There’s been a lot of fuss ever since the surviving members of Nirvana reunited and performed with Paul McCartney at 12.12.12: The Concert for Sandy Relief and Saturday Night Live. Together the four-piece played a new co-written song titled Cut Me Some Slack, which appears on Sound City – Reel to Reel, the soundtrack for Dave Grohl’s upcoming documentary.
Some people were stoked to see Nirvana together again while others despaired and were relieved when Grohl said there would be no Nirvana reunion tour. Whatever your position, the story of how McCartney, Grohl, Pat Smear and Krist Novoselic got together is still an intriguing one.
Until now there have been only slithers of insight about how Cut Me Some Slack was written: a cryptic message from Grohl revealed the song title, Novoselic tweeted about the collaboration and McCartney said onstage that to his astonishment he found himself in the middle of a Nirvana reunion jam.
Now Novoselic has kindly revealed the entire tale of how Cut Me Some Slack came into being. Posting the story on his blog page This Is Krist Novoselic, Novoselic recounts in detail his experience of playing with Smear and Grohl for the first time since 1994 and jamming with McCartney.
Read: Krist Novoselic – What A Great Week
It was a blast playing the 12.12.12 Sandy benefit show and Saturday Night Live with Dave Grohl, Pat Smear and Paul McCartney. I really liked jamming with Pat and Dave again — and what a great experience playing with Paul!
The collaboration came out of the Sound CIty film that was produced and directed by Dave. He asked me if I wanted to play with him, Pat and Paul? I said YES! It was a wonderful day — Paul came in with this cigar box guitar and started playing some mean slide on it. He said it was in a “D”. Hearing that, Grunge instincts took over my left hand and I dropped the E on the bass to D. Pat and Dave got into it and the tune took shape. Paul flashed a riff and we picked it up. I busted another one out and everyone picked it up. Things started coming together.
It was so exciting to play with Paul. I became seized with thoughts, for I hadn’t played like that with Pat or Dave since the last Nirvana show in 1994. Wow, it was emotionally and musically heavy! Some other things brought me back; there was a Lefty on guitar who was a heck of a songwriter. Anyway, words can’t really describe it and I returned to the task at hand. A new song was born! And that’s about it. That’s all it is — a new song by some players who have doing it for a while.
The Sound City film is about people coming together to make music — and I feel that’s what we did. The Sandy Benefit was a lot of fun and it felt good to participate in a good cause. Don’t have any crazy backstage stories — Pat and Dave and I had this little corner of Madison Square Garden to hang out in. Except for Paul and his band, I didn’t see any of the other big acts backstage. We got there around 5:30pm and waited until after midnight to play.
SNL was a blast. Martin Short was hilarious! My only disappointment was they actually cut a great skit from the broadcast. It was a great among greats so I guess that’s what we get. (Watch it here!) I think that was our best performance of “Cut Me Some Slack” for the whole week.
