Ok. Kurt Cobain. WHY Was He So Influential? (Make the case)

first off. i must apologize. years ago considered myself a music guru but must admit that i missed the whole 'Nirvana Experience'. was focused more on the 'Hendrix Experience' (BTW before you ask, i am 35).

Anyhoo, loved 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' and a couple of other tunes but never really considered Cobain 'god' like i might have of Clapton, Hendrix or {insert rock deity name here}

not to say that i am not wrong however. SO!

while i appreciate his talent, what made him "one of the greatest Rock Stars ever?"

have also heard him described as "a hero to rock fans"

enlighten me would you please?

thanks. :shrug:

Even some country fans I knew would say to turn up the stereo when Nirvana came on. They mixed the anger of punk with the the "hooks" from pop and refreshed commercial music.

Music had really become plastic and unlistenable, and he made it where you could actually stand to turn on the radio again. Of course it's back to plastic and unlistenable now but what do you do. Madonna and Britney will be with us always, I suppose.

yes have heard that term more often than not.

as a rock enthusiast i would apply that label to (sorry for any omissions):

Clapton
Hendrix
Guthrie
Gilmore
Page
Plant
Pert

many, many more but you get the drift. they are 'gods' for their talents/vision/etc... but what did i miss re: Cobain?

:shrug:

i am not limiting 'rock' to heavy metal here. you can understand.

It's 500 times worse now. :-(

(Although equal credit must be given to Dave Grohl, Krist Noveselic, and Butch Vig); messiah of the so-called "grunge" movement; represented the arrival of popular British punk rock in the mainstream: nihilistic, angry, and loud.

It isn't about proficiency in Cobain's case. Cobain was a less than stellar guitarist. Clapton and Hendrix were technically proficient; Cobain had something of a spiritual, DIY feeling to him.

Every ten years, someone needs to show up and give rock n' roll a kick in the ass. And Cobain was that guy in the 90s.

You mentioned Clapton and Hendrix. Now, by any standards, they are guitar gods. I think of Cobain like I think of the Sex Pistols. Both were revolutionary, and both had limited skills. But on the whole, I'd say the Sex Pistols had a bigger impact on music than the Clash, but the Clash was the better band (and my personal favorite). Cobain was an accidental revolutionary. It was pretty clear he didn't expect or want the level of fame he achieved. Now, take another band from that time, Pearl Jam. Better musicians? Yes (except that Dave Grohl is better than the drummer for Pearl Jam). As revolutionary and important? Hardly.

Cobain and Clapton or Cobain and Hendrix are like apples and oranges. One is the messenger, and the others are the masters.

no, not for their guitar prowess, rather their supposed 'influence'. what i can't figure out is why/how Cobain was so 'influential'. reading many of the posts so far, he wasn't apparently that talented, rather a 'god' for a music scene "grunge" that petered out pretty quickly (by comparrison standards)

i am still confused

It turned into post-Grunge in the late 90s. It's all rooted in the sounds of 1992. For better or worse.

1. He had the basic ingredient that kids require:
Adults thought he sucked (which he, of course, did)
2. His music is extremely easy to play. And since he
could not really sing, it was easy to mimic vocally as well.
Suddenly, every kid with a guitar was a musician - sounding
just like the record.
3. He was a very pretty boy and a rebel. Rebel in a pea-brain
sort of way, but a rebel nontheless. This appeals to both
teenage girls and teenage boys.

WHAMO - Instant success!

he died, and the media made him a "legend" because of it

1. He had the basic ingredient that kids require:
Adults thought he sucked (which he, of course, did)
2. His music is extremely easy to play. And since he
could not really sing, it was easy to mimic vocally as well.
Suddenly, every kid with a guitar was a musician - sounding
just like the record.
3. He was a very pretty boy and a rebel. Rebel in a pea-brain
sort of way, but a rebel nontheless. This appeals to both
teenage girls and teenage boys.

WHAMO - Instant success!

