Former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg discussed Kurt Cobain being unhappy with Courtney Love wanting to record Nirvana’s “Pennyroyal Tea” in a new Yahoo interview. Alternative Nation transcribed his comments.
“First of all, Kurt was very covetous of good songs. He was competitive in that way. Courtney at some point did an acoustic show at the Cafe Largo, I think it was Cafe Largo in Hollywood and she did ‘Pennyroyal Tea;’ this was before In Utero came out and it’s an incredible song and she can certainly sing- can I say shit on this? She could sing the shit out of it.
And the next day Kurt called me and said, ‘Listen, you know Courtney is thinking of recording ‘Pennyroyal Tea’ and don’t encourage that; that’s a Nirvana song. I’m not giving her that song.’ You know, so, first of all, he wanted to keep all the best songs that he wrote for Nirvana. He recognized that great songs were rare.
Secondly, Courtney wrote a lot of great songs after Kurt died. She’s an extremely talented person. And there’s absolutely no trust whatsoever- Kurt was around when they were rehearsing a lot, their rehearsal tapes- I spoke to Eric Erlandson for the book, the guitar player for Hole who was also very close friends with Kurt. And you know he would sometimes rehearse with them, playing bass.
He recommended Scott Litt to mix Live Through This cause he was so happy with what Scott had done on, remixing the singles on In Utero and you know, they were married and played their music for each other but no, Courtney wrote those songs. Courtney wrote ‘Doll Parts.’ If Kurt had written ‘Doll Parts,’ he wouldn’t have let Courtney record it.”
Danny Goldberg just released his new Kurt Cobain book Serving the Servant.
