Nirvana’s First ‘SNL’ Appearance Was Nearly a ‘Titanic-Level Disaster’
There’s an insane amount of competition for the best-ever musical performance on Saturday Night Live. But if we crowned an all-time champ for best SNL mid-week promo by a musical guest, the winner has to be Nirvana. Their profoundly awkward team-up with NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley was one for the ages.
Nirvana was a seasoned SNL veteran by the time the group played the 1993 season premiere with Barkley. But when the band appeared for the first time in January 1992, the result was almost a “Titanic-level disaster,” according to drummer Dave Grohl in the new documentary Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music. The explanation for why the appearance was so harrowing is simple: Pure fear.
“I was absolutely fucking terrified,” Grohl admitted.
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Nirvana wasn’t yet a huge name when the band made its SNL debut — in fact, Lorne Michaels had never heard of them. That changed when producer David Geffen called in late 1991 to persuade Michaels to book the group. “He said, ‘I don’t know what’s happening, but last week they sold 60,000 records and this week, they sold 140,000. So something’s happening.”
Grohl reminisced about the band’s first appearance, including the commercial break before their first song when guitars, drums and speakers were given a last-minute check. Then everyone was instructed to get quiet so host Rob Morrow could deliver his introduction: “Ladies and gentlemen… Nirvana.”
“The room gets dead silent,” Grohl remembered. “Your heart is racing, and you’re thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m gonna faint. I’m gonna puke on live television. I’m gonna die.’”
Whenever Grohl was nervous about a performance, “I beat the shit out of the drums, twice as hard,” he confessed. That adrenaline response was amped up when the band launched into “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on SNL. “I was hitting the drums 10 times harder than I’ve ever hit them before in my life. By the first verse, I had snapped my snare stick in half. Which is not good.”
General rule of thumb for rock and roll: You need sticks to play the drums. And Grohl had destroyed one of his only 20 seconds into the song.
“There was one break right before the first drum roll, I think, where I grabbed another stick really quick and busted into it,” Grohl said. “It was so close to being, like, Titanic-level disaster.”
Instead, the performance helped launch Nirvana into superstardom. While Michaels may never have heard of the band, Adam Sandler’s Gen X friends sure had. He was “getting more calls than you ever got before from friends in my hometown, just like, ‘What’s he like? What’s Kurt like?’”
Jimmy Fallon never forgot it either. “Three people making that sound,” he marveled. “They probably blew so many speakers.”
And at least one drumstick.
