I will admit that Nirvana was necessary to music, in much the same way Hitler, slavery, Communism, and the Clintons were necessary to history. It makes you appreciate goodness when you are oppressed by pure evil due to your own complacency.
Kurt Cobain was among the least talented people on Earth. Notice I am not commenting on him as a, ahem, "musician". He is pure worthless crap who, if God is just, is burning in hell right now, being forced to listen to his own strap-the-rat-cage-on-my-face music. My buddy (ex-buddy) dropped an ashtray on my guitar and made less dissonant noises than anything Cobain ever did. His lyrics are the worst of off-night coffee house poetry read by ugly people with pierced eyeballs, three strands of purple hair, and deep-seated psychological damage. His struggling attempts at guitar playing are so infantile he makes Keith Richards look like Yngwie, or to use his full name, Yngwie Fucking Malmsteen. For him, the guitar was merely a conduit for his whining to reach more people. I was deployed to Saudi in 94, and a friend who had never so much as touched a guitar before asked me to give him lessons. Rather than go through rudiments (he just wanted to screw around and play songs, not really learn the fundamentals), I suggested starting with some simple stuff like "Rock You Like A Hurricane". He was having a hard time with the timing of the rhythms, so he asked if I could teach him some Nirvana. I choked back the pool of bile forming in the back of my throat, and wound up teaching him every song on Nevermind in the course of thirty minutes. Thirty minutes. I had heard most of the songs before, and he had a CD so I could hear the rest, so I actually learned them myself within that time as well. Thirty minutes. Does that sound like Kurt might have racked his brain to come up with riffs? Too bad he never got rich enough to invest his vast fortunes in a tuner.
Several days later, that same friend came up to me in a state of shock, saying, "Did you hear? Cobain killed himself." I thought, "Good. Saved me a trip and a bullet." Then, in a rare moment of prescience, I thought of other famous dead people, and realize he would be canonized right alongside Janis Joplin, Jimi, Lennon, Belushi, et al. I correctly predicted that he would be referred to as a "Guitar God" (Guitar magazine headline the day I returned from Saudi). It is fashionable to overrate people once they have died. For example: Jimi Hendrix was a strange guitarist. He was not terribly innovative in terms of music--I think Page was more musical in his innovation--but he broke new ground in use of noise (feedback, dissonance, etc.). If Jimmy Page had died in 70, and Hendrix survived to get fat and sweaty in the 80's and 90's, I believe their respective legends would also be reversed. John Belushi was funny, but nothing really special. Keith Moon was a drummer--he was no Buddy Rich. This happens. Because they are dead, they are no longer around to make mistakes, and people will only remember the good. For Cobain fans, they will have to rely on the one thing Cobain was good at: drawing pop music fans out of the doldrums of late 80's pop. Since metal was essentially the pop rock of the 80's, and the genre was populated by seriously good guitarists, how do you rebel against that? Be the worst guitarist ever. Even the cheesiest pop/metal bands of the 80's had rather gifted guitarists (Warrant/Winger/Ratt/Slaughter etc.), and people who listen to music as background noise got tired of hearing the earlier pureness watered down into pop, and wanted something different. Enter Cobain. He was no innovator. He played punk without the energy or 'skill'. He couldn't sing, but didn't let that stop him either. He wrote lyrics like a suicidal 12 year old girl with an eating disorder and a thesaurus. He sucked big time.
As I stated in the opening, he was necessary. Nirvana tracks (I will no longer cow to popular opinion and call it "music") serve as a stepping stone for people in their musical growth years. It's the first stone. If you still like Nirvana, it's time to step to the next stone. Get a real job. Move out of your parents' basement. Learn how to play an instrument--any instrument. Put down the skull bong. Tear up the Phish posters. Finally, start listening to music played by people who don't whine about their sad little lives, who care about music, and who can tune a freakin guitar.
I feel rather ashamed for having spent so much time writing about someone not worthy of anyone's time, but these things needed to be said to those people out there that listen to Nirvana. I don't hate you, and I truly hope you understand what I am saying, and don't just ignore this as pointless Kurt-bashing. It's quite the opposite. I HAVE a point. Kurt Cobain sucked, sucks, and will forever suck. Long live actual music!!
Andy
"Life sucks. Get a helmet." -- Denis Leary