I few weeks ago, I was asked to write something about Kurt Cobain for Black Table.com, because today is the ten year anniversary of his suicide.
I am always flattered and grateful when someone asks me to contribute to something, because it makes me feel like a “real” writer, but I often have to decline, because writing takes time, and time is something I just don’t have right now.
This was different, though, because I thought I had an interesting take on Kurt Cobain’s death, so I accepted. I wrote it up, re-wrote it, and then got buried in the Star Trek convention and forgot to send it in until one day after the deadline.
So it didn’t make the article, which is a drag, because the other writers are all respected and they all wrote great things. It would have been cool to be alongside them. They tell me it was cut for space . . . but I just read the other contributions, and it’s pretty clear to me that I’m not yet in their league.
I’m thrilled that I’ve had this realization while I’m suffering a crisis of confidence at the tail end of a rewrite, and I’m terrified about the “sophomore slump.”
But since I already put the work into it, it seems stupid to just file it off in the “never got published” directory.
Here it is:
The first time I heard “Nevermind,” I wasn’t impressed. As far as I was concerned, it was just a poor rip off of The Pixies’ “Doolittle.” When “Smells Like Teen Spirit” took over eMpTyVee and every radio station in the country, I got burned out pretty damn fast.
Then I read an interview with Kurt Cobain in . . . I think it was
Rolling Stone. Maybe it was Spin. But he said that there wouldn’t be Nevermind without Doolittle. Kurt Cobain was influenced by The Pixies? Okay, I’ll give it another try.
I listened to the whole album three or four times and I was hooked. The only other album that has completely pulled me in like that was Radiohead’s OK Computer. I bought “Bleach” within a week, and stood in line to pick up “In Utero” when it was released. I still think that Kurt’s version of “The Man Who Sold The World” is one of the most beautiful and haunting things I’ve ever heard.
For as much as I loved the music, I completely hated Kurt Cobain’s antics. The destruction of vintage guitars enraged me, the dresses and outrageous behavior in interviews just annoyed me, and over time it became difficult for me to appreciate the music on its own. By the time Kurt ended his life, I’d lost interest in Nirvana, and I told my friend Dave, “Well, what do you expect? Poor Kurt had all his dreams come true, and he just couldn’t handle it. Maybe he ran out of vintage Strats to destroy.”
Dave did his best to convince me that rock had lost a pioneer. Without Kurt’s music, he said, there wouldn’t be Perl Jam, or Soundgarden, or Alice In Chains. Without Nirvana, he suggested, Guns N Roses may still be sitting atop Rock’s Mount Olympus.
“Meh. There’s one less Junkie in the world,” I said. The truth was, I’d recently lost a dear friend to suicide, and Kurt’s death brought back a lot of unresolved sorrow over my own loss.
Almost a year later, I was listening to Chet Baker, an influential Jazz musician who was also a heroin addict when he fell (some say jumped) out of an Amsterdam hotel window in 1988. Baker was a trumpet player, with a soulful voice. There was always a touch of sadness and longing in his lyrical style — be it musical or vocal. I’d been reading a lot of Burroughs at the time, and I called up my friend Dave to rave about Chet Baker’s “How Deep is the Ocean?”
I told him how I could feel Chet Baker’s sadness, and I wondered if his addiction played a part in his music, the way Burrough’s addiction clearly informed his writing.
“Oh, you mean like Kurt Cobain.” Dave said. A statement, not a question.
I thought for a second. “Yes. Exactly like Kurt Cobain. I never thought of it that way.”
“So you maybe have a different opinion of him now?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.” I surprised myself with my answer. “But I’ll never
forgive him for destroying all those vintage guitars.”
Dave laughed, “You’re such a dick.”
“Yes I am. But I’m a dick who can listen to Nirvana again.”
Here’s the part where I eulogize Kurt Cobain.
