On a Plain

"On a Plain"
Song

"On A Plain" is a song by the American rock band, Nirvana. It is the eleventh song on their 1991 album, Nevermind.

History

"On A Plain" was written by Kurt Cobain in 1990. It was first recorded in the studio on January 1, 1991 by Craig Montgomery in Seattle, Washington. It was debuted live on May 29, 1991 in Los Angeles, California.

"On A Plain" was recorded for Nevermind in May or June 1991 by Butch Vig in North Hollywood. It was released as a promo single in the summer of 1992, and became a moderate alternative rock hit.

An acoustic version was recorded during Nirvana's MTV Unplugged set on November 18, 1993. This version appears on the band's MTV Unplugged in New York album, released in November 1994. It features Lori Goldston on cello.

A live performance appears on the band's 1994 home video, Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!. It was recorded at the Roskilde Festival on June 16, 1992 in Roskilde, Denmark.

Another live performance of "On A Plain" from Nirvana's show at the Paradiso Club in Amsterdam on November 25, 1991 appears on the 2006 DVD re-release of Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!.

An early 1991 rehearsal of "On A Plain" can be found after the credits have ended on the DVD version of Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!.

Later, through the release of Cobain's Journals, it was discovered that two lines - "Black sheep got blackmailed again" and "I got so high, I scratched 'til I bled" - were lifted from an early draft of a then-unreleased song, entitled "Verse Chorus Verse".

The song, along with many others off Nevermind, was last played at the last Nirvana show on March 1, 1994 in Munich.

Meaning

In a 1993 interview with Jon Savage, Cobain said that "On A Plain" was about "classic alienation." [1] However, he also admitted that he offered a different explanation for his songs every time he was asked, because he didn't know their meanings himself. "For the most part, I write songs from pieces of poetry thrown together," he revealed. "When I write poetry it's not usually thematic at all. I have plenty of notebooks, and when it comes time to write lyrics, I just steal from my poems."

"On A Plain" may be a good example of this. According to the 1993 Nirvana biography Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana by Michael Azerrad, the song's lyrics were written minutes before it was recorded for Nevermind. Each line of the song seems to have a different meaning. For example, the line "Don't quote me on that" comes from a running in-joke at the studio, in which everyone would end their sentences with the phrase, "But don't quote me on that!". Another theme addressed is the frequent nonsensicality of Cobain's lyrics ("what the hell am I trying to say?", "it is now time to make it unclear/to write off lines that don't make sense").

The "black sheep" in the song is believed to be Cobain himself, which supports his explanation that the song was about being alienated. In the same interview with Savage, Cobain spoke at length about his isolated youth, saying he had few friends in his hometown of Aberdeen, Washington, and spent much of his time reading books by Susan E. Hinton. "I was so antisocial that I was almost insane," he said. "I felt so different and so crazy that people just left me alone."

Covers

"On A Plain" has been covered by the following artists:

• American experimental rock band Animal Collective.
• American punk rock band Agent Orange (Smells Like Bleach: A Punk Tribute to Nirvana)
• American indie rock band Rogue Wave
• alternative rock band Dead Sex Kitten (Smells Like Bleach: A Punk Tribute to Nirvana)

Chart Position

Year	Single	Chart	Position
1992	On A Plain	Modern Rock Tracks	No. 25

Accolades

• Ranked #19 in NME's "Top 20 Nirvana Songs" (2004)

References

• Azerrad, Michael. Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana, Doubleday, New York: 1993, ISBN 0-86369-746-1
• Kurt Cobain: The Lost Interview by Jon Savage, Guitar World, 1997