Territorial Pissings - Nirvana (Live on Jonathan Ross)

Ominously, Cobain failed to show up for Nirvana's first soundcheck for Tonight With Jonathan Ross. Show researcher, Steve Lewis, explained how this posed a challenge for the production crew: "[It] is essential for the camera crew to work out a shooting script from the lyrics, so that [they] can point the camera at the drummer or guitarist at suitable points in the song." When Cobain did eventually arrive on set, with just an hour to go until the live transmittion, a second soundcheck/camera blocking rehearsal was hastily put together for 'Lithium'.

All efforts to manage the production proved futile, however, as the band broke out into an impromtu and furiously intense version of 'Territorial Pissings'. Initially, the show's production crew didn't realise that the band were playing a different song: "The people in the production gallery didn't realise. They couldn't make out the words so they stuck to the shooting script for 'Lithium'". By the time Lewis was able to flag down the production crew, the band were already trashing their equipment.

"When it was over, Dave Grohl walked past me and said, 'sorry man'. And Phil Smith, their record company man, came up and said they'd pay for the damage, which unbelievably they did."

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