The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions took place last night (April 12) in Brooklyn, N.Y., and the biggest story amongst niceties from KISS and the inductions of Cat Stevens, Linda Rondstat, Peter Gabriel and more, was the female-fronted reunion of Nirvana and the pleasantries exchanged between Kurt Cobain's widow Courtney Love and the surviving band members.
R.E.M. frontman and friend of the '90s, Michael Stipe inducted Nirvana, telling the massive audience that the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" band managed to capture lightning in a bottle, expressing they were able to blend something unique together and show it to the world.
Soon after the touching tribute from Stipe, the surviving members of Nirvana and Cobain's family took to the stage for a nine-minute acceptance speech. Dave Grohl paid tribute to the four Nirvana drummers who came before him as well as the punk rock scene of Washington, D.C., in the '80s and his family, who "didn't mind that [he] listened to f---ing Slayer."
Bassist Krist Novoselic gave a much shorter tribute, thanking the late Cobain, as well as the producers and record labels that helped to launch Nirvana to mega-stardom in the early 1990s.
The biggest story of the acceptance speeches was not Wendy O'Connor, Cobain's mother, calling her deceased son an angel (though that was incredibly touching), but when Courtney Love effectively buried the hatchet with the members of Nirvana, giving meaningful hugs to Pat Smear, Novoselic and even Grohl, who she has notably feuded with in the recent past. She kept her comments short, just wishing that Cobain had been at the ceremony.
With the lack of a lead singer in the world, Nirvana's performance was a question - how to fill in the spot of the irreplaceable Kurt Cobain? Smartly, the surviving members opted for not one, two or three, but FOUR female singers to try and fill Cobain's shoes.
The performance started out with Joan Jett and Nirvana with "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (of course) and gave the most solid performance of the night. Soon, Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon performed "Aneurysm," followed by Annie Clark with "Lithium" and Lorde on "All Apologies."
Watch videos of the performances below, via Stereogum:
