A piece of Kurt Cobain

On Oct. 23, 1993, the band that launched the alternative-rock revolution played the first of two sold-out shows at Chicago's Aragon Ballroom. A little more than five months later, its leader would be dead at age 27, the victim of a self-inflected shotgun blast to the head. But on this night, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana never sounded more alive.

For the penultimate song before the encore, Cobain introduced a new tune that he called "On a Mountain." It was classic Nirvana, with a slow, creepy verse that exploded into a wordless, painfully cathartic, undeniably catchy chorus. The song stunned me from the first listen, just as the band's signature hit did when I first heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit" two years earlier.

The band never played this mysterious tune in concert again. But in late January, 1994, Cobain, bassist Krist Novoselic, and drummer Dave Grohl entered Dave Lang Studios in Seattle for their final recording session. Following a long jam, they knocked out a killer version of the song-now retitled "You Know You're Right"-capturing it for posterity in one perfect, undeniable take.

Eight years later, I am sitting in the living room of Courtney Love's exquisitely appointed mansion in Beverly Hills, Calif., listening to that recording. It is even more potent than the rendition that lives in memory and on bootlegs of the Aragon show, thanks to a moody intro built on some weird, echoed harmonics; lyrics that are made more poignant by knowledge of Cobain's fate ("I would move away from here/You won't be afraid of fear... Things have never been so swell/And I have never felt so well"), and a searing solo that stands among the guitarist's very best.

It is no exaggeration to call this "the great lost Nirvana single." And lost is how it sadly remains-at least for the foreseeable future.

The Cobain estate-in the person of his widow, Love, and 9-year- old daughter, Frances-are in the midst of an increasingly ugly fight with surviving bandmates Grohl and Novoselic. It's shaping up to be an epic legal battle that may prove even nastier than the notorious feuds for control of the posthumous careers of Jimi Hendrix or Bob Marley. And

amid the flurry of insults and accusa-

tions, legal filings and slanderous innuendoes, what's at stake is "You Know You're Right" and a handful of other unreleased gems- songs that almost no one has heard by the most important band of its generation.

The roots of the feud

The roots of the current conflict can be traced back before Cobain's death to a fundamental shift in the band's power structure that he initiated in the spring of 1992.

Cobain first met Novoselic in 1985 in their native town of Aberdeen, Wash. Two years later, the duo formed Nirvana, progressing through one album (1989's "Bleach") and several drummers (including Chad Channing, who played on that initial release) before linking up with Grohl, the missing link that made the music click.

In September, 1991, Nirvana released its second album, "Nevermind." Propelled by the single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and benefiting from a near-mythic confluence of being the right band from the right place at the right time, the disc sold a staggering six million copies by the spring of 1992-at which point Cobain threatened to quit if his bandmates didn't agree to changing the split on their songwriting royalties.

The three musicians had previously divided the money evenly. Now, Cobain proposed a 75/25 split for the music with him getting 100 percent of the lyrics, retroactive to the start of the band. Grohl and Novoselic felt betrayed, but they agreed, lest Nirvana cease to exist. They blamed Love-whom Cobain had married in February, 1992- for instigating the change.

In Charles R. Cross' recent biography, [ITAL] Heavier Than Heaven [ITAL], the band's attorney at the time, Rosemary Carroll, says that the decision was actually all Cobain's. "He knew what he was worth, and he knew he deserved all the money."

From that point on, Cobain received 91 percent of the band's songwriting royalties. The second biggest chunk, 5 percent, went to Channing, while Grohl and Novoselic got 2 percent each-though that included key contributions such as "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

For other business concerns like merchandising and tour revenues, Nirvana acted as a general partnership, and that's how it filed its tax returns. But the songwriting deal seemed to confirm that Cobain was by far the partner with most of the power.

The band recorded only one more studio album, 1993's "In Utero," before its leader died without leaving a will in April, 1994. It has often been said that in rock, death is a great career move, and just because Nirvana no longer existed, doesn't mean its career stopped. Left in the band's wake was a considerable legacy of B-sides, compilation tracks, unreleased songs, demos, and live recordings, including 1994's "MTV Unplugged in New York" and 1996's "From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah."