I didn’t know Kurt, and his death didn’t greatly impact my life. But I knew his music, and when I came to understand his addiction, and his frustrations with the music industry’s efforts to turn him into just another commodity, I felt sad for him, and mourned his loss.
I don’t think Kurt Cobain was that great a musician, and I can speak from experience, because even I was able to play along with most of Nevermind, without learning any new chords. But he was an amazing writer, and his real legacy can be seen in garage bands and on record store shelves all over the world. Dave was right: without Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, there would be no Perl Jam, no Soundgarden, no Alice in Chains, and Seattle would just be this mysterious city where it rains a lot.
I can’t believe it’s been ten years — a decade! — since Kurt Cobain died. Wherever he is, I hope he’s sipping Pennyroyal Tea.
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I hit this site after doing a Google search to learn more about the line, “Give me (a?) Leonard Cohen afterworld (afterward?)”. Still not sure if I’m hearing the lyrics correct or if everyone else is writing them incorrectly, and no more insight about that line than when I started. That is so-Kurt, to mumble lyrics that can’t be understood and likewise, that is so-Google, to be inundated with irrelevant hits.
But not to give the wrong impression: there are often good hits that were irrelevent to the initial search, and this was one of them. It’s the best thing about the internet, to explore and learn new things. Like, I didn’t know Wil had a website. I didn’t believe it was Wil’s website — remembered as that subtly charming, if geeky and somewhat annoying brooding overachiever of Star Trek TNG — but instead thought it was just some spoofer making fun of him. Read the “first time here” page, and no, I don’t love you Wil. 😉 But I entered the site anyways, hope you don’t mind. But you played a key role on a TV show, although you may sometimes be marginalized or trivialized as a child in that role. For what use is the wisdom of the elders without youth to endow with such wisom? And I am (was then, too, no flex-time or temporal anomalies here) just a couple years younger, so I saw it through the eyes of a youth, which was cool.
Anyways, about Nirvana and Kurt Cobain… First let me say that I am sorry that I didn’t read all the cool responses so far. I am just a very slow reader and it would take me another hour or two to read. I read enough to form some things to say, though.
What Nirvana brought to me was music that I could relate to, that I was drawn towards, that I could feel like these lyrics capture a lot of the feelings that I am struggling with in my youth, and even into adulthood. When I was a teen, and first heard Nirvana, I just wanted to hear more and more. For those of you who nitpick about the esoterics of artistry, let’s not forget the single most important thing when it comes to art: Does it communicate with you? Does it reach you? Does it reach or maybe even resemble anybody you know? Can you relate to it? Does it provide interesting things that you can form opinions about, wether or notyou agree with them? Does it inspire much thinking? Is it a challenge, or is it (eye/ear/pop/mind) candy? Do you remember the music? Do the sounds trigger some sort of emotional response? (My theory is that just as mathematics is a way to look at the structures of numbers and patterns, and use them as tools to achieve some desired goal, so too music is a collection of patterns, which can elicit emotional responses common to many people. Furthermore, the music could be reduced to numbers and patterns analyzed, such that predictions could be made about the emotional or psychological response of such patterns on a human. But I digress… frequently 😉
People are going to have different life experiences, and so may not be able to relate to the music or lyrics of Nirvana. This is normal, and to be expected. But before you summarily dismiss the entire band just because it did not reach you personally, you should be aware that there is a greater variety of people in the world than you, or even of the same type as you, and the music has the capacity to reach some of those people. So, it’s notgoingto be in your tracklist rotation, big deal. Just show proper respect to the artists and those who appreciate the art for what it was.
About the topics of depression and substance abuse, and other mental maladies. Some of you just dismiss Kurt as a junkie, just because you yourself are not a junkie, or never have been, or don’tsee that you will be (even though there’s every chance in the world that things could go wrong in your life: loose job, wife, house, kids, cars, money, friends, and feel the need to escape into substance abuse because you can’t reconcile the difference between what you had and what you’ve lost — it could happen to you: not condoning it, not supporting it, but we can not see all ends, can’t see the future, and things can be very different than what we imagine, and some of these junkies have stories too, so have an ounce of sympathy you bastards).
