The Nirvana song they almost butchered on ‘MTV Unplugged’: “These people are going to have to wait”
By the time Nirvana got to work on MTV Unplugged, people still knew them as one of the loudest voices in hard rock. Their album Nevermind had catapulted them to stardom, and while there were a handful of downtempo tunes on the record, there was no way that people thought of them as the first act to turn things down a notch. When they walked into that New York studio to cut a live session, everything fell into place, which is a miracle considering how ‘Pennyroyal Tea’ had started.
Before talking about the performance, it takes a massive amount of guts for someone of Nirvana’s calibre to even do this kind of show. They were well into the tour for In Utero at this point, and going to one city after another was already starting to make Kurt Cobain incredibly uneasy, which usually resulted in him taking anything he could to relieve his stomach pain.
Whereas most bands would plan out their setlist days in advance, Cobain thought it would be a good idea to give their fans a unique experience. Instead of just copying their live set on acoustic instruments, what we got was an eclectic mix of Nirvana rarities like ‘Something in the Way’ and ‘On a Plain’ as well as a handful of covers of artists like David Bowie and bringing out the Meat Puppets to perform a few songs.
During rehearsal, though, Cobain could never get through ‘Pennyroyal Tea’ without complaining about how everything sounded. Sure, they had played the number countless times live, but there are a lot of things that boatloads of distortion can fix that isn’t exactly going to work when everything is unplugged.
In the middle of one of the rehearsals, the run-through of the song as a full band resulted in guitarist Pat Smear getting the harmony line out of tune every time he played. There are moments when he turns away from the mic, but one of the producers is eventually brought in. He suggests that Dave Grohl should play the guitar part while Smear works on his vocal line, only for that to fall apart again when layers of feedback start.
Despite not rehearsing it again, Cobain found the ideal solution by suggesting during the filming, “Am I going to do this by myself? I can try it in the normal key, and if it sounds bad, these people are just going to have to wait.” Although there’s not much for Cobain to work with on this version, hearing him singing with no adornment whatsoever is actually a far better move than just playing a downtempo version of the song.
After all, the track is about someone who’s not in control of their own internal struggles, and hearing one person crying out in pain sends the message a lot better. That doesn’t mean that Cobain was prone to a few problems as well, eventually drifting offkey before going into the third verse and anchoring himself again once the next chord rings out.
There are numerous highlights from Nirvana’s performance that night, but ‘Pennyroyal Tea’ marks a real turning point in the setlist. Everyone knew that Nirvana had the capability to deliver an acoustic show, but the minute that Cobain played by himself, this wasn’t just another show. This was an art project that was happening right in front of everyone’s eyes.