If there were ever two seminal figures in the '90s grunge scene, they undoubtedly be Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age). While Cobain's life was cut short at a young age, the two musicians shared a strong bond both musically and personally, as Lanegan noted in his autobiography.
But in a new oral history of Lanegan's life, another close friend reveals that he may have had a hand in penning one of Nirvana's most memorable tracks.
In Lanegan, which is being independently published by author Greg Prato, former Queens of the Stone Age bassist Nick Oliveri said, "Mark said he wrote some lyrics on 'Something in the Way' with Kurt on Nevermind. But Kurt had played on some of Mark's solo stuff, The Winding Sheet. So, instead of getting paid, they just did this thing where, 'Hey man, I added a lyric on your song and you added a lyric on my song. Let's just call it even. Whatever happens, happens.'
"Little did Mark know, if he would have had publishing on 'Something in the Way' on Nevermind, he would have had a lot of money. I remember him kicking himself in the butt a little bit about that – 'If I had that 'Something in the Way' publishing…'"
Elsewhere in Lanegan, the singer's former Screaming Trees bandmate Gary Lee Conner told Prato, "When we were working on songwriting for Dust [1996], during that time, Mark is like, 'Courtney [Love] wants us to do a song… And it was that song — 'You Know You're Right' [a then-unreleased Nirvana song]. So, I got a tape of it and we learned it. We never recorded it. But we learned it without Mark, and Mark came down to sing it… and he couldn't. He changed his mind. And that was the end of it.
"But who knows?" Conner reflected. "We could have had a big hit with Kurt's song. [Laughs] I'd imagine it would have been a pretty big deal – in '95 or '96 to release a cover of an unknown Nirvana song. I don't know. That was the idea. But I don't know if it was the idea of capitalizing on Kurt … although we could have used the money."
