Nirvana

Before the explosion of grunge, which would turn Nirvana and Screaming Trees into two of the flagship names of the Seattle scene, Kurt Cobain and Mark Lanegan tried to make an album together. It was 1989, and that project, destined to remain unfinished, was called “The Jury”. It remains one of the greatest “lost albums” in rock history.

The idea came about right after Nirvana's first American tour. Cobain and Lanegan, bound by deep mutual admiration, started writing original songs with the intention of recording an album for Sub Pop. “Mark and Kurt got together. I think they got drunk or pretty high, wrote a bunch of songs, got excited and went to Jonathan Poneman saying: 'Hey, we want to make an album together!'” producer Jack Endino would later recall.
The recordings were booked at Reciprocal Recording in Seattle with Endino at the desk. The lineup included Krist Novoselic on bass and Mark Pickerel of Screaming Trees on drums. The chosen name was “The Jury”, suggested by Pickerel, while Cobain would have preferred “Lithium”. Endino, amused, nonetheless jotted down “Screaming Nirvana” on the session paperwork.
By the time the band actually got into the studio, though, the project had already changed radically. The original songs had vanished. “When they showed up they told me: 'We tried writing some songs, but we never recorded them and we've forgotten all of them. So we're going to do some Lead Belly songs instead.'” The choice fell on the great American bluesman, adored by both of them. “He was someone both Kurt and I loved, and we used to listen to him together,” Lanegan would recall.

Over the course of just two sessions, four tracks were recorded: “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”, with Lanegan on vocals, “Grey Goose”, which remained instrumental, and “Ain't It A Shame” and “They Hung Him On A Cross”, both sung by Cobain. These would be the only surviving traces of that collaboration.
The enthusiasm, however, faded almost immediately. “In the end we started losing interest pretty quickly, realizing it wasn't on the level of the originals we loved listening to. We told Sub Pop the project probably wasn't going to move forward, and that's when they suggested I make a solo record,” Lanegan would recount.
According to drummer Mark Pickerel, the problem was mostly one of personality. “They were like two middle-schoolers at a party, two wallflowers. It was really frustrating. Neither of them would ever take the initiative and say: 'I'll sing this one' or 'You'd be perfect for the first verse, I'll come in on the chorus and then take the second verse.'”

After a second session, in August 1989, “The Jury” was shelved for good. “We never made an actual decision to abandon it, but everyone got really busy. I had high hopes, I wanted it to become a real band. But apparently it just wasn't meant to be,” Pickerel would say.
Paradoxically, the project's failure marked the beginning of Lanegan's solo career. It was Sub Pop itself, having realized “The Jury” wasn't going anywhere, that suggested he record “The Winding Sheet”, his solo debut released in 1990. Of those sessions, in fact, only “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” made it onto the album, while the other three tracks stayed unreleased until the Nirvana box set “With The Lights Out”, which came out in 2004.

The friendship between Cobain and Lanegan, however, never broke off. The two kept in touch throughout the years of grunge's full-blown explosion, sharing a deep mutual respect. Lanegan had sensed, from the very first Nirvana show he saw, that he was witnessing something unrepeatable. “Nirvana were ready from the very first time I saw them: wonderful songs, wonderful singer, wonderful look, everything about them was wonderful. I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd just witnessed something huge.” Of Cobain, he would say instead: “Kurt looked at me as a kind of older brother. I knew he had something special. After a while, the rest of the world figured it out too.”
In January 1991, Screaming Trees signed to a major label and released “Uncle Anesthesia”, the fifth album of their career, produced by Chris Cornell (Soundgarden). The album gave the band their first entry on the US charts thanks to the single “Bed Of Roses”, which reached No. 23 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart.
A few months later, the Seattle phenomenon exploded for good. On August 27, Pearl Jam arrived with “Ten“, while on September 24 it was “Nevermind” by Nirvana that changed the face of Nineties rock forever. The ensuing wave of success swept up Screaming Trees too, who in 1992 released “Sweet Oblivion”, their most celebrated album. The single “Nearly Lost You”, featured on the soundtrack of Cameron Crowe's film “Singles”, became their signature song, while Cobain chose Lanegan's band as the opening act for some of Nirvana's most important shows, including the Reading and Roskilde festivals.

Behind the success, though, the deep bond between Cobain and Lanegan always remained. Looking back on his friend in his autobiography “Sing Backwards And Weep”, Lanegan would write: “I could have been a better guide for this kid I adored.” According to a story never fully confirmed, on April 5, 1994, the day of his death, Cobain allegedly tried to call him, but Lanegan didn't pick up. That regret would stay with him for the rest of his life. “I will always feel remorse. I was a selfish person who didn't answer his friends' calls, a stubborn addict who would rather have become homeless than accept anyone's help.”
Years later, when Screaming Trees broke up and Lanegan sank into addiction, actually ending up living on the streets of Seattle, it was Courtney Love, Kurt Cobain's widow, who helped him get into rehab. Along with her support, she handed him a note he would never forget: “Kurt loved you and would have wanted to see you alive.”

Years later, Dave Grohl would reveal that “The Winding Sheet” deeply influenced Nirvana's “MTV Unplugged”, which closed with “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” as a tribute to his friend Lanegan. “Kurt admired Lanegan enormously. 'The Winding Sheet' had a huge influence on our Unplugged.”
On February 22, 2022, Mark Lanegan was found dead at his home in Killarney, Ireland; the cause of death was linked to Covid, which he had survived (he had recounted the experience in a book, “Devil in a Coma”) but which had left his body weakened.
What remains is the lingering regret over what could have been: a true meeting of Kurt Cobain and Mark Lanegan, an album written and sung by two of the most intense, tormented voices in Nineties American rock.
Of that lost record, only four recordings survive - enough, though, to hint at the extraordinary potential of a collaboration that never had the time to come to fruition. Ain't it a shame?

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28/06/2026