“He loves you guys. He doesn’t like anybody, but he loves you guys”: Joe Perry on the time he met Kurt Cobain – and Aerosmith’s unlikely influence on Nirvana

Nirvana and Aerosmith are two bands that would not necessarily be seen as natural bedfellows. Indeed, the grunge rockers are often positioned as the force that obliterated the ’80s rock and hair metal scene.

Now, in a recent interview with Classic Rock magazine (via Louder), Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry has discussed the time he met Cobain backstage after a show in Seattle in the early ’90s.

“He was pretty quiet. He just wanted to hang out,” recalls Perry. “He came in the dressing room with Courtney [Love] and kind of just sat around with us. He was a normal guy.

“When he went off to the bathroom, Courtney – who was very verbal – said: ‘He loves you guys. He doesn’t like anybody, but he loves you guys.‘ I had nothing but respect for the guy. He was an amazing songwriter and performer, and to hear that was great.”

Love’s reported comment tallies with what we know of the Nirvana man’s musical tastes. Cobain included the band’s 1976 album Rocks in his top 50 albums of all time – a list that was documented and reproduced in the Kurt Cobain Journals book.

He also named an early Nirvana demo Aero Zeppelin, noting – again, in his journals  – that the song was not about the groups themselves, but was named in homage to “a couple of our favorite masturbatory ’70s rock acts”.

However, Cobain’s feelings towards both of those bands were more complex than Love – perhaps being a little diplomatic – appears to have let on in her conversation with Perry.

In 1993, in a candid interview with legendary UK music journalist Jon Savage, Cobain revealed he’d later grown annoyed with the classic rockers’ lyrical content.

“I listened to Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, and I really did enjoy some of the melodies they'd written,” Cobain told Savage.

“It took me so many years to realize that a lot of it had to do with sexism. The way that they just wrote about their dicks and having sex. I was just starting to understand what really was pissing me off so much, those last couple of years of high school.

“And then punk rock was exposed and then it all came together. It just fit together like a puzzle. It expressed the way I felt socially and politically. Just everything, you know? It was the anger that I felt. The alienation.”

So there it is – it may not always have been a straight case of hero worship, but Aerosmith (and ’Zeppelin) ultimately shaped the Nirvana sound in more ways than one.

Speaking of hero worship, Perry took on one of his own icon’s tracks when he performed Jeff Beck signature tune Beck’s Bolero in New York, recently.