A few weeks after the 37th President boarded Air Force One for his last trip as President, David Bowie stood in a studio in Philadelphia and asked the country’s young Americans, “do you remember your President Nixon?”
Not long after that, Neil Young, recording “Campaigner,” reminded the world that “even Richard Nixon’s got soul.”
But it turns out that at the same time, another rock’n’roller was starting his career with songs referring to RN – a musician who, though he is not yet in the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame with Bowie and Young, is sure to join them sometime after 2013, when his eligibility starts 25 years after his recording (as opposed to performing) career began.
During his final live shows with Nirvana, in the fall and winter of 1993-1994, Kurt Cobain sometimes brought out an Epiphone Texan guitar for the acoustic portion of the show, which he had found in a store in Los Angeles. It sported a “Nixon Now” bumper sticker from 1972, and is now renowned among students of the Nirvana oeuvre as the best-sounding acoustic Cobain ever used. (At the end of 1994, eight or so months after the deaths of Cobain and Nixon, a blowup photo of Kurt playing this guitar was displayed in the Nixon Library exhibit “Rockin’ The White House.”)
But it turns out that this was not the first time that President Nixon entered Cobain’s musical world. From RTTNews.com comes this article:
Early recordings from a young Kurt Cobain were recently discovered at a garage sale in Aberdeen, Washington.
Producers Jack Endino and Butch Vig [the producers of Nirvana’s first two albums] both verified that the tapes are self-recordings of Cobain, who is believed to have been 8 or 9 years old at the time. According to reports, it sounds as though he is playing an acoustic guitar and ukulele, sometime around 1974 or 1975, based on the content of songs about Richard Nixon. [Note: Cobain was born on Feb. 20, 1967, so he may have been as young as 7 when he recorded this material.]
Several cassettes labelled “KDC” – believed to stand for Kurt Donald Cobain – in black magic marker were found at the sale. The tapes are estimated to be worth millions.