Oliver: Nirvana - Molly's Lips [Live] (2 February 1992)

"I finished last night's programme, at 2 o'clock, with a rather obscure track by Nirvana and here's another one."

Nirvana's cover of The Vaselines's song, Molly's Lips, got Peel's 2/2/92 show off to a suitably turbo-charged start and it's that out-of-the-blocks feel that sees it included here.  It's all about the energy and it has to be because they miss out a lyrical couplet from the original, namely:

She said she'd take me anywhere
As long as I'm good and clean.
(Lyrics written by Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee)

which would have been right up Cobain's street one would think.  Nirvana covered this and another Vaselines track, Son of a Gun, as part of their second Peel Session in 1990.

Although the song suggests a number of potential interpretations including abduction and stalking, it was actually written about a Scottish actress called Molly Weir, who played Hazel McWitch in Rentaghost. Weir was the embodiment of motherly Scottish charm, and she inspired at least one other tribute song.  I'd like to have seen Nirvana have a try at covering that.  The fact that Nirvana were singing about Molly Weir also introduces a neat variation on the Six Degrees of Separation game:

Jim Carrey>Courtney Love>Kurt Cobain>Eugene Kelly>Molly Weir>Michael Staniforth (Timothy Claypole in Rentaghost).

Peel wasn't to know it but with this being the third non-Nevermind track he had played in his last three shows after Sliver on 25/1/92 and Beeswax on 1/2/92, he was inadvertently A & Ring Nirvana's decision to take control of the myriad bootlegs and compilations of their off-cuts, rarities and pre-Dave Grohl recordings that were popping up in Nevermind's wake, by gathering together the best of them and putting them out on an official release called Incesticide.

The Vaselines' original puts me in find of the fascinating irritatingness of The Lovely Eggs.


Videos courtesy of Marty Tly (Nirvana) & Wonder Muddle (The Vaselines).