Bear With Me: Another Column on Kurt Cobain. Sorry About That
I first heard Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in a Levittown nightclub, in a mini-mall designed for shoe stores. Four years later, on a mute TV in an airport terminal, I watched its last tableau: a leafy Northwestern homesite; a room above a garage where someone’s Volvo was parked; dead legs photographed through an open window; a coroner’s van; tattooed kids in the rain with candles; a subtitled elegy; a black-and-white headshot underscored by two dates, hyphenated. It was my 25th birthday.
A decade has slipped by since that day, the day after Kurt Cobain was found dead. Those of a certain age remember the weird little era when Kurt and his band crashed the MTV heavy-metal circle-jerk, caused a near-complete eversion of the recording industry, smashed vintage guitars, and rationalized the wool cardigan for youthful self-loathers. Nirvana’s success meant the fools had gained squatter’s rights to the kingdom. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves in moments of wistfulness, as we change out of our penny loafers and flip past ever more pop-punk product on MTV2.
Don’t misread me: I’m too old to feel any tugging nostalgia for the Kurt Years. (It’s kind of untoward, I think, to idolize someone who’s only two years your senior). Still, I’m a sucker for the story line: a fragile artist whose muse was failure, blown apart, psychologically, by the paradox of being successful, and then, physically, by a needle and Remington 20-gauge shotgun. Add to that a mystery that perhaps his crazy-ass wife killed him out of greed, jealousy, or both.
That legendary story line is much of why April 5 (or 8, depending on whether the event or the day you heard about it holds more meaning to you) is a new Hallmark moment, a valentine for media companies, which have evoked the tin anniversary to sell all kinds of Cobain product, new and old, from reissued CDs to investigative non-fiction. Call me the Grinch who stole Kurtmas, but it feels wrong. Profiting from Cobain’s death will forever be jarring because he seemed to lack the ego required to be a commercial superstar. But there's another reason, a more complicated one.
It was often said, while he was alive, that Cobain’s romantic fatalism and DIY roots were constantly at odds with an increasingly lucrative career. (What do you call the underground when it’s above ground?) Reconciliation of the two was never possible, and likely wouldn’t have been required of a less emblematic artist. While Nirvana’s life-after-Kurt resolved those tensions rather cleanly -- Drummer Dave Grohl now fronts arena-rock profiteers, Foo Fighters, while bassist, Krist Novoselic is currently framing a new platform for progressive politics – the resolution for Cobain the Romantic, at least that which we projected on him, was his suicide. We were the ones who pieced together the story that’s being sold back to us.
But ten years on, legend, commerce, and armchair psychology are just minor fictions. In reality, Kurt Cobain was a sad kid who wrote good songs, a stringy-haired, emotionally scarred diarist with an upset stomach and spot-on pop sensibilities. He died for his own reasons. We supplied the rest. All of us. Every bit of it.
With us around, the kid never really had a chance.
I first heard Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in a Levittown nightclub, in a mini-mall designed for shoe stores. Four years later, on a mute TV in an airport terminal, I watched its last tableau: a leafy Northwestern homesite; a room above a garage where someone’s Volvo was parked; dead legs photographed through an open window; a coroner’s van; tattooed kids in the rain with candles; a subtitled elegy; a black-and-white headshot underscored by two dates, hyphenated. It was my 25th birthday.
A decade has slipped by since that day, the day after Kurt Cobain was found dead. Those of a certain age remember the weird little era when Kurt and his band crashed the MTV heavy-metal circle-jerk, caused a near-complete eversion of the recording industry, smashed vintage guitars, and rationalized the wool cardigan for youthful self-loathers. Nirvana’s success meant the fools had gained squatter’s rights to the kingdom. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves in moments of wistfulness, as we change out of our penny loafers and flip past ever more pop-punk product on MTV2.
Don’t misread me: I’m too old to feel any tugging nostalgia for the Kurt Years. (It’s kind of untoward, I think, to idolize someone who’s only two years your senior). Still, I’m a sucker for the story line: a fragile artist whose muse was failure, blown apart, psychologically, by the paradox of being successful, and then, physically, by a needle and Remington 20-gauge shotgun. Add to that a mystery that perhaps his crazy-ass wife killed him out of greed, jealousy, or both.
That legendary story line is much of why April 5 (or 8, depending on whether the event or the day you heard about it holds more meaning to you) is a new Hallmark moment, a valentine for media companies, which have evoked the tin anniversary to sell all kinds of Cobain product, new and old, from reissued CDs to investigative non-fiction. Call me the Grinch who stole Kurtmas, but it feels wrong. Profiting from Cobain’s death will forever be jarring because he seemed to lack the ego required to be a commercial superstar. But there's another reason, a more complicated one.
It was often said, while he was alive, that Cobain’s romantic fatalism and DIY roots were constantly at odds with an increasingly lucrative career. (What do you call the underground when it’s above ground?) Reconciliation of the two was never possible, and likely wouldn’t have been required of a less emblematic artist. While Nirvana’s life-after-Kurt resolved those tensions rather cleanly -- Drummer Dave Grohl now fronts arena-rock profiteers, Foo Fighters, while bassist, Krist Novoselic is currently framing a new platform for progressive politics – the resolution for Cobain the Romantic, at least that which we projected on him, was his suicide. We were the ones who pieced together the story that’s being sold back to us.
But ten years on, legend, commerce, and armchair psychology are just minor fictions. In reality, Kurt Cobain was a sad kid who wrote good songs, a stringy-haired, emotionally scarred diarist with an upset stomach and spot-on pop sensibilities. He died for his own reasons. We supplied the rest. All of us. Every bit of it.
With us around, the kid never really had a chance.
posted by Michael at 9:07 AM
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