Dinosaur Jr.’s frontman, J Mascis has revealed to Spin magazine that rumors are sometimes true, since he was asked to join one very famous band: Nirvana. He explained how this happened at a New Jersey venue on July 13 1989:
‘Nirvana was playing Maxwell's and after the show I was talking to Kurt and [Sonic Youth's] Thurston Moore, Kurt said, 'you should join my band.' I think he was sick of the guy Jason [Everman] who was in the band at the time, and thought I should play guitar. I didn't think much about it. Later, there was also talk of playing drums on a single [1990's 'Sliver'] they were doing, but it ended up being [Mudhoney drummer] Dan Peters.’
And, a few years later, there was another offer from Built to Spill’s frontman as Doug Martsch told Spin:
‘When we signed to Warner Brothers [in 1995], I didn't have a band. One idea I had was to play all the instruments myself and just get a drummer. I ended up doing that and scrapping it, but another idea was to have J play drums on the record. He was willing to do it, but then I kinda decided it wouldn't be a good idea. I felt like I needed to work with someone who I could really work with a little more, you know? I didn't know how we could work together, I had no idea and I didn't want to get started on something like that. I didn't want to be telling J Mascis what to play on drums. I wanted to find someone I felt comfortable really expressing myself with. But there was a moment where he was almost the drummer on that record.’
Let’s see Dinosaur Jr. is a sort of cult band beloved by many, but still quite underground, Built to Spill is also indie-underground, but Nirvana is without any doubt plain mainstream. You can’t even compare Nirvana’s fame with that of Dinosaur Jr.’s! But let's put things back in time, in 1991, Nirvana opened for Dinosaur Jr., just look at this flyer!
So should have Mascis accepted? We can ruminate the idea for days, and think about what could have been the result, but let’s not rewrite history. Mascis said it clearly, ‘I didn't think much about it’, so he was clearly not interested.