Music

Unreleased Kurt Cobain song will be his first unheard material in a decade

by Mark Teo

March 9, 2015

A new 12-minute long Kurt Cobain song will appear on the Montage of Heck documentary.

It’s hard to believe that decades after his death, we keep on finding unreleased Kurt Cobain material. “You Know You’re Right,” for one, was unveiled for 2002’s Nirvana compilation. Then, we learned that Cobain was recording tracks for a solo album with Pat Smear and Eric Erlandson, which resulted in the demo track “Do Re Mi.” And now, we’ve learned that an unreleased 12-minute track will appear on Montage of Heck, the Cobain-centric documentary that’s been approved by his remaining family.

Brett Morgen, the film’s director, took to Twitter to announce that the yet-named song will appear on the film’s soundtrack.

Listening to a mind blowing 12 minute acoustic Cobain unheard track that will be heard on the montage of heck soundtrack. Hello @truefalse
— Brett Morgen (@brettmorgen) March 7, 2015

At present, there’s no telling where the song’s sourced from. It could, like “Do Re Mi,” be taken from his solo sessions—a likely scenario, considering that Cobain demoed songs in the period between In Utero and his death. Erlandson, his bandmate for the solo project and Hole’s guitarist, claimed there was an album’s worth of rough recordings, and said they were akin to his White Album—and in that context, a 12-minute song makes sense.

“[Kurt] was headed in a direction that was really cool. It would have been his White Album,” Erlandson told Fuse in 2013. “That’s really what he was going towards, a solo album but working with different people. I was really excited about some of the stuff he was working on. I got to see him play it in front of me.

That’s why I was really sad [when he died]. I was like, ‘Oh man, not only are you cutting off a life, but a message to the world, a musical path is just left with … Bush and all this other stuff [laughs]. He was cut short. Who knows where the music would have gone.

If we’re lucky, the track on Montage of Heck‘s soundtrack is a step towards hearing his demos. The film, meanwhile, has already popped up on the film-festival circuit to wonderful reviews—although the doc was approved by his family and calls Cobain’s daughter, Frances Bean, its executive director, Morgen reportedly was given access to the Cobain archives and, importantly, the final edit. Critics have claimed that it’s comprehensive, touching and surprisingly hilarious—colour us intrigued.

Here’s a review of Montage of Heck from Sundance.