It’s finally Friday, woohoo! Here’s the Dirt on rock and roll today:
Friday (April 5th) marks the 25th anniversary of the death of Nirvana founder and frontman Kurt Cobain at the age of 27. Cobain, who killed himself with a shotgun in a room above the garage of his Seattle home, instantly joined the pantheon of rock legends who died too early, including Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin,Jimi Hendrix, Bon Scott, and more. Yet while many of those artists lived the rock star lifestyle to the fullest, Cobain was branded as something that he, by all accounts, never wanted to be — the spokesman for an entire generation. It’s widely felt that Cobain’s inability to reconcile his inner demons and fear of “compromise” with Nirvana’s massive success drove him to depression, drugs, and ultimately, suicide.
Cobain did leave behind a small, yet incredibly significant, body of music. Nirvana was one of many bands — including Soundgarden, Mudhoney, and Mother Love Bone –– to emerge from the Pacific Northwest music scene, where a mix of influences ranging from punk to New Wave to metal fused into what became known as “grunge.” The combination of this heavily distorted sound with Cobain’s pop sensibilities, plus the emotional pull of his vocals and lyrics, catapulted Nirvana to the front of the pack, giving the world and the media a face to put to the entire alternative music genre that got pulled into the mainstream in Nirvana’s wake.
Born in Aberdeen, Washington, on February 20th, 1967, Cobain lived with various relatives after his parents divorced. Cobain met bassist Krist Novoselic in 1985, forming Nirvana with him in the late Eighties. The fledgling group drifted through several drummers and kicked around Olympia, Washington, before finally settling into the Seattle rock scene.
Novoselic told us that it was the band’s own belief in the power of music that attracted people to them right from the start. “Nirvana always listened to music or always wanted to connect with something, and the best music is music that you connect with in a way that you can’t really put your — you just emotionally connect with it. So if we were projecting anything like that, people caught onto it.”
The group recorded demos with Seattle producer Jack Endino, who played the tapes for Sub Pop Records co-founder Jonathan Poneman. Poneman signed Nirvana to Sub Pop, and their first single, a cover of Shocking Blue‘s “Love Buzz,” came out in December of 1988. The group’s debut album, Bleach, recorded for just $600, arrived in 1989. It sold 35,000 copies, was a success at college radio, and brought major record labels sniffing around the band.
A six-song demo produced by Butch Vig led to a deal with DGC/Geffen Records, while Dave Grohl signed on as the band’s permanent drummer. The band recorded their second album during the summer of 1991, and the disc, titled Nevermind, arrived in September of that year.
DGC expected to sell about 100,000 copies of the record. Instead, it became a colossal hit, bolstered by the single and video, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” An authentic rock anthem, the song captured the alienation, frustration, and apathy of young people worldwide. The song rocketed to the top of the radio charts asNevermind climbed the Billboard Top 200, finally perching at Number One by the beginning of 1992. The album went on to sell over 14 million copies.
Drummer Dave Grohl recalls playing at England’s Reading Festival in 1992 as one of the biggest highlights of the band’s initial success. “It was a huge show, and we were headlining, and we hadn’t practiced for about three months, and we just stepped onstage and we expected it to suck really bad, and it turned out to be totally amazing.”
In February of 1992, Cobain married Hole frontperson Courtney Love, and the couple had their first and only child, Frances Bean Cobain, in August of that year. Rumors began to circulate that the two were heavy heroin users, which led child care authorities to threaten the couple’s custody of Frances. Although Cobain claimed to suffer from stomach troubles, several canceled tours fueled the perception that he was already on a self-destructive path.
With recording of a new album delayed, the band’s label released a collection of rarities and B-sides in 1992 called Incesticide. Finally, in the spring of 1993, the band recorded their third album, In Utero. Almost immediately, more rumors surfaced, this time suggesting that DGC was unhappy with the record and threatening not to release it. Nirvana expressed disappointment themselves with the sound of Steve Albini‘s production and re-mastered it.
The album came out in the fall of 1993 and, while not quite the blockbuster that Nevermind was, sold strongly and garnered positive acclaim. Guitarist Pat Smear was added to the band for their fall U.S. tour, but the shadows of drug use and depression were growing. Cobain had reportedly overdosed several times during 1993, and on a post-tour vacation in Rome in early March of 1994, he tried to commit suicide with an overdose of the tranquilizer Rohypnol and champagne.
