Nirvana - The Rise and Fall of a Grunge Myth

Nirvana are the most representative band of the grunge movement (from grungy, slang for dirty). In just a few years and with a handful of albums to their name, they managed to establish themselves as the true legend of the Seattle scene, capturing the mood of an entire generation and turning alternative rock into a mass phenomenon. The sacrifice of their leader, Kurt Cobain, has certainly fuelled the myth, but the impact of Nirvana's music on the 90s is undeniable, and can in some ways be compared to the influence Rem and U2 had on the previous decade.

As often happens in the history of rock – just think of the textbook case of Led Zeppelin – they became pioneers despite initially showing a very "derivative" approach. Cobain and his bandmates, in fact, drew heavily from various genres of the past, particularly punk and noise-rock for their speed and immediacy, and hard-rock for the heaviness and harshness of certain sounds, but they also didn't shy away from melodic nods to pop — no coincidence that they would become one of the movement's most popular bands, loved even by audiences outside grunge, precisely for their catchy, effective choruses. But what made them immortal above all is the stamp of their leader, the angry, desperate minstrel of the apathetic kids of Generation X, as portrayed in Douglas Coupland's cult book.

In the footsteps of the Melvins

The band's roots can be traced to the scene around their fellow musicians Melvins. Inspired by them, the barely twenty-something Kurt Cobain (vocals and guitar), Chris Novoselic (bass) and Chad Channing (drums) form Nirvana and start out playing on the Melvins' own second-hand equipment. In truth, none of the three is actually from Seattle: Cobain was born in Hoquiam, Washington, while Novoselic and Channing are Californians. But their records, together with those of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, would turn this small city in the American Northwest into a factory of billion-dollar success stories. After releasing the single "Love Buzz/Big Cheese" on Sub Pop Records, the label symbolising the city's scene, Nirvana make their full-length debut in 1989 with Bleach (a title inspired by a bizarre ad recommending that needles be washed in bleach before shooting up). Making it required a shoestring budget of just 600 dollars, advanced by guitarist Jason Everman, who would in fact end up contributing very little musically to the record.

Cobain immediately reveals himself as the soul of the band. His songwriting gifts, poised between John Lennon and Sid Vicious, emerge in tracks like "About A Girl", a melodic ballad that foreshadows the existentialism and desolate streak of his style (already showing a clear pop sensibility, destined to surface more fully in later work), but also in grunge prototypes like the autobiographical "School" and the incendiary "Blew", the latter driven by a pulsing bass intro and a monochord, clearly punk-derived riff, which also recurs in the quirky "Floyd The Barber" (dedicated to a TV series). It's hard not to glimpse Cobain himself in the antisocial kid of "Negative Creep", while the tense "Paper Cuts" is a tribute to their "godfathers" Melvins. These tracks, together with the cover of Shockin' Blue's "Love Buzz", immediately set the parameters of the Nirvana sound. A raw, jagged sound that mixes the dirty blues-rock of Rolling Stones and Stooges with the power of hard-rock (from Led Zeppelin to Aerosmith) and the hardcore fervour of Husker Du and Pixies.

Raw and immature as it is, Bleach proves to be a work of crucial importance for the years to come. Whether it's truly the cornerstone of the grunge movement is hard to say. What's certain is that, however convulsive and somewhat muddled their reworking of past models may have been, Nirvana undoubtedly helped build a new kind of rock, one that fully dusted off the traditional song form (verse-chorus-verse), focusing on the essentialism of the 60s and 70s at the expense of all the artifice of the 80s, from synths (practically banned) to every kind of guitar effect.

A movement traceable more to a shared political and existential outlook (the anti-establishment approach, the withdrawn, angry, iconoclastic temperament) than to a single musical style, grunge would nonetheless always remain tied to this reference model, seasoned with a marked preference for distorted, noisy sounds.

The subsequent tour also brings the band solid success and encourages them to keep going, despite the psycho-physical health problems of their leader already starting to surface.