As for me, I’ve never had any chemical addiction, other than caffiene (which has an effect of keeping me awake for several days at a time, from a can or two of soda), which I mostly avoid now. But of other types of addictions, say behavioural, those who know me would say “computer addiction”, as I love to spend all my time tinkering, surfing, coding, building, swearing at (when things go wrong), and otherwise mollycoddling my computers.
But what I do suffer from, and probably from pre-birth, is pretty severe depression at times, and only moderate most of the time, and sometimes very light depression. But if some psychiatrist armed with the DSM IV and medications looks at me, they quantify and classify me as “suffering from Major Depressive Disorder”, and prescribe a bunch of meds that do nothing but make me so fat I can’t walk, ormake me a little happier at first, but soon doesn’t make me happy, but I keep taking because if I stop I have a crash and become very unhappy. All of this seemed too eerily close to addiction to me, but thankfully without the component of severe chemical dependency, so I quit taking any meds a while ago, screw the doctors. I’ve lost weight, and feel a lot better physically, and the “crash” I experienced for a few days was NOTHING compared to the crashes of my adolesence. The thing is, doctors,for all theireducation, are just like everybody else. They will try and pidgeonhole you to fit into their concept of how the world should be, and how people should be, and if you are in such a world that they can’t even comprehend (so sad that they imagine they would kill themselves in my position), then they get very scared and freaked out. Only they have the law on their side, as doctors, and under the auspicies of “moral responsibility to the patient, and society”, want to keep the patient from harming themselves or others. But, in my history, I have never intentionally hurt myself (except for the occasional harmless stupid trick to impress a friend, like dropping your head onto the desk and see how loud a noise you make 🙂 , nor have I physically hurt anybody else (except for the tooth I loosened in my brother when I punched him in the mouth when I was 3-5, and that friend in adolesence who kept throwing acorns at my house even when I asked him notto, and let him know how strongly I felt about it, yet he persisted just to see how pissed off I’d get, and I punched him, but I can’t hit hard anyways, didn’t even leave a red mark or a bruise). But there were times in my youth when I would have contemplated harming myself, or sat with a knife to my chest, resting between the blades (oh, no wrists or pills for me, that’s for people who want to be saved, and my personality is very different, if I am going to do something, I do it right, the first time). An exercise that was theraputic for me, was to hold my breath (don’t laugh 😉 with the idea in my mind, that if both my body AND spirit willed me to die, then I would be strong enough to induce self-suffocation by sheer will-power. Which I guess is apparently nearly impossible, so it’s fairly harmless. I never passed out or anything, but even if I did, my body’s autonomic system would kick in and I’d start breating as soon as I lost conscious control of my mouth and nose and lungs. Which only confirms the premise of the exercise: that only my body wanted to die (or that corporeal existence of mind and emotion), but not the spirit. The triumverate of me can’t act uni- or bi-laterally. This had some theraputic value inasmuch as it means I must continue to endure whatever hardships may come, as my spirit wishes to continue on it’s voyage until the proper end.
