“I’m assuming he would not have approved of us”: Rivers Cuomo thinks Kurt Cobain would not have been a Weezer fan

Nirvana may rank among Rivers Cuomo’s “favourite bands of all time,” but the Weezer frontman reckons that the admiration wouldn’t have been mutual — at least on the part of Kurt Cobain.

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In a recent NME feature, Cuomo looks back on an interesting chapter from Weezer’s early days that saw the band performing at small, semi-secret venues under the pseudonym Goat Punishment. Besides covering Oasis songs, the band also once played a show consisting solely of Nirvana tunes.

Asked if Courtney Love’s approval of their covers would have meant a lot to his Kurt Cobain-obsessed teenage self, Cuomo replies: “Yeah. Courtney is a real icon to our generation, and feels like our big sister.”

“You really want somebody like that to approve of what you’re doing and Kurt didn’t live long enough to hear us – he died a month before our Blue album came out [in April 1994],” the singer explains.

“But I’m assuming he would not have approved of us. But that Courtney does is pretty great.”

According to Cuomo, Weezer’s music didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would appeal to the late grunge legend: “It seemed like the music he looked up to was rougher around the edges, more punk, and less commercial,” he says.

Also in the interview, Cuomo takes a moment to reflect on Blue, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.

“When we released the Blue album, I definitely felt like it was the greatest album of all time. I figured there was a chance I was wrong, but to me, it was my favourite album of all time and I assumed other people would feel the same way,” he says.

The musician also credits the record’s enduring influence to its “singable, beautiful melodies, heavy guitars and important-feeling lyrics that don’t take themselves too seriously.”