![]() ![]() You had to be like Calvin Johnson, maybe, obscure but respected. ![]() At the same time, one had to care, and follow very strict rules for not selling out. But it was impossible: one must have the irony, the ambivalence of not caring, of admitting your own complicity in the system. Kurt Cobain, in these interviews that start in 1990, the year before Nirvana made the big time, and end two months before he died in 1994, had internalized the punk rock of the 1980s in the indie/alternative “underground,” and we see him grapple with trying to be true to his punk-rock ethics. There were always traps contained in that youthful fervor for authenticity: how to identify authenticity, first of all, and then how easily markers of authenticity can become just another pose, full of clichés (the hallmarks of hackery). And it is this strain of punk purity that carried into the 1980s as a counter to the materialist corporate culture of the Reagan years. Virtuosity on your instrument was not the point, but being politically virtuous was. They were not arena-rock gods, they were just a garage band. Lester Bangs wrote about the Clash inviting their fans to share their hotel room with them. As punk developed, it retained its nihilist refusal, but it also had a more egalitarian side. There was a lot of spitting going on: gobs at the band and gobs back to the audience. In 1977 the Sex Pistols released the ironically titled single, “God Save the Queen.” Johnny Rotten famously sneered as he asked his audience, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” The sneer insured that the joke was complicated: the Pistols were cheating the audience because they defiantly refused to please, but also that the culture had cheated all of them and left them with a kind of nihilism. ![]() Punk rock offered a giant refusal to that cynicism while still cloaking itself in irony. In her telling, Cobain was well aware that his dissent was being commodified, but he strained to dissent nonetheless. In an original introduction, Dana Spiotta-author of the novels Stone Arabia and Eat the Document- explores how Cobain publicly struggled with Nirvana’s attempts to subvert their own fame, situating the singer-guitarist’s remarks on the subject in a cultural context that runs from punk rock through the hypercapitalism of the streaming era. Famed music journalists such as David Fricke and Jon Savage sit side by side with local reporters and college radio DJs. It brings together eight interviews with Cobain, including three that were previously unpublished. He advocated for these causes not just on stage and on record, but also in the press, as a sometimes cagey, often candid, always illuminating interview subject.Ī new book, Kurt Cobain: The Last Interview, offers a substantial compendium of-and addition to-the canon of published Cobain conversations. The late Nirvana leader was a feminist, LGBTQ+ ally, antiracist, and champion of eccentric musical visionaries, who somehow also managed to sell millions of albums and pack arenas with folks who might have picked on him in high school. Like many punk heroes, Kurt Cobain was beloved as much for his music as for what he represented. ![]()
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