Remembering Kurt Cobain

In the 1990s, my generation lost its quintessential voice. Just as the Boomers suffered the loss of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, Generation X lost its own muses in 90s, with the deaths of Kurt Cobain (1993), Jeff Buckley (1997) and Sublime’s Brad Nowell (1994).

Cobain, grunge’s own sacrificial lamb, died ten years ago today of an apparent suicide. He, like Morrison, was instantly immortalized, not only by an early death, but by the fact that he was bursting with a dangerous streak of independence.

Cobain had a new sound, a new way of expression, that kicked out the popping brightness of 80s new wave and punk in favor of thrumming guitar lines, a scratchy-voiced cry and a decidedly dark outlook.

I’m not going to go out on a weeping limb and call Cobain our Lennon or say he could have transformed music…but I will say his death did cut short a career and a genre that just may have changed the way rock is heard today.

He, at the very least, represented the outlook of my age group and that immediately before me. I was nearly 14 and just starting to explore expressive music when Cobain died. I was really into the hell-may-care loser attitude behind “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” an attitude that many claimed defined our generation. I didn’t know at the time how right Cobain was about us. We simply just didn’t care enough to keep the fire going.

It wasn’t until about a year after his death that I felt a shift in the culture, when Nowell, who I’ll daresay was a figurehead/creator of alternative, died of a heroin overdose. His death may not be remembered as monumental (though it should be), but he too was a forerunner of a generation’s sound, taken before complete fruition.

Much like the time immediately following the deaths of Morrison and Hendrix, drugs were at the forefront of consciousness. Rockers and fans alike were running scared from heroin and, in turn, from the music spawned from the “drug culture.” Fellow Seattle grungesters Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains cleaned up, then fell away either to alt rock or nonexistence. Grunge died an early death, then alt rock soon followed.

Would alt rock and grunge still be around if Cobain hadn’t died? I can’t really say. One man can’t carry a genre. Would we still have this discussion had Cobain lived? All I’ll say is: A martyr can’t exist without a death.

Maybe the world wouldn’t have given Cobain as much credit if he hadn’t met such a timely end. Timely, that is, because it was “before the due, natural, or proper time” (according to Webster’s)…Cobain knew how the American icon system worked. He said it himself, he wanted to die before he was washed up. He wanted to go out a figure of mystery, leave while still on top. He accomplished his mission of martyrdom…but what did he leave behind?

But Cobain did deserve credit, if nothing else, for waking America up from the dream that was the 80s, and forcing a generation of the bored, the questioning, the defiant, out into the spotlight. For Generation X, he was our Pied Piper…we just didn’t know where to go once he left.