SMELLS LIKE SELF-RIGHTEOUS BULLSH*T: HOW KURT COBAIN NEARLY KILLED METAL

I remember exactly where I was the very first time I heard Nirvana. I’m sorry to say, I’m not one of those super cool people who already knew the band from Bleach – no, the first Nirvana song I ever heard, like 99% of the rest of the world, was “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” And it was, of all places, in PE class.

See, the American Heart Association or whatever the fuck they’re called was doing some stupid program to encourage jumping rope as a means of getting exercise and increasing cardiovascular health. My school, very much to the chagrin of the student body, decided to participate in said program, and so we ended up being split into groups, and each group had to choreograph some lame routine involving jumping rope in formation and a piece of music.

I don’t remember what song my group chose for our surely awful routine; I don’t remember what song any of the other groups chose for their routines, either, save for that one group that chose – you guessed it – “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

As I recall, that’s group’s routine was truly awful – I think they just skipped rope in circles over and over again – but it certainly seemed like the best one of the day, because the song just fucking ruled (incidentally, the group was led by one of those kids who you think only exists in John Hughes movies – held back in school multiple times so he was way older than the other kids in his grade, banned from getting a driver’s license until he was 21 ’cause he got picked up for stealing a car when he was fucking 13, etc. – so I’ll leave it to you to make your own connections between Nirvana’s music and teen delinquency). I asked the team the name of the song, band, and album (these were the pre-internet days, mind you, and you needed all that info to go to a record store – remember those? – and buy the damn thing). And then I went to the store that very weekend to purchase Nevermind.

I’d actually already seen that now-immortal album cover before and not realized the band was anything I’d be interested in; in hindsight, I have to wonder if that’s because the bands I generally listened to at that time either didn’t have real, live-action photos on their album covers (think about it: GN’R, Metallica, etc. all used illustrations of some sort) or, if they did, generally did so to announce to the world that they actively tried to look like chicks (see: Poison, Cinderella, etc.). Maybe that should have been my first clue that Nirvana had something a little different in mind for themselves from the other bands I liked. But at the time, all I remember about it is thinking that the album cover was awesome, because it held that same sense of danger and mystery that all great hard rock and metal album covers had: I mean, who the fuck would put a baby’s dick on their album cover? And who would have said baby chasing money on a fish-hook? Even if the album sucked, this would have been an eye-grabber.

So I ran home, listened to the album, and it was, needless to say, killer: “Lithium,” “Breed,” “In Bloom,” “Come As You Are” (a.k.a. the song every bad guitar player in the world knew how to play) – these songs were awesome.

If we’re being honest, though, it never really occurred to me that Nirvana were any different from all the other bands I was already into – and from what I’ve read over the years, it seems like it never really occurred to a lot of other people, either: in Fargo Rock City, Chuck Klosterman admits that, at first, he and his friends constantly mixed-up Nirvana with Ugly Kid Joe; in Life on Planet Rock, Lonn Friend talks about playing Nevermind for the dudes in Skid Row for the first time, and how they flipped out and immediately announced their intentions to take the band out on tour; and, of course, we’ve all heard the numerous stories about Axl Rose, who frequently wore Nirvana merch in public, being heartbroken when Cobain refused to open for Guns N’ Roses, and the feud that ensued between the two front men.

Fact is, there’s a perfectly logical reason none of these people initially heard Cobain’s music as the begining of some kind of revolution in rock: because most people weren’t really looking for any kind of revolution in rock. People forget that, by the time Nevermind took off, things in the world of glam had already started to deteriorate: not only had Poison and Motley Crue split rather publicly with key members of their respective bands, but two other groups who would later be lumped under the “grunge” tag alongside Cobain, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, had already gotten a decent amount of attention from MTV and the mainstream music press (and, it’s worth noting, AIC originally had the much more glamish-sounding moniker “Alice N’ Chainz” and had opened for Poison, and Soundgarden had done multiple tours with GN’R), as had Nine Inch Nails, who would also later be dubbed leaders of the “alternative” scene (and would also open for GN’R). It might seem like it’s giving too much credit to a band that had a member who unironically wore a top hat, but it’s unlikely people (and by “people,” I mean “the mainstream”) would have made the leap from Ratt and Warrant to Nirvana and Pearl Jam without a band like Guns N’ Roses acting as an interloper first, as evidenced by the pre-Nirvana success not only of Soundgarden and AIC, but other more forward-thinking bands like Faith No More and Living Colour, both of whom were already pretty big by the time anyone knew the name “Kurt Cobain.”

