Battle in a Place of Nirvana

Look under any Christmas tree you want this week, but you won’t find that Nirvana boxed set that the two surviving members of the band hoped would be a holiday fan favorite as well as a fitting commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the group’s seminal album “Nevermind.”

The collection (planned to include the famous unreleased track “You Know You’re Right”) had been in the planning for two years when Courtney Love, widow of Nirvana’s leader, Kurt Cobain, filed a lawsuit in May seeking control of the band’s musical catalog. That has put her at odds with Nirvana’s Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, whom Love has dismissed as mere sidemen and ingrates.

In recent days, the feud has only grown uglier and stranger. Grohl and Novoselic released an open letter last week and framed the dispute like this: “[Love] couldn’t care less about Nirvana fans. She is using Nirvana’s music as a bargaining chip to increase leverage for her personal gain.... Our music is just a pawn in her endless legal battles and her obsessive need for publicity and attention.”

A return salvo came by the end of the week from a new quarter: Wendy O’Connor, Cobain’s mother, who said in a press release that Cobain detested his bandmates and feared that they were trying to siphon off the band’s wealth. She also says Cobain’s 1994 suicide could have been prevented if it were not for the “selfish and criminal behavior of the people who so callously revise their personal histories today,” a clear shot at drummer Grohl and bassist Novoselic.

What next? Grohl and Novoselic this month counter-sued Love and in coming weeks the matter will wind its way through the King County Superior Court in Seattle. Some cynics within Geffen Records, the label that has been scheduled to release the boxed set, say the venom will eventually give way to compromise in the name of money and, for Love, more leverage in her artist rights battle against the music industry powers. It may take some time, though--after all, the path to true nirvana is never easy.

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Compiled by Times Staff Writers