Money was always a point of contention for Nirvana, and Kurt Cobain almost quit over it. But just how much did the best grunge band of all time make during their reign?
It’s rare for money to be distributed equally, but this is mostly because each member’s contributions usually vary. Some of the greatest bands of all time divide these bits and pieces up to those who contribute the most, which only seems fair, even if it’s often the one thing that ruptures dynamics and causes fights and disagreements behind the scenes. But with Nirvana, it was mainly Cobain who drove most of their creative decisions, and yet the one member who seemed most hard done by.
It’s no secret just how much Cobain poured into Nirvana. This was somewhat prophetic from the beginning, growing up as an outsider who sought belonging in the art form, soon to be pouring all his deepest darkest thoughts and musings into the one project that would change the game forever. For this reason, among many others, Nirvana wasn’t just a band from the get-go, but a deep peek into the inner workings of one of music’s greatest minds.
But this didn’t mean everything was equal behind closed doors. In fact, it’s the fact that things were divided up evenly that rubbed Cobain the wrong way, causing him to fight for more of the share when most of the lyrics and melodies came from him only. “We’re a group, we’re a three-piece,” he once said, adding, “But I had written 99% of the songs, and many times, I had taken Krist [Novoselic’s] bass away from him and shown him what to play, and stayed behind Dave [Grohl’s] drumkit and shown him what to play.”
He continued, “When I found out about things like that, I didn’t feel that guilty about asking for a higher percentage. And it’s only in one area of payment. Just the songwriting credits. It was a touchy subject at the time, and I felt really guilty about asking it. I just feel I’m entitled to it. At the time, I was ready to quit the band over it. I couldn’t believe that they were giving me so much crap about this.”
How much money did Nirvana make?
But internal frictions and disagreements aside, and while the band’s cultural impact is clear, their monetary successes appear to be a little more complicated. Going on estimated earnings based on their records, including their opus Nevermind, which sold 30 million copies worldwide, total record sales linger somewhere between $75m and $100m globally.
At the time of his death, Cobain’s net worth was also estimated to be somewhere around $50m, per Celebrity Net Worth and Finance Monthly. But despite the immense financial success, Cobain always kept a level head, regarding his art as a deep part of himself, even in the throes of struggling with the unprecedented fame that came with it. Right until the end, his focus was on what he had to say through his music, his ego barely anywhere to be seen in interviews, delving into all the ways Nirvana disrupted a stale music industry.
Despite the tragedy that defines his story, that’s what it was always about. As he explained to Rolling Stone, “I still see stuff, descriptions of rock stars in some magazine — ‘Sting, the environmental guy,’ and ‘Kurt Cobain, the whiny, complaining, neurotic, bitchy guy who hates everything, hates rock stardom, hates his life.’ And I’ve never been happier in my life. I’m a much happier guy than a lot of people think I am.”