This is all a very, very, very long-winded way of saying that aesthetically, Nirvana may have been pretty different from their peers, but sonically, not so much. Cobain certainly wasn’t the only one writing brooding lyrics or bringing a punk influence to his music at the time, even if he was the most popular. So maybe that’s why I felt so baffled that Cobain was so ready to shun the metal world.

Think about it: even if Cobain wasn’t responsible for the “grunge” or “alternative” label, he wasn’t as shy about being famous as he claimed to be; he never stopped making music videos the way Pearl Jam did, he never stopped giving interviews or posing for photo shoots. He was only too happy to talk shit about Guns N’ Roses in the press, which was his prerogative, I guess; and while he was certainly correct in calling Axl Rose immature for challenging him to a fight backstage at the ’92 VMAs, one could argue it was equally immature of him to taunt Axl both on-stage and off, where he mockingly called out to the singer “Will you be the godfather of my baby?” Not wanting to tour with GN’R was one thing, but provoking the bands’ members was something else, and to this day, I’m pretty sure the only difference in the way Axl reacted to Cobain and the way, say, Phil Anselmo might have reacted is that Anselmo really would have beat the living shit out of Cobain right there on the spot, rather than just threatening to do so (And besides, who anointed Cobain the arbitrator of good taste? He married Courtney fucking Love!).

If we’re being honest, Cobain’s anti-GN’R stance became an anti-metal stance in general, and soon the effects were felt beyond the world of Motley Crue and their ilk, bands I’m sure some metal heads (if not this one) were only all-too-happy to see go the way of the dinosaur; Cobain’s actions suddenly set the standard for “street cred,” and now no one in the mainstream could talk about metal without coming off as an idiot who was out of the loop and unhip. Just read the following statement from Metal Blade Records founder Brian Slagel, as told to Revolver in their May 2007 oral history of thrash:

“It was such a huge backlash. Thrash got lumped in with hair metal, Poison, and all that other garbage, and that kind of ruined it for everybody. It’s funny, because Metal Blade did marketing for a lot of those grunge bands – Faith No More, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice in Chains. I knew those guys, and they were all huge fans of metal. But they couldn’t say it to the press. They could only talk about their ‘cool’ influences!”

I’m sure it’s no coincidence that right around this time, pretty much every thrash band that wasn’t Metallica or Slayer were getting dumped by their major label. Metal was out, grunge was in. And the result was that hard rock music suffered.

Seriously, think about it: Cobain’s status as a “guitar hero” even though he wasn’t actually a very good guitar player meant that suddenly any schmuck could be a guitar god. I don’t mean to sound elitist, but there is, very simply, a difference in skill level between what Trey Azagthoth does and what Jack White does, between what Scott Hull does and what Wes Borland does, between what Zakk Wylde does and what Munky does. Of course, there’s something to be said about the presence of emotion and feeling over general guitar chops, but record execs and the media didn’t recognize that any more than they did the vast gap between Eddie Van Halen and C.C. DeVille; kids didn’t want guitar solos any more, and so guitar solos were virtually outlawed until the start of the 21st century, when they slowly began to creep back in. Cobain might not have intended himself to become the patron saint of talentless ass clowns like Fred Durst – who has Cobain tattooed on his chest – but a lot of pain and agony probably could have been avoided if he’d just kept his mouth shut like the media-shy artiste he claimed to be.

And, I’m sorry, but even as a songwriter, Cobain was already relying on forumla by the time In Utero came out; was anyone really surprised when the “lost” Nirvana track, “You Know You’re Right,” surfaced a few years ago and featured soft, almost spoken verses before a loud, screamed chorus? As insensitive as it is to say, we have to be realistic: the best thing that ever happened to Cobain was dying, because it allowed him to become a martyr who idiots like Rolling Stone’s David Fricke could declare was “His generation’s John Lennon” without recognizing the basic difference between taking one’s own life and being murdered. But if most of In Utero is any indication, Nirvana were just about out of creative steam, same as the Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam.

So it’s little wonder that Zakk Wylde got up in arms about Dave Grohl’s sudden attempt to gain cred in the metal world as a would-be collaborator with Ozzy Osbourne. But then, the very fact that Wylde and Grohl even found themselves as sudden, opposite sides of the same coin speaks to the difference between today and the age of Nirvana; Wylde is famous again, and Grohl puts out side projects on Southern Lord.

So maybe I’m overreacting.

Then again, maybe not…?

-AR