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It started me thinking about those days in 1993, being a
Nirvana fan and waiting/wading through all the scandal and rumor in the run-up
to the album’s release. Nevermind had
sent such enormous shockwaves through the music world that every move Cobain
and company made in 92/93 was noted in the music press with inordinate amounts
of scrutiny and hysteria. Following it all could be both dizzying and numbing.
Of course the way the story played out seems inevitable now,
with twenty years hindsight. At the time, though, the crazy sense of
anything-might-happen was a lot of fun. Innocent, even. Will the band break up?
Nah, they’re too smart to ruin such a good thing. So the cops came to Kurt and
Courtney’s house to check on a possible domestic disturbance? But those two
seem to have it so together, it’s gotta be a misunderstanding.
No, really, back then it was actually very easy to see it
that way. Kurt so often came across in interviews as such an erudite,
even-keeled fellow. When he said in that Spring ’92 interview with Rolling
Stone that he wasn’t a hopeless heroin
addict, it was almost believable. Especially if you were a hardcore fan,
completely taken in by the notion that these guys really were the rock
and roll white knights, sent here by some holy spiritual alliance of The Beatles and
The Stooges and REM and Sonic Youth to save us all from the Skid Rows and
Warrants then ravaging the rock and roll world with sickening doses of cliché
and hairspray.
So when word got out in Spring ’93 that the newly-recorded
follow-up to Nevermind had been nixed by the record label for being too
uncommercial, there was no reason for panic. Nirvana were a smart bunch of
guys, they’d find a way to get the music out there. We all eagerly awaited the
surely awesome, probably much punkier batch of tunes, our imaginations fed by
tantalizing titles like “Milk It”, “Rape Me”, and “Moist Vagina”.
Then there was the tentative title of the record: I Hate
Myself And I Want To Die. Hilarious. See,
Kurt Cobain’s making fun of his own (and his generation’s/audience’s) -
propensity for unresolved anger and emotional confusion. What most
right-thinking adults think of as just a bunch of whiny, privileged Generation
Xers who oughtta just get over themselves, Kurt Cobain recognizes as genuinely confused
people who are also smart enough to know that confusion shouldn’t stop them
from moving forward with life. Self-awareness and irony, see?
Well, the humorous part of the title we got right, but we
should be forgiven for not spotting how very black that humor actually was. I
mean, look at the promotional video for In Utero’s release, with Bobcat
Goldthwaite administering over the band as they give birth to a horde of plastic fetuses.
These guys are not that serious.
Even when the album came out, for all of the noise and rage and gross body imagery, much of the focus ended up falling on lyrics that seemed at the time to point to a fairly healthy outlook. If Kurt could note that the pay-off from teenage angst had made him feel bored and old, how far away from finding some route to new found engagement and a youthful sense of purpose could he be? If he's aware that that legendary divorce is such a bore, shouldn't he be able to work through the emotional residue of his own childhood issues?
Maybe those questions were naïve even then. Too hopeful, too blinded by the intoxicating sound of gut-crunching drums and guitars that sounded like gnarly, slippery vines winding around your heart like aural intestines.
Even when the album came out, for all of the noise and rage and gross body imagery, much of the focus ended up falling on lyrics that seemed at the time to point to a fairly healthy outlook. If Kurt could note that the pay-off from teenage angst had made him feel bored and old, how far away from finding some route to new found engagement and a youthful sense of purpose could he be? If he's aware that that legendary divorce is such a bore, shouldn't he be able to work through the emotional residue of his own childhood issues?
Maybe those questions were naïve even then. Too hopeful, too blinded by the intoxicating sound of gut-crunching drums and guitars that sounded like gnarly, slippery vines winding around your heart like aural intestines.
Still, I can't help but remember how hopeful the picture
seemed then, at least as it was presented in the press, and here I am thinking
specifically of the Rolling Stone cover
story in which the band appeared dressed in suits with the headline
"Success Doesn't Suck". Kurt sounded excited for the future. I don't
think it was a put-on, he likely believed his own words at the time he spoke
them. If his fans were sometimes willfully delusional, so was he. Artists are mirrors of their audience, but maybe the opposite can also be true.
Sometimes I imagine a Kurt Cobain who actually resembled
the Kurt Cobain I really thought existed back then. One who wasn't cursed
with a terrible mixture of chemical imbalance and family issues and drug
dependence. One who was resolutely positive and determined to pull through the
morass of fame and fans and addiction. Dedicated to art at any cost.
Maybe he could have started his own label and been a Jack
White kind of figure. Only he'd reissue old favorites like Fang and the Marine
Girls instead of old blues singers. (Though Leadbelly might sneak in there.)
Maybe the celebrity aura would have died down and he could be an elder statesman
figure like Sonic Youth or REM, or an omnipresent fount of ongoing musical
activity like Robert Pollard or J Mascis.
But maybe there's also an alternate world in which Hitler
was a really likeable guy and Gandhi was a reprobate. We're stuck with this
one, in which Nirvana was a shooting star and In Utero was the last fading glimmer in the trail. Where
"Heart-Shaped Box" is an endless, gorgeous mystery and "Milk
It" an impenetrable, fascinating beast. Where songs about elation,
"Dumb" say, though "All Apologies" qualifies, end up
sounding deeply sad. The guy, and the band, were hopelessly complicated, but
those songs exist. That's enough.
