On April 5, 1994, at the age of 27, Kurt Cobain, frontman of Nirvana, ideologue of grunge and icon of Generation X, undoubtedly the last ecumenical phenomenon in the history of rock, committed suicide. On the occasion of his thirtieth anniversary, we asked ourselves: why was he so loved by those who experienced the punk revolution firsthand? And why was he so loved even by those who didn’t experience the punk revolution firsthand? Franco Sarcina tries to answer the first question, Francesco Prisco tries to answer the second.
At the end of the 1980s, ideologies still existed and anyone who wanted to do some healthy militancy might get a party card. It was valid for politics, but also for the music to listen to: the majority party was synth pop, music “binge” on keyboards. Synthesizers were everywhere, even well beyond the perimeter of synth pop: in Duran Duran’s songs as in those of Madonna and Michael Jackson. If you wanted to be in the opposition, there was the electric guitar and the most representative party was hard & heavy (Iron Maiden, Metallica) which might be very “hairy” (Bon Jovi) or very rude (Guns n’ Roses) , in any case nothing too deep. It was still the Eighties, a decade of hedonism and formalism, where passions (musical and otherwise) were worn. And if you dressed well you lived better.
Choose the alternative
The alternative to this bipolar world might have been to seek one’s points of reference back in time, in the music of the fathers, who were sometimes registered fathers: the Sixties and Seventies, places where substance abounded. You might do it timidly in the province of Naples, but also in Seattle, Washington state. And from Seattle came that rough riff, just four repeating power chords, the dark ballad verse, the chorus that exploded in the liberating scream: «With the lights off it’s less dangerous/ Here we are, let’s have fun/ I feel stupid and contagious ».
The impact of «Nevermind»
At the end of 1991 Smells like teen spiritfirst track of the album Nevermind, declares to the world that another world exists, where those who cannot find a place elsewhere are welcome, musically speaking and beyond. It wasn’t Nirvana’s first album (the debut, Bleach, dates back to 1989 but few people noticed) that they weren’t Kurt Cobain’s first band. The strength of this project lay precisely in the fact that there was nothing too new: musically speaking, they kept alive the anarchic flame of punk which had never really gone out in America. Plus a certain taste for dissonant melodies. At the lyrical level, the sense of rejection prevailed (“A denial”), the awareness of being out of context, the importance of having to move forward, better yet “come” for what “one was” (Come as you are). On an imaginary level, the grunge aesthetic (lumberjack shirt+niche band t-shirt+worn jeans+amphibians) was unconsciously invented by Neil Young at the time of Rust never sleeps (1979). Everything has already been seen, following all, and yet profoundly new, because it is always current.
The moral of «The Wrestler»
If you want to understand how it felt in the early nineties, when Kurt Cobain arrived, look at yourself The Wrestler (2008), the beautiful film by Darren Arnofsky. There is a dialogue between Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei – he a wrestler and she a lap dancer – that explains it very well: Legendary Eighties, unbeatable! Eh, you can swear by it! Guns n’ Roses are the strongest. The Crue, Def Leppard… Then Cobain, that faggot, came along and ruined everything. End! We wanted to have fun, what’s wrong with that? I hated that nineties shit. It sucked!
#Kurt #Cobain #years #death #havent #experienced #punk #loved
2024-04-04 23:07:35
