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Nirvana Acoustic Guitar Legend
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Legend, we have the Nirvana Bio and some Nirvana Pictures. And Nirvana
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Nirvana Bio and Nirvana Pictures
Nirvana Bio
Prior to Nirvana,
alternative music was consigned to specialty sections of record stores and
major labels considered it to be, at the very most, a tax write-off. After
the band's second album, 1991's Nevermind, nothing was ever quite the
same, for better and for worse. Nirvana popularized punk, post-punk, and
indie rock, unintentionally bringing it into the American mainstream like
no other band before it. While its sound was equal parts Black Sabbath (as
learned by fellow Washington underground rockers the Melvins) and Cheap
Trick, Nirvana's aesthetics were strictly indie rock. They covered
Vaselines songs, they revived new wave cuts by Devo, and leader Kurt
Cobain relentlessly pushed his favorite bands -- whether it was the art
punk of the Raincoats or the country-fried hardcore of the Meat Puppets --
as if his favorite records were always more important than his own music.
While Nirvana's ideology was indie rock and melodies were pop, the sonic
rush of their records and live shows merged the post-industrial white
noise with heavy metal grind. And that's what made the group an
unprecedented multi-platinum sensation. Jane's Addiction and Soundgarden
may have proven to the vast American heavy metal audience that alternative
could rock, and the Pixies may have merged pop sensibilities with indie
rock white noise, but Nirvana pulled at all together, creating a sound
that was both fiery and melodic. Since Nirvana was rooted in the indie
aesthetic, but loved pop music, they fought their stardom while courting
it, becoming some of the most notorious anti-rock stars in history. The
result was a conscious attempt to shed their audience with the abrasive In
Utero, which only partially fulfilled the band's goal. But by that point,
the fate of the band and Kurt Cobain had been sealed. Suffering from drug
addiction and manic depression, Cobain had become destructive and
suicidal, though his management and label were able to hide the extent of
his problems from the public until April 8, 1994, when he was found dead
of a self-inflicted shotgun wound. Cobain may not have been able to
weather Nirvana's success, but the band's legacy stands as one of the most
influential in rock & roll history. |
Nirvana Bio |
Nirvana Pictures |
Kurt
Cobain (vocals, guitar) met
Chris Novoselic (born Krist Novoselic) (bass)
in 1985 in Aberdeen, WA, a small logging town 100 miles away from Seattle.
While Novoselic came from a relatively stable background, Cobain's
childhood had been thrown into turmoil when his parents divorced when he
was eight. Following the divorce, he lived at the homes of various
relatives, developing a love for the Beatles and then heavy metal in the
process. Eventually, American hardcore punk worked its way into dominating
his listening habits and he met the Melvins, an Olympia-based underground
heavy punk band. Cobain began playing in punk bands like Fecal Matter,
often with the Melvins' bassist Dale Crover. Through the Melvins' leader
Buzz Osborne, Cobain met Novoselic, who also had an intense interest in
punk, which meant that he, like Cobain, felt alienated from the macho,
redneck population of Aberdeen. The duo decided to form a band called the
Stiff Woodies, with Cobain on drums, Novoselic on bass, and a rotating
cast of guitarists and vocalists. The group went through name changes as
quickly as guitarists, before deciding that Cobain would play guitar and
sing. Renamed Skid Row, the new trio featured drummer Aaron Burkhart, who
left the band by the end of 1986 and was replaced by Chad Channing. By
1987, the band was called Nirvana.
Nirvana began playing parties in Olympia, gaining a cult following. During
1987, the band made ten demos with producer Jack Endino, who played the
recordings to Jonathan Poneman, one of the founders of the Seattle-based
indie label Sub Pop. Poneman signed Nirvana, and in December of 1988, the
band released their first single, a cover of Shocking Blue's "Love
Buzz." Sub Pop orchestrated an effective marketing scheme, which
painted the band as backwoods, logging-town hicks, which irritated Cobain
and Novoselic. While "Love Buzz" was fairly well-received, the
band's debut album, Bleach, was what began the ball rolling. Recorded for
just over 600 dollars and released in the spring of 1989, Bleach slowly
became a hit on college radio, due to the group's consistent touring.
Though Jason Everman was credited as a second guitarist on the sleeve of
Bleach, he didn't appear on the record; he only toured in support of the
album before leaving the band at the end of the year to join Soundgarden
and then Mindfunk. Bleach sold 35,000 copies and Nirvana became favorites
of college radio, the British weekly music press, and Sonic Youth,
Mudhoney, and Dinosaur Jr., which was enough to attract the attention of
major labels.
During the summer, Nirvana released "Sliver"/"Dive,"
which was recorded with Mudhoney's Dan Peters on drums and produced by
Butch Vig. The band also made a six-song demo with Vig, which was shopped
to major labels, who soon began competing to sign the group. By the end of
the summer, Dave Grohl, formerly of the D.C.-based hardcore band Scream,
had become Nirvana's drummer and the band signed with DGC for $287,000.
