With the count of Dave Grohl’s drumsticks and the clash of mangled guitars and bass from Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic, Nirvana‘s In Utero opens with ‘Serve The Servants’. Cobain delivers the unforgettable line in a hoarse gravel of a voice: “Teenage angst has paid off well; now I’m bored and old.” The line reverberates […]
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Every so often, a guitar riff comes around and redefines a new era of rock and roll. After The Beatles had defined what popular music sounded like in the 1960s, a string of new bands in the ‘70s snatched the rock throne to try and become the next musical monarchy. Many contributed to this diverse […]
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If you ask an AI bot how Kurt Cobain and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic first met, you might get a very detailed and bizarre story about their time as art students at a school called the Grays Harbor Institute of Northwest Crafts. Cobain, a young “sawblade painter specialising in wildlife and seascapes”, struck up a […]
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Every musician strives to satisfy their fans, even though it can sometimes be challenging to discern their desires. Nonetheless, the primary focus remains on creating the best music possible, hoping it resonates with someone. However, rock and roll artists like Nirvana have been known to craft songs intended to challenge or provoke their audience rather […]
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Despite being in two of the most successful bands of the last two centuries, for years, Dave Grohl has moulded himself into the musician’s musician. Outside of fronting Foo Fighters, one of the most successful bands in the world, Grohl’s penchant for waxing poetic about the more underground side of rock and roll has endeared […]
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The entire story of Dave Grohl reads like one of the greatest redemption arcs in rock and roll history. On paper, anyone who was anywhere near Nirvana would have never wanted to play music again after Kurt Cobain passed away, and yet Grohl found a way to move on and gain an even bigger following […]
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When a band ceases activity prematurely, regardless of the reason why, if there’s enough of a fanbase around them, they’ll begin to create their own mythologies of what could have been had they been able to continue. One of the greatest examples of this is Nirvana, who were forced to separate after the loss of […]
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For such an iconic emblem, Nirvana’s drugged-out smiley face logo curiously doesn’t appear anywhere on their records or single covers. It’s a face for merchandise. Some official, many bootleg, but the black tee and yellow grinning mug with deathly cross-eyes and a little tongue ever-so-slightly loose out of the left-hand side, and if you’re lucky, […]
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Inspiration doesn’t stay in its lane, such that everything floats down one big mutual stream of influence where artists of any format can dip in, fishing out anything from a new film to an old painting to modify their perspectives, and Nirvana prove that point well. Nirvana countibuted back to that stream greatly by not […]
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There was no competing with any other songwriter in Nirvana compared to Kurt Cobain. Though he may have had a limited vocabulary for guitar chords and proper music theory, the soulful energy channelled through classics like ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and ‘In Bloom’ struck a nerve with kids that was impossible to put into words. […]
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