OK, so it would have been cooler if John Lennon had fronted Nirvana last night. (Actually, it would have been cooler if Kurt Cobain had fronted Nirvana last night, but I digress.)
We gotta admit it: our hopes and expectations were pretty damn low when we heard “the cute Beatle” would be filling in for the late Cobain during Wednesday night’s Nirvana “reunion” at the 12/12/12 Concert to benefit victims of Hurricane Sandy. Thoughts of Macca wailing “Rape Me” had us a bit nervous, although we could envision a hearty “Helter Skelter.”
Surprise! Macca and the Nirvana dudes – drummer Dave Grohl, bassist Krist Novaselic and guitarist Pat Smear – hit it out of the ballpark. They even introduced a brand new song. And it’s a good song. Very “Helter Skelter”-ish.
Side note 1: Who would ever have imagined that a member of the pioneering L.A. hardcore band Germs (in this case, Smear) would one day share a stage with a member of the Beatles?
Side note 2: Another quirky Germs/Beatles connection occurred when Germs frontman Darby Crash committed suicide by drug overdose on December 7, 1980. Few remember his death, as our friend and former colleague Scott Becker pointed out on Facebook, because it’s been overshadowed in music history by the murder of John Lennon the following day.
Side note 3: All this means that together, the band that played this song last night has been rocked by two suicides and one murder.
Life is strange.
- Photo illustration courtesy of Death and Taxes magazine
Related Stories
This article appears in Dec 12-18, 2012.
That’s odd. I think of Paul as “the musically talented Beatle”.
@John: You’re not my sister.
If my second-hand cocktail-party knowledge of literary theory is worth anything, the critic Harold Bloom has suggested that artists somehow deal with a threateningly strong influence by disguising it behind a less strong and therefore less threatening one. I submit that Paul McCartney was the true agonistic influence on Kurt Cobain, and John Lennon a less threatening and more superficial disguising influence.
“About a Girl” would bear that out, Tom.
John Lennon did not die December 7, 1980. He died the following night.
I recall hearing about or reading about the fact that Kurt Cobain was a beatlemaniac and that they constantly had to get him to leave Lennon song alone so they could practice or record Nirvana songs.
You are absolutely right, Eric. Silly error. I can tell you WHERE I was when John Lennon was murdered (working in the reserve room at Joyner Library on the campus of East Carolina University), but in failing to double check the date, I got it wrong. It has been corrected in the story above. Thanks for pointing that out to us.