Love, death and Nirvana
April 16, 2004 | 12:00am
It’s been ten years since Kurt Cobain hugged the void he sang so many times about.
The Nirvana singer/guitarist died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and his body was found on April 8, 1994 (as if you didn’t already know). He preferred the swift fire from a shotgun to the slow fade of klieg lights; preferred a grisly copout to playing music and "faking it, pretending to have 100 percent fun"; preferred burning out instead of fading away. Thus, Kurt will be eternally young, infinitely the outlaw grunge rocker of Nirvana, always the guy in cardigan or flannel welcoming gods and demanding to be entertained, never to become a dinosaur rocker we all so abhor – like a freaking Rolling Stone or ancient Pete Townshend (quotable quote: "I hope I die before I get old" – which didn’t happen). Last I looked, Kurt is still dead, and we’re still alive, gnashing our teeth to sappy manufactured music (just like aural shit from American Idol reject William Hung), shielding our ears from uninspired rock n’ roll swill (mall punkers and rap metal-heads), waiting for a new aural messiah the same way Cobain unwillingly was in the early ‘90s.
Take note: For those who prefer sober rock journalism, skip this article if you must and check out www.digitalnirvana.net, which is a storehouse of essential Nirvana articles published in magazines like Rolling Stone, Details, NME, Melody Maker, RIP, Musician, etc. For this is my Kurt Cobain: the way this grungy Filipino writer saw, heard and felt the music from the Seattle trio (Kurt along with bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl), as well as how the vocalist’s life and death touched, altered and made me muse about living, dying and everything else in between. It may be fluff, but it is stupid and contagious fluff that is closest to my heart.
I first heard Smells Like Teen Spirit from a rusty tricycle with shrill tweeters in front of our apartment in Malabon. At first, I thought the song was from the Sex Pistols having escaped the undertakers of obscurity. It was derivative (punk rock was nothing new) and yet there was something so seductively fresh about it. I heard paradigms shifting and trails being blazed with that incendiary track – probably much like Brits the first time they heard God Save the Queen in ages past.
There was something magical and democratic about a song with a Neanderthal riff (which sounds like that elementary guitar break in Louie Louie or Boston’s More Than a Feeling) as well as cryptic yet creative lyrics ("A mulatto/An albino/A mosquito/My libido…"). Something probably inspired by William S. Burroughs’ cut-up method. I never realized a raw and simplistic song could be so damn good. Before Teen Spirit hit the airwaves in ’91 to ‘92, rock had become a bloated, overbearing beast wearing top hat and cycling shorts, doing duets with Elton John, and lumbering into tabloids with pushers, bodyguards and groupies. The whole unbearable sex, drugs and rock n’ roll bit. Sadly, rock stars had become both virtuosos and sad caricatures.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved Guns N’ Roses’ "Appetite for Destruction" and "GNR Lies." But after the glam and gritty debut, GNR became a lost Vegas act. In the band’s gig in Japan, lead singer W. Axl Rose made four costume changes in the course of Civil War. Four! Was that necessary? Not even Elvis did something that Broadway. I also hated the bombast and balladry of Estranged, the stupid rap of My World, as well as the bile and egotism of Get in the Ring from "Use Your Illusion II."
No chance in hell for ordinary blokes to emulate guitarist Slash’s parts in GNR songs. Same with the stuff recorded by Joe Satriani, Steve Vai or Metallica’s Kirk Hammet – with their modes, sweeps and mad, methodical guitar solos. There we mortals were in the ‘90s: arms around a cheap, fake Stratocaster bought in Raon; staring at tablatures photocopied from Fade to Black; trying to figure out how to play the tapping parts in Always With Me Always With You or that blistering solo in One. F*ck all that!
Rock music became an exclusive boys’ club. Kurt Cobain gave it back to the people. The way Johnny Rotten stole rock n’ roll from under the rug of uptight prog rockers with their quasi-classical rock, mystic philosophies and single songs spanning one whole album. Kurt proved that all you need to play good ole rock n’ roll is a pawnshop guitar, three chords and the truth. Nirvana inspired the disaffected, the rejects, and the outsiders to take up the guitar, write their own songs and find salvation in music. Or at the very least create one hell of a racket. No jaw-dropping guitar chops, props or schmaltzy costumes necessary. No need to dress up in leather pants, denim jackets, and boots. No need to poof up one’s hair with Aqua Net. Come as you are, Kurt invoked. Nirvana made rock accessible and relevant again. The voice of a generation – scribes dubbed Cobain. Much like what Bob Dylan was before. Stuff like this added more pressure on the reluctant rock star.
Michael Jackson, Michael Bolton, Mariah Carey, Bon Jovi and other pathetic pop chart-toppers in ’92 fell like chaff before Nirvana’s sickle (Tom Petty’s metaphors, I admit). Nirvana’s second album "Nevermind" (the follow up to "Bleach," which was recorded for $606.15) was the first shot fired in the flannel revolution. Much has been said about the album as cultural phenomenon blah blah blah. Heck, all I heard during those tempestuous times were catchy, well-crafted songs. And interesting stories woven to them as well.
Teen Spirit started out as a crack against Kurt smelling like a deodorant. Polly was based on the abduction, torture and rape of a 14-year-old girl (and Kurt was bothered that people cheered whenever the band played this song). Killing Joke sued Nirvana over the riff in Come As You Are. Territorial Pissings begins with lines from The Youngblood’s Get Together. Stark and sinister Something in the Way, my favorite track, was inspired by Cobain’s life under a bridge during tougher times.
