The Beatles changed the course of music in the 1960s, and Paul McCartney was one of the most important members of the band. His lyrics and musical compositions were crucial, alongside the contributions of John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, in creating some of the most influential records of all time. In the following decades, inspired by what the Fab Four had accomplished, many new movements in Rock and Roll emerged. In the early 90s, it was Grunge that brought the genre back to its basic ideas. Over the years, McCartney has spoken about many of those bands, giving his opinion on Nirvana and the late Kurt Cobain. What is Paul McCartney's opinion on Kurt Cobain and Nirvana Paul McCartney liked Nirvana and also their late singer, guitarist and main songwriter Kurt Cobain, saying his compositions were special. "Oh yeah. They were special. One of the most cool things of recent years was seeing the (2015’s Montage Of Heck) documentary on him and he’s playing 'And I Love Her'. That was out of the blue. If you’d asked me what song of mine Kurt Cobain might know, I don’t think I’d have come up with that one. And he does a great little version of it. I love it, cos it’s got a lot of soul," he told Q magazine in 2016. Curiously, he had already been a fan of the band since they achieved fame in the 1990s and it was actually his son James McCartney who introduced the band to him. He talked about that a couple of years earlier, when he was invited by Dave Grohl to be part of the documentary “Sound City” (2013), which he was making about the historic mixing desk he bought from the studio of the same name after it had closed down and was selling its equipment. He ended up writing and recording the song “Cut Me Some Slack” with Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear, the surviving members of Nirvana. "Dave was making a movie about the Sound City desk, which was a desk where a lot of great records were made on. He bought it and put it in his studio. I knew him, casually as a friend and he said: 'Hey, I'm gonna do this thing, you know. Would you come along and just jam? I said: 'Yeah, sure! What you wanna do?'" Paul McCartney continued: He said: 'I don't know'. So I just got there and I had a new guitar that I have been given by Johnny Depp. So I took it to the studio and we would just make something up. I started playing this guitar which has a really great sound on it. We made a riff, Dave got on the drums, put a beat behind it. Krist, who is the Nirvana bass player, started playing some great bass to it, Pat Smear started playing some guitar. We had this little jam going and I started shouting. I started making up some words (then we structured the song and recorded properly). In the middle of all that I didn't even know I was in the middle of a Nirvana reunion." "I thought I was just playing with a bunch of guys. It was only after I hear them talking, like 'Hey, we haven't done this for like 20 years'. I'm going: 'What are you talking about guys?' I didn't even know. My son was like a crazy fan of theirs, so he turned me on to them. So I remember in his bedroom, playing me 'Lithium' and 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' and some of the early monster hits. So I credit him for really turning me on to them," Paul McCartney said in an interview (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage). The Beatle also said that at the time somebody whispered to him ‘That’s Nirvana. You’re Kurt.’ I couldn’t believe it,” he said. Paul McCartney said it was really powerful to play with the remaining members of Nirvana live https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a8j_LEryAs&list=RD7a8j_LEryAs&start_radio=1&pp=ygURY3V0IG1lIHNvbWUgc2xhY2ugBwE%3D Since Nirvana came to an end after Kurt Cobain’s tragic death in 1994, the remaining members of the band never played together again until they reunited with Paul McCartney. After the song was released, Paul invited them to take part in the “12 12 12” benefit concert for Hurricane Sandy relief at Madison Square Garden in New York. That was the first time they performed live together since then. In the following year they joined him again on stage, this time in Seattle and The Beatle told Rolling Stone at the time that Grohl, Novoselic and Smear were great musicians and it was great to have them playing that night. "We hatched that plan a couple of weeks ago. Dave was going to come up to Seattle with his family. I said to him, 'Do you think there's any chance the guys would fancy (a reunion)?' He said, 'Well, let me ask.' And they fancied it. So we thought, 'Let's go and flip 'em out.' I mean, my band's great but when you augment it with Nirvana, that's greater." He continued: "When you're playing with guys like that, you realize that they've been to the heights of fame. So they're used to it they're not gonna freak. And they're hell of musicians, so we learned everything really quickly. That's what's great about playing with guys like that," Paul McCartney said. Krist Novoselic told Guitar World in 2023 that McCartney liked the basslines he created for the song and recalled at the time people were saying he would replace Cobain in a Nirvana reunion. “There was speculation that Nirvana was reuniting, with Paul taking over for Kurt, but it was just fun. He said he liked my basslines. Paul McCartney said that! You can put that in a pull quote,” he said. During the same conversation that Dave Grohl sent him an e-mail to invite him to be part of the recording of "Cut Me Some Slack" and his answer was: "Dude, I’ll walk there from Washington if I have to.'" The track ended up winning the Grammy Awards for Best Rock Song in 2014. John Lennon was Kurt Cobain's favorite Beatle Interestingly, Kurt Cobain once described his songwriting as a combination between The Beatles and Black Sabbath. He asked engineers to make him sound like John Lennon, who was his favorite Beatle. “John Lennon was definitely my favorite Beatle, hands down. I don’t know who wrote what parts of what Beatles songs, but Paul McCartney embarrasses me. Lennon was obviously disturbed [laughs]. So I could relate to that.” “And from the books I’ve read — and I’m so skeptical of anything I read, especially in Rock books. So I just felt really sorry for him. To be locked up in that apartment. Although he was totally in love with Yoko and his child, his life was a prison. He was imprisoned. It’s not fair. That’s the crux of the problem that I’ve had with becoming a celebrity — the way people deal with celebrities. It needs to be changed; it really does.” “No matter how hard you try, it only comes out like you’re bitching about it. I can understand how a person can feel that way and almost become obsessed with it. But it’s so hard to convince people to mellow out. Just take it easy, have a little bit of respect. We all shit (laughs)," he told Rolling Stone in 1993, just one year before his tragic death at the age of 27. Like The Beatles, Nirvana was also a band that changed the course of Rock and Roll, becoming part of a movement that showed the music scene a new direction to follow.The post Paul McCartney’s opinion on Kurt Cobain and Nirvana appeared first on Rock and Roll Garage.