I was never that impressed

....was never impressed AT ALL...he suuuuuuucked IMHO!!! :evilgrin:

And they called it grunge. Mimimalized rock from the uneccesary hair and attitude bands from the 80'. Think Motley Crue and G'n'R. With Cobain in the lead, Nirvana streamlined the notion of the band and turned preconceived songwriting notions on their head.

He was a slap in the face to existing rock musicians who had been growing progressively harder to distinguish from boy bands and pop acts.

...into the mainstream.

to his lyrics and his base line.

oh and you forgot Stevie Ray Vagahan.

my favorite

was not exactly formulaic . . . though it was in good form) and then he stripped away the quirky literate lyrics and then he had the right connections to the right labels and then he hit the mainstream. ok, he was a visionary, i guess, albeit in a really dullwitted sort of way.

'in utero' isn't all that bad though.

rock music was ready for a renaissance in 1991. When G'n'R put out "Appetite for Destruction" it was the last kick in the pants for hair metal. Motley Crue, Poison, all those other bands were on the way out by 1990. Metallica went mainstream in 1991 with the black album, which was followed very closely by G'n'R's "Use Your Illusion." That was the state of rock in 1991 - "November Rain." Not very exciting.

If I'm not mistaken, Pearl Jam's "Ten" and Nirvana's "Nevermind" came out at almost exactly the same time as the black album and "Use Your Illusion." But they took rock music in a completely different direction. Kids who were in the know were already listening to the Sub Pop bands like Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Dinosaur Jr., etc. and the record companies were already looking in that direction for the new sound.

Pearl Jam lit the fuse with "Alive" and "Nevermind" was the rocket that blew the whole thing out of the water. Bear in mind that "Nevermind" is almost as much a testament to the producer Butch Vig (who later went on to form Garbage) as it was to Nirvana - he was the guy that created the sound that would be imitated by almost every mainstream rock band since then. But "Nevermind" wasn't exactly short on good songs. Every song on that album is a classic pop song, just done in a way that nobody had heard before.

So it wasn't all Kurt Cobain - it was more a question of a damn talented songwriter being in the right place at the right time and working with a producer who was able to take the "Seattle Sound" - which up until "Nevermind" was pretty hard to listen to - and turn it into something that was new and exciting, and yet palatable to the masses.

but you are right. "Ten" was "Ten Times Better" from a musical (technical) standpoint.

but now we have much more than "kids" claiming Cobain was some sort of "rock god". i just don't see it.

Metallica did go mainstream in '91 but they stuck (IMHO) to their roots. No, it wasn't "Master of Puppets" but it wasn't far from it. They were/are Metal (hard Metal) and IMHO stayed true to their creed (up until a couple of years ago). Metallica, for many years, 'flew the flag' if you will.

the "Seattle Sound" thing really didn't stick though did it? i mean, this wasn't Woodstock or "The British Invasion" was it?

thanks but STILL "confused" :shrug:

I bought "Ten" just after the 1991 fall quarter started at college, because a friend told me it had "that guy from Temple of the Dog" and the guitarist and bassist from Mother Love Bone. I wasn't a huge MLB fan, but I LOVED Temple of the Dog, owing to Soundgarden's influence and that vocalist who guested on the single "Hunger Strike". That was Eddie Vedder's vocal debut on album.

You are right that it was the fuse that lit the rocket later. It is like a chicken/egg argument on influence and popularity, because both bands had similar roots and regional identity, and the time was ripe for a major change. "Ten" came out first, but didn't become huge until "Nevermind" opened the door a few months later. 1991-92 were peak times, and I guess living near the eye of the storm hurts my objectivity. ;-)

And you brought up SubPop, which definitely brings back memories of my college radio days.

Sorry, I'm out of ideas :) :) :)

Seriously though, I have nothing against the guy, just wasn't a huge fan :).

that killed the Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson era of "rock" music.

Cobain was not very consistent (with his mental, substance abuse and medical problems, who could have been), but he had flashes of genius and was intensely and (when not incapacitated) passionately the source of his own music in a way that mainstream "rock" had forgotten for a time.

