In 1991, Kurt Cobain, the leader of Nirvana who died thirty years ago, wrote a letter to Rolling Stone in which he expressed what he thought of the audience and the political pedigree of the magazine. “At this point in our career, before treatment for hair loss and bad credit, I have decided that I have no desire to do an interview,” Cobain wrote. «We would not benefit from an interview because the average reader of Rolling Stone is a middle-aged ex-hippie turned hypocrite, which embraces the past as “the glory days” and takes a kinder, gentler, and more adult approach to new liberal conservatism. The average reader of Rolling Stone “He is a rebel only with his mouth out.”
Cobain’s letter was never sent. He and the other members of Nirvana—Krist Novoselic (bass) and Dave Grohl (drums)—finally agreed to appear on Rolling Stone, although with Cobain wearing a famous t-shirt on the cover with the slogan “Corporate magazines suck.” However, this letter, which is included in the excellent biography of Cobain written by Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven (2001), captures the singer-songwriter’s acute political sensitivity, a spirit that was often downplayed by critics and forgotten among listeners of his music.
Class rage is present in all Nirvana studio albums. Since its debut, bleach (1989), until its swan song, In Utero (1993), the sound and attitude of Cobain’s music were deeply rooted in his blue-collar background, centered in the logging town of Aberdeen, Washington, where he lived most of his short life. Although his lyrics rarely directly addressed this context, his worldview and critical perspective were marked by the logging economy, economic inequality, and the resulting lack of middle-class opportunities he experienced growing up in a small town. of the American Pacific Northwest.
High probabilities
Cobain was born in February 1967, the son of a twenty-one-year-old father who worked as a mechanic at a Chevron gas station and a mother who was only nineteen. As Cross describes, money was a constant problem, both for the Cobain family and the local population in general. Aberdeen’s timber economy had peaked in the early 1970s and many of its nearly twenty thousand residents were choosing to go work elsewhere. Financial pressures overwhelmed Cobain’s parents and ultimately contributed to his divorce, an experience that emotionally damaged Cobain at a young age and from which he never fully recovered.
Public schools, especially art classes, offered him some relief, although during high school he moved into ten different homes, both foster and family. Cobain also became homeless and rejected his parents to be alone. He mythologized this roughly four-month period in the song “Something in the Way” from the Nirvana LP. Nevermind (1991), in which he mentions having slept under a bridge in Aberdeen, a claim refuted by Novoselic, among others. However, Cobain regularly slept in empty buildings and even in the waiting room of Grays Harbor Community Hospital, sometimes carrying food from the cafeteria to made-up room numbers.
During this period, Cobain resumed his interest in music. Buzz Osborne of the Melvins was a few years ahead of him in school and became his mentor, introducing him to punk rock. After another period of homelessness, during which Cobain received food stamps and worked as a janitor at the high school he had attended—a job he would later simulate in the video for Nirvana’s hit song, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”—he He committed himself more fully to music thanks to the role model Osborne provided him and by meeting Novoselic, who went to high school in Aberdeen. Although money remained a constant problem, Cobain had found purpose.
The years that followed, approximately 1987 to 1991—the year it was published Nevermind—, were a mixture of strident ambition and great difficulties. Cobain and Novoselic paid their dues by living out various rock band clichés, whether playing frat parties, changing drummers or sleeping on the floor during regional tours. Sub Pop, Nirvana’s first record label, provided validation for Cobain but also hurt the band due to its own financial difficulties: it paid the cost of recording but also kept the profits.
At this point, the Pacific Northwest was quickly becoming a powerhouse of the alternative music scene. Bands like Green River, Mudhoney and Soundgarden had defined the genre grungewhile groups like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile and 7 Year Bitch started the scene riot grrrl. Cobain had been drawn to Olympia, home of Evergreen State College, and his role in fostering these trends through labels such as K Records and Kill Rock Stars. At that time he was dating Tobi Vail, the drummer of Bikini Kill, a relationship that inspired “Smells Like Teen Spirit” from an improvised graffiti by Kathleen Hanna, the vocalist of Bikini Kill. Grohl, who had already joined Nirvana, was also dating Hanna. However, despite these close relationships, Cobain felt class insecurity when interacting with this group of college students. He felt that he had something to prove to them.
Nevermind, recorded in Los Angeles in the spring of 1991, was that test. Nirvana had attracted attention thanks to their first album bleach, to their constant tours and the recognition of older groups like Sonic Youth. Cobain, Novoselic and Grohl were signed to DGC, an imprint of Geffen Records, a major label. Despite this lucrative contract, Cobain returned to Olympia from a trip to Los Angeles in July to discover that he had been evicted from his apartment. For several weeks, he lived in his car, as he had done before, just a few months before Nevermind became a platinum record. Apparently, his success would resolve Cobain’s life circumstances, financial and otherwise. But in the end, it wasn’t like that.
Expression and escape
There is no single explanation for Cobain’s suicide in April 1994. No doubt his severe heroin addiction, which friends, family and his wife, Courtney Love, tried to break, played a key role. But there are also the pressures of sudden, extreme fame and lingering emotional traumas from childhood to consider. Lifelong anxieties, including class anxieties, probably influenced his sense of limitation.
In February 1991, before the recording sessions in Los Angeles, Cobain began an unfinished autobiographical essay, which is briefly cited in Cross’s book. “Hello, I’m 24 years old,” Cobain begins. «I was born as a lower-middle class white man on the coast of Washington state (…). My parents divorced, so I moved with my dad to a trailer park in an even smaller logging community. “My father’s friends convinced him to join the Columbia Record Club and soon records were showing up in my RV once a week, amassing quite a collection.”
Music was an escape for Cobain and, like his heroes John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who came from similar working-class backgrounds, it provided him with a means of expression, including a classist anger. Cobain would express his appreciation for hip-hop in the same vein, although he criticized its misogyny, and rap artists such as Jay-Z would later pay him respect. In fact, Cobain was outspoken against the sexism, homophobia, and racism he encountered in the rock scene, especially from other white male musicians, including such esteemed figures as Eddie Van Halen.
Throughout his life, Cobain attempted to fight against a system—artistic, social, and economic—that had disadvantaged him from the beginning. He also tried to create a space for other voices, whether it was female-fronted bands like Shonen Knife or marginalized artists like Daniel Johnston. Thirty years later, it is important to remember Cobain not only for his music or for his tragic death, but for his progressive political ideas, the fruit of his own experience, which he tried to articulate and highlight during his life. of the.
