Kurt Cobain

Thirty years without grunge's fallen angel. On April 5, 1994, that shotgun blast didn't just end Kurt Cobain's life, but also the dreams of an entire generation. A generation raised wearing flannel shirts and drinking in the bitter choruses of Nirvana. Songs like “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, the anthem of the apathetic kids of Generation X, as told in Douglas Coupland's cult novel. A generation that made unease and restlessness its banner, just like Cobain himself. Torn apart by the traumas of a troubled childhood and unable to handle the enormous success that had turned him into a magazine-cover star, a face printed on t-shirts, the Nirvana frontman said goodbye to the world, joining the sinister “Club 27” of rock's burned-out lives, alongside Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin (after him, it would be Amy Winehouse's turn).

"Nevermind" – When Generation X Saw Itself Reflected in the Seattle Sound

All the neuroses of a generation condensed into a single record. All the rage in the world compressed into a sequence of hair-raising riffs and melodies. Even if it weren't such a great album, "Nevermind" would still deserve to be remembered as the perfect manifesto of a musical epoch, as well as the definitive testament of one of its most beloved and unfortunate figures. Emblematic even in its title ("It doesn't matter": the devaluation of all values), it remains the cornerstone of grunge as a whole.

But how was it possible for three outsiders from provincial America, with no particularly remarkable technical background, to rise to become global superstars, turning remote Seattle into the epicenter of the Nineties rock empire? The credit, beyond the undeniable talent of Cobain and his bandmates, belongs to one of those magical alchemies that, throughout rock history, have given birth—almost out of nowhere—to entire scenes or new genres.

Grunge Liberation

It wasn't Nirvana who invented grunge, even though over time they became its most celebrated and popular standard-bearers. The music scene that originated in the 1980s in the state of Washington, particularly in Seattle, and achieved worldwide success in the early Nineties, was actually born as an evolution of other genres already well established in rock, such as hardcore and post-punk—especially the Californian variety of the early Eighties (Adolescents, Mission of Burma, Flipper, X, Bad Religion, Dead Kennedys). By smoothing out some of the rougher edges of those sounds and incorporating pop melodies and hooks, with an approach that felt almost more nostalgic than avant-garde, the Seattle sound revived old-school punk—no longer as a revolutionary force, but as something apathetic and desolate, with an underlying resignation that replaced the irreverent fury of Johnny Rotten and co. The same went for the look. The aggressive arsenal of leather jackets, studs and mohawks from the "no future" era gave way to a scruffy, casual wardrobe of flannel shirts, ragged sweaters, t-shirts and ripped jeans. A choice in keeping with a pauperist spirit that rejected any display of flashiness, ideologically tying itself to the movement's underground, suburban, outlying origins.

What remained shared with Sex Pistols and their peers was precisely the anti-establishment approach, combined with an angry, iconoclastic streak and a strong predilection for distorted, dirty, noisy sounds. The traditional song format was thus updated into a desolate, unkempt, violent shape, in what has gone down in history as the "noise-chorus-noise" formula.

The term grunge derives from the adjective grungy, slang that had been in use since the Sixties to describe something dirty and filthy. It was Mark Arm, later the singer of Green River and Mudhoney, who first introduced it into the local music scene. In the mid-1980s, Bruce Pavitt of Sub Pop Records used the term to promote the Green River EP "Dry As A Bone" (1987), which can therefore be counted among the genre's pioneers, alongside Mudhoney (again fronted by Arm) and Melvins (the band that inspired the young Kurt Cobain). Over time, the term would come to be adopted by the media to describe an entire galaxy of bands orbiting around Seattle, even ones quite different from one another in both musical inspiration and attitude.

At the end of the Eighties, the restless Kurt Cobain, born into a family of Irish descent and still marked by his parents' painful divorce, worked as a roadie for various bands, including the Melvins and Tina Bell's Bam Bam, a seminal figure of the Seattle scene. In 1987, together with Krist Novoselic, he formed The Stiff Woodies, with Aaron Burckhard on drums. After several name changes, the band settled on the one that would go down in history: "Nirvana means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that's close to my idea of punk," the frontman would explain, still caught up in that enthusiastic youthful fervor that would soon abandon him. Because for him there would never be freedom from pain, and Nirvana would turn out to be only a prolonged, fleeting moment of success before a tragic reckoning with himself.

