Good news! The rumors that Nirvana was reforming with Paul McCartney on vocals turned out to be true! Early yesterday morning, the Guardian published a story that the best band in the world was going to reform for one night only with the singer of the other best band in the world. We freaked out, and checked a bunch of other sources online to confirm, because journalism. Then, last night, at the 12-12-12 Hurricane Sandy benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, Sir Paul McCartney was indeed joined onstage by Dave Grohl, Krist Noveselic, and Nirvana touring guitarist Pat Smear, and they did indeed play music together.
Bad news! They only performed one song! Worse news! That one song was not “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” or “Heart Shaped Box,” or even something relatively safe like “Come As You Are.” Instead, the mutant beast of rawk that is PaulVana performed a new song entitled “Cut Me Some Slack.” It was fine in an “Old Musicians Who Are Good At Their Jobs Doing Their Jobs Well” sort of way, but Nirvana and Paul McCartney performing one non-Nirvana song last night counts as a bait-and-switch in our book. A bait-and-switch for charity, but a bait-and-switch nonetheless.
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Is it almost better that they didn’t take this unholy union to its logical conclusion and do an hour of Nirvana songs with Paul standing in for Kurt Cobain? Maybe. Sometimes it’s better to let a great band such as Nirvana stay in the past. That’s not what we’re taking issue with. What we’re bummed about is we expected, if nothing else, a performance that would give the world something to talk about. Not Paul McCartney’s grizzled yawp screaming “Mama” while Dave Grohl drummed extra hard in the background for five minutes.