The mythology of teen spirit

Having recruited Dave Grohl (from Warren, Ohio) on drums and backed by their already-established colleagues Sonic Youth, the trio enters Geffen's orbit, right in the thick of the grunge era, and in September 1991 release Nevermind. Produced by Butch Vig and mixed by Andy Wallace, it's an album destined to earn its place among the all-time classics. Few albums in the history of rock, in fact, have managed to embody with the same intensity the moods and anxieties of an entire generation. And yet Cobain, once recording wrapped, wasn't satisfied. He never forgave Gary Gersh and Andy Wallace, the label exec and producer respectively, for wanting to get their hands on the material, sharpening its dynamics and depth and smoothing out its rough edges. He was making a colossal mistake. It's precisely that balance, in fact, that is the secret of this record, able to blend hard-rock and melody, sonic abrasiveness and clarity of arrangement, iconoclastic punk fury and existential melancholy in just the right proportions. Nirvana's peculiar gift lies in pairing punk's nihilistic sarcasm with a melodic talent unknown to most of the bands emerging in the same period. And then there are the lyrics: a perfect fusion of music and life, capable of creating a mythic symbiosis between artist and audience that reaches its peak in "Smells Like Teen Spirit", the furious cry that opens the record and would go down in history as the symbol of the apathetic, sarcastic spirit of an entire generation (it would also be revisited in an interesting "sensual" version by Tori Amos).

Nevermind is something more than an album. It's rage, unease, pain, excruciating pain. It can all be summed up in the first few seconds of the opening track, "Smells Like Teen Spirit", perhaps the best-known rock song of the 90s: four chords, but spat out in a turbulent outburst that Grohl's drum rolls support to perfection. The alternation between the melodic verse and a chorus that symbolises the generational ordeal of the early 90s (“With the lights out it’s less dangerous/ Here we are now, entertain us/ I feel stupid and contagious/ Here we are now, entertain us/ A mulatto/ An albino/ A mosquito/ My Libido”) is one of the most moving moments on the album. The lyrics are almost nonsense, but by this point it doesn't matter what Cobain is saying, only how he says it. And finally, the solo, which weaves around the vocal melody, played with real heart.

If you're left reeling from the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" cyclone, after the briefest moment of respite another masterpiece begins: "In Bloom". Terrifying, fantastic. The opening words, murmured over a laconic, downcast bassline, are the best representation of Cobain's unease (“Sell the kids for food/ weather changes moods/ Spring is here again/ reproductive glands”). And then the acid-drenched solo, and the chorus, with that scream introducing a simple, memorable, almost epic melody. But the pain isn't only rage. "Come As You Are" reminds us of that, a melancholy depression carried by a bassline that's already legendary. Cobain's habit of tuning his instruments half a step below standard pitch finds a fitting justification here: it seems like nothing, but the track sounds more unsettling than ever. And so, amid one feedback squall after another, we arrive at "Breed": a track loaded with adrenaline, Grohl's drumming like a steamroller! Jumping on the bed is almost mandatory.

Amid screams and punk-inspired guitar bashing, "Breed" leads us into "Lithium", one of the album's biggest hits, blending the melodies of "Come As You Are" with the angry choruses of "In Bloom": it would become one of the anthems of the so-called "Generation X", which over time has reduced Cobain's image to a fetish and a symbol to be stamped on flags and t-shirts, often ignoring the message of unease he expressed in its purest form on "Polly". A deceptively simple track, just a basic chord progression on acoustic guitar, but here you can hear the decisive power of Cobain's voice: "Polly" is almost singer-songwriter territory and betrays the influence of the great American crooners on Kurt's musical upbringing. Nirvana would pay tribute to bluesman Leadbelly at their "MTV Unplugged In New York" show with a terrifying version of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?".

If "Polly" lets the listener relax after being battered by the wall of sound of the previous tracks, there's little time to recover. Track seven opens by parodying a 60s hippie song ("Get Together"), before exploding into a tremendous scream: that of "Territorial Pissings". This is punk as played by Nirvana, the fullest expression of what Cobain called "physical music". The run of tracks that follows, like "Drain You" (almost cheerful, a favourite of the band's leader) and "Lounge Act", simply reinforces the idea of an album that transcends the simple notes it's made of and immediately establishes itself as a generational manifesto. "Drain You" also contains a more "experimental" section, in the vein of Sonic Youth's dissonances. "Lounge Act", meanwhile, stands out for Novoselic's contribution, who became famous for his simple, immediate basslines.

