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TL;DR:

  • Kurt Cobain wanted Nirvana’s Nevermind to be like Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin II.
  • He also wanted it to be like the Sex Pistol’s Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.
  • Nevermind stayed on the Billboard 200 for well over one year.
Led Zeppelin in black-and-white
Led Zeppelin | Chris Walter / Contributor

Nirvana’s Nevermind is one of the defining classic rock albums of the 1990s. During an interview, Kurt Cobain explained how Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin II inspired Nevermind. In addition, he discussed some of the other albums that inspired Nevermind.

Kurt Cobain contrasted Nirvana’s musical output with Pearl Jam’s

During a 1994 interview with Rolling Stone, Cobain was critical of Pearl Jam. He was then asked if he empathized with Pearl Jam having to put out a follow-up to their breakthrough album. 

“Yeah, I do,” he said. “Except I’m pretty sure that they didn’t go out of their way to challenge their audience as much as we did with this record.” The album in question was Nirvana’s In Utero, which was much more abrasive than their previous album, Nevermind. 

Kurt Cobain said ‘Led Zeppelin II’ and Aerosmith inspired Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’

Subsequently, Cobain discussed his band’s artistic process. “It just kind of pisses me off to know that we work really hard to make an entire album’s worth of songs that are as good as we can make them,” he said. “I’m gonna stroke my ego by saying that we’re better than a lot of bands out there. 

“What I’ve realized is that you only need a couple of catchy songs on an album, and the rest can be b******* Bad Company rip-offs, and it doesn’t matter,” he opined. “If I was smart, I would have saved most of the songs off Nevermind and spread them out over a 15-year period. But I can’t do that.”

Cobain said Led Zeppelin II and other famous albums inspired him to make Nevermind killer track after killer track. “All the albums I ever liked were albums that delivered a great song, one after another: Aerosmith’s Rocks, the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks …, Led Zeppelin II, Back in Black, by AC/DC,” he said.

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How ‘Nevermind’ and ‘Led Zeppelin II’ performed on the charts in the United States

Nirvana’s Nevermind reached No. 1 in the United States or two weeks. The album lasted on the Billboard 200 for 616 weeks in total. It became the group’s most successful LP by far, and their only album to last on the Billboard 200 for more than a year.

Led Zeppelin II reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for seven weeks. It lasted on the chart for a total of 117 weeks. Aside from In Through The Out Door, none of the band’s albums lasted as long at the top of the chart.

Nirvana’s connection to Led Zeppelin goes beyond Cobain’s comment. Nirvana drawing inspiration from Led Zeppelin helped the “Zeppelin sound” become relevant for Generation X.

Nirvana are one of America’s great bands but they wouldn’t be the same without British groups like Led Zeppelin.

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