As a vehicle to oversee posthumous releases such as these, as well as other business deals like licensing songs to films, Grohl and Novoselic proposed the formation of Nirvana, L.L.C., a limited liability corporation that gave the two musicians and Love (as representative of Cobain's estate) equal votes in controlling the future of the band. But Love claims that the deck was stacked against her from the beginning.

The L.L.C. was proposed by Los Angeles music business attorney Jill Berliner, who represented Grohl and Novoselic individually, and who also became the attorney for Nirvana, L.L.C. John Silva had been Nirvana's manager (though Cobain had come to "hate" him, according to the Cross book), and he went on to manage the post-Nirvana careers of both Grohl and Novoselic, as well as Nirvana, L.L.C.

Love says the interests of the attorney and the manager were to benefit Grohl and Novoselic, not the Cobain estate. "Collusion! Collusion! Collusion!" she rails.

Berliner defends the L.L.C. as a natural extension of the band's working relationship. "There was an existing general partnership, and the assets were transferred into an L.L.C. for tax reasons," she says. Love counters that the L.L.C. ignored the fact that Nirvana's single biggest asset was the catalog of Cobain's songs, and those were left off the table when the power structure of the L.L.C. was set as three equal partners.

Nevertheless, in late 1997 or early 1998-almost four years after her husband's death-Love signed the L.L.C. agreement. She now says that was a tremendous mistake.

Courtney balks

The most impressive posthumous Nirvana release yet was to have been a 45-track box set compiled by Novoselic and timed to be released in honor of the 10th anniversary of "Nevermind" in the fall of 2001. But in June of that year, Love filed suit in King County superior court in Washington, seeking to terminate the L.L.C.

To fight the case, Love hired attorney O. Yale Lewis, who is famous for recovering the rights to the music of Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Holly for their families. Lewis succeeded in getting Judge Robert Alsdorf to grant an injunction against the release of any Nirvana material until the case is resolved, and the box set-which included "You Know You're Right," among other rarities-was shelved indefinitely.

In legal filings and in interviews, Lewis, Love, and her current manager and boyfriend, Jim Barber, make several arguments for why the L.L.C. is invalid. One is that it has effectively stopped functioning, since Grohl and Novoselic generally side against Love. Another is that it was always unfair, since it ignored the way the band really worked-i.e., that Cobain called most of the shots.

But the key question remains: Why did Love, a brilliant woman well- schooled in the ways of the music business, sign an agreement that she now claims was bad for her?

Love says she was distraught and given poor advice by her attorney, Carroll, who told her that under Washington state law, if she didn't sign, Grohl and Novoselic could have forced her to sell the estate's interest in Nirvana. "I'm not going to go after her for malpractice, which is what people want me to do," Love says. "But I should."

"After Kurt's death, people wanted to force Courtney into the L.L.C. for all sorts of reasons-for convenience, and maybe to control her," Lewis says. "And I think Courtney did believe that if she didn't [enter the L.L.C.], that all of her associations with Kurt's legacy would be stripped."

The lawsuit further argues that Nirvana was about to break up at the time of Cobain's death, "and there was little chance that Cobain, Grohl, and Novoselic would ever perform together again." The suit concludes by asking that control of Nirvana "be centralized within [Cobain's] family, who already control the songs he wrote... which are the [ITAL] sina qua non [ITAL] of Nirvana."

In other words, Nirvana was Cobain's songs, and Cobain [ITAL] was [ITAL] Nirvana. But this is a point that his bandmates dispute- especially Novoselic, who stood by Cobain's side from earliest Aberdeen through his doomed bout with stardom.

What IS a rock band?

When I interviewed Cobain for the Sun-Times in June, 1993, shortly before the release of "In Utero," he seemed optimistic about the state of the band. But when he spoke about making important decisions such as touring, filming videos, and releasing singles, he usually said "I" rather than "we."

