Kurt Cobain wasn’t precisely identified to draw back from darkish material in his songwriting. There was the one in regards to the real-life abduction and torture of a teenage woman, the one about abortifacient tea, and oh, the one actually known as “Rape Me.” He additionally favored to invoke healthful parts of popular culture, like Teen Spirit deodorant, to juxtapose in opposition to these uglier subjects. In that respect, it’s not as bizarre because it sounds that Nirvana recorded a track about being sexually assaulted, tortured and killed by characters from The Andy Griffith Present, but it surely does sound fairly freaking bizarre.
“Floyd the Barber” is the second track on Nirvana’s first album, Bleach, which was launched in 1989, properly earlier than their early ‘90s breakthrough into the mainstream and anybody would care about their musical desecration of the residents of Mayberry. The track begins with the narrator getting into Floyd’s barber store, because the “Bell on door clangs, come on in” and “Floyd observes my furry chin.” Floyd instructs him to “Sit down chair, don’t be afraid” earlier than inserting a “steamed scorching towel on my face” and starting to carry out a routine shave, however then issues take a flip.
“Barney ties me to the chair / I can’t see, I’m actually scared,” Cobain sings, earlier than “Floyd breathes onerous, I hear a zipper,” and the beloved barber performs an act upon the narrator — together with his “pee-pee.” Sure, Kurt Cobain sang the phrase “pee-pee.” The narrator then senses “others within the room / Opie, Aunt Bee, I presume,” who “take turns and lower me up” earlier than Aunt Bee suffocates the narrator in a similar way. You recognize. Crotchly.
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As nice as it might have been to get Griffith’s tackle the track, or anybody else concerned with the present, it’s unlikely they even knew about it. Even after Nevermind generated extra widespread curiosity in Nirvana’s earlier releases, not one of the songs from Bleach ever obtained a lot radio or MTV consideration. The one exception is “A couple of Woman,” and that was solely as a result of Nirvana recorded it for MTV Unplugged, introducing it as a track “off our first report,” which “most individuals don’t personal.”
By the way, “A couple of Woman” comes simply after “Floyd the Barber” on Bleach. A slight adjustment to the set listing may have given us a really completely different world, particularly one the place we get Ron Howard’s opinion on Nirvana. Anybody have his cellphone quantity?
