Kurt Cobain

By Sean Healy

On April 9, Kurt Cobain, lead singer of the rock group Nirvana, killed himself with a shotgun. A suicide note, found next to his body, said, “It's better to burn out than to fade away”.

Cobain had only just recovered from a coma a month before, induced by a combination of champagne and downers. Apparently, he'd been suicidal for months, if not years. His initial plan was to call Nirvana's latest, third, album (eventually called In Utero) “I hate myself and want to die”.

Nirvana burst on to the scene in 1991 with the hugely successful Nevermind album and provided the impetus to the “Seattle sound” (or “grunge”) that has led to bands such as Pearl Jam, Dinosaur Jr and many others in all corners of the world.

Whilst no-one could claim that Nirvana was politically progressive (one of their albums has a song called “Rape Me”), Cobain did become an emblem for many young people -- alienated, angry, confused.

One journalist from Rolling Stone called Cobain “the closest his generation came to a John Lennon”. Others have raised the spectres of Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.

But if there are parallels, there are also some chilling differences. Cobain had none of the breezy optimism, and certainly none of the radicalism, of John Lennon. Banner-bearer of a generation adrift? Maybe. Certainly, despair and anger run very deep in today's generation. Cobain seems to have been its voice more than Pepsi.

This article was posted on the Green Left Weekly Home Page.
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