"I have my heart set on-everybody, the whole band has their heart set on-releasing 'Scentless Apprentice' after 'Heart-Shaped Box' [as a single]," he said. "That's a really good example of the direction we're going in. We actually collaborated on that song; it came together in practice. It was just a totally satisfying thing to finally contribute equally to a song, instead of me coming up with the basics of the song.

"Obviously, we're pretty much on the same wavelength-there's never been a situation where I tell them what to do," he continued. "But there are a lot of times where I've had to sit behind the drum set and show Dave what I've been thinking in my head, and he'll incorporate that idea. For the most part, it's always been like 80 percent my song that I've written at home and introduced to the band later on in practice. I'm just so pleased to be able to collaborate- I'm getting tired of being expected to be the sole songwriter. I would love to have a songwriting partner. And Krist and Dave for some reason have started to come out of their shell."

I e-mail that quote to Novoselic. "Would Nirvana be a band if Kurt Cobain was alive? I don't know," he says. "Would Kurt and Courtney be married if Kurt was alive? I don't know. It's a tragedy that the guy died. In your interview with Kurt, you sent me that quote-well, yeah, Kurt was a [freaking] brilliant songwriter, man! He says it was 'refreshing.' [I'd say to him,] 'What planet did you come from, dude? We've been working together for years, we've been doing stuff like that forever, I've got publishing on "Teen Spirit" and quite a few other songs!' I don't know what kind of mood he was in then. He was a windmill; he was turning all the time."

In stark contrast to the posthumous careers of Hendrix or Marley, where torrents of shoddy product were issued for years, there has been no "new" Nirvana music other than the two live albums since Cobain's death. Love contends that Nirvana, L.L.C. is letting the legacy of the band slip away, and that it would have "wasted" a potential hit by burying "You Know You're Right" on a box set when it could spur platinum-plus sales as the bonus track on a single-disc greatest hits set a la the Beatles' "1."

Novoselic grants that Love has a point. "I've always considered everything she said. We've considered it and agreed and said, 'Hey, that's a great idea, Courtney.' I tried to get along with Courtney as best I could, but there's only so much you can do."

For her part, Love knows she has a public-relations problem, thanks to the Nirvana lawsuit and a second highly publicized suit filed by the Universal Music Group over breach of contract by her band, Hole. (As an outgrowth of that suit, she has become a vocal opponent of the major-label system, claiming that its contracts are fundamentally unfair in the manner of the old Hollywood studio system because they tie artists up well past the so-called "seven year law" that prevails for actors in California.)

Early in a lengthy interview, as Love rattles off citations of various California labor laws, I remark that she's beginning to sound like Lenny Bruce at the end of his career, when he was obsessed with his numerous fines for public indecency and could talk about little else beside his court cases. That characterization stings because it has already occurred to her, and she keeps returning to it over the next few hours.

"Data and statistics do not make me Lenny Bruce!" she rants at one point. "But when you find out what your money and your husband's money is being used for, it's enough to turn you into Lenny Bruce- and they didn't even like him, that's the scary part!

"I can stop the worst of them from continuing to feed on the dead man. That's the Shakespearean part I want you to understand: There's a dead man! A kid without a dad! There's blood on the walls-my husband's! I'm supposed to just walk away from that and say it never happened?"

What about the music?

At times, Novoselic and Love both seem willing to settle. "We could work out a deal with Courtney," the bassist says. "I'm always willing to work out anything-I'm easy." Asked when Love thinks the matter will be resolved, she says, "It should have been done six months ago." But down in the trenches, their representatives are talking tough and itching for a fight.

"You read the L.L.C. agreement, you read the complaint, and what's really going on is [Love] has her stink with U.M.G. over Hole and she's using Nirvana as leverage," says Kelly Corr, the Seattle lawyer representing Grohl and Novoselic. "She is a fool if she doesn't settle with us, because we're going to go to court and we're gonna beat her. Come on out for the trial. It will be a hell of a lot of fun-a real circus!"

