Mark Lanegan “co-wrote” Nirvana’s ‘Something In The Way’
A new book has revealed that Mark Lanegan “co-wrote” Nirvana’s closing ‘Nevermind’ track ‘Something In The Way’.
An excerpt from the new book Lanegan featuring former Queens Of The Stone Age bandmate Nick Oliveri claims that the late Screaming Trees frontman helped write lyrics for the track with Kurt Cobain, which went uncredited.
“Mark said he wrote some lyrics on ‘Something In The Way’ with Kurt on ‘Nevermind’,” Oliveri told author Greg Prato via Consequence. “But Kurt had played on some of Mark’s solo stuff, ‘The Winding Sheet’.
“So, instead of getting paid, they just did this thing where, ‘Hey man, I added a lyric on your song and you added a lyric on my song. Let’s just call it even. Whatever happens, happens.’ Little did Mark know, if he would have had publishing on ‘Something In The Way’ on Nevermind, he would have had a lot of money. I remember him kicking himself in the butt a little bit about that – ‘If I had that ‘Something In The Way’ publishing…’”
Elsewhere in the book, Lanegan’s Screaming Trees bandmate Gary Lee Conner recalled how Courtney Love once offered the band the then-unreleased Nirvana song ‘You Know You’re Right’ following Cobain’s death.
“When we were working on songwriting for [1996 album] ‘Dust’, during that time, Mark is like, ‘Courtney wants us to do a song,'” Conner said. “And it was that song – ‘You Know You’re Right’ [a then-unreleased Nirvana song]. So, I got a tape of it and we learned it. We never recorded it. But we learned it without Mark, and Mark came down to sing it…and he couldn’t. He changed his mind. And that was the end of it.”
Conner added: “But who knows? We could have had a big hit with Kurt’s song. [Laughs] I’d imagine it would have been a pretty big deal – in ’95 or ’96 to release a cover of an unknown Nirvana song. I don’t know. That was the idea. But I don’t know if it was the idea of capitalising on Kurt … although we could have used the money.”
The song was eventually released as a single from Nirvana’s 2002 self-titled compilation.
Back in 2020 Lanegan told NME that Nirvana remain “just as vital today” as they were in those early days.
Lanegan died at the age of 57 last February.
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Damian Jones
NME