Things got worse when Cobain returned home. On March 18th, police had to come to the Seattle home he shared with Love and talk him out of the bathroom, where he had locked himself in and threatened suicide. An intervention by friends and business associates led to Cobain checking into the Exodus Recovery Center in Los Angeles on March 28th, but he fled back to Seattle on March 30th, where he convinced friend Dylan Carlson to buy him a shotgun “for protection.”
Cobain spoke with Love for the last time, by phone, on April 1st. On April 5th, he wrote a long farewell letter, took a mixture of heroin and Valium, and shot himself in the mouth. His body was discovered three days later, on the 8th, by an electrician, and cremated on April 14th. A public memorial service in Seattle on April 10th drew 7,000 fans.
In the 25 years since Cobain’s death, an acoustic set called MTV Unplugged In New York, an electric live album called From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah and a 2002 greatest hits collection were among the archival recordings that initially surfaced. The latter featured the band’s final recording, “You Know You’re Right,” and Grohl recalled the sessions for that song: “We had some time off before a tour, and Kurt wanted to go in and demo some stuff, so I said, ‘Hey, why don’t we do it at this studio down the street from my house.’ And we went down there, and we had three days booked. Kurt came in the last day and we were like, ‘Okay, what do you wanna do?’ And Kurt said, ‘Well, why don’t we do that song we’ve been doing at soundcheck?’ And so we rehearsed it, I think, once, and then recorded it. Kurt did three or four vocal takes, and that was it.”
A box set held up for several years due to legal battles between Grohl, Novoselic and Love was eventually released in 2004 under the name With The Lights Out. Grohl went on to form Foo Fighters, while Novoselic also dabbled in music, most notably with Sweet 75.
Novoselic told us a while back that he finds aspects of the fascination with his former bandmate unsettling: “There’s a cult that’s developed around the media perception of the person, Kurt Cobain, which has nothing to do with the person I knew (laughs). You know, it’s a cult of personality, the cult of celebrity. Nirvana really impacted a lot of people and connected with a lot of people, and when you deal with things on that level, it’s very positive, but there’s some negative aspects of it too, like, you know, just obsession.”
Novoselic did add that he appreciates the interest fans continue to have in Nirvana. “I do. I love Nirvana fans. I love Kurt and I love Dave, and I feel great to have played music with them. In some ways I’ve been finding out that Nirvana represents an evolution of consciousness for people and I think that’s something to be really proud of.”
Nirvana was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014, in their first year of eligibility. The surviving members played a four-song set at the ceremony in which they were joined by female artists Joan Jett, Lorde, Sonic Youth‘s Kim Gordon and St. Vincent, each of whom took a turn singing. R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe inducted the band, while accepting were Grohl, Novoselic and Love, along with Cobain’s mother Wendy O’ Connor and his sister Kim.
The surviving members of the group, including Pat Smear, again reunited at the end of Foo Fighters‘ set at the Cal Jam festival on October 6th, 2018 to perform six songs. They were joined on vocals by Deer Tick frontman John McAuley and Joan Jett.
A documentary by filmmaker Brett Morgen, called Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck, was released in 2015 on HBO. Morgen had unrestricted access to previously unseen and unheard archives of Cobain’s art, personal recordings, photos, home movies and more. A companion album featuring rare recordings came out later that year.
Morgen told us that he could not believe how much material Cobain created in his relatively short life: “I’d never met anyone who was as prolific as he was. I mean, given his short life span and that a lot of that time, he didn’t have a secure home, the amount of materials that we have present a guy who just never stopped creating, and that is beyond inspirational.”
Charles R. Cross, author of the Nirvana/Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven and Here We Are Now: The Lasting Impact Of Kurt Cobain, explained why Cobain’s music has had such a lasting impact: “The music that Kurt and Nirvana created is still considered some of the greatest music we’ve had in modern rock ‘n’ roll. You know, the albums still continue to sell, and as an influence of other bands and the sound of things that we still hear on the radio, I think you still hear the influence of Nirvana and Kurt. There are a whole bunch of reasons for that: I mean, the most notable being the fact that he just wrote incredible songs that touched so many people.”
Nirvana’s music brought rebellion, raw emotion, and a punk attitude back to rock music at a time when it was sorely needed. And while Kurt Cobain was anointed as the spokesman — even after his death — for what came to be called “Generation X,” his own tortured reluctance to accept that role mirrored the confusion felt by Nirvana fans over their identity, their gender, and their place in the world. In a declining music business consumed by slick marketing, endless merchandising and corporate “product,” he may have been the last of his kind.
Ozzy Osbourne has postponed all his 2019 tour dates, both in North America and Europe, as he recovers from an injury sustained while dealing with his recent bout of pneumonia. The Black Sabbath frontman fell at his Los Angeles home, aggravating years-old injuries from his 2003 ATV accident that required surgery last month. Ozzy will remain under doctor’s care in Los Angeles as he recovers.