Did I digress again? Ok, but I had a point somewhere. I’ve never been a junkie,nor very fond of them in the past. But such struggles with depression led me to a month long hospital stay, where I met a few very nice people who had substance abuse problems, not just “junkies”. Now I cringe when I use the word “junkie” without thinking, or when someone else does (obviously with no sympathy or empathy, and limited awareness of substance abuse issues). I think, what if my friend heard me refer to them as a junkie? That would hurt them immeasureably and I’d probably loose them as a friend, and that’d make me very sad, because once you see past the problem, they are people too, and some may be friend-worthy (yes, with an awareness stipulated, for instance: you can’t give them any money, ever, not out of spite, and not to diminish them, but they may harm themselves or others if they get high, even if they seem to be “clean”). Not all ju… addicts would choose to continue being addicts if it weren’t for the addictive nature of the chemicals. They are no less responsible,but their decision making process can be impaired. But the point I am making, is some people want to fight the addiction. They have lost their home and jobs and family, children, friends, money, and even more intangible things, like the ability to be trusted with money… even if they had a job, they’d need someone else to open a bank account and store the money and hand them just enough for food each week, and pay all their bills directlyfrom the account. This is not to diminish them as people but only to keep them safe and healthy. It is a fact that it is a consequence of addiction. But think, how would YOU feel in their position? It’s very belittling, humiliating, and shameful as it is, and they’re doing everything they can to get back on track. Then some asshole comes along and says they never had any drug problems, waving it in your face, and disregards your whole existence by summing up your life and experiences as “junkie”. Even the commonly used term of “staying clean” has the implication that you are (or were) “dirty”. And you hear other people say things, and soon it’s the only voices you hear in your head, “Once a junkie, always a junkie.” If that’s all people are going to see you as, why bother to fight the addiction when it’d seem much easier to just continue and let it swallow you whole? At least it’s more familiar to you to be an addict than to be a struggling, recovering addict, looking for work, for a new life, for new friends, and being discriminated against all the while. And at the same time, feeling a deep sense of disloyalty to all your old drug-buddies, and maybe even having to deal with all the co-dependants from the past drug-life while you’re trying to get out of it all. It is really a very sad predicament to find oneself in, and as such, deserves some awareness of that fact, some respect for the condition and the people afflicted by it, and for fuck’s sake, a small amount of empathy or sympathy just to show that you ARE a human and not some mechanized drone of “commonly acceptable society”.
What’s this got to do with Kurt and Nirvana? Well, a lot, nothing, I don’t know. It just seems very relevent to this discussion that people have some awareness about drug addiction. If you want to completely appreciate it, why not volunteer some help? Some places REQUIRE a past history of drug abuse problems, because that is sometimes the only way other addicted people will be able to make any connection that they can find a way out of the mess, if they see someone in front of them who has walked the same path already. But if you think you want to see the real thing, not isolated as a volunteer or clinician (“clean” vs. “dirty”, inside the glass or outside the glass), why not read up on the DSM IV, practice a certain mental malady, and head over to your local nut-hatch and stay for at least two-four weeks and meet some people and talk with them, about their lives, before and after the addiction. A lot of people also had mental hardships or environmental factors which left them much more easily susceptible to the patterns of drug abuse. NOTE: faking an illness could really piss off the caregivers (and rightly so), and may even lead to legal actions for insurance fraud or losing health insurance entirely. If you self-pay, it’d be harder to lose insurance if caught, but may still have the angry caregivers to deal with. And also, there’d be one more person out on the street who really DOES need help, who may end up killing themselves or others, by intent or irresponsibility or negligence. But as far as I know, there is no other way to really relate to someone until you have lived a piece of their life with them, and not the best parts, only the worset parts, or more accurately, what THEY consider to be the worst parts.
About the blame for who killed Kurt Cobain: wife’s narcissistic, self-indulged,drug-induced, negligence, or fame’s pressures, or fortune (was watching a video with Kurt saying how sad it made him to have a lot of money, because when he was poor, it made him happy to go shopping at old stores and find a treasure, because he placed more emotional value, and received more emotional value out of the experience, than “walking in with $1000 in [his] pocket and buying the store”), or the music industry’s crass policy of placing the needs of commercialization over artistry and individuality, or the fault of society in general for being such a shitheap of humanity as a whole. The answer is so simple it hurts to have to explain it to such thick people: Whoever pulled the trigger killed Kurt Cobain. I say “whoever pulled the trigger” as opposed to “Kurt” because there was some recent speculation that Kurt didn’t do it, but I didn’t research that. It may have been just drivel & hype of the media to fill 15 seconds of air time as a lure to draw people into watching the other news segments, around the 10-year death-iversary (to me an aniversary is something you are proud of and celebrate, so we should use a different word for the passing of time after someone’s death, especially in the case of an untimely and gruesome death such as this).
