Tastemaker: 10 years later
Cobain's death couldn't have been more timely
Aaron Vehling
Issue date: 9/25/03 Section: Showcase
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A big question on the minds of those who tend to ponder big questions is whether frontman/songwriter/guitarist Kurt Cobain and his band would be as revered today if Cobain hadn't killed himself.
The answer is, quite succinctly: No.
Despite the fact that Nirvana essentially revolutionized the music scene in the early 90s, its candle would still have burnt out.
Allow me to whip out my brush and paint you a picture of the scene in 1993 to further illustrate my point.
A sense of apathy and distress permeated the air surrounding Nirvana at this point in time.
"Nevermind" was a phenomenal breakthrough record - it changed music, it defined a genre and it knocked Michael Jackson from No. 1 on the Billboard album charts.
But a few years had passed and expectations for a follow-up were incredibly lofty. The band, especially Cobain, was interested in doing a real, raw punk record and was not comfortable with all the pressure.
In fact, according to Cobain biographer Charles Cross, the band was pretty much a dying beast. Cobain was lost in a haze of heroin, drummer Dave Grohl and Cobain did not get along, and bassist Krist Novoselic was quite frustrated with the overall malaise that had engulfed the band.
Charging on, they hired indie producer Steve Albini to produce what was originally called "I Hate Myself and Want to Die." Eventually, the record took on the name it now carries.
There were some sure-fire hits on the record, including "Heart Shaped Box," "Dumb," "Rape Me" and "All Apologies," but much of the record was sharp, metallic and bleak when compared to its predecessor.
This threw off many fickle fans, and the mainstream was losing interest in the band. But when Cobain killed himself with a combination of a heroin overdose and a shotgun blast on April 5, 1994, the fate of Nirvana was sealed.
Cobain fans around the world united as national TV news networks revealed the information surrounding his death.
He was immortalized as one of rock's many fallen icons.
But if Cobain hadn't killed himself, he would never have reached such a lofty status.
Nirvana, as I mentioned earlier, was imploding, so the band would have broken up regardless of Cobain's death.
Fans would have mourned the disbandment of their favorite musical entity in much the same way fans of The Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarden mourned the separation of those two bands, but Cobain would have been seen as anything but a martyr.
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