Once quoted as saying “I hate Paul McCartney”, it may come as a surprise that Kurt Cobain once recorded a cover of McCartney’s Beatles song And I Love Her. The track featured on the soundtrack to Brett Morgen’s recent documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, discovered by Morgen on one of the hundreds of random audiotapes that he was given access to during the making of the film.
Coinciding with the documentary’s DVD release will be a complete solo album of previously unheard material from Cobain. The cover of And I Love Her is the first track to be unleashed.
Unsurprisingly, Cobain transposes the tiki-tinged original to a suitably grunge, melancholic dirge. A gritty, DIY tape recording, and set against a somber key, the croaking vocals feel like the precursor to tracks like Heart Shaped Box and Something In The Way. But even Cobain’s inherent angst can’t quite smother the pop glitter of McCartney’s original, the sentiment creeping through in a slightly eery melding of grunge and a good old fashioned love song.
According to Morgen “Nobody in Kurt’s life — not his management, wife, bandmates — had ever heard his Beatles thing,” The latest artefact to fuel the unabated fascination with Kurt Cobain, And I Love Her is just one more piece of the puzzle. Listen to the track in full, available to stream on Spotify.