Nirvana

NIRVANA

Formed: 1987, Aberdeen, Washington

Members: Kurt Cobain, vocals and guitar (born Hoquiam, Washington, 20 February 1967; died Seattle, Washington, 5 April 1994); Krist (Chris) Novoselic, bass (born Compton, California, 10 May 1965); Dave Grohl, drums (born Warren, Ohio, 14 January 1969).

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Nevermind (1991)

Hit songs since 1990: "Smells like Teen Spirit," "Come As You Are," "All Apologies"

In fewer than three years, Nirvana became the centerpiece of a major revolution in popular musical taste, the effects of which can be felt to this day. The guitarist/composer Kurt Cobain led this dynamic trio toward mainstreaming the punk rock style that became known as grunge. With Nirvana's success in the early 1990s, alternative rock moved into the hearts and minds of a whole generation. Like Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, and too many musical innovators before him, Kurt Cobain did not live to see the full effects of Nirvana's musical legacy, which still lives on.

Cobain's Childhood and Teenage Trials

Kurt Cobain was born into a working-class family in an economically depressed community in the state of Washington. An apparently happy child who showed considerable artistic ability, he saw his family fall apart by the time he was eight years old. His parents' separation and divorce were traumatic events for the young Kurt. Thereafter he lived at times with both parents, then with other relatives and friends. During his teens he endured periods of homelessness, sleeping wherever he could. By the ninth grade he was into alcohol and marijuana, soon followed by harder drugs.

As he passed through adolescence into young manhood, his personal relations were strained. Eventually all that seemed to matter was composing music and playing it on the guitar, skills in which he was largely self-taught. A high school dropout who never held any job for very long, Cobain eventually found a musical soul mate in the bassist Krist Novoselic. In 1987, the drummer Aaron Burckhard (Dave Grohl became Nirvana's drummer later), Cobain, and Novoselic formed the trio that eventually altered the direction of the music world.

Forging a Style

The musical roots of Nirvana lay in the soil of punk rock, though their style came to be known as grunge. Among other things, it shared with punk rock a tendency toward alternating slow and fast, soft and loud passages. By comparison with popular groups of the 1980s—even harder-edged ones like Guns N' Roses—Nirvana's music was dissonant and frenetic, with a guttural bass underlining, liberal distortion effects, and a heavy drum line. At the same time, however, Cobain's compositions had a quieter, more lyrical side. Such work provided respite from more intense tracks in the two major studio albums
Nirvana cut. In one of his published journals, Cobain provided the best description of the Nirvana style: "Nirvana try to fuse punk energy with hard rock riffs, all within a pop sensibility."

The Sub Pop label in Seattle had become important to all alternative musicians in the artistically fertile northwest region of the country. Signing with them marked Nirvana's first serious recognition by the business side of the music industry, giving them the opportunity to become better known. Although the label lacked the resources to promote its records widely, Nirvana had already attracted considerable attention through their concerts and other performance dates in the region. Their first effort was a single featuring "Love Buzz" on side A and "Big Cheese" on B, both of which would reappear in Bleach. "Love Buzz"—originally recorded by the Dutch group Shocking Blue—became a signature song for Nirvana in their early concert dates. In subject matter and style these numbers and the others cut for the album come remarkably close to the Nirvana that debuted on the national scene a few years later.

Bleach, the first Nirvana album, came out in vinyl in 1989 from Sub Pop. The album title comes from an advertisement recommending drug users to "bleach" their needles before reusing them in order to ward off the HIV virus. Like many of the verbal elements in Nirvana's albums, it was chosen almost at random by Cobain when he had to come up with a title. The songs on Bleach range from the lightweight, mildly outrageous "Floyd the Barber," inspired by a character on the television series The Andy Griffith Show, to the dark and angry "Scoff," a punkish retort to someone in authority. Though a few tracks seem too slight to merit inclusion, the album has surprises like the romantic, Beatles-like "About a Girl," inspired by Cobain's girlfriend of the time. Generally, however, the music on Bleach shares many of the characteristics of alternative rock associated with the Sub Pop label. I. It is a mix of punk rock and heavy metal with lyrics expressing the concerns and outlook of what became known as Generation X. Cobain gave a voice to those who felt cheated by what their parents and society had told them they had to believe in. As a result, they grew angry over their failed search for something to replace those false values.