The Prince of Darkness said, “I can’t believe I have to reschedule more tour dates. Words cannot express how frustrated, angry and depressed I am not to be able to tour right now. I’m grateful for the love and support I’m getting from my family, my band, friends and fans, it’s really what’s keeping me going. Just know that I am getting better every day…I will fully recover…I will finish my tour…I will be back!”
Ozzy was in a coma for eight days in December of 2003 when he accidentally crashed an ATV while riding on his estate grounds. He broke his collarbone, several ribs and a neck vertebra in the incident, of which he told us he had very little memory. “All I remember was getting on the quad bike and that was it. I don’t remember anything else. I didn’t know what was real, I didn’t know whether I was dreaming. I kept believing, when I’d come in and out of this coma, that they were moving me around from different hospitals, so it was really weird. It was like going on this incredible journey.”
Most of the 2019 shows on Ozzy’s last full world tour will be rescheduled beginning in February 2020. Fans are being asked to hold onto their original tickets, as they will be honored for the rescheduled dates. Because some of the 2019 dates were festival appearances, not all will be rescheduled.
Disturbed will perform in Israel for the first time this summer. The band, whose lead singer David Draiman is of Jewish heritage, promoted its Israeli live debut in a video message in Hebrew. Draiman said: “Shalom, we are Disturbed and we will be at Rishon Lezion’s Live Park on July 2nd.”
Although Draiman has visited the country many times and spent time there in his younger years, the singer said in a 2011 interview with Ynet that he has wanted to play in Israel his whole life. He remarked, “Beyond the fact that people here tell me here and there that they love the band, I think I will be convinced when I can finally put on a show and the audience comes. That would be the real proof.”
Draiman spent a year after high school studying at a yeshiva in Israel, and recalled that his life could have taken a very different course: “The level of study that I was at, I was probably only about two or three years away from being ordained as a rabbi, so I really needed to figure out in my head where I wanted to go with things. And I just couldn’t do it habitually anymore. I grew a very strong dislike for the organized aspect of religion over the course of time.”
Disturbed recently unveiled the dates and cities for the second North American leg of its “Evolution” tour. The new run begins on July 21st in Mankato, Minnesota, winding through the next three months before coming to a close on October 11th in St. Louis. Pop Evil and In This Moment will perform on select dates.
Guns N’ Roses is the first act to be announced for the return of the Louder Than Life festival. The event will take place at the Highland Festival Grounds At KY Expo Center from Friday, September 27th, through Sunday, September 29th. This will mark the first live appearance for Guns since they played in Hawaii in December 2018.
The full Louder Than Life lineup will be announced on Monday, April 8th, the same day as tickets go on sale at 9:00 a.m. ET.
Guns N’ Roses’ “Not In This Lifetime” tour began three years ago in April 2016, and after 159 shows in 41 countries, it played its last date at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, Hawaii on December 8th, 2018. The trek is now believed to be the second-highest-grossing tour of all time, having earned more than $500 million since it launched.
Since the end of the tour last year, guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan have both returned to solo endeavors. There has been speculation that Guns N’ Roses will record a new LP, but no official announcement has been made yet.
Static-X has explained its decision to enlist a vocalist who will wear a mask in the likeness of late frontman Wayne Static during the band’s upcoming reunion tour. The North American trek, which celebrates the 20th anniversary of Static-X’s Wisconsin Death Trip album and pays homage to Static, also features DevilDriver and Dope.
While the identity of Static-X’s touring singer has not been officially revealed, strong rumors suggest that Dope frontman Edsel Dope will pull double duty during the trek and also perform with the surviving original members of Static-X.
On April 2nd, Static-X drummer Ken Jay, guitarist Koichi Fukuda and bassist Tony Campos released a statement in which they addressed the criticism they received from some Static-X fans over the use of a singer wearing a Wayne Static mask.
They wrote, “We obviously wish that Wayne was here doing this with us. Unfortunately, that is not an option. Rather than putting someone else’s face in his place for our 20th anniversary tour, we have chosen to memorialize him and to ultimately to immortalize him. In our hearts, there is no greater display of respect than what we are doing.”
Wayne Static died in November 2014 after mixing Xanax and other powerful prescription drugs with alcohol, according to the coroner’s report. The 48-year-old, whose real name was Wayne Richard Wells, was found dead in his Landers, California home.
Finally, we’d like to wish a Happy Birthday to Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready! Have a great weekend!
