Without the Melvins there wouldn’t have been Nirvana?
“Continue to keep your ears trained on Aberdeenbecause cities with nothing to do are the Devil’s workshop.” It was 1988 when Dawn Anderson he closes his interview with a young man with this statement “Kurdt Kobain“. Yes, you read it right, “Kurdt”: this is how the musician was still called, as already confirmed to Rockol by Daniela Giombini. To introduce Cobain’s group, or “Kobain” as it was written in the article, Anderson describes Nirvana as “the Melvins fan club”a definition that today may seem provocative, but which at the time perfectly captured the relationship between the two bands. Even before grunge became a global revolution and before “Nevermind” transformed Kurt Cobain into the face of a generation, the Melvins were already the absolute point of reference for part of the Aberdeen and Seattle scenethe lineup that had taken hardcore-punk, slowed down the tempos, warped the riffs, and built a sound heavier, dirtier, and more disturbing than any other band from America’s Northwest Coast.
The Melvins from Aberdeen, a city where there is nothing to do
The story begins in 1983 in Montesano, Washington, a small town not too far from Aberdeen, in a context of boredom, rain and isolation geographical. Buzz Osborne, Matt Lukin and Mike Dillard form the Melvins starting with covers of Jimi Hendrix and The Who, but their path quickly changes when hardcore-punk enters their lives. Dillard soon leaves the group and is replaced by Dale Crover, the drummer destined to become one of the most important musicians of the whole grunge affair. That’s when the Melvins’ sound really starts to take shape, transforming the aggressive speed of hardcore into something slower, heavier and more obsessive. Rehearsals take place in the back room of Crover’s parents’ house in Aberdeen. The music is so loud it can be heard from blocks away and that small space becomes a gathering point for kids attracted by a sound that no one else was making at the time. Among those guys there is also Kurt Cobain. Krist Novoselic would remember years later how the porch of the Crover house had become a sort of spontaneous gathering center for a scene that still didn’t have a precise name.
In May 1986 the Melvins released their debut EPwhich went down in history above all as “Six Songs” because it contains six songs: “Easy as It Was”, “Now a Limo”, “Grinding Process”, “At a Crawl”, “Disinvite”, “Snake Appeal”. It’s a tiny record in duration but gigantic in impact. Inside there are already the elements that would influence much of the American alternative rock of the following years. “Easy As It Was” alternates hardcore fury and crushing riffs, “Now A Limo” is a miniaturized and schizophrenic punk explosion, while “At A Crawl” represents one of the first examples of that extreme slowdown that will become fundamental for sludge-metal, doom and grunge.
And it’s right in the credits of that first EP that a name already appears destined to change the history of music, thus tracing a first link between the Melvins and Nirvana. Krist Novoselic is in fact indicated as the album’s photographer. The Nirvana bassist himself confirmed many years later, in an article written in 2009 for the “Seattle Weekly”, that he had taken the shot for the Melvins’ first 7″. It is a small detail only in appearance, because it shows how the stories of the two bands were intertwined well before the official birth of Nirvana.
The importance of the Melvins for Nirvana, according to Krist Novoselic
In his article for the “Seattle Weekly”, Novoselic describes the relationship with the Melvins as something much deeper than a simple musical influence. “I first met Buzz in 1983. I was working at a Taco Bell when he and Matt Lukin came in to say hello to a co-worker of mine, Bill. Bill had been expelled from Aberdeen High for detonating a homemade bomb. He had been classmates with Buzz and Matt at nearby Montesano High. Our two visitors dressed differently than typical teenagers of the time: Buzz wore an old overcoat and Matt wore a worn flannel with heavy metal cuffs. I was already familiar with the first punk wave of the late 1970s, but it was the Melvins who introduced me to American hardcore,” Novoselic recalled.
“Buzz lent me records by Black Flag, Flipper, Butthole Surfers and Minor Threat. I was excited about this whole new world of music. And Buzz was happy to share that music with someone who wouldn’t immediately reject it just because it was punk rock. Most people hated that punk for no real reason other than the fact that in their eyes it was something bad and weird and wrong.”
Novoselic’s words explain well how important the Melvins were not only musically, but also culturally for the birth of the scene of which Nirvana would become one of the leading names. This wasn’t simply an older band to imitate. The Melvins were the group that introduced Cobain and Novoselic to a new idea of extreme and independent musicfar from the glossy hard rock of the Eighties and closer to a crooked, noisy and disturbing punk. The most important passage of his article therefore comes when Novoselic directly links the Melvins to the birth of Nirvana as the world has known them.
“In 1988 the Seattle grunge scene really started to explode. Even though they had left Washington, the Melvins had already made their mark as the first true grunge band. Every Seattle band of the late ’80s owed something to the Melvins: a band that slowed down and started playing sludgy, super-heavy riffs.”
