| "Drain You" | ||||||||||
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"Drain You" cover |
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| Song by Nirvana from the album From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah | ||||||||||
| Released | 1996 | |||||||||
| Recorded | Del Mar Fairgrounds, CA, December 28, 1991. | |||||||||
| Genre | Grunge, punk rock | |||||||||
| Length | 3:43 | |||||||||
| Label | DGC Records | |||||||||
| Writer | Kurt Cobain | |||||||||
| Producer | Shauna O' Brien, Diane Stata | |||||||||
| From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah track listing | ||||||||||
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"Drain You" is a 1991 song by American grunge band Nirvana and the eighth track from their breakthrough album Nevermind. It is most famous as a B-side on (most editions of) the band's most successful single "Smells Like Teen Spirit". However, a live version recorded in 1991 appeared on the live album From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah in 1996. The live version was released as a promotional single for promotion of the live album.
According to Nevermind producer Butch Vig on the Classic Albums: Nevermind DVD, "Drain You" had more guitar overdubs than any other song on the album: one clean track and five distorted tracks two tracks of the Mesa Boogie two tracks of the Fender Bassman and one that they called the "Super Grunge" track which was a pedal on the Fender Bassman. Cobain tended to dislike heavily overdubbed songs, and so Vig had to tell Cobain lies, such as that tracks did not record right or were out of tune, in order to get him to do so many takes. The strange noises during the middle section of the song are caused by a squeaking mouse toy Cobain brought into the studio that sound engineer Andy Wallace put through delays and made it sound "trippy". In his biography of Kurt Cobain Heavier Than Heaven, biographer Charles Cross wrote, "When Kurt was questioned about the song ["Drain You"] he said he had made a lot of it up on the spot but that the first line "One baby to another says I'm lucky to have met you"... was particularly important to the interpretation of the song..."[1]
On the Nevermind version, Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic tuned their instruments a whole step down resulting in the song being recorded in F♯ minor. In concert, however, "Drain You" was generally played in whatever tuning the band was using throughout the rest of the concert — generally standard tuning in earlier concerts (prior to the 1992 Pacific Rim tour in support of Nevermind) and half-step-down in later concerts. The song's verse is based around a conventional chord progression of four power chords in standard tuning: B, D#, G#, C#, the riff (F#)- E -C# for the choruses, and a chorus ending of B, A, G#.
This song is also in the music video games Rock Band 2 and Rock Band Unplugged.
Apart from the studio version of "Drain You" that on the Nevermind album several other versions of the song have been officially released:
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