Dave Grohl Never Showed Up To Record With Krist Novoselic And The Melvins

The line-up of veteran US sludge-lords the Melvins has been nothing if not malleable in recent times, with a revolving procession of past bandmates and new members augmenting bands stalwarts Buzz Osborne (vocals/guitar) and Dale Crover (drums) in the studio — but even they've outdone themselves on new album Basses Loaded, which finds no fewer than six bass players lending bottom-end over the record's duration.

"We didn't really think of it at the time, we just recording in a wide variety of ways and different times and then we realised, 'Oh, we have six different bass players on this record," Osborne laughs. "That's a bit unusual even for us. Although we're used to do things like that — we've been doing it for the last 14 or 15 years — so it's like second nature."

Of the bassists the one who seems to have stuck is Steve McDonald from seminal alt-rockers Redd Kross, and more recently crusty punks Off!, who seems to have taken up an almost permanent role in the Melvins' line-up.

"Dave decided that they wanted to do this, and I was, like, 'Okaaay' — kinda sceptical."

"Dale had done some shows with Off! when their drummer had a scheduling conflict, and during that time Dale said Steve might be someone that we'd consider playing with," Osborne explains. "I'd always been a big fan of Steve with Redd Kross and I always knew he was a good bass player, so we tried him out by doing these recordings to see if that worked, and once that worked then we knew maybe we should try to play with him live, so that's what we did. We've done about 60-odd shows so far — it works great, I wouldn't change a thing."

And of the other bassists probably the biggest name was former Nirvana member Krist Novoselic, whose involvement was originally meant to be part of a project revisiting the Nirvana catalogue with former Jesus Lizard mainstay David Yow on vocals.

"It was all Dave Grohl's idea — something that absurd had to come from Dave and not from me," Osborne sighs. "This is before they did this with Paul McCartney, right? Dave decided that they wanted to do this, and I was, like, 'Okaaay' — kinda sceptical. Then they had it set up so that Krist flew down here to LA and we're all at the practice space, so we sat there for three days and Dave just never showed up. He'd clearly changed his mind after putting all this in motion, but we're talking about Dave Grohl, 'Mister Beyond Reproach', 'Mr Nice Guy'. This is the kind of stuff that no one sees about him.

"I didn't think that was cool, I don't play games like that with people, but apparently he thinks that's fine, he thinks that's kosher — I don't. I don't take too kindly to being humiliated, especially under those sort of conditions, and I certainly think that I deserve an explanation as far as that's concerned, but apparently he doesn't. So be it. But instead of wasting our time we decided to do some recording with Krist anyway while we were there, and that's how it happened."