The Post about Kurt Cobain April 5th - 11 years later

Eleven years ago today - as best the medical examiner could determine - Kurt Donald Cobain died.

His death was officially recorded as a suicide, and despite great efforts to prove otherwise, it probably was.

[Yet questions remain. Not the least of them how a man injects a dose of heroin large enough to kill instantaneously, yet still finds the time and strength to roll down and button his sleeve, store his paraphernalia, and pick up and use a shotgun]

Whatever the method, his death was a tragedy.

A tragedy for his infant daughter, who has spent her life spinning memories of her father from what she sees and reads about his career.

A tragedy for his fans, who were denied the gift of his talent -and the dozens who mourned his death by following in his footsteps.

And a tragedy for Kurt himself, whose memory and music are now horribly intertwined with a macabre death.

That quite frankly, is obscene.

Obscene because everything you see and hear about Kurt and Nirvana is viewed through the lens of his death. People refuse to think of him as anything but a character in an art house movie, where every scene and every line of dialog has to foreshadow the end:

• MTV turned Unplugged in New York into a funeral dirge when the station played it endlessly after his death.

Never mind that it was one of the most innovative and enjoyable concerts of the series.

• Biographies of the band read like psychology texts, probing and engorging any event for a clue to the suicide.
• The lyrics are dissected and robbed of context. Why? to find a line that has no literal connection to what occurred, but which proves too tasty a quote for some authors to ignore.

Enough.

Go fire up your stereo and listen to Nevermind, their breakthrough album that knocked Michael Jackson from the #1 slot and ended the reign of Michael Bolton and New Kids on the Block.*

Tell me On a Plain, Lithium, or God forbid Smells Like Teen Spirit are anything but joyous anthems of Generation X.

Or their follow up album In Utero: darker, with less concession to commercial demands, but rife with memorable hooks. From the opening notes of Heart Shaped Box to the relentless attack of Scentless Apprentice, this was not the work of a man who had given up hope and abandoned what was important to him.

Of course Nirvana wasn't the The Judds, and not every song was suitable for a child's birthday party.

But I often wonder how much of that was Kurt just living up to his billing. For a man who allegedly hated the limelight, he certainly sought it out enough. He seemed to recognize this contradiction in himself:

Teenage angst has paid off well

but now I'm bored and old . . .

It may be hypocritical, given that I'm choosing to honor him on the annniversary of his death, but I prefer to forget how it ended and concentrate on the things that made me love his music in the first place.

Ear shattering drums that made your speakers quake. Bass lines that refused to quietly submit to a subordinate role, and in fact led the charge on most songs. Guitar that could be manic one second and controlled and subtle the next, with solos that were truly part of a song, not an excuse to write one. Vocals that were raw emotion, with lyrics that gained their strength and context as they wrapped themselves around the music.

That was Nirvana.

And that was Kurt Cobain.

 

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*long time readers will know what a bittersweet,double-edged sword it is to say that