Alors on vous rassure, il ne s’agit nullement d’un titre posthume sorti du coffre pour engraisser des héritiers souhaitant refaire leur salle de bain mais d’un titre enregistré 3 ans avant le passage de Nirvana au MTV Unplugged. Précision qui a son importance puisque les deux artistes, originaires de Seattle et copains à la ville, avaient décidé de reprendre le fameux « Where Did You Sleep Last Night » qui figurait déjà sur l’album de Mark, « The Winding Sheet », sorti en 1990.
Les deux chanteurs étaient accompagnés de Krist Novoselic à la basse et de Mark Pickerel des Screaming Trees à la batterie. L’enregistrement faisait suite à la tournée Bleach de Nirvana en 1989 :
“One afternoon at his place, we started talking about making a record,” Lanegan wrote in his 2020 memoir Sing Backwards and Weep. “‘We should do a record of this stuff,’ one of us suggested. And then the other, ‘We should do a record of all Lead Belly covers.’ “
Mais si les discussions autour de cet enregistrement furent assez funs, enregistrer a été une toute autre chose aux yeux de Lanegan qui écrivait :
“Being pals was easy but creating together turned out to be more difficult as our respect for one another turned it into an oddly unproductive exercise. Neither Kurt nor I were really willing to grab the reins. Despite being the least musically proficient member of Screaming Trees, it had become obvious to me early on that I had to be the default leader of the band, simply due to force of personality. I was used to directing Screaming Trees recording sessions … I couldn’t bear to do that in this situation, I was too awed by Kurt’s genius.”
Quant à l’interprétation de Kurt du titre lors de la session MTV, Mark expliquait :
“His version of that song is the definitive version — it blows mine away. One of the coolest things that ever came from hanging with Kurt was just sitting in his shed and hearing him play acoustic guitar and singing. To me it sounded like what I imagined it would be like if I was sitting in the room with Skip James or Lightnin’ Hopkins. It was so soulful and real, it gave me the chills.”
Source : Rolling Stone