I’ve recently started listening to Nirvana again, and all the music (Nevermind, Incesticide, and Unplugged are the first three CDs I got so I listened to them the most) still hits home just as it did the first time I listened to it over 10 years ago. Then I look at some CD like “In Utero”, and on the track listing, over half of the songs on that CD received regular airtime! Most CDs are lucky to get 1 song played on the air! To those of you who say Nirvana and Kurt aren’t worth the eulogy, go and name mesome other bands who have at least one CD with over half the songs that were played on the air frequently! And then tell me that that band isn’t worth all the attention!
Oh, another few comments about Kurt. I didn’t really watch him much in the media. That’s not really my thing. I listened to the music heavily. I had a tape with Metallica on one side and Nirvana on the other, a very good teen-angst combo. Some people mentioned that he wore alot of outrageous clothes or something. I totally missed that “experience” or that facet of Kurt: it was never on my radar as I said before. But the thing about Kurt that sticks in my mind, after watching some videos recently, was about the NORMAL clothes he wore, ripped sweaters and worn jeans. THIS didn’t change, even after he became famous. He still wore those kind of clothes after he had the money. He was always unshaven and with messy hair. He didn’t change his image to please the record company, to make more money, as everyone todayseems to do. I think that he was HIMSELF. He was probably just making music that he liked, for his own personal desire to express those things which are unexpressable in prose and common domestic interactions. I think he was probably just as surprised as anybody about the record deals, the tours, the nearly instant success and fame (a year or 18 months after Bleach is when Nevermind made the band famous, but some bands play 40 years and are not as famous). And not just fame, but the status of artistic and corporate revolutionary in the music world, icon of a frustrated, confused, angered, betrayed generation, legend inhis own time. Maybe he got carried away by the whole fame and fortune and notoriety and combined with drug use, he started acting weird and this was exhibited by the outrageous clothes and antics. It’s something that’s a bit sad to see, fame gone awry with someone who wasn’t ready for it or couldn’t handle it. But I think it’s clear, too, if you look at the clothes he wore most of the time in his daily life, and if you remember the story about him getting a lot of enjoyment from buying things in old vintage stores when he had little money to spend, you can see that he struggled with the fame and the industry, to be HIMSELF, true to his own identity. He wasn’t like a Britney’s Pears who just dress slutty and show off their breasts and sing smutty, trashy, and happy songs to make a quick buck while her looks last. He wasn’t busy or obsessed with “selling himself”, he was busy worrying about if he was still BEING himself. I think that is a PROFOUND observation, and a perhaps one of the precious few positive messages to take from his life’s experiences.
When Kurt died I was only 6 years-old, i was still watching those stupid shows for kids, and if i had heard nirvana at that time i’d be scared or i’d think i’d go deaf. but really….what does a 6 year-old kid know??? not a whole lot i bet, especially about good music.
when i became older enough to understand music, my uncle, who by the way is only 2(maybe 3) years older than me, intoduced me to nirvana. at first i just thought that kurt was a hottie but a pot-head (even made fun of my uncle because of this)…and i still liked britney spears! but now i’m glad i have such a cool uncle. it didn’t take me long to realize what good music really is.
kurt became my idol and always will be, why???? the answer is simple…as krist novoselic said :” kurt spoke to us in our hearts, and that’s where the(his) music will always be”.
None of us knows what really happened to Kurt, murder or suicide, so i dont see how all of you can comment and say what a pussy he is for killing himself. None of us knew him so i cant understand why anyone comments about the type of perosn he was.
Does it matter whether he “measures up” to John Lennon or Jim Morrison? I think we forget that he was actual person, not just an article in a magazine or the “Godfather of Grunge”. Its all very stereotypical.We need to remember him for the music he made that touched us, not smashed guitars.