Montage of Heck director Brett Morgen recently revealed an album of unreleased Kurt Cobain material is coming this summer. And in an upcoming interview with KCRW’s The Business (posting in full on Friday, May 8), Morgen dished even more details to host Kim Masters; Billboard presents an exclusive early window into that talk.
Masters questioned Morgen about his motivation in assembling the compilation, which was culled from 200 hours of recordings over 108 cassettes.
“I went into the archives — this could be too strong a word — I liberated a lot of material for the film,” Morgen says. “The primary motivation at that moment was for [daughter] Frances [Bean Cobain]. I finished the film and there was all this other music. No one asked me to do anything. I just started cutting the thing together and telling the estate they should put this out. Initially, I thought it would be a nice complement to the film… I don’t have any financial stake in the album.”
Kurt Cobain Album Coming This Summer, Says ‘Montage of Heck’ Director
Masters prodded him on the collaborative framework of the project: “Is this your record, Courtney [Love]’s record, or Universal Music’s record? Who has the rights to the record?”
“I assembled it and passed it over to the various other people,” Morgen maintained, declining to expand on the process beyond that.
We do know that the forthcoming album will feature material Cobain never brought to Nirvana; Morgen calls it “cinematic” and says it will feature some spoken word segments.
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“It feels like you’re in Kurt’s house, watching him create. You’re eavesdropping on him… in the most positive sense of the word, with a great deal of sensitivity, too.”
Morgen directed the 2015 documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, which features never-before-seen home movies, recordings, and artwork from the Nirvana frontman. It is the first film of its kind to be made with the cooperation of Cobain’s family. Read Billboard’s review here.
Kim Masters’ full interview with Morgen will post on Friday, May 8, on KCRW’s The Business.