Cobain's Nevermind 20 Years On...

This week some 20 years ago an album escalated a band who in turn elevated a whole musical style to the globe, Nirvana’s Nevermind not only gave the Seattle three piece world wide acclaim and accompanying fame and fortune, but it firmly placed the ‘grunge’ genre where it belonged as a pivotal musical style equally as important to anything that has gone before or come since. To Cobain the record and its creation was a poisoned chalice, it was the album he simply had to make but also an album which would lead to unbearable hurt.

In Nevermind Cobain would have known all too well that if the record were to succeed it would unleash on the unsuspecting masses an album that would push mainstream tolerance and mass media avenues to breaking point, this was ‘alternative’ music, this was not radio friendly, this sound was not what people were used to hearing on the radio or seeing on the television, this was something else, something more naked and unyielding.

Of course the album and the artists Kurt Cobain vocals/guitar, bassist Chris Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl could be as beautiful as the next band Polly, Something In The Way and Come As You Are show that this band had soul and richness of sound which could stand up there with the best REM or U2 could muster at the time but it also had a much darker side. Cobain’s guitar and vocals at times would reach manic and disturbed levels, coherence and form no longer the desired effect, more of a primal raw energy which very few bands can transmit on a studio record.
This was the key to Nevermind and even more so Cobain, Novoselic and Grohl, they were a live band who made the audience feel the song...Teen Spirit, Breed, In Bloom and Territorial Pissings were live songs, they were tunes lashed together to play live, to show piece their natural relentless musical talent to the crowd, to make an audience feel that special little feeling inside, the ache that only truly great live music gives you! Nobody wants to hear an album version of a song at a concert...this should be the mantra of any live music lover! ! ! Nirvana made a record live and breathe with blood coarsing through its veins, they made an album in Nevermind which was truly a 'live' studio record. 

Modern music is pushed and moulded into what it is today by pioneering and revolutionary people, since the birth of Rock ‘N’ Roll with Elvis changing the way music sounded, to the Beatles and their willingness to experiment, Dylan throwing off the shackles of his ‘Folk’ roots becoming the Jokerman electric poet...you can trace these pioneers up through the ages, Cobain can rightly take his place in this distinguished list, a man who brought us one of the finest albums of all time yet ultimately despised the fame and attention that followed to beyond breaking point. 

As for Nirvana, they will always be remembered as a band which helped shape modern music, they had only begun to tap into the promise which they held, they had only started to learn their craft, but because they had such natural ability it still hurts a little inside to think of the music that Nirvana didn’t get chance to make, Oh well whatever...Nevermind.