The alternative, or grunge, movement regrounded rock music in a very healthy and necessary way.

BTW, I'm not particularly a fan. I'm much older than you. I like Teen Spirit and a few others, but I'm way more into Pearl Jam and Soundgarden of that era.

geez, I sound like some lame critic. I'm lame aright, but I'm no fucking critic!

and not because of Kurt's deather either. :shrug:

but they no longer hold down 6 or 7 of the top ten like they once did.

I'm sorry Kurt's sound was cut short. He was a train wreck waiting to happen though.

I think of someone with longevity like Neil Young and then think about Jimi, and Jim Morrison and Kurt (though not quite of their ilk) and wonder "what if?".

Back ten years ago, I was dating my last girlfriend. Her name was Shariza. We started dating around the time Nirvana was on their third and final act. Both of us we fans. I won't justify their music; it just meant a lot to us at the time.

We were both in a very broken state. She had been raped several times and had intimacy problems. Actually, I had an attempted rape experience myself. We both had problems with drinking, and she had problems with coke. We bonded because no one else would have us.

It was a time for music for broken people.

We broke up because I got drunk and called and told her I loved her...and I meant it. She couldn't deal with love and broke up with me at a party while she was tripping her brains out. I remember that the Pixies "Debaser" was playing in the background at the time.

Grunge was the soundtrack to that period of my life.

Each year has been hard for me because it seems like death encounters my life in the month of April since Kurt's death.

Shariza eventually discovered that she was a lesbian and fell in love with the wife of a mutual friend of ours. They hooked up and broke up a marriage. It's really weird to be able to talk to your best male friend about our S.O.s leaving us for another woman.

On the one year anniversary of Kurt's death, Shariza decided that she would blow out her brains too, but first she tried to track down her now ex-girlfriend's ex, Brian. She wanted to kill him before she blew out her own brains with her shotgun.

She was stopped, but a week after the one year aniversary of Kurt's death she managed to kill herself but not Brian.

I can't say that their music is the best, but it's a part of my life that I can't forget. It would be like telling people that Sha-Na-Na was horrible at Woodstock--they were important because they were part of a moment in an important time in your life.

the voice of a generation.i listen to all types of music, nirvana is nowhere near the best in my collection. dont get me wrong im the biggest cobain fan around, but hes no rock god. he was an excellent songwriter who put into words the crap almost everyone goes through. even if not everyone expierences what he did.

kurt actuially had a damn hard life that gave him the 'life's a bitch' attitude. his parents split when he was in grade school, he wound up drifting from home to home until he dropped out of high school and went his own way. sometimes he wouldnt even have a place to stay and would end up staying in public parks and underneath bridges (thus the song: "something in the way").

Kurt became the voice, weather he liked it or not, for a dissillusioned generation. i have alot of admiration for the guy, it truly shows you can make something out of yourself no matter what your beginnings. near the end though, he couldnt handle the fame, tried once to kill himself with drugs, and the problems werent getting any fewer. so one day he (supposedly) used a shotgun to end his pain.

RIP Kurt... you've been missed.



i probably didnt explain much, but i tried. oh well

-LK

>he was an excellent songwriter who put into words the crap almost everyone goes through. even if not everyone expierences what he did.<

I'm in my 40's and am a Seattle native. I LOVED Nirvana. (I thought that my husband was going to have a hissy fit the Saturday morning I put Courtney Love's "Live Through This" on our boom box and turned it up to 11, but that's another story.) I loved the music because it wasn't plastic, prepackaged, or overly polished. The "Seattle sound" is certainly not dead; many of those bands are still recording and still successful. Grunge has also influenced an entire new set of groups, such as the White Stripes and the Strokes.

I am very, very sad today that we never got to see what Kurt would have done with the music if he'd been around a few more years. If nerdy squares that live in suburbia, drive economy cars and worry about their cholesterol can get what he was trying to say, he was (and continues to be,) successful.

