It’s ten years after the year that punk broke, but I just realized that many people still don’t get Nirvana. A kid who is 17 now, what does he or she know about Nirvana? A series of bad clichés from a mass-media-dubbed “grunge” movement that’s long since been relegated to history? A song the words of which are nearly indecipherable? What?
Ten years on, and seven years after Kurt Cobain’s suicide, it seems clearer and clearer to me that Nirvana was the last great rock band. There is still great music being made in the rock genre, and Radiohead may turn out to be the first great post-rock band, with Beck right behind. But that’s post-rock. As for rock itself, the best music is underground, away from N’Sync’s universe, and none of the underground scene’s outstanding rock musicians seem likely to attain the same level of zeitgeist status that Nirvana had when it was on top of the world. Nor do today’s remaining rock giants (does U2 still count?) speak for a generation the way that Kurt Cobain did. The whole notion of “speaking for a generation,” for better or for worse, now seems cheesy.
But what did Kurt have to say? That’s what people still seem not to get. I just watched a documentary on MTV about the taping of Nirvana Unplugged, which, recorded five months before the suicide, was Nirvana’s great last crowning statement. One of the critics commenting on what it was like to be there at the taping got it right: that sigh at the end of Where did you sleep last night, right before the final, painful, screamed verse – that sigh is what rock music has to offer the world. The pain, the weariness – everything that sounds so hackneyed upon explanation but feels so immediate in its sensation – all of it suffused every song Nirvana did that night. And in that one genuine moment – has there been a musical moment like that since, on the mass-culture level? – is everything that makes life painful, and beautiful.
And yet a lot of the people didn’t get it. One fratboy said “Dude, Nirvana, they rock out, they’re awesome.” Some giggling teenage girl said “I wanna hear Teen Spirit, and anything from Bleach too!” A couple of the critics MTV put on the documentary appreciated that it was a great concert, noting the musicianship and craft, but not the reality, it seems to me, of Kurt Cobain’s genius, or the truth of his writing. Others seemed to fall prey to the Nirvana Myth: that they were larger than life, that Kurt Cobain was Jim Morrison. That's not quite it either.
It wasn’t just a great show. It wasn’t just great music. And it wasn't a larger-than-life Neil Armstrong kind of moment. It was that Cobain was a true artist, in the Romantic coinage of the term. He was able to be in touch with a source of pain and alienation so profound, and then translate that pain into art so piercing and honest, that his art transcended ordinary human communication and was instead a manifestation of genius. In song after song after song, Cobain (I feel I should call him “Kurt” – why?) sang of being an outsider, of being a sellout, of being manipulated by authority, of hating the cruelty that is part and parcel of human existence. He seems, at least from his art and from the descriptions of the way he acted, to have been so kind-hearted and so sensitive that there literally was no place in the world for him. Yes, Nirvana reinvented rock and roll, probably for the last time. They were three talented musicians with astonishing integrity. But it was Kurt Cobain’s songs and singing that made their work transcendent. And those songs were about a longing that I didn’t quite see in the dude-go-for-it eyes of his fratboy fans.
Kurt Cobain knew this. Indeed, although it would be foolish to call it one of the ‘reasons’ for the suicide, Cobain frequently spoke out against the idiotic headbangers who moshed at Nirvana shows. He told heavy metal fans they were in the wrong place. When a girl was raped at a festival Nirvana performed at, the pain in Cobain’s voice was palpable as he voiced his fury at those who turned his music into a soundtrack for torture. Did these guys not understand what “Territorial Pissings” was about? Or “Rape Me”? Were there any people out there, in the sea of future snowboarders, who understood?
Of course, there were. I knew some of them quite well when I was younger. But we who felt like ‘Kurt was talking to us’ were often as alienated dealing with other Nirvana ‘fans’ as in dealing with Nirvana’s authoritarian enemies. In some ways, these guys were even worse. Because they ruined our separate space, they invaded a sanctuary that Kurt was trying to build for us, a place away from the bullshit fratboy jock mainstream homophobic garbage that passes undetected for the majority culture in America. A place of commentary on that culture – but not commentary in the detached, intellectual sense; commentary in the crying, pleading, shouting, screaming sense. Fuck-you commentary.
And sometimes that’s all one can really offer. There’s little more that I can really say to someone who’s part of that culture, the gap is so wide. And it’s a gap that persists today. Another example, distant from Nirvana but in the same curious position of dual communication, is The Simpsons, which everybody loves for different reasons. In the decade or so that I’ve watched the show, I’ve always liked it for the way it pointedly skews everything about authority and the mainstream, and yet somehow manages to get on the air anyway. The hypocrisy of moronic but pious-sounding newscasters. The loathesomeness of Homo Americanus. The sheeplike behavior of the mob.