Jim Barber, Love's manager and boyfriend and a former A&R executive at Geffen Records, fires back: "Obviously, Kelly Corr has chosen to join the other lawyers, managers, and accountants who have exploited and defamed Kurt Cobain to increase their own wealth and notoriety." But that's exactly what Novoselic accuses Barber of. The bassist resents the fact that Barber showed up to represent Love and aid in the mixing of "You Know You're Right" for the soon-to-be aborted box set.

"Who's this guy?" Novoselic asks. "Where the [heck] did he come from? He wasn't there when we recorded that tune!"

Last week, the defendants succeeded in forcing Love to turn over the prenuptial agreement that she signed with Cobain. Corr had insinuated that it would prove Cobain did not want his wife to have any involvement with Nirvana in the event of his death; in fact, it seems to say exactly the opposite. The defendants are still seeking the release of legal papers regarding the formation of daughter Frances' trust fund.

The digging and the arguing will continue as both sides lurch toward a trial in September. But the saddest part of this headline- making feud is that Cobain's last songs continue to go unheard.

After the musician's death, when Love fled Seattle and the glare of the media spotlight, Hole guitarist and Cobain pal Eric Erlandson went through the couple's house and "rescued" the star's journals, art work, and 109 cassette tapes, lest they be stolen or lost in the chaos of the time.

Barber and Love admit that they haven't yet catalogued the contents of all of these tapes, which sit in a safe deposit box. Most are rehearsal tapes or cassettes of studio mixes, but they say that a number contain other "lost" Cobain tunes-some recorded alone on acoustic guitar in his bedroom, and some taped with outside musicians like Erlandson, Hole drummer Patti Schemel, and Nirvana touring guitarist Pat Smear.

"There's some really melodic stuff, and there's some garbage," Love says. "Some stuff is box set-y, but other stuff, we don't want to pass it up. We don't want to get all 'Free As A Bird' about it, but there's stuff that's too good to bury."

"How we pull it together and in exactly what form it gets released, it's too early to say," Barber says. "In some ways, we feel like, 'Let's clean up the business situation before we go into that,' because it's going to be a lot of creative work to get this material in shape. I think there are amazing things-there may be some things that are singles, if you salt them in a context where they work for people."

The estate is determined to release this material under the name Nirvana, not Kurt Cobain. Erlandson, the man who saved this material, is saddened that the tapes are in limbo, and angry that Love is publishing her husband's private journals. "What should probably happen is that somebody like Krist who knows Nirvana's history inside and out should go through [those tapes],"he says. "But the way things stand between those two [Love and Novoselic], I don't know if that's gonna happen."

That music is the reason why fans should care about this fight, and it's what drew me to this story. Love originally promised unhindered access to the tapes if I traveled to California to hear them. That invitation grew more nebulous as further e-mails were exchanged. By the time I get to Beverly Hills, I'm only allowed to hear a few songs that "the other side" has already heard and knows exist. But they are enough.

"You Know You're Right" is by far the strongest song that fans have yet to hear, but a second tune that I listen to in Love's living room comes close. "Dough, Ray, and Me" is often discussed on the Web, but few fans have ever heard it. Cobain recorded two versions shortly before the end of his life. One was a four-track rendition on which he drummed and sang while Erlandson played bass and Smear played guitar. The other was a solo acoustic demo taped in his bedroom, and that's the version I hear.

The sound quality is sketchy, to say the least, but as soon as that famously gruff voice kicks in, it's vital, entrancing, and impossible to ignore. The song boasts a beautiful, Beatlesesque melody in the tradition of "About a Girl," the standout track from "Bleach." In addition to an endearingly rough guitar solo, its other outstanding feature is the moaned/whined/chanted repetition of "Dough/ Ray/Me, Do/Re/Mi" over and over during a long and climactic finale.

Deciphering Cobain's cryptic lyrics during a first listen is difficult at best, but I manage to scribble several lines in my notebook: "If I may/If I might/Wake me up/See me... If I may/Cold as ice/I only have/Sue me." Sue me? Sue me? I swear I heard him sing, "Sue me."