WORDS FOR KURT

KURT COBAIN
February 20, 1967-April 5, 1994

I had not intended to write anything about this particular musical figure and uncompromising artist but something within the four winds pointed me in this direction.

April 5, 2014 marked the 20th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide and like so many of you, I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news. In 1994, I was 25 years old, three years out of college and still living somewhat of the campus life as I was working at the University Book Store, located on the campus' beautiful Library Mall, as a sales clerk in the General Book Department. While the location was truly a pinky toe step into the "real world," those years while working at that store were a full dive into the deep end of those "real world waters" as I had graduated from college into a recession and had fund myself alongside other highly educated individuals in a collective of dead end jobs. Over-educated and underemployed indeed. As with my generational brethren (which I still REFUSE to refer to as "Generation X," a media driven term if there ever was one, as well as being just as lazy as it is stupid), I really believe that the 1990's represented a period of intense self-discovery and serious soul searching as we did want to try and find something meaningful to devote our lives to but we didn't necessarily want to tread the same well-worn paths or at least, not in the same way as generations past. But even so, trying to hold onto integrity alone did not pay the bills, so there we were, filled with hopes but an increasing sense of irony and cynicism with the realities of the world around us.

With regards to music, I was extremely in tune with the alternative music explosion of the early 1990's (which I still REFUSE to refer to as the "grunge scene," another media driven term if there ever was one that remains just as lazy as it is stupid as "Generation X") but I still wasn't quite sure if I fully trusted it. That being said, I do remember vividly the very first time that I had heard the music of Nirvana. It was on a very inauspicious night as I was walking home from the Book Store and stopped into a State Street liquor store to purchase a bottle of something or another for my then girlfriend/now wife to imbibe that evening with dinner. I stepped into the store and was practically knocked flat by this intense and gut punch of a wall of sound. Guitars, drums, feedback and snarling vocals were flailing about the store's four walls and I found myself spending more time than necessary looking for a bottle of something or another to purchase and take home.

Now that time musically, circa 1991, was devoted to a flurry of hair metal bands, overly processed pop, increasingly plastic dance music as well as the rock star behemoth known as Guns N' Roses. The time was filled with all manner of flash and pyrotechnics, some successful and entertaining but mostly, so soulless and irritating. What I heard that night in the liquor store had an air of truth and guts and passionate fury that had been so missing for so long that after several songs and knowing full well that I could not spend the full evening just listening to this music, whatever it was, I selected a bottle, approached the counter to make my purchase and then, I asked the clerk what it was that he was listening to.
     "Nirvana," he said.
Hmmm...Nirvana, I thought to myself. Yes...I think had I just read something about them in some music publication recently...and also please note dear readers and listeners, that this moment occurred before their breakthrough album "Nevermind" (released September 24, 1991) had become the SONIC BOOM we all know it to be. The ascent of Nirvana was beginning to build steam, the world was taking notice and on that very first listen, they truly grabbed me by the collar, shook me around and I liked it so much that I knew that I would eventually be back for more someday.

Once that SONIC BOOM did occur and the media appropriated the band, and especially appointed singer/songwriter/guitarist Kurt Cobain as the spokesperson of a full generation, I did become even more skeptical. While the force and power of the music still prevailed certainly, it was all so obscured and swarmed by a legion of new bands that I truly had difficulty differentiating from one to the next, and also especially if these bands were the real deal or just flannel/thrift store wearing wannabes delving in nothing more than feedback and attitude. I was definitely paying attention but I wasn't quite sold.

What began to sway my attention towards appreciating this time period and the great bands of that era was the slow realization that these people were essentially my age. That this was the generation of music fans that are now of the age to which they can be making their own records and so, I found myself gravitating towards the groups and artists that were truly comprised of music fans, rather than corporate constructed falsities. I slowly began to build my love for The Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails, the two bands of that generation that I embraced the tightest...and still do. Stone Temple Pilots began to catch my attention when they embraced the glam rock and power pop that obviously inspired them. The ferocious and uncompromising integrity of Pearl Jam spoke for itself even if I hadn't quite latched onto their music yet. These artists, among others during this period, were all unquestionably music fans. That was the draw for me and that is what formed my allegiance to all of them.

