Krist Novoselic recently recalled how Nirvana ended up making music and performing with Beatles legend Paul McCartney. He further noted how playing bass in the presence of the legendary Beatles felt like sparring with Muhammad Ali.
Krist Novoselic talks about Paul McCartney
The Nirvana bassist spoke with Bass Player in a recently published interview about how he still was jittery with excitement when Dave Grohl invited him to write and record the song “Cut Me Some Slack” with Paul McCartney, which they premiered during Nirvana’s one-off reunion featuring McCartney and the Foo Fighters’ Pat Smear at 2012’s “12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief”.
Novoselic said:
“Dave had sent me an email asking if I wanted to record 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 guitar, 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!'”
He went on:
“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. We had the old band back together, 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 song, too.”