Then comes "Stay Away", another great track, one that could be called a "pogo anthem" if it had ever actually been played live, with Grohl giving his very best. We're approaching the end now, ushered in by "On A Plain". At the close of that track come some groans that lead into the final one: two notes, an acoustic guitar, nothing else. "Something In The Way". Hard to describe — the lyrics, a kind of poem in their own way, speak for themselves: “Underneath the bridge/ The tarp has sprung a leak/ And the animals I’ve trapped/ Have all become my pets/ And I’m living off of grass/ And the drippings from the ceiling/ But it’s ok to eat fish/ Cause they haven’t any feelings/ Something in the way” (“Al di sotto del ponte/ Il pesce ha mollato una pisciata/ E gli animali che ho catturato/ Sono diventati tutti miei animali domestici/ E non continuo a vivere d’erba/ E lo sgocciolio dal cielo/ Va bene mangiare pesce/ Perché loro non hanno sentimenti/ Qualcosa nella strada”). Cobain recounts the days he spent living under a bridge, kicked out of home and gripped by unimaginable despair. After 10 minutes of silence comes the ghost track. A recording of guitars torn apart and obliterated in the studio, with tremendous distortion. "Endless, Nameless" is the fitting title of this "composition" (?!?). Nearly seven minutes of savage screaming and tremendous dissonance. Rage in its purest state.

This is how Nevermind closes: an hour of technically simple songs, transformed into rock masterpieces by Cobain's trembling, hoarse and fearful voice. It's difficult to analyze the band's work by extracting it from the mythologizing context that Kurt Cobain's suicide helped the record industry build around them. But listening to it without the chatter that surrounds Nirvana today ringing in your ears can still reveal powerful sensations to listeners who love "physical music".

Nevermind (nearly 10 million copies sold, against the 30,000 of the debut) would become one of the biggest commercial successes in recording history, without alienating Nirvana from the sympathies of the "harder and purer" fringes of their audience. Cobain's scream, almost detached yet at the same time vivid and anguished, quickly became one of the most powerful symbols of end-of-century rock. And the music from Seattle brought to light another America, populated by restless, maladjusted young people who suddenly rose from the underground to become a cultural phenomenon.

In December 1992, Geffen released Incesticide, a collection of rarities recorded for the BBC, singles left off albums, and alternate versions.

The most painful testament

Nevermind had been a bolt from the blue, an unexpected clean sweep. It had burst the grunge bubble, but it was neither the genre's forefather nor its most direct example. Cobain himself didn't love it all that much. He considered it a record that was too clean in sound - the crystalline production was by Butch Vig, future mastermind of Garbage - and too catchy: essentially it was melodic punk, sometimes speeding up into hardcore, sometimes triumphing in power-pop. A jewel too polished for a dirty genre whose noble, derelict forefathers had been bands like Butthole Surfers and Mudhoney. Cobain wanted to go back to the past and to grunge; the real thing, viscous and fetid like the Bleach debut. So he brought in Steve Albini as producer, the prophet of hard, pure sound, capable - thanks to his system of microphones scattered around the recording studio - of capturing the physical charge of a band's sound. The result is In Utero (1993), the third and final proper Nirvana album. Less successful and less appealing than its predecessor, the record is nonetheless the most desperate act, the true spiritual testament of Cobain, an accidental rock star. Because reading between the lines of its 12 tracks, you can probably find the real Kurt: a kid like many others, marked by a childhood that wasn't easy but wasn't tragic either (his parents, like those of many others, were divorced), who loved listening to the Sex Pistols, playing his guitar and singing his songs. A kid who had now reached breaking point, unable to bear success and, above all, its moral burden. The title Cobain reportedly wanted to give the album is telling: "I Hate Myself And I Want To Die".

In Utero is the realization of not being someone like his friend Michael Stipe, about whose R.E.M. the Nirvana frontman had pointedly declared: "They achieved success the way saints do". In other words: they made a ton of money, but never betrayed their principles. Cobain, on the other hand, felt he had betrayed himself, and feared that in the long run he would betray his audience too. So he was contemplating quitting. Not music: life. But first he had to rid himself of his last skeletons, his last ghosts, by throwing his unhealthy desire for self-destruction in the world's face. The sonic aesthetic of In Utero is steeped in this grim feeling. Its poetics go even further.