Nirvana Tops the Charts

Bleach, for all its promise, did not fully realize the group's ensemble power or Cobain's talents as a composer/musician. That promise was realized in 1991 with the release of Nevermind. In their combination of punkish fury, garage-band rock, heavy-metal riffs, and melodic inventiveness, these tracks set the tone of the 1990s. It was a jolt of originality unrivaled until the flowering of hip-hop and rap later in the decade.

For this album Nirvana signed with David Geffen's label, with a large advance payment and a guarantee of widespread publicity. The original pressing of Nevermind was 50,000 copies; by the end of the year it was selling 400,000 copies a week, and by January 1992 it had reached the number one spot on the Billboard chart. "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the lead track, became one of the most frequently played songs on college and alternative radio. The music video, featured on MTV, drew a record number of requests. A member of the popular 1980s heavy-metal band Mötley Crüe, in Los Angeles for a recording session, heard it one day as he headed home on the freeway. He was quoted later as saying he knew then that rock in the style of the Crüe was over. Something new had begun. It was another of those events in the history of popular music, like the emergence of Elvis and the Beatles, that seemed inevitable.

"Smells Like Teen Spirit" begins quietly enough, with a restless motif in the bass behind the melody line. The lyric pattern is verse-chorus-verse, with the instrumental volume increasing at the point of each chorus. During the chorus, Cobain's vocalism, subdued in the verse sections, becomes an angry shout. By the end of the track, the chorus has reached maximum intensity, with certain lines repeated over and over. Internally, the lyric lacks the kind of logic that shows in its structure. Some of it clearly seems aimed at the pressures felt in performance, as in the refrain line: "Here we are now, entertain us." Some lines seem to be there solely for the sake of the rime, as later in the chorus, where a series of randomly chosen words ends with "My libido / Yay, a denial." Whatever individual parts suggest, overall it is the music that carries the song, not the lyric. To put it another way, the lyric seems absolutely right in spite of its inconsistencies when it is heard in its musical context. In general, this characterizes most of the tracks in Nevermind and the other albums Nirvana released after they became internationally famous in the early 1990s.

Grunge Attitude

With every new development in rock comes a new look. Eighties groups had glammed in much-permed long hair, spandex shorts, and high tops. After the transcendent success of "Teen Spirit" and Nevermind, Kurt Cobain appeared unwashed and ungroomed on Saturday Night Live in a T-shirt advertising an unknown band, jeans with holes at the knees, Converse shoes, and crudely dyed hair. His appearance epitomized not only the grunge look, replicated by countless numbers of teens throughout the country, but also the grunge attitude. This was an "in your face," response that spoke volumes about a whole generation.

Nevermind gives this attitude musical expression, and defines it with various permutations. "In Bloom," the second track on the album, hits the fan who does not have a clue what Nirvana is up to, the one who merely wants to be entertained by "all the pretty songs." By contrast, "Come as You Are" is a low-key invitation to participate in the musical experience "as a friend, as an old enemy." "Breed" kicks the tempo up a notch, with a characteristic repetition of music and lyric that becomes truly obsessive by the next track, "Lithium," with its chilling chorus ending in the phrase, "I'm not gonna crack." "Polly"—a song Cobain reworked from an earlier version—deals with a celebrated kidnap and rape case and is written from the viewpoint of the perpetrator. "Territorial Pissings" spins off (in the voice of Krist Novoselic) a 1960s song, "Get Together," popularized by the Youngbloods, with Cobain voicing the perspective of an alien. "Drain You" describes parasitic relationships; "Lounge Act" and "Stay Away" parody musical trends Cobain found inimical to his artistic values. "On a Plain" returns to more personal themes and the difficulty of giving them expression in words; finally, in a quiet, codalike ending, "Something in the Way" takes the listener to the world of the homeless living beneath a bridge. An additional hidden track, purely instrumental, with feedback from the guitars, comes a full nine minutes after the last labeled track on the CD. It provides a fitting end to Nirvana's most important album.