Julie
still turns up the radio when "Smells Like Teen Spirit" comes on

hell i like hendrix, and he died a good 16 years before i was born. i dont see why there are these generational boundries that people think they cant cross, i see no problem with it, good music is good music, no matter when it was made.

my cd player spins stuff as old as the early 60s (sometimes earlier) and as recent as stuff that released last week, however i am one of the few teens that dares to listen outside of his generation, sadly. and if your still rocking to nirvana in your 30s-40s, and beyond that even, more power to ya.

-LK

... I don't think Cobain is in the same league as Hendrix or Clapton, but that could just be my age.

He did write some great songs, but musically Nirvana were not that special IMHO. They merely refined a sound that had been popular among the college crowd in the late 80s.

If there has to be a reason for the reverence of his fans, I would go with:

1) He had an "everyman" personna, and was definitely the anti-rock-star. Not that he was in any way the first.

2) He wrote personal songs that a lot of people could identify with. This is not easy, but most rock gods come from the music side, not the lyrical side.

3) He died before he had a chance to suck. Had he followed the trajectory he had set, it was all downhill. There is something about offing yourself that endears you to rock fans. Go figure.

cobain cant touch hendrix or clapton, hes not in the virtuoso class, id rather listen to hendrix than nirvana, but still, nirvana was/is better than alot of the crap out there at the time.

as for your points, again, your exactly on... he wrote good songs, related to common people, and died before his music got bad, infact kurt once said, "i want to die before i become pete townsend." take that how you will, i dont think he knew at that point he was gonna end up killing himself. but only god knows.

-LK

I lived in Seattle at the time Nirvana hit big, and I have some 'ground zero' insights. He is our age Matt, so really, it was like one of our classmates hitting it big.

Back in 1989, I was a DJ for a major college FM station in Washington state. Nirvana was an unknown band from a depressed coastal logging town called Aberdeen (if you have ever been there, you'd know why Cobain was angry - who wouldn't be growing up there?), and their "Bleach" album was giving them some regional notariety. I was required to play a couple of songs from it in my rotation, most famously, the song "About A Girl". It was raw, immediate, and had a catchy feel to it. Like a tight garage band leaning heavy on punk, a bit of metal, and even some pop for melody. The emphasis on our station was for local and regional music, so all the bands who would become famous in the 90's - Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Alice In Chains, Mother Love Bone (future Pearl Jam members), and Nirvana, got heavy play. None of us could have known back then that any of them would be major bands nationally.

Fast forward to 1992. I am student teaching during my last year of college. That spring the number one album in the country was Michael Jackson's "Dangerous" (or whatever the hell it was). Having been the biggest artist of the 80's, we didn't know an era was ending with that album. Bubblegum metal was going passé. Rap was still taboo on radio and MTV - not "safe" yet. Then, literally out of nowhere, that garage band from Aberdeen I had played not even 3 years before had a new album, and in one week, it knocked Jackson's album off the charts and became the new number one.

That was a sea change. R&B-flavored pop idol Jackson dethroned by some unknown band from Washington state with a heavy, raw sound more akin to punk than arena rock. "Nevermind" was one of those zeitgeist things. It was as if saturation with plastic music had once again run a new cycle and audiences wanted something authentic and passionate. Young people wanted their own Rolling Stones or Zeppelin. The Clash did a similar upheaval back in the late 70's when they upturned corporate arena rock. It was happening again in the early 90's.

Having worked with high schoolers at the time, they LOVED classic rock like the Stones or Zep or Hendrix or Floyd. But they wanted their own idol for their generation. Cobain was genuine, no doubt about it. No posing, no glamour, no aloofness from the fans. But it is safe to say his sudden rise to fame surprised him even more than it did myself. And I was very surprised, because I would have never guessed they would be the next big thing. He was a troubled soul, and very open with his pain and emotions. That is potent for adolescents, who are prone to drama and self-consciousness.

