Kurt Cobain

SEATTLE MUSIC SCENE

The ‘Grunge’ movement began in Seattle, Washington in the United States in the late 1980s. It was begun by bands such as Soundgarden, Mudhoney, The Melvins, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and reached its apotheosis in Nirvana, whose album Nevermind was released in 1991. The album’s first single Smells Like Teen Spirit became an anthem for Generation X, and, ultimately signified the beginning of a major pop culture story that continues to unfold today. It’s hard to believe that the album has just passed its 20^th anniversary. It’s even harder to believe Nirvana’s enigmatic lead singer is not here to witness how relevant musically and culturally he remains over time. 

GRUNGE FASHION

Kurt Cobain, the unapologetic, enigmatic - and heroin-taking - lead singer of Nirvana, became the poster boy for the entire movement. Sensitive blue eyes framed a face that was often described as ‘angelic’ yet Cobain’s disheveled appearance, dyed pink or bleached tresses and thrift store clothing ensembles comprising flannels, pyjamas, ripped jeans, slogan T-shirts and graffiti-covered Converse sneakers, became iconic touchstones for the disaffected and recession-scarred youth around the world.

Cobain disdained the commercialization of Grunge, saying that he had only ever done it because of necessity, because of having no money and of not wanting to support commercial interests by buying new clothing.” 

He was scathing in his critique of the fashion designers and other purveyors of youth products who subverted the ‘Op-shop’ or thrift store lifestyle to make money.

KURT COBAIN AND COURTNEY LOVE

The liaison between Cobain and equally disheveled, professionally charismatic – and personally chaotic – Courtney Love, lead singer of indie punk band Hole, made the grunge trend unisex and, accordingly, complete. When the two were married, Cobain was wearing his pyjamas and carrying a bouquet of flowers, while Love was wearing her signature smeared lipstick and what came to be her trademark messy hair. Love was carrying a matching bouquet. The wedding picture of the two is more of an anti-wedding image, thumbing nose at traditional images of happy couples.

GRUNGE AND MAINSTREAM FASHION

Grunge ‘fever’ had reached its peak with the news of this union that was at least paparazzi-friendly, even if the subjects ostensibly weren’t. But the images of the pair looking out-of-it and, it seemed barely out of bed, became fodder for the tabloids. The mainstream clothing manufacturers responded by churning out reams of used-looking and distressed garments for sale at retail, however the movement was by no means limited to the middle market: Vanity Fair did a fashion spread on grunge in October 1991 and the movement was given the seal of approval by American VOGUE which claimed that grunge had ‘broken out of the clubs, garages and thrift stores of Seattle, to dominate rock radio, MTV and the aspirations of kids across America.’[1]‘Grunge and Glory’ was photographed by Uber-Photographer and VOGUE staple, Stephen Meisel, with the models wearing expensive couture pieces by Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein. In his book Selling Seattle, Jamie Lyons calls this ‘another strategy by which mainstream culture diffused and defused sub-cultural style.’[2] But, according to Mark Oxoby, in Social Science: American Popular Culture Through History, the ‘original emissaries of grunge style were trying less to make a fashion statement than they were altogether ignoring fashion.’[3] In co-opting and supporting the trend, it appears that VOGUE et al missed the point entirely.

PUNK AND GRUNGE

Grunge was a complete and tangible re-think of the aesthetics of the day, celebrating the ordinary, reveling in the spoiled, finding and protecting the flaw, and thereby presenting a new kind of disturbed, disrupted beauty within. A poet through and through Cobain adored the pathos and the sadness of the discarded. For Cobain, the object contained within it all of the emotion of its provenance, in particular its original owner(s) and was imprinted with the shards of its history. Something out of the thrift shop has, without being retro, what Kurt Cobain called ‘the negative creep, in the marrow’s delicacy of despair’[4]. The romance of destruction and nihilism that was central to punk’s ethos is there as an undercurrent in the pop culture energy of this time, but in grunge, it morphed into a softer, more innocent and wistful version. Brenda Danet, considers the possibility that grunge ‘may have been a form of nostalgia for the handmade and its inevitable irregularities, and for the disappearing traces of the unique individual, in a world of simulation and artificial perfection.’ But in his merging the anarchic roots of The Sex Pistols with the power-chords of heavy metal giants Led Zeppelin, Cobain was, in essence, raging against the machine.

Perhaps the last word should go to current 1980s re-inventer, and longtime fashion and pop culture observer, Marc Jacobs, designer for Louis Vuitton who says: ‘Grunge…was punk, with all the anger and raw, in-your-face energy intact.’[5]

KURT COBAIN’S SUICIDE

But the movement was over almost as quickly as it was begun: Kurt Cobain was found dead in April 1994, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, and wearing, it must be said, his customized Converse sneakers. He had joined the so-called ‘27 Club’, a reference to rock stars and celebrities who died at the age of 27, which includes Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and more recently inducted Amy Winehouse. A graphic black and white photograph showing his right arm with fist clenched and one jeans-encased leg ran in WHO Weekly. His suicide referenced Neil Young’s famous lyric from ‘Rust Never Sleeps’: ‘It’s better to burn out, than fade away.’

The public grief in the wake of his death was prolific and long-lasting, defining in many ways the so-called ‘Lost Generation’. ‘Certainly the grief at Kurt Cobain's death shows that he was as important to his generation as John Lennon had been to the [‘Free Love Generation’] 1960's. The image of thousands at the Seattle vigil celebrating Cobain’s life amid a sea of media documenting the event was a fitting epitaph of grunge as popular culture.’[6]

One can only imagine Cobain would sneer at the entire industry that has sprung up in the wake of his death and which rolls on without any new input: recycled, upcycled, revised and re-written in spite of being out of context and generally out of air.”

FRANCES BEAN COBAIN

In any event, grunge assuredly came full circle in August 2006, when ELLE magazine presented the daughter of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, Frances Bean Cobain, in an editorial spread featuring the children of rock stars. It was Frances Bean’s first official photo shoot. In it she is wearing her father’s trademark thrift store red cardigan, his checked flannel pyjama pants (from the wedding outfit), his favorite sunglasses and a pair of his converse sneakers. It is an iconic image. Frances Bean herself avoided the grunge look for a time, in a bid to distance herself from her famous parents, but recent reports suggest she is embracing it although in a self-proclaimed ‘girly girl’ way. 

GRUNGE REINVENTED

Now that we are once again in a global recession, it seems no small coincidence that grunge is having a renaissance of sorts. Retail is reportedly suffering from lower sales volumes and ripped denim shorts and baggy white Ts and tanks / singlets are practically a uniform for all girls. Converse sneakers became popular again with all age groups and both sexes, so much so that the company released the special ‘Icons’ collection featuring among others, Kurt Cobain’s graffiti high-top sneakers. These are emblematic of certain rebellion, albeit packaged for the post-rebellion, post-revolutionary members of Generation Y. Thrift shop and street wear is once again the fashion trend du jour and looking ostentatiously wealthy is out. Kurt Cobain in a real sense – and there is no small irony in this - started the street wear trend that is to be grunge’s true lasting legacy.

Photograph by Geraldine Mills