The album Incesticide followed toward the end of 1992. After more than a year of ceaseless public attention and booming sales, Nirvana issued a collection documenting its recorded presence in early demos, compilations, and covers—in short, a history of the band from its earliest recorded beginnings to the point at which it became a major musical force. Part of the impetus for the album was Cobain's increasing doubts about the very success Nirvana was experiencing. The essential attitude of the alternative rocker was to remain outside the mainstream of music and society. Groups like Guns N' Roses or Mötley Crüe were supposed to be at the center of the stage, while indie musicians played in cellars and garages. Now all that had changed, and Cobain never felt completely comfortable with it. As happens so frequently in American popular culture, the outsider had moved inside by becoming a commodity. Cobain had to think that, in the words of his journal, "We can pose as the enemy to infiltrate the mechanics of the system." Otherwise, they would be selling out. That was what he came to believe he had done.

With the musical success he continued to doubt, Cobain's personal life changed. During the recording sessions for Nevermind, he met Courtney Love of the group Hole. They married early in 1992 and had a child in August of that year. Although Cobain had found in Courtney someone he truly loved, and in their child, Frances Bean, a sense of personal redemption, he continued to have serious problems with drug addiction. He was by then a habitual heroin user. He also suffered from suicidal tendencies that had shown up a number of times in his family. During the next two years, the many sides of his conflicted personality caused distress and pain to those who cared for him, and uneasiness in those who managed his career. He frequently overdosed on drugs, often just short of death. More than once during this time he had to be resuscitated. Cobain's problems notwithstanding, Nirvana remained the band of the moment. Its concerts sold out worldwide. This fanatic following of the group repelled Cobain. He tired of the constant performing and lack of privacy. In a pattern set early in his life, he wanted to withdraw from everything, but, because of his career, he could not. Drugs seemed to give him one way out of his dilemma.

As a way of reasserting its essential punkishness, the band created its controversial third album, In Utero, released in September 1993. It moved instantly to the top of the charts. As in previous efforts, a number of the songs address Cobain's feelings about being a rock star, while others deal with longstanding differences with his family. The violent imagery of "Aneurysm" and the controversial "Rape Me" are matched by the snarling dissonances of this music, which peak in the wildly frenetic "Pennyroyal Tea." The gentler, more lyrical side of Cobain surfaces in the Courtney-inspired "Heart Shaped Box." The last line of the last track, "All Apologies," encapsulates Cobain's emotional state at that time: "All alone is all we are." In Utero was the last Nirvana album to be released in Cobain's lifetime.

The Sudden End

While on tour in 1994, Cobain overdosed in Rome on a combination of the drug Rohypnol and champagne. Back in California later in the month, he entered a rehab center in Los Angeles. On April 1 he climbed a wall to escape, and four days later, at his home near Seattle, he isolated himself in the green house. After a strong hit of heroin, he committed suicide with a blast from a shotgun. He was twenty-seven years old. Among the last words on his suicide note was the phrase, "Better to burn out than fade away."

Two albums were issued posthumously. Unplugged in New York, recorded during Nirvana's live performance on the MTV show in the fall of 1993, is a frequently touching compilation of covers and selected Cobain songs delivered with an acoustic sound only occasionally captured elsewhere in their recorded work. From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah (a Seattle-area river), issued two years later, is yet another compilation, this time of previously unreleased live performances. Along with some stray tracks, pirates, and a recently released single left out of the In Utero sessions (over which a legal battle developed), these albums completed the recorded legacy of the most important group of the early 1990s.

Spot Light: Punk Revival

With Nevermind (1991), their first release from a major label, Nirvana put the punk rock sound at the center of the musical stage. In the 1970s the British group the Sex Pistols had begun the first wave of punk sensibility, a deliberately outrageous mixture of offensive lyrics backed by repetitive sounds. American groups like the Talking Heads and the Ramones, centered at the New York club CBGB's, furthered the punk esthetic; as good as they were, however, it was the garage bands in the Seattle area who finally realized the movement's full potential. Nirvana's raw energy and walloping riffs carried it to the core of a generation. When Nirvana came along, teens caught the spirit in the same way that earlier generations had followed the sound of the Beatles or Bob Dylan in the 1960s.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Bleach (Sub Pop, 1989); Nevermind (DGC, 1991); Incesticide (DGC, 1992); In Utero (DGC, 1993); Unplugged in New York (DGC, 1994); From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah (DGC, 1996).

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

C. Crisafulli, Teen Spirit: The Stories Behind Every Nirvana Song (New York, 1996); M. Azerrad, Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana (New York, 2001); C. R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain (New York, 2001); K. Cobain, Journals (New York, 2002).

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