And then, there was still Nirvana, the one that broke through and soared to the sun without ever artistically compromising themselves, but I just had this nervous feeling that the weight that was placed upon them, and Cobain in particular, would ultimately undo them. They just didn't seem strong enough to me to shoulder everything that had been attributed to them. Truth be told, I don't think that I was really able to articulate those sentiments to myself back then but I honestly felt nervous. That something abut this band and this man was just too fallible, when everything around them was suggesting or even demanding them to be infallible.

So, on the day that Kurt Cobain ended his life and the news spread through the world. I remember that I was standing at the General Book Information counter with my friends, co-workers and full representatives of my generation and age demographic just cracking wise during one of those lulls anyone in retail will instantly recognize, when the phone rang. It was the girlfriend of a co-worker and she informed him of the horrific news. he hung up the phone and informed all of us standing there that Kurt Cobain had killed himself via a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head. He was only 27 years old.

Now unlike so many of you, I wasn't devastated when I heard the news. Don't get me wrong, I was indeed shaken by the tragedy of it all. But I was feeling the way that I was because it all felt to be so sadly inevitable. I do not say this to be flip or to at all denigrate what a tragedy it was and will forever remain. It was just how I felt at the age of 25 having already lost some of my heroes. I lived through John Belushi's drug overdose and I lived through John Lennon's assassination and I had already housed the what ifs had the likes of Jim Morrison and especially Jimi Hendrix had lived. When Kurt Cobain's own drug addictions and struggles with depression, compounded by the onslaught of fame and the intense scrutiny that arrived with that fame, had ailed him severely, I do remember feeling that it was only a matter of time. Friends I had also felt the same. When the news of one overdose hit the media, we felt that sorrowful clock ticking its hands. Then it happened, and I vividly remember one friend/co-worker cynically admitting, "Well... our generation hasn't has its great rock tragedy yet."

And then, we did.

I guess I always had a slight sense of conflict with the band. In regards to the praise that "Nirvana changed music," I emphatically disagreed. Again, that is not designed to be flip or denigrate their legacy. My feelings are rooted in the reality that everything Nirvana achieved musically was completely rooted in all of the music that came before them. Remember they were music fans and it showed in the art they created. They were not copycats at all, but the roots of what they wrote and recorded are all present in a variety of forms which are easily discernible. Nirvana was not a band that re-invented the wheel, so to speak, as The Beatles eventually did. Or even artists like David Bowie, The Velvet Underground or James Brown among others. I could hear all of the artists of the 190's and 1980's alternative music scene from punk to New Wave in their intent, approach and attack. Cobain himself claimed how the Pixies were a massive influence upon his songwriting as well. So, in those respects, I never felt that they changed music itself, per se. And had they continued, maybe they would have been one of those bands to completely re-invent the wheel but of course, we will never know.

But now, as I think of Kurt Cobain 20 years on, perhaps he and Nirvana did in fact re-invent the wheel.

What Kurt Cobain and Nirvana always represented to me was a sense of truth that had been sorely missing in music for quite a lengthy spell during that time. A sense of that grit and teeth and the feeling that we are hearing a musical voice in a way that we had not heard in far too long. One that was earnest and unwavering in its passion, uncompromising in its volume and heart. That we are hearing that blood and fire in the tracks that tells the listener that what we are hearing is the sound of individuals who are indeed laying their lives in these grooves. Not for the pursuit of fame and fortune but because this is the one and only way they know how to communicate and leave a mark upon the world. That level of honesty was something that was just not heard so forcefully in rock music during those years at the dawn of the 1990's and for me, that unconventional purity spoke to me powerfully.