After releasing the single "Love Buzz" (1988), Nirvana played venues in Aberdeen, Seattle and Olympia, standing out for the fury of their live shows and for smashing guitars as a performative, provocative act. A year later, with drummer Chad Channing, who had arrived after a string of lineup changes, they recorded their first album under the Sub Pop banner: "Bleach," a title inspired by an anti-AIDS campaign urging drug users to clean their needles with bleach. It was made on a shoestring budget of just $600, advanced by guitarist Jason Everman, who would in fact end up contributing very little musically to the record. All three were barely in their twenties, and none of them, in fact, was from Seattle: Cobain was born in Aberdeen, Washington, while Novoselic and Channing were Californians. But their songs, together with those of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, would turn this small city in the Pacific Northwest into a factory of blockbuster success.

Cobain immediately proves himself the soul of the group. His enigmatic lyrics, often assembled using the Burroughsian cut-up technique, and his bittersweet songwriting style—poised somewhere between John Lennon and Sid Vicious—elevate tracks like "About A Girl," a melodic ballad that hints at the existentialism and desolate streak of his approach (already showing a clear pop sensibility, one destined to emerge more fully in later work), as well as the autobiographical "School" and the incendiary "Blew," both already closer to grunge territory. It's hard not to glimpse Cobain himself in the anti-social kid of "Negative Creep," while the tense "Paper Cuts" pays tribute to the band's "godfathers," Melvins.

These tracks, together with the cover of Shocking Blue's "Love Buzz," immediately set the parameters of the Nirvana sound. A raw, jagged sound that blends the dirty blues-rock of Rolling Stones and Stooges with the power of hard rock (from Led Zeppelin to Aerosmith) and the hardcore fervor of Husker Du, Pixies and Melvins.

Raw and immature as it may be, "Bleach" proves to be a work of crucial importance for the years to come. Even in their somewhat chaotic and confused way of drawing on past models, Nirvana helped build a new kind of rock, one that fully dusted off the traditional song format, banking on the stripped-down essentialism of the Sixties and Seventies at the expense of all the artifice of the Eighties, from synths (practically banned outright) to every kind of guitar effect.

Adolescent Spirit

The gestation of the difficult second album would take 17 months. It would be complicated and troubled, but in the end every piece of the puzzle would miraculously fall into place. On drums, after a series of comings and goings (Dale Crover of the Melvins, Dan Peters of Mudhoney), Dave Grohl—already a veteran of the hardcore punk band Scream—joined permanently. "Within a couple of minutes we knew he was the right drummer for us," Novoselic would recall. Thanks to the intercession of the charismatic Kim Gordon, bassist of Sonic Youth, and the advice of manager Susan Silver, Nirvana made the great leap, moving from the independent label Sub Pop to a major, Geffen, a subsidiary of the Interscope-Geffen-A&M group, itself owned by Universal Music Group. This wasn't such an unusual move at the time, even for a band that was, in every respect, "alternative." The major record labels were, in fact, sniffing out the commercial potential of the grunge movement, as shown by the precedent of Seattle acts like Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, already signed respectively to A&M and Columbia. "The crucial record was Alice In Chains' debut ('Facelift,' 1990)," Arm would explain. "It made it clear that something new was in the air, that an alternative was taking shape. Nirvana found themselves right in the middle of it all and played their cards well, helped along by an iconic personality like Kurt Cobain's."

Even at the height of his creative fervor, though, the Cobain who walked into Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California, in May-June 1991 to record "Nevermind" was already grappling with the demons that would later consume his existence. In his 2001 biography of the Nirvana frontman, "Heavier Than Heaven", writer Charles R. Cross revealed that many of the songs written for "Nevermind" dealt with Cobain's troubled relationship with Tobi Vail, his girlfriend at the time and drummer of the riot grrrl band Bikini Kill. When their relationship ended, Cobain began writing and sketching scenes full of violence, many of which reflected his hatred for himself and others. "In the four months following the end of their relationship, Kurt wrote half a dozen of his most memorable songs, all about Tobi Vail", Cross recounts. Take "Drain You", for instance, which opens with the line: "One baby to another said I'm lucky to have met you", a phrase Vail had once said to Cobain, and continues with: "It is now my duty to completely drain you", referring to the power the girl held over him within the dynamics of their relationship.

But on "Nevermind", pain miraculously transforms into irresistible songs, capable of winning over the mass audience of the new decade, hungry for rock after the electropop hangover of the 80s. No longer as raw and jagged as those on the debut, though just as powerful, the tracks on "Nevermind" bear the skilled hand of Butch Vig, chosen over Jack Endino, the producer of that first record. The band had been particularly taken with the work Vig had done with Killdozer, the future deus ex machina of Garbage: "We want our record to sound as heavy as their album", they told him, firmly reiterating their decision to entrust themselves to the indie guru of the famed Smart Studios, going so far as to favor him over big names like Scott Litt, David Briggs and Don Dixon. The budget, this time, was $65,000. It's impossible to say how many times over that amount the finished product would go on to earn. What's certain is that it was enough for Vig to sharpen their sound, heightening its contrasts and refining the arrangements, whereas Endino - partly due to budget constraints - had done little more than reproduce it as it sounded live.

