Krist Novoselic discussed the surviving members of Nirvana reuniting to record the Grammy winning “Cut Me Some Slack” with Paul McCartney in 2012 in a new Bass Player interview.
“Dave [Grohl] sent me an email asking if I wanted to play with Paul McCartney in L.A., and I said, Dude, I’ll walk there from Washington if I have to. So I flew down and we were standing around figuring out what to do, and I kept thinking, Please don’t make me play bass, please don’t make me play bass. That’s like being asked to do karate with Bruce Lee—you’re going to get your ass kicked. Yep, I’m going boxing. Who’s your sparring partner? Muhammad Ali. Good luck with that! So of course he asked me to play bass. Paul had this slide guitar that he was playing, and Dave was playing drums, but it wasn’t working for us. Then I realized we were playing in D, so I did the old grunge trick and I drop-tuned my bass to D. I played some riffs, and boom! Paul got into it, Pat Smear was feeling it, and Dave laid down some serious grooves. Then Paul shot me a riff and I shot him a riff and everything started clicking perfectly. And we were suddenly a band!”
“Paul stopped everything and said it dawned on him that he was part of a Nirvana reunion, and he was right because Dave, Pat [who had toured with Nirvana], and I hadn’t played like that for years. Then I got really sentimental. We had the old band back together now, and we had this cool left-handed guitarist, who was actually Paul McCartney, and he was doing vocals. I had to pinch myself. We ended up winning a Grammy for that, too, which was “Cut Me Some Slack” [McCartney/Grohl/Novoselic/Smear, Sound City: Reel to Reel Soundtrack, 2012]. And then we played live at Madison Square Garden for the Hurricane Sandy benefit on 12/12/12, and there was speculation that Nirvana was reuniting, with Paul taking over for Kurt. It was just a lot of fun. It was creative and compelling.”
