Hear Kurt Cobain’s Unreleased Beatles Cover

Brett Morgan’s Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck shows off years of labour on Morgan’s end, churning through hundreds of hours of never-before-seen Kurt Cobain footage and photographs. Some of the footage was video, and the rest was audio, visualised through cartoons. Needless to say, almost all of Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck is noteworthy, and the entire film is a must watch for any Kurt Cobain and Nirvana fan, or indeed any fan of grunge music or genres that it ended up spawning. But one thing that was left undiscovered before the film was Cobain’s cover version of “And I Love Her,” a Beatles classic, which you can hear below.

In fashion that was a staple of his during his life, Cobain dampers the somber pep of the Paul McCartney-penned track, delivering the lead guitar riff as something far more droning and aching. Of course — as he was also prone to doing — Cobain can’t help but revel in the song’s pop sheen, allowing just a bit of earnest hope to fill his soft croaking voice as he sings the chorus.

Cobain’s “And I Love Her” could surprise many fans — “I like the Beatles, but I hate Paul McCartney,” as he once said — as much as it did Morgen when he discovered it. “Nobody in Kurt’s life — not his management, wife, bandmates — had ever heard his Beatles thing,” Morgen told Rolling Stone. “I found it on a random tape. It’s a Paul song. How’s that for shattering the myth?”

Montage of Heck‘s director Brett Morgen revealed in a tweet that “a mind-blowing 12-minute acoustic Cobain unheard track” will be included on the soundtrack, further teasing Nirvana and Kurt Cobain fans already frenzied over the release of the documentary. Morgen wouldn’t elaborate further on the additional Kurt Cobain footage, but he did mention in a January Rolling Stone interview that Montage of Heck‘s entire score is comprised of previously unheard Cobain music.

“The score is all unreleased Cobain music. They don’t have titles. Before people saw the movie, there were these weird press releases focusing on the unreleased music. And it’s like: It’s a movie. We’re not going to stop it and play a song for four minutes. But nobody in Kurt’s life — not his management, wife, bandmates — had ever heard his Beatles thing [a snippet of ‘And I Love Her’]. I found it on a random tape. It’s a Paul song. How’s that for shattering the myth?”