Hamlet’s Band: Nirvana, pt. 2

April 20, 2006

A line drawing from Kurt Cobain’s notebooks features the outline of a person with a question mark in his head. This person poses a question in a dialogue bubble: “mandatory breeding laws?” Then underneath is written:

Nirvana
cant decide whether they
want to be punk or R.E.M.
Indecision can often
At times Kill a band and
Nirvana are suicidal [55]

This indecision is mirrored in the band’s music, which is commonly praised for its ability to switch registers between soft and hard.. within the same song. It is as if no decision could be made, so they did both.

One dominant feature of the published Kurt Cobain Journals is the constant presence of music lists. These are simply lists of bands and albums that Cobain has found inspiring. One of the first such lists to appear begins with this descriptive tag: “NIRVANA sounds like black sabbath playing the Knack…”, and the list goes on. In another long list we come across odd pairings:

AC/DC — Soul Stripper
REM — 10,000

Psychedellic Pistols — Pulse
Sexedellic Furs — Bodies

Cobain continually presents contradictions. I venture that there are not too many AC/DC fans who are simultaneously REM fans. In fact it is hard to know how anyone who accepts the values of the one, could embrace the other. The second pair—which obviously should be the Psychedellic Furs and the Sex Pistols—is another contradiction, classic punk band and 80s New Wave. “Isn’t She Pretty in Pink” gets purposely mixed up with “Never Mind the Bollocks.”

Cobain ends one of his most nakedly honest self-summaries with a statement about the construction of his self: “I use bits and pieces of others personalities to form my own.” That could also serve as a summary of the construction of Nirvana.. it went forward through the incorporation of bits and pieces of other bands. The long lists of musical influences represent our clues to the elements of this construction. That these lists were not purely a matter of the habits of journaling, but a genuine cast of mind, we can find confirmed from an odd source, Courtney Love’s mom, who writes in her recent biography:

I remember a car ride one afternoon when I was visiting Frances in Seattle. Kurt and Courtney sat in front, firing names, albums, groups, singers, songs, and labels back and forth at each other, making the air crackle with their passionate exchange. [Her Mother’s Daughter (2005), by Linda Carroll, pg. 296]

For a young man who was looking to find “self-respect” through music, this barrage of bare names of bands and albums was obviously important.

MTV Unplugged in New York, the posthumously released album of acoustic-type settings is the final testimony to the importance of lists. The non-Nirvana songs are from an odd assortment of sources: David Bowie, the Vaselines, the Meat Puppets, and Leadbelly. One might wonder how Cobain came to choose these songs.. whether he cast around a few weeks before the scheduled show to find some stellar songs.. but all he had to do is look to his journals. Leadbelly is a mainstay from the first versions of this music list. The Meat Puppets and Vaselines are part of an ever shifting group of classic punk bands that Cobain enthuses about. David Bowie is one of a number of surprising non-punk artists who shows up. This final performance by Nirvana was a product of these never-ending lists.. and the final performance shows just how effectively these influences had been incorporated into the identity of the band.. as “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” comes off sounding like Cobain’s own composition.

Whatever the contradictions, and perhaps because of the indecision, Nirvana came to its own musical identity.