A Friend Of Kurt Cobain Shared Some Rare, Previously Unreleased Nirvana Demos On YouTube

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John Purkey, who was a close friend of Kurt Cobain, recently shared some extremely rare and unreleased early demos of Nirvana on YouTube. The demos, which Purkey says were given to him by Cobain and until now have been stored in a secure metal box, are a small taste of some of the unreleased material that fans have been craving since Cobain passed away in 1994.

In the first video, Purkey says the band was playing with Melvins drummer Dale Crover at Seattle’s Reciprocal Studios way back in 1988. Another demo was recorded just prior to Nirvana’s debut album Bleach being released in 1989.

On his YouTube channel, Purkey says that on two different occasions he almost became Nirvana’s drummer.

“The first time I turned them down because I was already in another band. Later on, when Chad left the opportunity came up again and I was ready to drop everything. I talked to the guys in Subvert, everybody in Machine knew, I was like, that was it. They needed a drummer, and I’m ready to take the spot,” Purkey revealed.

So two days before he had to go on tour with Subvert, Purkey jammed with them, but didn’t get the call so they ended up going with someone else.

“So I went on tour with Subvert, that was that. It was a downer, I guess I really got my hopes up too. When I talked to Krist, when they first got back and he told me that Chad was leaving the band, instantly I was like, I wanted in the band for sure. But things worked out how they did, and they couldn’t have gotten a more powerful drummer, killer drummer, Dave Grohl.”

Yeah, that Grohl guy did turn out to be pretty good, didn’t he?

Take a listen to the demos Purkey posted as well as some more background on the tapes below…

H/T MXDWN

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