. Everything just works beautifully. I’ve probably listened to this album at least five hundred times over the years. It really is the perfect driving music for late night cruises through the country with the windows down.
I still have the old worn out VHS I dubbed off MTV in 1994. It was weird how on the CD they tried to cover up the part where Kurt flubbed the beginning of the verse in Pennyroyal Tea (“Here’s another one I could screw up.”) I prefer the fucked up version. A sample of that little part would probably make a good sample for a hip hop beat. Also when the high E, a half step below the vocals, rings out during the chorus. Gnarly.
After posting this, I plan on googling, “I was at Nirvana Unplugged.” I’m curious to know about who actually got to see this live. Like, did Joan in MTV’s accounting department get tickets and give them to her kids? There’s probably less then 300 people in the audience.
I think I was 14 when this happened… I only knew of one meat puppet during that time of my life.
where do bad folks go when they they die? they don’t go to heaven where the angels fly. they go to a lake of fire and fry.
The Meatpuppet covers and the cover of man who sold the world are still some of my favorite nirvana songs. cobain gave them the raspy voice that really seemed to give them a tragic/hopeless vibe.
I’m a Phoenician and a Sun Devil and got to see the Meat Puppets at the Mason Jar once and also at the Sun Club. The Mason was the better show, imo, and that place was like a large crackhouse living room that often turned into a moss pit/combat zone no matter who played there. Both were total shit dive bars from hell, but the Mason Jar was notorious for having major bands sneak in and play a few songs here and there. I barely missed it, but Metallica played there under some ridiculous name, but bands like them. I did see TOOL play there, so that sorta makes up for it. I Really Enjoyed watching post-prime Yngwie Malmsteen barely escaping out of the Jar with his life after he played for about a minute. He must have felt bad about his life decisions that led him to end up playing at such a shit hole. He whinged about the horrid acoustics (HA!) and up and quit and caused a fun riot to start up as he stormed off stage under a hail of plastic cups and death threats. Refunds don’t happen during riots when police mace is still being sprayed, but totally worth it! As much as missing that hurt, another good college buddy asked if I wanted to see some up and coming band called Nirvana play at After The Gold Rush in Tempe and I blew that off. FAAAAAWWWWK! He talked about the singer being seriously trashed (shocking, I know!) and hanging off the disco ball over the crowd, right over him, so I’d say it was the biggest mistake band-wise I ever made. I cannot even think about or listen to Nirvana without thinking about that mistake. I never was able to see Nirvana after that either, so PAIN! I think the place I miss the most is Long Wongs in Tempe. Killer bands, killer wings/food, cheap assed drinks and all in another small, living room sized room! I sorta remember being pretty drunk and nasty grinding against some drunk girl a foot away from the Gin Blossoms while being cheered on by Robin Wilson. Bands just got stuffed in the corner and without any separation whatsoever, so it was always fun to see groups play there. After the show I drank a few more with the band and just chilled. A few months later they blew up and were playing stadiums. Seriously nice guys, the Blossoms! And one last shout out to my favorite local band that never went big, The Hoodoo Kings! Just a rowdy blues band with a killer harmonica playing lead singer most appropriately named Dave Trippy. I saw them at least 50 times and I often hung out with them. The kind of band that I would drag anyone to see them if I knew they were playing somewhere. I lost track of them for a while, but I found Trippy heavily spun out and stumbling down 3rd street near Osborn in central Phx in the wee hours and I stopped and offered him a ride down the road in my Chenowth sand rail; which really ‘trippy’ for him, especially since he recognized me as an old fan. He didn’t smoke tobacco, but I heard that he died from cancer that was blamed on second hand smoke at the dive bars. I will greatly miss his music, his massive pompadour, his 100% always-on Hep Cat speaking style (Groovy, Daddy-o!), and just a cool dude in general! Feeling damn old now. Gonna shuffle off to a corner and maybe huck on a vintage Meat Puppets cd.