(If you're wondering what this is all about, click .)
This week's subject: Nirvana
The case for the prosecution ( )
Let's get one thing out of the way first of all. Nevermind is a good record.
At the time, it seemed like a refreshing antidote to the crap bland pop and hair-rock that dominated the late '80s. I've listened to it dozens of times, but don't admittedly own a copy (although bizarrely I do have a copy of From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah); I'm fairly familiar with In Utero, Bleach and so on. So I'm not completely anti-Nirvana.
However, that's really as far as it goes. So many people rave on about how Nirvana changed their lives and Kurt is their hero. I simply can't see what all the fuss is about.
A band best known for one song and a drug addict singer who took his own life. Hmmm.
A few years ago, Nevermind was voted the most overrated album of all time by BBC 6 Music listeners.
I wouldn't necessarily call it the most overrated album, but it's certainly overrated. Influential perhaps, but not original. The Pixies were doing the quiet / loud thing long before and even Cobain himself said that he was surprised that people didn't realise that Nevermind was a fairly obvious rip-off of The Pixies, a much more inventive band in my (biased) opinion.
Like so many other so-called influential bands, they opened the doors to hordes of copycats. Ok, so this is a criticism aimed at pretty much every so-called "influential" group at the start of a new movement (see Britpop a few weeks ago), but unfortunately, in Nirvana's case this meant the likes of Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, and Soundgarden; dull bands with particularly little merit. And if that wasn't enough, several years you had plenty of nu-metal bands claiming Nirvana (and their angst-ridden music) as an influence.
.. well I could just finish off here.
However, I will continue. I suppose the whole "grunge" movement never really appealed to me anyway. Music which meant more to white middle American people than it did to me growing up in South London accompanied by a pretty depressing attitude to life which Kurt felt compelled to constantly share with everyone else.
I'll admit I'm with Damon Albarn who once said about Nirvana, "What have these blokes got to say for themselves? 'I'm fucked up'. Fantastic.
"
As for Kurt Cobain, well he's become an icon in death and this has since had a huge effect on the band's legacy, much like Jim Morrison's death did on The Doors (now there's an overrated band). Nowadays, every major white rock music critic worth their salt has Nevermind in his or her Top 10 albums of all time, but would that be the case if Kurt hadn't picked up that shotgun?
Even while he was alive, Cobain's heroin usage was of more interest to most than his music, something that annoys me (much like the fuss surrounding Pete Doherty).
For those supporters out there who say that Kurt along with his bandmates might have tapped into the zeitgeist, all I can say is so what? So did the Spice Girls (or rather Simon Fuller did). Is that reason to worship either over a decade on?
Not in my eyes.
In addition, I'm always fairly suspicious of a band or artist who release B-sides, bootlegs, outtakes, retrospectives, demos, etc long after they've ceased to exist. Ok, so it's great for the completeists out there, but releasing the guy's diaries long after he's dead?
...
well that just smacks of extreme money-grabbing, not something a band should be proud of.
One more thing: without Nirvana, there would be no Courtney Love and thousands of trees wouldn't have been needlessly wasted on the (music) press printing articles about her. For that alone, surely they have to be sent down.
The case for the defence ( )
. As I confessed then, my instinctive antipathy towards Oasis, Blur et al was at least partly a consequence of my love for Nirvana.
I was 13 when I first heard Nevermind, round at a friend’s house, no doubt sandwiched between albums by Motley Crue and Iron Maiden.
As clichéd as it might sound, it was an epiphany. Nothing was the same again.
For a start, it seemed no longer possible for music to be a neatly compartmentalised part of my life, something in which I could take a passing interest from time to time.
Nevermind marked the beginnings of a serious obsession which to this day monopolises my time and energies.
And with this obsession came the discovery (and burden) of taste: all music is not equal. Adopting a scorched earth policy with regard to my record collection, I literally consigned everything except the newly-procured cassette copy of Nevermind to the dustbin.
Ripped it up and started again. It’s not routinely referred to as a seminal album for nothing.
Lots of people have their own Nirvana, but what was it about Nevermind that made me react like that?
It was raw and unfussy. It was free from posturing and pretension. It was a visceral expression of naked emotion.
Something in the music and lyrics struck a chord with me, something which gripped and engaged the listener in a completely natural, uncalculated way. ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was genuinely anthemic: “Here we are now / Entertain us”. For me and millions of others, this was our punk rock.
Inevitably, those possessing delicate “refined” music sensibilities unfairly characterised – or, rather, caricatured – Nirvana as crude, abrasive and brutish. But the legendary unplugged performance for MTV illuminated the effectiveness and simple beauty of their songs, as well as showcasing their talent for taking those of others and making them convincingly their own. Revisit their remarkable take on Ledbetter’s ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
’ and I defy you not to get a shiver up your spine.
As appreciative beneficiaries of the patronage of “godfathers of grunge” Sonic Youth, Nirvana were themselves enthusiastic champions of other bands, seizing the opportunity to promote The Meat Puppets through the unplugged performance and ‘80s Scottish indiepopsters The Vaselines through the covers of ‘Son Of A Gun’ and ‘Molly’s Lips’ which appeared on Incesticide. As the lists in his journals testify, Kurt Cobain was first and foremost a music fan.
He was also a source of inspiration. Siouxsie The Banshees bassist Steve Severin once said: “It has been said that everyone who listened to The Velvet Underground started a band ..
. I know I did”. The same is pretty much true of Nirvana.
They made you want to pick up a guitar and play. They made you realise that music didn’t have to be difficult or sophisticated, that it didn’t have to be precision-perfect and professionally polished. That it was accessible, doable.
In this respect, they had an extraordinarily liberating impact, re-teaching the lessons that punk had taught but which had been all but forgotten.
From this distance, thirteen years after Cobain committed suicide, assessments of Nirvana’s legacy are likely to be jaundiced unjustly by things beyond their control. As Michael Azerrad puts it in ‘Our Band Could Be Your Life’, throughout the ‘80s in the US “alternative rock” had bubbled away “beneath the radar of the corporate behemoths” until Nirvana took it overground.
In so doing, they essentially killed it off and paved the way for the likes of Silverchair and Bush – but not without giving retrospective exposure to a whole host of thoroughly deserving bands. They were an ear-opener, a gateway drug.
Nirvana also often stand accused of alerting record company execs to the profitability of angst.
It’s now pre-processed, manufactured, cynically calculated to induce teenagers to part with their pocket money. But is it really fair to hold them personally responsible for emo? And did Cobain really play at being the “tortured genius”?
I think not. He was a genuinely troubled young man who found himself thrust unwillingly into the limelight. Unlike the likes of Robbie Williams, he never wanted and hankered after the fame that ultimately caused him to take his own life.
And if all that isn’t enough to convince you of their innocence, then just reflect on the fact that they gave the world the drum intro to ‘Scentless Apprentice’...
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Thanks to Pete. Now it's over to you. Guilty or innocent - YOU decide.
The comments box is open and awaiting your comments - you've got until Friday to make up your mind...
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