Jo Wheatley would like to mourn the late Kurt Cobain. But how much is there to remember him by?
At 8.40am on Friday 8 April 1994, the body of Kurt Cobain was
discovered at the Nirvana frontman's secluded home in the Madrona district of Seattle.
Using his thumb to pull the shotgun trigger, Cobain had blown his own head off. His
remains were cremated at a private ceremony in Seattle on Sunday 10 April. Afterwards 10
000 fans attended a candlelit vigil at the Seattle Center.
So ended the career of perhaps the most influential pop musician of the nineties so far.
Nirvana - originally known as Skid Row - started out in a Washington state backwater
called Aberdeen, where, according to Cobain, people like Beavis and Butthead are in a
majority. Their debut album, Bleach, was recorded over Christmas 1988 for Sub Pop,
a small Seattle-based outfit. It cost $600. By the time they played Britain's Reading
festival in the summer of 1991, Nirvana had signed to the prestigious Geffen label. That
autumn they released their second album, Nevermind, which to date has sold 10m
copies worldwide.
Cobain always said that the sound he wanted was a mixture of Black Sabbath and The
Beatles. Nevermind also contained indirect references to dance music. The
subsequent single, 'Smells like Teen Spirit', was picked up by London DJs such as Jeremy
Healy and played in clubs alongside house and garage tracks. Like all significant bands,
Nirvana succeeded in embracing a number of different musical elements and reworking them
in a new mix. The band came to be thought of as the embodiment of grunge, aka slackers,
aka Generation X.
On the Monday before his death, Cobain absconded from a detoxification centre in
California. His mother, Wendy O'Connor, filed a missing person's report and predicted, 'He
is probably going to turn up dead and join that stupid club' - a reference to the dead
cool cats society which includes rock'n'roll casualties like Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones,
Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and John Lennon.
As a prediction of her son's imminent demise, O'Connor's remark turned out to be woefully
accurate. But in another sense it doesn't ring true. Cobain simply doesn't have what it
takes to be a full member of the stupid club. He will go down as more of a nobody than a
somebody.
Sixties pop was all about posing, just like the nineties version. But 30 years ago there
was something in the air, and pop music could not help but reflect a sense of expectancy.
Nowadays there is little or no sense that something is about to happen, and pop music is
unexceptional, even when it tries to be outrageous.
To his credit, Cobain was aware of this predicament. His music was not an old-fashioned
punkish attempt to pater le bourgeois. Instead it expressed the enervation and
exhaustion of wanting to shock but not being able to. Nirvana's third (and final) album, In
Utero (1993), described the pop star adored by his audience because he embodies their
sense of tired indifference: 'Teenage angst has paid off well. Now I'm bored and old.'
In the days of Jimi Hendrix, pop music was a unique Experience. Hendrix and Jones died
because they were high and wanted to get higher. Cobain shot himself on the basis that
everything is on the same mundane level, including pop music. This much is borne out by
extracts from his suicide note: 'Sometimes I feel as I should have to punch a time clock
before I walk out on stage....I haven't felt the excitement...for too many years now. When
we're backstage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowd begins, it doesn't
affect me the way it did for Freddie Mercury who seemed to relish the love and adoration
of the crowd.'
Cobain's life and work was about angst and indifference rather than angst and rebellion.
In turn, most people have remained indifferent to his death. After the death of Elvis
Presley (1977) and John Lennon (1980), the cities of Memphis and New York went into
mourning. But it was business as usual in Seattle on 8, 9 and 10 April. People living
three blocks from his house did not even recognise the name Cobain. Except for the young,
Cobain's death had no aftermath. It marks the demise of the pop star as a figure of wider
social significance.
There is only one limited sense in which Cobain's death has entered the wider public
domain: as a morality play of the permissive society. Many of Cobain's activities would
presumably have found favour with politically correct social workers: feminist lyrics,
altercations with macho Axl Rose (Guns'n'Roses), benefits for Bosnia Women's Aid, the joys
of parenting, and empathy with gay lifestyles. Nevertheless, various moralising vultures
have picked over Cobain's corpse, suggesting that this is what must happen to children of
broken homes who play with drugs.
In the Daily Telegraph, Tony Parsons suggested that 'perhaps it is because he is
one of those children of the sixties generation - divorced parents, too many early drug
experiences, too much too soon all round - and the suspicion lingers that he was doomed
from the start. We mourn Kurt Cobain not because his death comes as a surprise but because
it feels inevitable'. Guardian critic Caroline Sullivan advised, 'parents should
look at Cobain's short life and pitiful death, and try to prevent the next casualty from
being a child of theirs'.
Parsons blames the sixties for the corruption of society and Sullivan emphasises parental
responsibility. Meanwhile MTV offered counselling to traumatised fans. There is so much
plagiarism here from official government philosophy, we might as well have Hillary Clinton
and the Tory home secretary writing the rock music columns of national newspapers. The
restraining tentacles of the culture of conformity have reached this far.
Never before have newspaper writers dared to be so patronising to pop music and its
followers. On the other hand, maybe some deserve it. At the Seattle Center on Sunday 10
April, the youthful congregation chanted 'asshole' as a mantra to describe themselves and
their fallen idol. How low can you go? When I travelled round Europe a couple of years
ago, not speaking any of the languages I introduced myself to blokes I fancied by saying
'Nirvana'. It felt good at the time, but now I'm not so keen to be associated with a
generation of self-confessed assholes. The asshole generation? It stinks.
Reproduced from Living Marxism issue 68, June 1994
I am embarrassed to watch the 70's and 80's bands, and all those surfer bands live. Is it because I don't enjoy their music? No. It's because they all had that we're better than you aura surrounding them, and it looked like they didn't want to be playing - they were doing it for the money. Take the Monkees, for example, who have openly stated that they hated the type of music that they were playing, and in between recording songs would play 'Johnny Be Bad' and other rock and roll stuff.
Cut to the latter part of the 1980's, when a new revolution is taking place in Seattle. There is a new type of sound - loud, pissed off, and not caring about anything at all. What would later be called grunge wasn't just music, but a lifestyle. Is it just luck that Kurt Cobain and Nirvana became the pinups for this movement? Absolutely not. It is because Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, Chad Channing, Dave Grohl, Jason Everman, and all the other drummers Nirvana used, ate, breathed, and slept this lifestyle. When you saw Nirvana live, it was breathtaking. Three (or for the In Utero tour, four) guys going absolutely nuts and playing the loudest, noisiest, most rocking set you've ever heard. Many a time, they'd intentionally screw up a song because they were sick of hearing it. They didn't care.
Musically speaking, Kurt Cobain could not read notes, understand guitar theory, or even know many scales or modes. But he conveyed something that only a handful of artists had before him, such as Jimi Hendrix, Janmis Joplin, and Santana - PASSION. The picture of Kurt swinging his guitar around, looking as if he's having a seisure, is a staple of every show Nirvana ever played. The breaking of all their equipment - why? Was it to please the fans? Of course not. It was to show that they just didn't care.
Every band that has come into the spotlight since 1994 has been influenced by Kurt and Nirvana. Creed (ugh), Papa Roach, and of course the Foo Fighters. The Stone Temple Pilot's 'Pop Love Suicide' is devoted to Kurt. This man didn't create a new type of music or lifestyle, but he embodied it more than any other person has, or will. Not many artists believe in their music as much as Kurt Cobain did. Not many will. This is, in my mind, what made Kurt Cobain the best artist I've ever heard, seen, or attempted to mimmick, in my entire life.