Kurt Cobain wasn’t a big fan of Tool. It seems his issues with them were mostly over the band’s music video for the 1993 song “Sober”.
According to a story from Ultimate Guitar, Cobain felt like the “Sober” video was a ripoff of Stephen and Timothy Quay. The Quay Brothers are stop-motion animators whom Cobain and the Tool fellas were both fans of. Speaking in a 1993 interview, Cobain decried the “Sober” music video, saying he hoped Tool would get “sued” over ripping off The Quay Brothers.
“Oh God. I hope they get sued,” he said. “It is such a ripoff. It’s a shameless ripoff. I mean, I wanted a Brothers Quay style, but I didn’t want anything like that. That was terrible!”
“I mean, it’s a neat video,” he added. “It’s really nice to look at, but I’d rather watch a Brothers Quay video.” He also pointed out similarities like “Meat going through pipes,” calling it “shameless” and adding, “They should be slapped on the wrist for that!”
Cobain discussed his plans with Flipside in 1992 (as cited by Ultimate Guitar) and teased what he’d hoped to do. “Yeah, we’re gonna put out a ‘Lithium’ single within a couple of months. It’s gonna have a doll theme,” he said. “I’ve been collecting old dolls for most of my life, and I make dolls out of clay that are replicas of 18th-century Yugoslavian dolls.”
Cobain wanted to make Nirvana music videos in the style of the Quay Brothers, Too
“They’re really weird. They have elongated heads and have really long fingers. Kinda like a Brothers Quay video,” he continued. “It’s gonna be a ripoff of a Brothers Quay video. Because we asked them to do our video and they refused.”
“There’s not much of a theme other than the dolls doing weird, surreal things with each other,” the Nirvana frontman added. “When Courtney [Love, Hole singer and Cobain’s wife] goes to get another ultrasound, we’re going to videotape the baby in her womb and put that in the video too.”
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