Kurt Cobain
[Name of the Writer]
[Name of the Institution]
Kurt Cobain
Introduction
Ten years ago today, Kurt Cobain, co-founder as well as the lead vocalist of the band Nirvana, committed suicide. His body was not exposed for three days. When word of his bereavement got out, fans converged on his house in Seattle, Washington. Further thousands assembled for an impulsive vigil in the city's own. Cobain was one of the most admired rock stars of his day. Nirvana initiated the Seattle music own as grunge to viewers around the world and made alternative rock middle-of-the-road. Just two and a half years passed between Nirvana's chief tag debut and Cobain's loss. Fans liken its impact on them to the consequence that John Lennon's murder had on their parents.
This paper is intended to discuss the impact and influence of Kurt Cobain/Nirvana as the most influential musician who brought a subgenre of alternative rock called "Grunge” to the mainstream music.
Discussion
Even though Cobain's death and the closure of Nirvana, the significant Seattle trio's tune lives on and is being discovered by a fresh generation.
``He's a legend,'' said Dobson, who was 9 when Cobain passed away but cites him as one of her main influences. ``I'm sure he's going to live on for 10 more years, then 10 more years and beyond. ''In a current concern of Rolling Stone magazine, Nirvana position as the 27th greatest-ever rock 'n' roll act, achieving over such top names at The Who, The Clash, Prince, Michael Jackson and Madonna.
After he undergoes a succession of episodes, including a drug-induced coma, Cobain's mother filed a lost person’s information on April 4, 1994. Four days afterwards, an electrician rented to set up a burglar alarm at Cobain's apartment found him dead, with a suicide note next to him quoting the renowned statement from Neil Young's ``My, My, Hey, Hey (Out of the Blue)''-``It's better to burn out than fade away.''
``The smell of Teen Spirit wad bad on Kurt’s death,'' said Jeff Roberts, administrating associate of the now-defunct Sounds Familiar record store in Myrtle Beach. ``His death had a enormous crash kids that hadn't witnessed any of its idols die. It hit 'me right between the eyes.'' Best remembers hearing the news while sitting in the cafeteria at Conway High School in Conway, S.C., and he dismissed it as teen gossip.
``We just sat there stunned and thought, what's going to happen now?'' said Taylor, who, while growing up in Iowa, counted Nirvana as one of his favourite bands. ``Kurt intones the whole thing as his spirit was bleeding. It was a big loss, but enthused artists to do their personal thing.''
Myrtle Beach musician Patrick Best is certain Cobain's legacy, in line with rockers who died young such as Jimmy Hendrix and Jim Morrison, will continue to influence future legions of music lovers.
``He provided people a cause to raise the issue against the society and their personal lives again,'' Best said. ``He gave the unwanted, outcast, the indifferent, the weak, the eccentric, a way out-a place to go-to feel accepted and lay personal their emotions and takes a stand and gave them an outlet of expression, whether it be to start a band or just become a deeper listener. Kurt gave his audience what they needed at that time: hope for something better.''
Reviewers of that theory-most of them from the extreme age band grunge supposedly represents-disagree, asserting that grunge has been miscast as the soundtrack for a generation by a baby boomer-dominated media impatience to drag the rubbish over their eyes.
"Grunge beam largely to Generation X; no one preserve refute that. It was the first valid Generation-X-produced and obsessed music," said William Strauss, co-author of a numeral of volumes on generations, plus the GenX analysis "13th Generation: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?" (Vintage, 1993).
But not every Gen Xer-defined by Strauss and co-author Neil Howe as anyone born between 1961 and 1981, despite the fact that others put the preliminary marker at 1964-was a fan of grunge. The late Tupac Shakur, for example, was as influential an artist, and as tragic an example of squandered talent, as Cobain-and many Gen Xers identify more with Shaker’s rap than with Cobain's grunge.
"Newsweek or a daily newspaper or a number of other very straight forms of media said that admirers connected to the bands as they dressed in flannel shirts. ... I realized as I read it, that was the first time I'd thought about what the bands wore," Klosterman said.
"The Internet was just about to happen, there was a surplus of magazines, and cable TV had prolonged. All these passages led to grunge being the initial genre of music to be analyzed in the present tense, as it was happening, which led to every element of grunge being reverse-engineered (by the media)," he added.
According to Strauss, however, grunge was a landmark event, part of a cycle that every generation experiences.” Each generation has a three-decade footprint on popular culture," Strauss said. "First, as consumers of elder-produced culture. Then, in the second decade, as producers of popular culture for itself, and finally as creators of popular culture for the generations that follow it.