And then there’s the detail that directly links Melvins and Nirvana to Dave Grohlthe drummer who joined the lineup in 1990, after his experience with the Screams and in time to work on the classic album “Nevermind”. Without the Melvins, Nirvana probably would never have met Dave Grohl. And it’s difficult to imagine the history of rock in the nineties without that lineup. This is how Novoselic remembered this aspect:
“In 1990 Kurt Cobain and I were driving back to Washington from Los Angeles. We took the opportunity to stop in San Francisco to visit our friends Melvins and told them we were without a drummer. Scream were playing in North Beach and we all went to see the concert. Buzz said we absolutely had to see their amazing drummer. Scream played a great show and we got to know the band. Buzz introduced us to their drummer, David Grohl.”
Buzz Osborne and the first songwriting attempts of a young Kurt Cobain
The Internet is one of those places where small historical artefacts resurface every now and then, capable of describing an era better than any official biography. On Reddit, using the right keywords, it appeared a handwritten letter from Buzz Osborne and addressed precisely to Krist Novoselic, dated 16 April 1986. It is an extraordinary document because it tells the story exact moment when Kurt Cobain was still an unknown boy recording demos on cassette, but already starting to impress those around him.
Here is the Italian translation of that letter:
“Hi Chris and Shelly,
Well, you’ve been gone for over a month and not even a letter to your old friends? Hmmmmmm…………
You must be pretty busy out there in that dusty desert, huh?
SO FRIEND, WHAT’S UP!!
How was the trip?
Where do you live?!?!
What are you doing?
How are you?
It would be nice to receive a letter, man, come on!!!! Have you forgotten how to spell it?
(I don’t want to) hear from you anymore, I thought we had a lot of fun together. I hope you too.
However, life here is more or less the same.
KO-BAIN and DAVE went to his aunt’s house and recorded a cassette with some of Kurt’s songs. I was quite impressed by it. Some of his songs are REALLY killer! Despite the poor sound quality, it sounds good, although with a little more time it could have been better. However, it’s still a great demo. I think he might have some kind of future in music if he keeps pushing himself.
Our next tour will be in MAY so…”
The importance of the Melvins for Nirvana according to Kurt Cobain
That the Melvins were fundamental to Cobain it’s not just Krist Novoselic or Buzz Osborne who tells it. Kurt himself says it in one of the first Nirvana interviewsalso in the chat published in 1988 by Dawn Anderson. The article shows how, at the time, Nirvana was perceived almost as a direct emanation of the Melvins.
“Ah, Aberdeen… a city where there is nothing to do but drink fish beer and worship Satan. The Melvins were from Aberdeen. Do you remember them?”, began Anderson in his piece treasured by “LiveNirvana.com”. It then reads: “Now the Melvins fan club is churning out some pretty heavy riffs of their own. They call themselves Nirvana, a name that means everything and nothing at the same time”.
Anderson then described Cobain as a boy who grew up musically watching the Melvins rehearse for hours: “Nirvana’s supreme guru, Kurdt Kobain, lives in Olympia now, but he started grinding out Melvins/Soundgarden-style riffs right in the city that time forgot, learning everything he knows from watching the Melvins rehearse. Endlessly.”
During the interview, Cobain himself openly confirmed this influence:
“I saw hundreds of Melvins rehearsals,” he recalled: “I drove their van on tour. Everyone hated them, by the way. And Matt (the Melvins’ old bassist) and I even used the same phone card; it was almost like we were married.”
In the piece, Nirvana were therefore described as a band that was still immature but already capable of distinguishing itself from its models. Anderson wrote: “The group is already years ahead of most mere mortals when it comes to songwriting and, at the risk of sounding blasphemous, I sincerely believe that, with enough practice, Nirvana could become… better than the Melvins!Cobain, however, was well aware of the risk of being perceived only as a follower of Osborne’s band and openly declared:
“Our biggest fear at first was that people would think we were a copy of the Melvins.”
Yet that closeness helped Nirvana enormously in the early years. The band’s initial demo immediately caught the attention of Seattle’s underground scene and it didn’t go unnoticed that Dale Crover of the Melvins played drums on those early recordings. Even Jack Endino, historic producer of Sub Pop, agreed to record Nirvana precisely because he saw Crover behind the drums. The Melvins’ influence on Nirvana was therefore not just musical. It was practical, cultural, human and even logistical. The Melvins introduced Cobain and Novoselic to American hardcore-punk, offered them an alternative model of heavy rock, brought them into the Northwest underground scene and even ended up indirectly contributing to Dave Grohl’s entry into the band.
When Kurt Cobain decided to associate his name with the Melvins’ major debut, “Houdini” in 1993, he also did it to give something back to a band that had played a huge role in his musical and personal formation. This is probably the most significant detail in the entire story. Cobain, in the last years of his life, distanced himself from many people and many realities of the grunge scene, but he never denied the Melvins.