Kurt was quick to dismiss "Nevermind" as no different from a Cheap Trick album. Yeah right – if Cheap Trick had Vincent Van Gogh with a rasp and a perpetual bellyache for a singer.
In ’92 came "Incesticide," a rarities/odds-and-sods collection labeled by Novoselic as a "cash cow." "No," said the guy from Sub Pop Records, "piggy bank is more like it."
In ’93, the album that was supposed to be titled "Verse-Chorus-Verse" came out as "In Utero," which is noisier, less catchy, edgier, dirtier, more abrasive, the opposite of the slickly-produced "Nevermind," and arguably more autobiographical.
"Teenage angst has paid off well/And now I’m bored and old" (from Serve the Servants). "You can’t fire me ‘cause I quit" (from Scentless Apprentice, which was inspired by Patrick Suskind’s novel Perfume). "Forever in debt to your priceless advice" (from Heart-Shaped Box; a line used by Cobain to piss off an aunt). "I wish I was like you, easily amused" (from All Apologies). "Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld/So I can sigh eternally… I’m so tired I can’t sleep/I’m anemic royalty" (from Pennyroyal Tea). "I miss the comfort in being sad" (from Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle).
As John Lennon once said, every truth is universal. When Cobain sang these words, they amplified our own conditions and uncertainties. We can’t relate to the trappings of fame, but we could (like Kurt) see ourselves as a prisoner of one’s circumstance, as a Kafkaesque bird searching for a cage and asking for water and a cracker.
Something personal: One burning memory I have of Kurt Cobain is watching him lead the rest of the band in rendering Nirvana songs acoustically. How can music so abrasive and noisy work in an MTV Unplugged setting? Take out the distortion and overdrive on angry grunge anthems and strip them down? Only bollocks thought it could happen. And it did.
One evening, my money-less friends and I ended up with gin, tuna and Skyflakes in the living room of our rat-infested apartment, doing and watching nothing on TV. Fuzzy reception. I switched channels. And there was Kurt with an acoustic guitar on stage with flowers, candles and the rest of Nirvana, singing the Beatlesque About a Girl. That was trippy. That was an unexpected treat. I need an easy friend/I do with an ear to lend…
"Nirvana Unplugged in New York," released in ’94, is one essential live album. It is a treat to discover just how great Cobain is as a songwriter, how rich with melody and cool harmonies the songs are when stripped down of stomp box effects. I love the way the band simplifies staples like Pennyroyal Tea, On A Plain, Dumb and Come As You Are. I also love the covers (from David Bowie, the Meat Puppets, The Vaselines and Leadbelly.) The gig featured Germs guitarist Pat Smear, Meat Puppets guitarists Curt and Cris Kirkwood and cellist Lori Goldston. Grohl played restrained drums. Novoselic played bass and clumsy accordion.
One day in ’94, I was broke, I was depressed and it was my birthday. I peered at the Nirvana album through a record-store glass like a dog staring at a poster of a bone. A very important person in my life bought the album for me, an unforgettable gesture. I listened to the cassette tape that evening. All was well. All was fine. All in all is all we are. And it so happened that we were talking on the phone when we heard the news that Kurt Cobain committed suicide. We exchanged silences for while. Silences and sniffles.
Ten years later, things are different. We are not together anymore. She was recently diagnosed with cancer. I don’t relish watching a person (responsible for turning me into who I am and who I am not) leave this world before her time. If ever she does, I do hope she goes to a place without errant lovers, letdowns and disappointments; a place with pretty gardens, magic-realism books and beautiful music. I know I’ll play that tape someday and hear her voice with Kurt’s music.
So much has happened in the last 10 years, Novoselic is bald, bearded and more political. Grohl is making music with the Foo Fighters, recently jamming with jazz legend Chick Corea at the Grammys. William Hung has just released an album. Kurt is still dead (with many still insisting that he was murdered and that it was no suicide at all). The once mighty grunge bands are gone from the scene. Alice in Chain’s Layne Staley is dead. Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell has hooked up with Rage Against the Machine. No one wants to be Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam anymore – not even Eddie Vedder. Oh hell, except perhaps for Scott Stapp of Creed and that annoying singer in The Calling. The new musical fad is kicking the shit out of the old musical fad. But I still, from time to time, listen to old Nirvana CDs, even if my flesh, senses and tastes have undergone changes upon changes; I sometimes stare into a mirror and wonder who the f*ck that other guy is. I am and yet I am not. The songs remain the same, though.
Recently, my girlfriend Becca (my Courtney Love without the shooting up and the sleeping around tendencies) gave me her most cherished possession: a limited edition "Nirvana Unplugged in New York" CD in a red, wooden, heart-shaped box. It was No. 972 of only 5,000 copies in existence worldwide. I nearly cried when I got it. How can a man not love a woman who has given her heart and heart-shaped box set? What cute irony. It was the universe’s way of telling me one album could mean different things to one person, that each one of us could listen to music and find death, love and everything else in between. Yes, even in Nirvana songs. Especially in Nirvana songs.
Kurt Cobain? Well, he got up onstage. He played a couple of songs. He left. It was loud. People were slam-dancing. I went home with a headache and a blown mind. Yes. Kurt Cobain. What more there is to say?
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