Last week one of the broken links in the chain of crucial Nirvana titles was restored: The Cobain-conceived (though not, alas, completed) 1994 video “Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!” joined the modern age via a DVD edition, with a spiffy 5.1 mix and bonus performances.
Not that it needed either extra to be as potent and perception-tweaking a statement as there ever has been about life in the eye of the rock ‘n’ roll hurricane. And not your typical eye, for that matter, but the sort of soul-depleting, brain-scrambling one that only stirs up once a decade (if that), when a significant figure or a band or a scene becomes the biggest thing in pop culture.
That factor is the convincer in my argument as to why Cobain is the one and only true New Dylan who has ever mattered. He’s really the only one who fully fits the bill.
He eloquently (and ineloquently) summed up his era through lyrics laden with obscurantism, the sort that still inspires stoned raps about their meaning. He conveyed them in music that upended the notion of what a widely embraced but freely expressed popular sound could be. And he got thrust into the role of spokesperson for a generation.
A role he didn’t want. A role no sane person would want.
He was a significant figure fronting a (tremendous) band that launched (not created) a scene that, for a time, was the biggest thing in pop culture.
All other New Dylans are just songwriters.
You can glean this much from the bleary-eyed madness of “Live!,” which stuffs raw performance footage from the tour supporting “Nevermind” into a whirlwind of mashed-up interview bits that re-creates the media frenzy that followed the band at that time.
It’s as painful as it is fascinating. You’re witness not only to the start of Cobain’s disintegration but also to the emergence of one of the fiercest, most compelling and radical forms of rock since Hendrix torched his Fender at Monterey Pop.
Pearl Jam is in my pantheon of all-time greats, Soundgarden is still missed despite Audioslave, I’m making Seattle rediscoveries all the time (hello again, Alice in Chains) and I continue to enjoy acts that liberally crib from my generation’s most famous suicide (be it Local H or the occasional Vines song or Dave Grohl, who is another matter altogether).
But no one and nothing is quite like Cobain, and not many have been as fearless or burned as intensely.
Right: Cutting out early means he was spared the curse of a lengthy career in the spotlight where every move would have been scrutinized.
He neatly avoided having to evolve, grow into his 30s, face his 40s, struggle to seem relevant at 50. Unlike peers now with Audioslave or Velvet Revolver – add Army of Anyone, which is Filter plus the rest of Stone Temple Pilots, to that post-’90s supergroup list – he never had to lose or ditch his band because it had reached a creative end, then face rejection by starting a new one.
He’ll never be saddled with mid-career failures he had to sweat off to achieve comeback physique, though he probably would have been more like Neil Young or Prince in that regard: He wouldn’t consider anything a failure, and he’d have no need for comebacks.
I wonder: Will Frances Bean’s friends – or children – eventually find Cobain’s ravings as quaint as an early Beatles record? Will critics decades from now view them as overrated, repetitive, limited? Somehow I doubt it. But at least I’m on track to find out.
And so is Grohl, who I believe has blossomed through tenacity and genuine talent into a significant figure in his own right. His music is his own; it may never be as startling or groundbreaking as Cobain’s, and it will never be as volatile – but it’s every bit the complete embodiment of who he is as Nirvana’s stuff was for Cobain.
Yet Grohl has changed while Cobain has remained frozen in time. He has developed into a savvy singer-songwriter, one who manages to be commercially viable without sacrificing street credibility.
Yet, though I can’t think of an album of his I wouldn’t gladly play right now, he’s nonetheless a comfortable rock star for a too-comfortable age. His idea of challenging himself: Cut a double album (half-hard, half-soft), then tour likewise, eventually issuing an acoustic memento – “Skin and Bones,” which perhaps not coincidentally also arrived last week.
Bad timing, if you ask me. Taken alongside Nirvana at its most explosive, the magnificent Foo Fighters show I saw at the Pantages (which this new live album replicates) is paler than Rose McGowan.
It’s also hard to avoid comparing “Skin and Bones” to Nirvana’s “MTV Unplugged,” another broken link in the band’s chain that needs fixing. That might be why it’s taken so long for Grohl to tread in this terrain, apart from his acoustic “Everlong.” He knows he’s got stiff competition.
Robert Christgau has a great line on “Unplugged”: “The vocal performance (Cobain) evokes is John Lennon’s on ‘Plastic Ono Band.’ And he did it in one take.” Grohl has been honing his “Skin and Bones” all year – and now, with its humanizing between-song banter (including Dave’s tale of moving in with Kurt) edited out, it sparkles and soothes and slouches from too much rehearsal like any other piece of major-label product from a beloved modern-rock band.
Bet I come to love it sometime next year, when I don’t have Cobain on the brain. For now, I’m just filing it away with my Weezer outtakes.
Contact the writer: 714-796-2248 or bwener@ocregister.com
