Drain you
Courtney and Dave bleach the color from Nirvana’s legacy
Since Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” fired the riff heard ‘round the world in 1991, Kurt Cobain’s shadow has loomed large over rock ‘n’ roll. For better and worse, Cobain opened the door to mainstream success for countless bands such as Pearl Jam, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Smashing Pumpkins, unwittingly (and certainly unwillingly) birthing the “new rock” radio format.
Ten years after Cobain’s April 5, 1994, death by apparent suicide (his body was found April 8), two of the remaining key figures in the Nirvana mythos — drummer Dave Grohl and Cobain’s wife, Courtney Love — are bona fide rock royalty. More to the point, both have new albums, offering convenient springboards for examining how and whether they’ve upheld Cobain’s conflicted, spotlight-shunning yet intensely creative legacy.
Cobain would have a hard time stomaching Love’s solo debut, America’s Sweetheart. Like Love, Sweetheart is a good-looking but embarrassing train wreck. It cynically approximates grungy riffs and unconvincingly fronts a sloppy, scrappy punk posture. Written and produced by committee (Elton John lyricist Bernie Taupin, Pink hit-maker Linda Perry), its off-key screeches and slurred, grating melodies are cobbled together with the sole aim of bolstering Love’s flagging celebrity quotient. Where Cobain made a belabored point of clinging to music for its artistic and cathartic possibilities, Love, having been rebuffed by Hollywood, sees it as a backup lay.
But don’t write Love off just yet; it’s likely Cobain would have admired, however grudgingly, her antipathy toward the house he inadvertently built. Love has been consistently vocal about her lack of interest in living up to Cobain’s legacy — which, arguably, is the best way to honor it. Cobain had no desire to act as standard-bearer for a movement, and his unyielding devotion to punk’s contrary spirit suggests he’d look favorably upon the stiff middle finger his widow has extended to grunge orthodoxy. The first lady of the flannel movement, you’ll recall, irked countless diehards with her obstinate stonewalling during 2002 negotiations with Grohl and Nirvana bassist/co-founder Krist Novoselic over an eagerly anticipated Nirvana box set and greatest-hits disc (the latter has since been released). Heck, it’s even conceivable that Cobain might not have turned up his nose at Love’s blatant careerism — one doesn’t get into rock ‘n’ roll or record a song like “Teen Spirit” out of purely selfless motives.
Likewise, Cobain would have coveted Grohl’s charmed post-Nirvana career. It’s safe to say that no one holds Grohl up to exacting musical standards the way Cobain felt he was. And it’s easy to imagine Cobain approving of Grohl’s use of commercial cred on a project like Probot, a metal-geek’s dream collaboration with members of bands such as Motorhead and DRI. Probot celebrates the visceral charms of hardcore and speed-metal, a far cry from Grohl’s usual fare — not that anyone seems to mind. It’s also reasonable to posit Cobain would approve of Grohl’s one-time participation in Queens of the Stone Age: like Nirvana, forced into spearheading a declining genre with a useless, media-created moniker (“stoner rock”).
Grohl’s popular day job, however, is a different story. Fun as the band’s videos and singles may be, Grohl’s Foo Fighters traffic in the commercial, radio-directed pop-rock anthems that Cobain so famously disdained in Pearl Jam. Foo Fighters’ safe, paint-by-numbers populism at best belies Grohl’s coming-of-age in the punk and hardcore scenes; at worst, it smacks of the same means-to-an-end careerism as Sweetheart. Cobain may not have hated a good hook and a catchy melody as much as he let on, but he wasn’t interested in pandering, either.
One Nirvana family name is conspicuously absent from the zeitgeist, as it has been for much of the last decade. (No, temporary Nirvana/Foo Fighters touring and session guitarist Pat Smear doesn’t count.) That name is Novoselic. The imposing bassist has kept a doggedly low profile, spending his Nirvana capital on a political action committee for musicians and plugging away in a couple of under-the-radar bands. Love may pay her own kind of tribute to Cobain’s beloved punk ethos; Cobain might have envied Grohl’s thriving career sans grunge-movement baggage. But outside of the limelight, Novoselic has enjoyed the freedom to do whatever he pleases, in or outside of music. Likely that’s what Cobain would have loved most.