What do Nirvana, Van Halen and The Jimi Hendrix Experience have in common?
No, not iconic guitarists who have sadly all passed away. Nor is it simply that novice guitarists still ask their tutors to teach them Smells Like Teen Spirit, Hey Joe and Eruption to this day (good luck, kids).
What unites these three US rock titans is that, perhaps surprisingly, each of their debut commercial offerings was a cover version.
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Hendrix released his take on the rock standard Hey Joe as his first single in December 1966, while Van Halen’s version of The Kinks’ You Really Got Me kickstarted their career in 1978.
But for eventual grunge superstars Nirvana – whom many discovered with the era-defining Smells Like Teen Spirit in 1991 – a more obscure 1960s track would be the first to bear their name in record stores across the country.
That single, Love Buzz, was released on the iconic Seattle-based indie label Sub Pop, whose co-founder Bruce Pavitt recalled: “Nirvana’s first appearance in Seattle was at the Central Tavern – at this little showcase that they did for us in April of 1988 that nobody really showed up for. In listening to their whole set, that one was the only song that really jumped out, and it was a cover. But the hypnotic feel of that was an indicator of their direction in songwriting.”
He said of their version of Love Buzz: “It’s an incredible recording. They totally nailed it.”
Love Buzz – which was included on Bleach, their debut album for Sub Pop in 1988 – was originally written and recorded by Dutch rock band Shocking Blue and released in September 1969 on the band’s second album At Home.
Shocking Blue were founded in 1967 by former The Motions guitarist Robbie Van Leeuwen, (no relation to Queens Of The Stone Age’s Troy Van Leeuwen), and found mainstream success with the line-up of vocalist Mariska Veres, bassist Klaasje van der Wal and drummer Cor van der Beek.
Shocking Blue’s highest charting single was Venus, which reached No 1 in nine countries, including the US.
Venus was also a huge hit in 1986 for pop trio Bananarama, whose version was produced by Stock Aitken Waterman and hit No 1 in the US again as well as in Australia, Finland, New Zealand, South Africa, and Switzerland.
Shocking Blue didn’t release Love Buzz as a single until 2015 for Record Store Day, nearly three decades after Nirvana’s version was recorded. But in rhetoric ’80s the song still caught the attention of a young Krist Novoselic, Nirvana’s bassist, who discovered At Home in a bargain bin and was impressed by the bass playing of van der Wal.
The dark psych-rock of Shocking Blue’s original Love Buzz sounds closer to Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida than, say, the more Melvins-inspired sound of Bleach. Yet despite the sludgier take on the track, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain wasn’t satisfied with how the recording turned out, telling NME: “I wish we could have recorded it a lot heavier. It was one of our first recordings. We weren’t sure just what we wanted to do, so it turned out kind of wimpy compared to our [other] recordings.”
Cobain also lamented Sub Pop’s editing of his sound collage intro, compiled from children’s records, that was reduced from 45 to 10 seconds on the initial single (and removed from the album version altogether).
“They were just constantly having control right away, doing exactly what a major label would do and claiming to be an independent label,” Cobain told biographer Michael Azerrad.
Nirvana’s version is notably recorded half a step up from standard tuning (F Bb Eb Ab C F), reportedly by mistake, though live performances often found the band performing the song in the key of A minor.
The song opens with a simple repeating five-note bassline (Ab, Bb, B, D Eb). The riff, played entirely within the 6th to 9th frets across the D and G strings, begins with the root note of Bb. Cobain’s guitar parts mainly consist of overdriven, ringing power chords (Bb again), and a speedy descending pull-off riff across the top three strings. Cobain then doubles Novoselic’s bassline as the song’s main riff.
Cobain’s stripped-back, harsh tone is one of the hallmarks of Nirvana’s sound, often attributed to his use of cheap, pawnshop-bought gear. Cobain’s modest rig at the time consisted of just one pedal – a Boss DS-1 distortion – for the entirety of Bleach, alongside a right-handed Univox Hi-Flier, flipped upside down and restrung, and a ’68 Fender Twin Reverb amp, though he was known for using a solid-state Randall Commander II for live shows at the time.
The original Love Buzz/Big Cheese single launched the Sub Pop Singles Club subscription, and was produced in a super-limited quantity of 1,000 hand-numbered 7” records (and an additional 200 unnumbered). The band were reportedly unhappy with such a limited release. “We put a single out and nobody could buy it,” commented Novoselic. However, the quickly-sold-out single ensured its own word of mouth promotion for Nirvana as a buzzy band to watch.
One quirk of the single’s sleeve credits is the misspelling of the pre-fame band members – “Kurdt Kobain” and “Chris Novoselic”. In a list published by online physical media marketplace Discogs, the Love Buzz/Big Cheese single was the third-most expensive record sold on the website in 2025 to the eye-watering sum of $10,666.
In the two years prior to the release of the group’s mega-selling second album Nevermind, Bleach sold around 40,000 units, but after the band found worldwide success its sales would increase to over 1.9 million, going platinum in the process. As of 2026, Bleach is still Sub Pop’s best-selling album.
A staple of the band’s live set since the late ’80s, Love Buzz has been played numerous times. According to setlist.fm, it is Nirvana’s eighth-most performed song. Live recordings of Love Buzz can be found on official Nirvana releases such as Live at Reading, Live at the Paramount, Live! Tonight! Sold Out!! and the box set With The Lights Out.
Interestingly, the two versions of the song have each featured in a HBO series – Shocking Blue’s original makes an appearance in Entourage, while Nirvana’s cover appears in the season two opener of The Last of Us.
Love Buzz wouldn’t be the last obscure cover made famous by Nirvana either, as the band’s incredibly successful MTV Unplugged in New York album – released shortly after Cobain’s death by suicide in 1994 – featured an at-the-time lesser-known David Bowie track, a song by Scottish rock group The Vaselines and, notably, three consecutive covers by Arizona ‘cowpunk’ band the Meat Puppets.
As Bruce Pavitt said: “Nirvana were famous for doing covers. They had good taste. They actively helped educate their crowd, as well as promote cool music.”