"Grunge was about feeling sorry for you, not working, slacking. ... I don't think it's a music that looks for deep thought: 'Why ask why?' 'Just say no.' 'Just do it,'" said Strauss, who was born in 1947."Grunge was such a monumental movement. ... Grunge was music with real emotion, and it caught on," he said. “We really didn't hear a lot of angst rock before grunge. It was all 'talk dirty to me,' you know? Grunge was emotional. It was angry," Elliott added.
The rage uttered in grunge-and its mainstream success, particularly among record buyers in the Gen X demographic-led many pop culture analysts to believe the music represented the masses listening to it on some deeper level.
Generation X grew up in the shadow of the boomers, but also at a time when negativity dominated their formative experiences, said Strauss. Soaring divorce and crime rates, economic woes, the emerging AIDS epidemic and a still-frosty cold war contributed to an underlying angst.
"All through the '80s, Gen Xers were constantly told how stupid they were, how their parents had failed them and how the schools had failed them," Strauss said.
When baby boomers began having children of their personal-Strauss and Howe call them the millennial generation, beginning in 1982-attitudes about children changed.
Gen Xers rose up through an era when "demon child" shows such as "The Omen" and "Rosemary's Baby" were admired, according to Strauss, while the Millennials' childhood was one of coddling and ubiquitous "Baby on board" signs.
Much of the difference in how succeeding generations were perceived-"Rosemary's Baby" vs. "Baby on board"-stems from the dominance of the baby boomer generation not only in size but also in its tendency to throw its weight around when it comes to making pop culture pronouncements.
"The boomers have a cultural purpose. They ride astride the culture and don't let go of it easily," Strauss said.
People looked to Kurt Cobain because his songs captured what they felt before they knew they felt it. Even his struggles--with fame, with drugs, with his identity--caught the generational drama of our time. Seeing himself since his boyhood as an outcast, he was stunned--and confused, and frightened, and repulsed, and, truth be told, not entirely disappointed (no one forms a band to remain anonymous)--to find himself a star. If Cobain staggered across the stage of rock stardom, seemed more willing to play the fool than the hero and took drugs more for relief than pleasure that was fine with his contemporaries. For people who came of age amid the greed, the designer-drug indulgence and the image-driven celebrity of the '80s, anyone who could make an easy peace with success was fatally suspected.
Conclusion
Whatever importance Cobain assumed as a symbol, however, one thing is certain: He and his band Nirvana announced the end of one rock & roll era and the start of another. In essence, Nirvana transformed the '80s into the '90s.
They didn't do it alone, of course--cultural change is never that simple. But in 1991, "Smells like Teen Spirit" proved a defining moment in rock history. A political song that never mentions politics, an anthem whose lyrics can't be understood, a hugely popular hit that denounces commercialism, a collective shout of alienation, it was "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" for a new time and a new tribe of disaffected youth. It was a giant fuck-you, an immensely satisfying statement about the inability to be satisfied.
From that point on, Cobain fought to make intellect of his new state of affairs, to find a way to generate rock & roll for mass spectators and still sustain his personal version of truthfulness. The weight of that attempt deepened the gash he had borne since boyhood: the busted home, the bitter hatred of the local toughs who intimidated him, the agonizing stomach pains. He sought purpose in fatherhood. He wanted to pacify in his daughter, Frances Bean, his personal primal fears of abandonment. He managed, finally, only to disseminate them.
At 27 years old, Kurt Cobain wanted to disappear, to erase himself, to become nothing. That his suicide so utterly lacked ambivalence is its most terrifying aspect. It all comes personal to stillness at the end of a long chaos: a young man sitting alone in a room, looking out a window onto the Puget Sound, getting high, writing his goodbyes, pulling a trigger. You can imagine the silence shattering and then collecting itself, in the way that water breaks for and then envelops a diver, absorbing forever the life of Kurt Cobain.
References
Azerrad, Michael. Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana. Doubleday, 1994. Burlingame, Jeff. Kurt Cobain: Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind. Enslow, 2006. Cross, Charles. Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain. Hyperion, 2001. Summers, Kim. "Kurt Cobain". Allmusic. Accessed on May 9, 2005. Kitts, Jeff, et al. Guitar World Presents Nirvana and the Grunge Revolution. Hal Leonard, 1998.
33 Things You Should Know About Nirvana, Michael Odell, Blender Magazine, Jan/Feb 2005.
