Endless, Nameless (song)

The earliest known live performance of "Endless, Nameless" was at the No More Wars anti-Gulf War benefit show on January 18, 1991 at the Evergreen State College Library 4300 in Olympia, Washington.

The song was first recorded in the studio during the recording sessions for the band's second album, Nevermind, in May 1991 at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California. It was recorded following a failed attempt at recording the future Nevermind single "Lithium," with a "frustrated"[2] Cobain instructing producer Butch Vig to continue recording while he, Grohl and Novoselic began playing "Endless, Nameless."[3] As Vig recalled, “the rage and frustration in [Cobain's] voice was fuckin’ scary to hear, because he kind of lost it.”[4] Vig remembered Cobain being "really pissed off, thrashing and screaming" during the take.[5]

Unlike the rest of Nevermind, the song was recorded live, with no overdubs added afterwards. Cobain's vocals and guitar were recorded in the middle of the room, with Cobain singing into a Shure SM57 microphone designed for conversation and not music. Vig recalled that "we had tremendous bleed from the bass and drums all pouring into Kurt's microphone."[3] Cobain smashed his guitar during the recording, which halted recording for the day after the band realized it was the only left-handed guitar available.[3] According to the 1993 Nirvana biography Come As You Are by Michael Azerrad, the sound of Cobain smashing the guitar can be heard around 19:32 on the track.[3] A photograph of the destroyed guitar, a black Japanese Fender Stratocaster[6][7] and not a Mosrite as claimed by Vig,[8] appears in Come As You Are.[3]

On September 3, 1991, the song was recorded during a John Peel session for the BBC by Dale Griffin at Maida Vale Studios in London, England.[9] This version of the song featured Cobain briefly singing part of "Turning Japanese," the 1980 single by English rock band the Vapors. The full session, which also included versions of the Nevermind song "Drain You" and future In Utero song "Dumb", was first broadcast on November 3, 1991.

When played live, "Endless, Nameless" was usually performed last, with the band members frequently destroying their instruments and the stage during the end. The final live performance of the song was on December 13, 1993 at Pier 48 in Seattle during the Live and Loud concert, filmed for MTV. The original broadcast of the performance, on December 31, 1993, only included a noise jam at the end of the recognizable song that was not credited as "Endless, Nameless." However, the jam was included as part of the song when the full show was released on DVD in September 2013.

In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked "Endless, Nameless" at number 60 on their ranking of all 102 Nirvana songs.[12] In 2019, Vulture ranked it at number 16 on their "Best Nirvana Songs, Ranked" list, calling it "a revolting sound that Nirvana brought to bear on millions of Middle American homes" that "surfaced like a nightmare, a cherry bomb in a disc changer, Cobain’s stomach pain manifested in sound."[13] In 2023, PopMatters included it on their list of "The 10 Heaviest Nirvana Songs," with Dean Brown describing it as "an obstinate emission hell-bent on rupturing the mournful mood left by 'Something in the Way.'"[14]

American musical comedian "Weird Al" Yankovic parodied the song on his 1992 album Off the Deep End with the seven-second-long hidden track, "Bite Me."[15] Off the Deep End also featured the lead single "Smells Like Nirvana," a parody of the 1991 Nevermind single "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and an album cover that parodied the cover of Nevermind.