It's one of those covers that takes a song you've heard a million times and makes it feel like you're hearing it for the very first time. The original is a romantic ballad, while Kurt's bare-bones bedroom-folk version is raw and haunting, more like Nirvana's "Something In The Way" than anything by 1964-era Beatles. One of the biggest gems of the 2015 Kurt Cobain documentary Montage of Heck was this unearthed Kurt solo acoustic cover of The Beatles' "And I Love Her." This is one of the most popular songs Kurt or Nirvana ever covered, but Kurt's version sounds absolutely nothing like the original. You could hear the psych-rock influence of songs like this coming through on early Nirvana originals like "Blew" and "Blandest," and if you didn't know any better, you might think they wrote "White Lace and Strange" too. He sings it like he wrote it, with all the angst his own much darker songs had. And Kurt's vocals only slightly hint at the '60s-style singing of the original. Even this early on, Kurt's guitar playing had that swampy, flannel-wearing sound that Nirvana became known for, and it gives the song a much dirtier, heavier vibe than the original. The original is more psychedelic and Cream-like, but Nirvana turned it into something that sounded much more like what we now know of as grunge. But even if they aren't a household name, their heavy, psychedelic sound was a clear precedent to a lot of metal, stoner rock, garage rock, etc, and their album's opening track "White Lace and Strange" found its way into the hands of Nirvana, who covered it during their first radio session for Olympia's KAOS-FM in 1987, along with some of their own obscure early originals. Singer/guitarist Chris Bond went on to play with Hall & Oates, but Thunder and Roses remained in obscurity, and they're still there today.
Philly's Thunder and Roses released just one album in 1969, King Of The Black Sunrise, before calling it quits. Considering VU were basically the inventors of atonal, unstructured noise rock, this was a fitting tribute. They apply their trademark loud-quiet-loud formula to the song, with the first more faithful half being "quiet" and the second half very much being "loud." As the volume increases, Kurt goes off script and starts busting out throat-shredding, off-key screams and dissonant guitar solos, before the whole band just locks into a jam, with some sharp improvised basslines from Krist Novoselic. (Nirvana's cover also appeared on the compilation Heaven & Hell - A Tribute To The Velvet Underground - Volume One.) Their version is over twice as long as the original, and though it starts off as one of Nirvana's more straightforward covers, they eventually turn it into something that sounds like no band in the world besides Nirvana. Melvins did a noisy take on "Venus In Furs" from VU's 1967 debut The Velvet Underground & Nico, and Nirvana took on "Here She Comes Now" from their 1968 sophomore LP White Light/White Heat.
In 1990, towards the end of the era with Chad Channing on drums, Nirvana teamed up with their pals the Melvins for a split single of Velvet Underground covers.
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