As with any respectable bestseller, "Nevermind" too has its lead single. Except in this case, it also happens to be one of the most iconic and representative songs of the entire decade. Nirvana certainly had no idea of that when they were strumming through the first chords of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - quite the opposite. When Cobain first presented the embryonic version of the song to the rest of the band, all that existed was the main riff and the vocal melody of the chorus, which Novoselic quickly dismissed as "ridiculous". In response, Cobain had the band play the riff for an hour and a half straight. During that long session, Novoselic decided to slow the tempo down, starting to play the verse while Dave Grohl backed him on drums. It's no coincidence that the track ended up being the only one on the album credited to all three band members as songwriters. But it's possible that even Cobain didn't take "Smells Like Teen Spirit" all that seriously. Far from being a generational anthem by design, the title was actually born out of a drunken night spent with his friend Kathleen Hanna, singer of Bikini Kill, who had scrawled "Kurt smells like teen spirit" on his apartment wall in spray paint. It was a joking reference to Teen Spirit, a deodorant popular with teenagers at the time, which was also used by his girlfriend Tobi Vail. It's not entirely clear whether Cobain ever fully grasped the irony of the allusion, but the title struck him as the perfect way to cap off a long conversation he'd had with Kathleen about anarchy and punk rock. According to critic Simon Reynolds, the song thrives precisely on the ambiguity of this "teen spirit", which on one hand represents youthful rebellion, but on the other is exactly what gets "bottled up" and sold by the market purely to sustain itself. And it's from that very contradiction that all the paranoia and frustration of the older Cobain would eventually emerge.

What's certain is that no one could have guessed that such a simple riff and such a silly title, born out of one drunken night, would give rise to the anthem of Generation X - the generation that, according to Douglas Coupland's cult novel, made unease, apathy and restlessness its banner, much like Cobain himself. It's equally undeniable, though, that the song possesses a raw, irresistible primal energy. Almost a collective scream, desperate and compelling, impossible for anyone to ignore. All it takes is those four sticky chords, those roaring guitars, that raw wail of nonsensical words, propped up by Grohl's thunderous drum rolls, and the job is done.

Nirvana realized as much the first time they played it live, at Seattle's OK Hotel on April 17, 1991: a collective explosion that sent the crowd into a frenzy. So when it came time to record the album, Cobain and his bandmates chose "Smells Like Teen Spirit" as the very first track to play for Butch Vig. The producer was just as thrilled, suggesting only that the guitar be overdubbed during the chorus, and to win over a reluctant Cobain, he reminded him that his idol John Lennon used to double his own vocal takes too: "By overdubbing the vocals and guitars, the sound would be more powerful", the man behind the console assured him.

Cobain claimed he wrote it while trying to write a Pixies song, but "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is, in every respect, the manifesto of the Nirvana sound. It's far less simplistic than it might seem, with that searing guitar solo tracing the vocal melody and that distinctive structure in which the choruses come before the verses (rather than the other way around). And with lyrics that, on the surface, read like a kind of nonsensical mantra, yet conceal a deeply bitter core: "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". Cobain seems to be almost mocking the very concept of youth rebellion, revealing in that "I feel stupid and contagious" all the unease of someone starting to see himself as part of a machine he despised - the music business ("Here we are now, entertain us") - which would gradually make him feel more and more "split" and out of place, right up to that tragic ending on April 5, 1994. Even the hugely successful music video directed by Samuel Bayer, which flooded MTV and every music channel in heavy rotation, reinforced the idea of a parody of youth rebellion, one that turns teenage rage into the awareness of an insurmountable sense of otherness.

It was precisely that manifesto-single, chosen as the opening track, that fueled the explosion of Nirvana's second album across the world's charts. Much to the astonishment of Geffen's own executives, who could hardly believe their eyes on January 11, 1992, when "Nevermind" knocked Michael Jackson's "Dangerous" off the top of the Billboard 200. A song so iconic that it became almost unbearable to Cobain himself, who often left it out of live setlists. Nothing, however, could stop its march through rock history, sealed by its fifth-place ranking on Rolling Stone's list of the greatest songs of all time. Among the countless covers, one that certainly deserves mention is the languid, sensual rendition by the ever-inspired Tori Amos, from 1992.