"Youth angst has paid off well, now I'm bored and old". Just to set the tone, that's the incipit of In Utero, a record that lines up one psychoanalytic session after another until your brain explodes and presents you with the bill. "Serve The Servants" is the first, and with its searing distortion and aggressive rhythm gives the impression that yes, pain can still be defeated, that vibrant disease called existence can still be cured. The last is "All Apologies", an electroacoustic ballad caressed by the breeze of a cello that points to a way out: we're not the only ones suffering, there's a world out there made of things and people to merge with and recognize ourselves in. The whole meaning lies in that "All in all is all we all are", the final line of "In Utero", repeated like a mantra: a line that collides Neil Young with Guicciardini, Saint Francis with Coleridge, Heraclitus with Piet Mondrian.

In between these two extremes lie eleven other songs, eleven other ways of digging into one's own conscience: there's life as retribution ("Rape Me": musically, a variation on the theme of "Smells Like Teen Spirit"; narratively, the desire of a raped woman to give her attacker the same treatment back) and life as attempted vindication ("Francis Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle", which recounts the sad decline of an old actress unjustly deemed insane), love as antidote (the great single "Heart-Shaped Box") and death as eternal ecstasy ("Pennyroyal Tea", proof that blues, punk and Leonard Cohen can be one and the same thing), the scream of Darby Crash ("Milk It", a tonal drip-feed with a whiff of post-hardcore) and Munch's "The Scream" (the inhuman "Scentless Apprentice", inspired by the macabre novel "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer").

Nevermind will remain Nirvana's most important album due to a series of historical circumstances: the record for singing out of rage or rebellion, but also for humming in the shower. In Utero, no - you don't hum along to it; not because it lacks melodies ("Dumb", in that sense, is a serenade to melancholy worthy of the Beatles' catalogue), but because it's a single psalm of despair that leaves you literally speechless. And breathless. A record to be contemplated in silence. It's probably the last great grunge album, the swan song of an almost ineffable genre; after it there would be only the beautiful, forgotten yet unforgettable final flourish of Barkmarket's "L. Ron".

In Utero effectively wrote the final word on that utopia of eternal adolescence - a desperate and naive utopia - which had been lit in the heart of the Eighties by immortal bands like Replacements and Husker Du, and which was extinguished for good by a gunshot on April 5, 1994.

A mirror of Cobain's personal odyssey - he had in the meantime married Courtney Love of Hole - Nirvana's final studio statement achieved solid sales, even as it partly alienated the band from the sympathies of that "MTV generation" that had consumed them as just the latest "sensation" of the moment. But it was on MTV itself that Nirvana revisited, in a captivating acoustic setting, many of their hits, recording the hugely successful Unplugged In New York. A document of a November 1993 concert, the album reveals the suffering soul of Cobain's songs. Stripped of hard-rock trappings, Nirvana's songs reveal themselves to be anguished confessions of an incurable existential unease. An atmosphere of imminent tragedy pervades the renditions of "Pennyroyal Tea", "All Apologies", "Come As You Are" and "About A Girl". But the record also draws its strength from a handful of covers, such as David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold The World", Meat Puppets' "Lake Of Fire" and "Oh Me", and a heart-wrenching version of the traditional "In The Pines", taken from Leadbelly's blues rendition titled "Where Did You Sleep Last Night".

Around the same time, Geffen also released the videotape "Live! Tonight! Soldout!", a nervous and ironic musical history of Nirvana pieced together from interview clips and home-video footage interspersed with live performances. The wilder, more electric side of the Seattle band's concerts would instead be documented on the live album From The Muddy Banks Of Wishkah.

But success would do nothing to heal Seattle's blond punk idol. Like Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison before him, Kurt Cobain too would take his self-destruction to its extreme consequences. After long, painful months devoted to a European tour, on April 8, 1994 the Nirvana frontman took his own life with a gunshot, consecrating himself forever to his fans' cult worship. In his farewell note, an epitaph: "It's better to burn out than to fade away". It's a line from "My My, Hey Hey", the song by his mentor Neil Young. A year later, the Canadian singer-songwriter would pay tribute to his disciple's memory by dedicating "Sleep With Angels" to him.

Unfortunately, not even Kurt Cobain would escape the inevitable posthumous commercial operation, which led to the "exhumation" of his last song before his suicide, "You Know You're Right", in order to sell a few extra copies of the anthology The Best Of Nirvana (thirteen classics from the Seattle band). And over another supposed 109 unreleased tracks, hidden away in some vault, a legal battle has already begun between Courtney Love, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl. "You understand, there's a lot of money involved", Love admitted. But it's just the latest squabble over the crumbs left by the dead in the history of rock.

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