A hard, scratchy, immediate voice, which started from the soul and reached the soul directly, without passing through vocal virtuosity or contrivance. An angel's little face that would have been able to inspire the singers of Stilnovo and that when he sang transformed into a suffering face, capable of revealing all the pain of a heart that gave too much and felt too much. An attitude that became that of a generation that changed the history of world rock from the garages of a small suburb of Washington state. A generation forced to move forward without its symbol, who died too soon due to a rifle shot. A blaze, as he said. Thirty years ago, on April 5, 1994, Kurt Cobain died, the one who more than anyone sang the anger, the pain, the injustice that people like him - and there were many, too many - felt towards a society that was no longer able to represent them or make them feel alive.
Punk, Hard Rock, Post Hardcore. Many in that period tried to define Nirvana's music. But each label seemed too limited, too narrow to contain what it actually was. Everyone called it Grunge After. But before it was just music that eluded (not to say disgusted) the simple sounds, the catchy choruses and the fan-catching riffs to embrace direct, primitive and irrational sounds who put the word "commercial" in the attic and spoke of a world without heroes or references. Music that from the suburbs of Aberdeen before and of Seattle then it arrived everywhere, in every corner of "the globe", some would say today.
Bleach, Nevermind, In Utero
Kurt Cobain was this and much more. A face and a voice capable of representing, of symbolizing, of condensing all the anger of the world in a few verses sung with the mouth attached to the microphone, the eyes closed and an energy that exploded on any stage, which destroyed stages and guitars wherever it went . Yet, paradox of paradoxes, the concert that everyone remembers is the one in which Nirvana remained immobile, without losing a shred of expressive power. L'MTV Unplugged New York in which he, Kris Novoselic and Dave Grohl remained exceptionally anchored on a stage that struggled to contain what those Nirvanas expressed that still today inspire songs, genres, people above all.
The beginning of everything was Bleach, in '89, considered the album that marks a point of conjunction between the Melvins' sludge-metal and grunge. Yet Cobain really didn't like it, “there was nothing new in that album,” he said.
The success, the real one, came two years later, when the second album was released: it was titled Nevermind and contained pearls such as “Smell like teen spirits”, “Come as you are”, “Lithium”, “In Bloom”, “Polly”, “Drain You”. Twelve songs that managed to cross the borders of Seattle and enter the collective imagination. What also pushed them was one of the most iconic covers ever: the one that portrays a newborn baby immersed in a swimming pool, in front of a banknote hanging from a hook. Cobain, needless to say, hated him to death: “Looking back at the production of Nevermind, I'm embarrassed by it now,” he said in an interview.
Another two years was the turn of In utero: powerful, direct, heartbreaking. “Rape Me” a provocative cry of anger, “All Apologies”, a sweet pain that nestles in you, but also “Heart Shaped-Box” and “Pennyroyal Tea”.
Thirty years ago Kurt Cobain died
Face, symbol, voice of a generation. This was Kurt Cobain and this was also everything he didn't want to be because he didn't have the strength. A candid face against a cursed voice. A sincerity shouted at a world that had nothing sincere for him. A planetary exposure against the dirty walls of a garage to which he perhaps would have liked to return. They arrived the disagreements, the suffering, the heroine. Not even the (troubled) marriage with Courtney Love and the birth of his beloved daughter Francis Bean managed to calm his conflicts. The ones he had with himself, this time, not with the world.
In the first months of '94 the first flames of that fire began to burn, causing it to burn. “Better to die in a blaze than to go away day after day,” he wrote in his diaries, quoting Neil Young.
His last appearance on TV was in Italy, a guest with Nirvana on the Rai 3 Tunnel program hosted by Serena Dandini, who said of him: "Meeting him I had the impression of a person of extreme sensitivity, defenseless, which you could hardly understand look into the eyes, with a look of fear like that of a puppy hunted by the world." In March, during the European tour, he was hospitalized in Rome for overdose from drugs and champagne. Only a month later, on the morning of April 8, 1994, Kurt Cobain's body was found by an electrician in his villa on Lake Washington. He had died three days earlier, committing suicide with a rifle shot to the head. He was 27 years old. She left an entire generation orphaned. She left a legacy to future generations of direct, sincere, powerful music, capable of expressing much more than he would have wanted to express.
One of the best articles I've read about Kurt Cobain and the tragic anniversary of his death. Calibrated and competent. Compliments