When Metallica went on tour with Guns N’ Roses in 1992, they had reached out to and offered for Nirvana to open for them, but Kurt Cobain said no.
In a new conversation with NME, Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett is asked about that Guns N’ Roses tour and if there was a band that had turned down an offer to be an opener. Hammett names Nirvana, and then goes into a story regarding a conversation between him and the late Kurt Cobain.
“I had to make the phone call to Kurt [Cobain] to talk to him about the possibility of joining our tour and he just went on and on about how he just didn’t like what Guns N’ Roses stood for and I said to him: ‘Just go out there and represent Nirvana – just play the show and then that’s it’. I pleaded with him, but he just wasn’t having it. So there you have it. It would have been great if Nirvana was part of that tour – but you know [the actual opening act] Faith No More were great as well.”
Hammet continues:
“When we played Seattle on the ‘The Black Album’ tour, I remember calling Kurt to invite him to the show and he said to me: ‘Are you guys going to play ‘Whiplash? That’s my favourite Metallica song!’. When he came to the show, he was in the snakepit [an area onstage] with Courtney Love and every time he walked by, he tried to get my attention but my head was somewhere else.
“He was great. I became friends with him right when the first Nirvana album [1989’s ‘Bleach’] came out before people were even calling it grunge, and it’s so sad when I think back to all the guy wanted to do was play guitar and write songs and sing and somehow that all got destroyed for him.”
Holy shit, can you imagine a concert that included both Metallica and Nirvana? That would have been fucking incredible! We would have loved to have seen that bill. What issues do you think Kurt had with Guns N’ Roses? What do you make of his response to Hammett?