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A little over one month after this programme was broadcast, Nirvana would head into Pachyderm Studios, somewhere in a forest in Minnesota to record their follow-up album to the colossally successful Nevermind. Although it meant nothing to me at the time, it was arguably the most eagerly awaited album of 1993. If people were looking for clues as to what the record might be like, they could have done worse than to listen carefully to the band’s holding operation compilation, Incesticide, which was released by Geffen Records shortly before Christmas 1992 and gathered together a collection of unreleased recordings, live session tracks and some previously released recordings which pre-dated the group’s major label days.
The compilation included the BBC sessions which the band had recorded in 1990 for John Peel and for Mark Goodier, the following year. Been a Son was one for those who had been backing the band in its earliest days. Originally recorded for their 1989 Blew EP, the song garnered attention as evidence of the pop sensibilities which Kurt Cobain would showcase more widely over the next two years. Although, people spoke about the track’s Rubber Soul harmonies, it sounds to me to be more widely nudging towards a thrashier version of The Who’s late 1965/early to mid 1966 sound. Krist Novoselic contributes a bass solo and the lyrics subvert those of I’m a Boy. Whereas, Pete Townshend wrote about a boy forced into dresses and make-up by his determined mother, Cobain was singing about his father, Don’s, attitude to Kurt’s younger sister, Kim and his belief that he would have preferred another boy for a child, not least in the chilling couplet: She should have died when she was born/She should have worn a crown of thorns.
Kurt had not been shy about referencing family in his songs, not least in their single, Sliver. It was territory he would return to on some of the songs on In Utero, such as Serve the Servants and Radio Friendly Unit Shifter. However, those were for future Peel playlists. In the present, he happily played the version of Been a Son which Nirvana recorded for Mark Goodier in November 1991, citing it as one of his favourite Nirvana tracks.
Video courtesy of Virtual Jukebox.
Lyrics are copyright of their authors.
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