The sorrows of young Kurt

"Nevermind", then, is an album that opens like a hurricane. But the rest of the story is no less gripping than that thunderous incipit. It's a masterclass in adrenaline-fueled rock craftsmanship, made immortal by Cobain's hoarse, quivering voice. Take "In Bloom", which was originally meant to be the album's first single but ended up being released as the fourth instead. It's an immediate, catchy slice of power-pop that opens on a downcast bassline, with Cobain's bleak words (“Sell the kids for food/ weather changes moods/ Spring is here again/ reproductive glands”). Then comes the blistering solo and the melodic refrain that burrows into your head, with another primal scream drawn straight from garage-rock, in the tradition of Iggy Pop & The Stooges. It was supposed to be titled "Knows Not What It Means", as Cobain obsessively repeats at the end of the chorus, and its meaning remains uncertain to this day: it can be read as an attack on chauvinists, on those who abuse others, but also as a jab at casual fans who sing along to choruses without knowing what they're actually about. That contradictory relationship with fans is also played out in the striking black-and-white video, in which the band, initially stiffly dressed up as a 1960s pop group, ends up erupting, trashing the stage and tearing off their clothes amid general chaos.

On the more adrenaline-charged side of things, there's no shortage of other standout tracks. Like the near-hardcore "Breed", with Grohl's frenzied drumming and a wall of noise (guitar riffs, samples, layered vocalizations) driving an unstoppable pogo from start to finish. And above all, the explosive "Lithium", the song that put Cobain's vocal cords through the wringer - forcing a halt during the early recording sessions - but also tested the drummer, due to a tempo so fast that Vig suggested Grohl correct it by using a click track (a metronome to help keep time) through his headphones. Providing a counterpoint to the sound's explosive charge and the seemingly carefree "Yeah, yeah" of the chorus is a dramatic lyric, telling the story of a young man depressed over the death of his partner, who turns to religion to keep himself from suicide (with more than a hint of autobiography, inspired in Cobain by his breakup with Tobi Vail).

Other tracks on the album likewise brim with fury and rage, such as "Drain You", caught between Sonic Youth-style dissonance and the usual autobiographical references to Tobi; "Territorial Pissings", which opens by parodying a 60s hippie song ("Get Together") before exploding into another terrifying scream; the power-pop of "Lounge Act", with Novoselic in inspired form; the punk assault of "Stay Away", with Grohl at his best and a definitive line like "Rather be dead than cool", which basically sums up the entire essence of the grunge movement in five words.

But pain isn't just anger. "Come As You Are" is here to remind us of that - a melancholy, depressive ballad, built on Novoselic's now-legendary bassline and a flanged guitar that repeats a melody dangerously close to that of "Eighties" by Killing Joke (though the feared lawsuit from Jaz Coleman and co. never materialized). Cobain's habit of tuning his instruments half a step below standard finds a fitting logic here, giving the song an unusually disorienting sound, while the line "I don't have a gun", meant only to convey peaceful intentions, would take on a far sadder meaning after Cobain's suicide.

Also offering the listener some respite from the preceding walls of sound is "Polly", though from its opening lines it reveals its own dark, harrowing soul: its protagonist is the fourteen-year-old girl abducted after a punk show by pedophile Gerald Arthur Friend, who raped and tortured her for two days until she managed to escape and the perpetrator was arrested. It's a true crime story that Cobain chose to tell from the perpetrator's point of view, sparking controversy and assorted accusations. Nirvana even had to defend themselves in court, arguing that "Polly" (originally titled "Hitchhiker", then "Cracker") was simply a song condemning violence. Stark and acoustic from the start, it would go on to become one of the standout moments of the band's legendary 1994 MTV Unplugged performance in New York, with an almost crooning delivery that Cobain would later echo explicitly in his poignant tribute to bluesman Leadbelly, "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?".

This acoustic vein also runs through the desolate whisper of "Something In The Way", in which Cobain recounts the days he spent living under the bridge on Young Street, near the Wishkah River in Aberdeen, kicked out of his home and gripped by unimaginable despair: “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”). Even though Novoselic would later cast doubt on how truthful those events actually were, pointing out that "Kurt wanted to exaggerate a bit", the undeniable allure of this spare acoustic ballad remains intact - featuring a contribution from Kirk Canning on cello - and it too would find its ultimate expression in the version included on the 1994 album "MTV Unplugged In New York".

After 10 minutes of silence, the curtain falls with the ghost track: a recording of guitars torn apart and obliterated in the studio, drenched in brutal distortion and feral screams - "Endless, Nameless". Rage in its purest form.

