While Nirvana is highly regarded and seen as a major player in the grunge music scene, frontman Kurt Cobain is not universally considered to be a monster guitar player. Joe Satriani, who is an excellent player in his own right, think’s Cobain deserves more credit for his skills.
“I was very happy with those Nirvana records,” Satriani told Classic Rock in a recent interview. “He was a great guitar player. You go back and look at Nirvana clips, and you realize this guy is playing everything he’s supposed to play. He’s not looking at what he’s playing, so obviously he really knows the instrument.
“And he’s playing with one of the greatest drummers of all time [Dave Grohl], so that wouldn’t have worked if he was not a good guitarist.”
When asked if the decline of guitar solos during the grunge music movement affected the way he decided to play guitar at the time, Satriani replied:
“I didn’t pay any attention to that, I guess. [My 1992 album] The Extremist came out as my love letter to the classic rock era, so it was a throwback record anyway, but when I emerged from the studio I realized, ‘Oh, it’s all Nirvana and Soundgarden.’”
Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan shared a similar sentiment about Cobain in a recent interview, telling Wall of Sound:
“To people outside of our world, they found it very confusing. Because, especially in the ’90s, if you were in the metal lane, you were in the metal lane. Now, it’s understood that people [can be] cross-genre artists. But back then, it was like, alternative [musician] playing heavy guitar with solos? Heretical…”
“You know, Kurt Cobain would play taking-the-piss solos. It’s all good because he was a great guitar player, but that, sort of, was the mindset. I was like, ‘I want to be Yngwie!’ I didn’t care what any alternative person thought. I just wanted to play as fast as possible.”