And yet, I know people who enjoy the Simpsons and yet also enjoy listening to Peter Jennings act as if he knows jack shit about what he’s talking about; who see nothing wrong with the SUV suburban lifestyle; and who rarely stop to wonder whether they are being manipulated in just the same way – only a little more insidiously – as the Springfieldians they watch on TV. These people like the Simpsons because it’s funny. Ah, that silly Lisa – will she ever win? Hahaha, Homer just said “d’oh” again.
Another analogy: before the Nirvana documentary was on, another network aired one of its gritty new crime shows. One of the plot points was a "rave" scene where our clean-cut cuts were lured into taking some bad, bad drugs by a snarling pusher dude. The show couldn't even get rave music right -- they had on some lame dance music that would never be spun at any party like the ones they were trying to depict -- and all the characters on the scene, the pusher, the kids, the sort-of-rave-kids were, in fact, dumb frat boys and girls, but talking in that salacious tone of voice that says "I'm on drugs, wowww... sin." The show couldn't understand, or refused to depict, that rave culture was and is a disctinct subculture, an alternative subculture that's not "your kids, but on drugs" but is a wholehearted, conscious rejection of the construction of "your kids." No one behaves at a rave/party the way the characters did on TV; those guys are the reason we have for leaving their culture as far behind as possible. And of course, right after the evil-drugs scene was a series of insipid, cliched cop-show dramas and dialogue, all meant to be "us." Maybe that 'us' includes someone in mainstream culture. But I felt closer to the preposterous caricature of the bad rave boy than the entirely un-self-aware conventions being mouthed by our supposed protagonist. You, not the rave kid, are the one locked in a stupid and destructure culture.
Am I being too harsh? Not from my experience; the dissonant juxtaposition which I had at one time considered outright shocking is, actually, quite natural to many. And my experience is so different from the lover of mainstream culture that, to repeat, the chasm is almost unbridgeable. To the mainstream man, I say: everything you take for granted, I critique. Everything you think is a value, I question. Everything you think is deviant, I approach with curiosity. In what position does that leave us, you and me? We are on opposite sides of the question of how to live one’s life. Your life is so demarcated by conventions that you do not see it as demarcated at all. My life coincides with conventions, most likely, but because I am outside the boundaries that you live within, even those areas of coincidence are utterly different experiences for you and me. For you, they are natural. For me, they are ambivalent. For you, values are real when they are sincere. For me, they are real when they are ironic.
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” is a song that mocks the institution of the pep rally. In the song, and the video, Kurt Cobain sings about the mindlessness of the pep rally – the deliberate mindlessness, as if the students are being trained to sit and obey, to care on command, and to chant slogans. Which, in my opinion, is exactly what pep rallies are all about. A fellow high school classmate of mine who was on the football team, and who saw/sees pep rallies as about showing school spirit and supporting the team cannot have the same experience of Nirvana as I have.
“All Apologies” is a song that is largely about the inability to speak, the impossibility of saying anything that has not already been said and cliched and turned into commodity. It is a song that voices Kurt Cobain’s sexual confusion, his discomfort with being a Rock Star, his anxieties and fears. Which are all (except for the Rock Star part) emotions that I have had as well. A fellow lawyer of mine who has never much wondered about his sexuality, is comfortable in his social role, and is a pretty well-adjusted human being who was well-liked as a kid and happily integrated as an adult cannot have the same experience of Nirvana as I have.
And yet, it is their Nirvana, rather than ours, which seems to be winning the battle of history right now. In my life, I deal with teenagers all the time. The ones who care about music – very few of them care about Nirvana. It’s kind of how I felt about the Rolling Stones when I was growing up in the 80s. Okay, sure, they’re good and all. But not very relevant. And yet, this constituency includes kids who, if they listened to Nirvana, if someone pointed them out, might find that connection between artist and audience that is so, so rare.
Was 1991 a more honest time than today? Nah. Most Nirvana fans then really were thuggish brutes whose idiocy was only matched by their cruelty. Even then, “we” were in the minority. “We” are always in the minority, because if it’s the majority, it’s not the disaffected, alienated, rejected “us.” It’s neither noble nor fun to find oneself in this particular social role, or to realize that, years later, much of your opinions on society and culture were formed in the unique crucible of having been an outsider. Had I been included into majority culture, I would likely never have questioned it.
Do the benefits now outweigh the costs?
I don’t know. They didn’t for Kurt. But I know the truth when
I hear it, and those grown-up football jocks don’t. I hope that’s
at least worth something.
Jay Michaelson
April 5, 2001
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