Dissing the Right Wing:
Nirvana, pt. 4

April 30, 2006

[A picture from Kurt Cobain Journals, pg 116]

Charles Cross in his biography of Kurt Cobain tells of a run-in that Cobain had with Axl Rose of Guns 'n' Roses backstage at an awards show:

Kurt, Courtney, nanny Jackie, and Finnerty were sitting with Frances when Axl Rose walked by, holding hands with his model-girlfriend Stephanie Seymour. "Hey Axl," Courtney beckoned, sounding a bit like Blanche Dubois, "will you be the godfather of our child?" Rose ignored her but turned to Kurt, who was bouncing Frances on his knee, and leaned down near his face. As the veins in Axl's neck thickened to the size of a garden hose, he barked: "You shut your bitch up, or I'm taking you down to the pavement!"

The idea that anyone could control Courtney was so laughable that a giant smile came to Kurt's face... He turned to Courtney and ordered, in a robot-like voice: "Okay bitch. Shut up!" This brought a snicker to everyone within earshot... [Heavier than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain (2001), pg. 249]

That is a story about clashing rock personalities.. but it happens to point up the difference between 80s heavy metal and the bands that swept to the fore with Nirvana. The difference was not solely in musical style.. as if somehow "alternative music" was present in guitar solos and drum fills.. it also lay in the political and ethical assumptions brought to the music. One could say that Kurt Cobain was playing a "left-wing" version of heavy metal. That political twist may be, in the end, what separates alternative bands of that period from their heavy metal cousins.

Social conservatives might be surprised to learn that Axl Rose is one of them.. and I do not mean to suggest that he is part of the right wing in any programmatic way. What I mean is that rebels must always define themselves against social norms, and that norm for Axl Rose was represented by conservative values. His rebellion—manifested in tattoos, drugs and parties—is clear, but his conformity to conservative standards is equally clear if one examines the values underlying his actions. In the above story Rose appears with a trophy-model girlfriend, refuses to acknowledge Courtney, and absurdly threatens Cobain with physical harm. Imagine, absurd as it may be, that James Dobson had run into Cobain backstage at an awards show. The confrontation would lack the hysterics of an Axl Rose, but many of the same values would still be present. Dobson too would have definite ideas about a healthy male-female relationship and the place of women in a power structure.. he would also have some aggression, although it may come out in a radio show rather than a threat to take Cobain down to the pavement. Axl Rose stands in for thousands.. perhaps millions.. of partying frat boys and troubled rebels.. and when these guys get all that out of their system, as they generally do, they come "back to God" and start living by the conservative standards that always formed the way they saw their world.

Cobain was a rebel of a different kind. We can think of him as a left wing rebel.. that is, the norms which he tacitly adopts.. even as he falls away from them.. are socially liberal. His distaste for the right wing is an oft-stated theme of his journals. In one screed he writes:

...Im far beyond the point of sitting down and casually complaining about this problem to the right wing control freaks who are the main offender of destroying art. I wont calmly and literally complain to you! Im going to fucking kill. Im going to fucking destroy your MACHO, sadistic, sick, Right Wing, religiously abusive opinions on how we as a whole should operate according to your conditions. [120-1]

Oddly that could function as simultaneously an attack on the world of Guns 'n' Roses and James Dobson. In a similar vein Cobain drew the illustration of a soldier in camouflage wearing a football helmet. It seems to be a case of wish fulfillment as he hangs the elements of American culture that he finds most intolerable. This leads him to a mixture of military and sports imagery, tying together jocks and soldiers.

On the same page as the last quotation, Cobain gets around to setting out some of this own values:

I find a few things sacred such as the superiority contributions women and the negro have made to Art. I guess what im saying is that Art is Sacred. punk rock is freedom.

The echo is of William Blake, who was also prone to write fiery statements about Art: "Where any view of Money exists Art cannot be carried on. But War only." Cobain would have agreed wholeheartedly.. and probably added Blake to those endless lists of musical influences. There may well be much to criticize in this view of the world, but my point is that it is proceeding on a wholly different foundation than anything we know as heavy metal.. and it is a repudiation of the values connected to a social conservative such as James Dobson. Nirvana will always remain a seminal band precisely because they point toward a form of rock music which is not indebted to conservative values.. a rebellion whose end will not be admission into a church, but graduation into liberal causes.