Music during that time was so prefabricated and homogenized that music functioned less as art and more as some sort of accessory. Nirvana and Kurt Cobain as a songwriter re-invented the wheel in how we all listen to music by forcing all of us to not treat music as an accessory but as art to become as passionate about as the performers. Yes, there will always be people like myself who are music fanatics that hang onto every single note but for the masses, the general public, Nirvana changed how we reacted to music, how we felt about music and therefore, how we connected to music and furthermore, how we connected to the artists and each other through the music. If that is not re-inventing the wheel, then I am not certain what else could be I feel that right now in 2014, we have reached that point again where music is just not something to be passionate about as the artistry of the album has faded, the single format has risen to prominence and artists have given way more to a more producer driven culture. Music has become a plastic accessory once again and I cannot help but to wonder who just may re-invent that wheel to remind us that music is art. Yet, 20 years ago, Kurt Cobain did just that.

20 years ago, I also bristled as the comparisons between Kurt Cobain to John Lennon as I just felt them to be unfair as Lennon, by the time of his death, had truly changed how we saw the world through his music, artistry, opinions, and intensely brutal journey of self-discovery within his art for over a nearly 20 year period. Kurt Cobain, on the other hand, had only had a fraction of that time. Now, 20 years on, I realize what a mistake I made with that assessment because if time was to be the sole factor in how an artist could change how we see the world, then what would that make of Jimi Hendrix's legacy, for instance, a musical existence that was over and done in just three to four years? Time is irrelevant as well as being an illusion. The impact is all that matters and nobody can deny the impact Kurt Cobain had upon us, no matter how much actual time he had to be in the world.

And to be even more empathetic to the younger fans whose worlds fell apart when Kurt Cobain passed, I was not a teenager who loved the band and I now understand that the day the horrible news broke for them was exactly like how hearing the news of John Lennon's death was for me.

More truthfully, as I now understand, my conflict in regards to Nirvana and Kurt Cobain rested within the media reaction towards the band and how those reactions and perceptions reflected themselves upon the band and Cobain in particular, something Nirvana had conflict with themselves and therefore no control. With those John Lennon comparisons  for instance, why couldn't the media just allow Kurt Cobain to exist and be treated as his own man and not in the shadow of someone else?

When I arrived back at my apartment on the day Kurt Cobain died, I clicked on MTV to catch any stories that they would inevitably be reporting and I was greeted with the sight of the channel's "Walter Cronkite" figure, music journalist/writer Kurt Loder, a figure who was indeed knowledgeable but did often come off as one who was not above pandering to the "industry of cool," as Writer/Director Cameron Crowe wrote about so brilliantly in his outstanding film, "Almost Famous" (2000). In reporting the news abut Cobain's suicide, Loder was his most pompously and unctuously repugnant as he wore a black arm band and instructed the viewers at home to race out and buy all four of Nirvana's releases at that time. Loder was an agent for the machine at that point and I could feel Cobain retching in eternity at the completely disingenuous display.

I used to think that Nirvana didn't really change music but they changed the music business but now after 20 years, I see the music business is just the same as it ever was. Kurt Cobain was perfectly built for the art of music. Yet, I do not think that he was built for the business of music. If he had lived, I do wonder how he would have lasted anyway. Despite all of his thrashing and fury, Kurt Cobain displayed a fragile soul, perhaps too fragile to survive in this business which was already threatening to swallow him and his band whole. If he had lived, I wonder if he would have found a way to continue making music like Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails, Soundgarden or Billy Corgan or former bandmate Dave Grohl have each accomplished. But was his skin too thin for something so ravenous? We'll never know...

I have four Nirvana releases within my music collection, yet I don't listen to them very often now and truthfully, I didn't at the time. Mostly because the grandeur of Billy Corgan and Trent Reznor's music speaks to my spirit in a much greater fashion. But now that 20 years have passed, there is something about Kurt Cobain's particular musical spirit that has called to me and has driven me to re-acquaint myself with this music. In doing so, I am struck once again at what attracted me initially back in that liquor store in 1991.

I am hearing and basking myself in his legacy, his beauty, his poetry, his fury and rancor, his grace and tranquility, a legacy that will continue for as long as there are those who treasure truth in art are are seduced the power of a soul merged with music. Unmatched and unequaled, we will never see the likes of someone quite like him again.

And how much better we are for having had him when we did.

R.I.P. Kurt. R.I.P.