That's how “Nevermind” ends, the album made immortal also by Kirk Weddle’s iconic cover photo, depicting a 4-month-old baby (Spencer Elden), naked in a swimming pool in Pasadena (California), seemingly chasing a one-dollar bill on a fishhook (elements added in post-production). The boy's parents received a fee of 150/200 dollars. The band later gifted the boy the album's platinum disc as a token of gratitude. In 2006, Elden would tell NME he was happy to have been part of the album and that he'd gotten a “Nevermind” tattoo, while two years later he would offer to recreate the album photo, this time in swim trunks, in the same pool as back then. Too bad that, on the occasion of the album's thirtieth anniversary, right as a celebratory box set was about to be released, Elden would change his mind and file a surreal $150,000 damages lawsuit against the people involved in making the cover, over its alleged “child pornography content” and the “sexual exploitation” of his image. In court, so far, he has lost, but Elden doesn't seem inclined to stop, in this as unpredictable as it is bewildering legal aftermath.

Rock Martyr

“We've just been luckier because we write catchy songs and people remember them,” Kurt Cobain once told his biographer Michael Azerrad with a touch of irony. And yet, with “Nevermind”, Seattle's damned blond angel felt he had gone too far. He hadn't been convinced by record executive Gary Gersh's decision to bring in Andy Wallace (who had already produced for Slayer) for the mixing stage, to sharpen the dynamics and depth of the sound while smoothing out some of its rough edges. In general, Cobain would declare himself unhappy with the album's “too clean” sound, even going so far as to say he felt “embarrassed” by Vig's production, which he thought sounded more like a Mötley Crüe record than a punk-rock one. But it was precisely that balance that would help create the magic of “Nevermind”. A record that is both dissonant and radio-friendly, able to blend fury and melody, roughness of sound and clarity of arrangement, in just the right proportions. After all, what would make Nirvana truly unique was precisely their ability to pair the nihilistic sarcasm of punk with a melodic gift unknown to most bands in the Seattle galaxy. And then there's the sound of Cobain's guitar which, according to Guitar World, had “set the tone for all of Nineties rock music”.

Released in the United States on September 24, 1991, “Nevermind” would go on to sell over 30 million copies (against the 30,000 of the debut), becoming one of the decade's biggest commercial successes, without alienating Nirvana from the most hardcore fringes of their fanbase. Cobain and co. would nevertheless find their way back to the raw, grimy roots of their early days on the follow-up, “In Utero”, bringing in Steve Albini at the production desk, the prophet of the hard and pure sound: it would be their true – and chilling – musical testament. Kurt had wanted to call it “I Hate Myself And I Want To Die”, having already decided to end it all.

Not even Bob Dylan's endorsement, proclaiming him the “spokesman of a generation”, would be enough. Cobain had never hidden his discomfort with what he had become: “It used to be an adventure to play, now it's a circus that bores me,” he had told friends. Unable to handle the enormous success that had turned him into a magazine-cover star, a t-shirt icon, worn down by drugs and by his equally “toxic” relationship with his wife Courtney Love, the Nirvana frontman took his leave of the world with a shotgun blast, in his home on Lake Washington, in Seattle, on April 5, 1994, joining that grim “27 Club” of rock lives burned out too soon, alongside Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin (after him, it would be Amy Winehouse's turn). From damned angel to rock martyr: a trajectory that was hardly unprecedented, but one that pierced the heart of an entire generation. A terrible end, and for many even an unacceptable one. So much so that it also spawned a string of unlikely conspiracy theories, all promptly disproved by the autopsy.

Having swept through placid Seattle like a hurricane, after the initial high, grunge would leave behind a long trail of other untimely deaths, like those of Andrew Wood, frontman of Mother Love Bone and one of the movement's founders, of Layne Staley, vocalist of Alice in Chains, of Scott Weiland, voice of Stone Temple Pilots, of Mike Starr, bassist of Alice in Chains, and finally of Chris Cornell, the unforgettable singer of Soundgarden. What remains certain, though, is that Kurt Cobain embodied Seattle's true hero, single-handedly capable of carrying an entire music scene. “Without him, grunge wouldn't have had even a tenth of the immense popularity it achieved between 1992 and 1995 – notes Eddy Cilia in his Guide – deprived of the musician who had made it popular, and hampered by its own evident expressive limits, grunge gradually drifted away from the spotlight.” Where new phenomena and new music-marketing brands were already waiting in the wings to fight over the scene.

“It's better to burn out than to fade away”, was Cobain's tragic epitaph, inspired by a famous line by Neil Young (from “Hey Hey, My My”). With him, the dream of an entire era went up in smoke.

(Taken from the volume “1991” in the “The Past” editorial series)

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