Nirvana became famous in the early 1990s with “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. On the 30th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death, a Frankfurt author looks at the cult band from the perspective of a millennial. She says: Nirvana was way ahead of its time in many ways.
By Melanie Aschenbrenner
Audio contribution
Audio 03:26 mins | 04.04.24 | Melanie Aschenbrenner
Nirvana fascination yesterday and today
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A Hessian teenager’s room at the turn of the millennium: There were just boy band posters hanging on the wall, but suddenly everything is different. 14-year-old Isabella Caldart hears “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the first time – and she has an awakening experience.
“I was jumping up and down on the bed,” she laughs. “I didn’t know what the song was about, but I felt it straight away.” It – the feeling of youthful revolt.
For Isabella Caldart it is the beginning of a great love, and she is not alone. The scratchy anger, the emotion make Nirvana and the character Cobain timeless, as the Frankfurt author and blogger shows in her new book “Nirvana. 100 pages”.
The Sound of Aufstand
Kurt Cobain’s story begins something like this: difficult childhood, ADHD diagnosis, moves through ten families in four years. Only in music, in the punk and indie scene, did Kurt, born in 1967, really feel at home.
Further information
Nirvana. 100 pages
Claim, 2024
Paperback, 12 euros
End of further information
When grunge emerged as a music genre at the end of the 1980s, the critics also included Nirvana – which Kurt and his teammates Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic didn’t like, but the raw, distorted grunge guitars became their ticket to success.
Appearance in Hanau and Frankfurt – but no longer in Offenbach
Even before their breakthrough with the “Nevermind” album, Nirvana were touring through Germany. In November 1989 they played in Hanau at the Kultur-Bazaar.
Two years later, in November 1991, they rocked a completely sold out Frankfurt Batschkapp. Thanks to MTV’s rotation of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, Nirvana are no longer an indie insider tip, but the band of the moment.
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Kurt Cobain, Star Wider Willen
Nirvana rage against commerce and pressure to conform and look for perspectives. But the sensitive Cobain, an anti-hero like he is in the book, unwillingly cannot cope with his role as a star. He suffers and takes refuge in drugs. On April 5, 1994, he committed suicide in Seattle at the age of 27.
The concert in the Offenbach town hall planned for March 1994 had already been canceled due to Cobain’s health.
Why another Nirvana biography?
It is obvious to Isabella Caldart that, in addition to the already established Nirvana biographies by Michael Azerrad and Charles R. Cross, there is now room for a new approach to the band, a fresh perspective is even overdue. “I think the book fills a gap,” she says.
The author, born in 1986, is also concerned with the younger, female perspective in 2024. About queer, feminist aspects, the political dimension of the band and Cobain’s play with the media. As a millennial, Caldart belongs to the first generation that was musically socialized after Cobain’s death and has developed its fan knowledge backwards – with all the questions and criticisms.
“Did you know I’m gay?”
Today, no rooster crows when male-read stars appear in dresses and skirts, with nail polish and eye shadow. Things were different in 1991 – and Kurt Cobain appeared in a yellow ball dress on the macho rock show “Headbangers Ball” on MTV.
“This playing with queer symbolism existed and still exists in many subcultures,” says Isabella Caldart. “But not in the mainstream. We have a few pioneers like David Bowie, Prince, and of course Freddie Mercury, who broke with traditional male roles. But those were exceptions.”
“Ally” of marginalized communities
Kurt Cobain openly plays with gender roles, attacks the homophobia of Axl Rose and lets Nirvana fans know: If you are sexist, racist, anti-gay, we don’t want you.
No one can say for sure whether Cobain was really queer, as some now suspect. The fact that he repeatedly declared that he was gay was partly a provocation. But he has also repeatedly positioned himself clearly as an “ally,” as Isabella Caldart emphasizes: as an ally to marginalized communities.
Playing with media fire
A Nirvana fairy tale goes like this: The band rejects the press hype and consumer society. She wants to remain authentic, but the evil media and record companies are destroying her. In this reading, Cobain is literally hunted to death by a scandal-hungry press.
This picture is crooked, Caldart believes. Instead, Kurt Cobain consciously exploited the opportunities that MTV and the music press offered his band. “He knew exactly where he could go. He always let his rebellious attitude shine through, but deep down he knew: I need the media and the media needs me.”
This relationship began to change in 1992, when Cobain’s wife Courtney Love was accused (probably wrongly) in a Vanity Fair article of having taken heroin while pregnant. “After that, the two of them were considered THE heroin couple in the press until the end,” said Caldart.
The author doesn’t downplay the fact that drugs were certainly involved for Kurt & Courtney and that their mental health suffered – but she doesn’t look at everything through this lens.
Further information
Playlist by Isabella Caldart
One compiled by Isabella Caldart Nirvana playlist is available on Spotify.
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Nirvana are political
The USA at the end of the 1980s: The Iran-Contra affair, AIDS, the Republican-conservative governments of Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush left their mark. For the “totally left-wing”, feminist, anti-racist band (as bassist Krist Novoselic describes Nirvana) it is clear that they have to stand up to this.
“Nirvana’s political attitude could be seen less from her texts than from her public positioning,” says the Frankfurt author Isabella Caldart. She proves this with, among other things, interview statements and Nirvana’s numerous benefit concerts. The band campaigned against censorship and anti-gay legislation, for the right to abortion, and for the victims of the Yugoslavian war.
Nirvana’s afterlife
But of course: the sound of revolt today is called hip hop and rap. Rock à la Nirvana has had its day as a major youth culture. If you see kids in Nirvana shirts today, it’s more of a fashion phenomenon, not fandom. Nevertheless, Nirvana anthems like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Come As You Are” are still streamed a good million times every day.
Because the feeling is right with this inflammatory yet sensitive music. Caldart believes that many teenagers, regardless of generation, have a Nirvana phase – no matter how short it is: “It comes to you at a time when you are full of rebel spirit. You understand the message, even if you don’t understand the lyrics. Simple in terms of energy.”
Further information
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