But what was amazing was how he touched oldsters. Neil Young was so moved by his death that he wrote the song (and named the album) "Sleeps With Angels" for Cobain, and refused to tour for the album because it was too painful for him to play the songs in public.

Bob Seger was so affected by Cobain's death that he wrote the still-unreleased single "Haunted Eyes" about him (apt title, eh?). Seger decided not to release it because he felt the same personal reservations that Young had. They admitted they saw themselves in Cobain - they too loved rock and roll for the sheer joy of it, and fought the same demons that fame and adulation bring. They just felt they were luckier than Cobain to have subdued those demons. But regardless of age or generation, they identified with him.

For those interested in Nirvana beyond the immense fame of "Nevermind", check out "Bleach" and put yourself in my shoes from 1989 - enjoy them for what they were in that time and place, with none of the baggage of stardom. Or their underrated "Unplugged" album, with a cover song from the vast catalogue of folk legend Leadbelly. Cobain was exploring old music, and I think greater things were to come, had he beat his ghosts.

Nirvana was never my favorite of the Seattle explosion of the early 90's. But having been there at the time, I fully understand why they became big. I wish I could say that about the inexplicable popularity of Incubus or Limp Bizkit or Eminem, but I am an old fart after all.

And we all know what happened to Michael Jackson's career after Nirvana derailed him...

Nirvana was derivative of something that was derivative of something that had fallen off the radar in 1983.

Go buy some 'Mission of Burma' or 'Descendants' or 'Slapshot' or 'Black Flag' or 'Dag Nasty' or 'Husker Du' and then tell me what any Nirvana album is worth.

Zero.

The reason Nirvana took off is because America had been choking on big hair bands for 10 years, and was ready for a change. I give credit to them for kicking the door in.

All the bands you just listed were/are far superior to Nirvana -- and for that matter, so were most of Nirvana's own contemporaries such as Mudhoney, Sonic Youth, Fugazi, My Bloody Valentine, or Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. I'm sorry, but I never shared the adulation that so much of the general public had for Nirvana and Cobain.

And as for them opening the floodgates, I'm not so sure it was a good thing. Most of the bands that rode on Nirvana's coattails weren't other indie bands, but lame crappy corporate major-label hacks like Bush or Silverchair who were labeled "alternative" just because they sounded like Nirvana. Meanwhile, most of the actual bands that helped create the scene that made Nirvana possible were pretty much ignored by the general public (like Mudhoney or Sonic Youth for example).

:grr:

To be quite honest, I'd become so cynical towards the whole "alternative" craze of the mid-'90s that by the time the Spice Girls, Hanson and the Backstreet Boys came along, I actually PREFERRED hearing them over most of the "alternative" bands (not to be confused with actual indie bands) that they were supplanting. I felt some relief that there was actually mainstream Top 40 cheeze which acknowledged that it was cheeze and didn't pretend to be serious meaningful music.

...in the midst of a horrible, horrible time in music, he said "and now for something, completely different."

He was the first sort of "voice" for an as of yet untapped reality, the feelings of Gen Xer's. A huge group of people identified with him, when no other music out there was doing or saying anything close to that.

At that particular place and time, he was truly delivering something revolutionary. And it can't be denied that Nirvana fatherer the whole seattle grunge movement.

That said, his "fame" is even greater because he died, and I mean no rudeness by saying that.

If any one band can be credited with fathering the grunge movement, it would be Green River (which spawned Mudhoney and Pearl Jam). And Mudhoney and Soundgarden were on the scene before Nirvana.

Nirvana made grunde a "movement"

Just becuase there were people playing grunge before Nirvana means nothing. The fact that soundgarden and mudhoney were around before Nirvana only underscores that fact that Nirvana fathered the movement. They had been around before and, fathered nothing.

Btw, Soundgarden's first album that enjoyed huge mainstream success? Oh yeah, that's right, came out in the height of the mainstream grunge movement, fathered by Nirvanna. :)

That said, Far Beyond the Wheel is one of the best soundgarden songs ever! :D (What ablum was that from again?)