Nirvana recorded their second album with Vig, completing the record in the
summer. Following a European tour supporting Sonic Youth in the late
summer, Nevermind was released in September, supported by a quick American
tour. While DGC was expecting a moderately successful release, in the
neighborhood of 100,000 copies, Nevermind immediately became a smash hit,
quickly selling out its initial shipment of 50,000 copies and creating a
shortage across America. What helped the record become a success was
"Smells Like Teen Spirit," a blistering four-chord rocker that
was accompanied by a video that shot into heavy MTV rotation. By the
beginning of 1992, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had climbed into
the American Top Ten and Nevermind bumped Michael Jackson's much-touted
comeback album Dangerous off the top of the album charts; it reached the
British Top Ten shortly afterward. By February, the album had been
certified triple platinum. |
Nirvana Bio Continued
Nirvana's
success took the music industry by surprise, Nirvana included. It soon
become apparent that the band wasn't quite sure how to handle their
success. Around the time of Nevermind's release, the band was into baiting
their audience -- Cobain appeared on MTV's Headbanger's Ball in drag, the
group mocked the tradition of miming on the BBC's Top of the Pops by
Novoselic constantly throwing his bass into the air and Cobain singing his
live vocals in the style of Ian Curtis, and their traditional live
destruction of instruments was immortalized on a Saturday Night Live
performance that ended with Novoselic and Grohl sharing a kiss -- but by
the spring, questions had begun to arise about the band's stability.
Cobain married Courtney Love, the leader of the indie
rock/foxcore band
Hole, in February of 1992, announcing that the couple was expecting a
child in the fall. Shortly after the marriage, rumors that the couple were
heavy heroin users began to circulate and the strength of the rumors only
increased when Nirvana canceled several
summer concerts and refused to
mount a full-scale American tour during the summer. Cobain complained that
he was suffering from chronic stomach troubles, which seemed to be
confirmed when he was admitted to a Belfast hospital after a June concert.
But, heroin rumors continued to surface, especially in the form of a
late-summer Vanity Fair article which implied that Love was using during
her pregnancy. Both Love and Cobain denied the article's allegations, and
publicly harassed and threatened the article's author. Love delivered
Frances Bean Cobain, a healthy baby girl, on August 18, 1992, but the
couple soon battled with Los Angeles' children's services, who claimed
they were unfit parents on the basis of the Vanity Fair article. The
couple was granted custody of their child by the beginning of 1993.
Since Cobain was going through such
well-documented personal problems, Nirvana was unable to record a
follow-up to Nevermind until the spring of 1993. In the meantime, DGC
released the odds-and-ends compilation Incesticide late in 1992; the album
reached number 39 in the U.S. and number 14 U.K. As the group prepared to
make their third album, they released "Oh, the Guilt" as a
split-single with the Jesus Lizard on Touch & Go Records. Choosing
Steve Albini (Pixies, the Breeders, Big Black, the Jesus Lizard) as their
producer, Nirvana recorded their third album, In Utero, in two weeks
during the spring of 1993. Following its completion, controversy began to
surround Nirvana again. Cobain suffered a heroin overdose on May 2, but
the event was hidden from the press. The following month, Love called
police to their Seattle home after Cobain locked himself in the bathroom,
threatening suicide. Prior to debuting In Utero material during the New
Music Seminar at New York's Roseland Ballroom in July, Cobain had another
covered-up overdose. By that time, reports began to circulate, including
an article in Newsweek, that DGC was unhappy with the forthcoming album,
accusing that the band deliberately made an uncommercial record. Both the
band and the label denied such allegations. Deciding that Albini's
production was too flat, Nirvana decided to remaster the album with
R.E.M.'s producer, Scott Litt.
In Utero was released in September of 1993
to positive reviews and strong initial sales, debuting at the top of the
U.S. and U.K. charts. Nirvana supported it with a fall American tour,
hiring former Germs member Pat Smear as an auxiliary guitarist. While the
album and the tour were both successful, sales weren't quite as strong as
expected, with several shows not selling out until the week of the
concert. As a result, the group agreed to play MTV's acoustic Unplugged
show at the end of the year, and sales of In Utero picked up after its
December airing. After wrapping up the U.S. tour on January 8, 1994, with
a show at Center Arena in Seattle, Nirvana embarked on a European tour in
February. Following a concert in Munich on February 29, Cobain stayed in
Rome to vacation with Love. On March 4, she awakened to find that Cobain
had attempted suicide by overdosing on the tranquilizer Rohypnol and
drinking champagne. While the attempt was initially reported as an
accidental overdose, it was known within the Nirvana camp that the
vocalist had left behind a suicide note.
Cobain returned to Seattle within a week of
his hospitalization and his mental illness began to grow. On March 18, the
police had to again talk the singer out of suicide after he locked himself
in a room threatening to kill himself. Love and Nirvana's management
organized an intervention program that resulted in Cobain's admission to
the Exodus Recovery Center in L.A. on March 30, but he escaped from the
clinic on April 1, returning to Seattle. His mother filed a missing
persons report on April 4. The following day, Cobain shot himself in the
head at his Seattle home. His body wasn't discovered until April 8, when
an electrician contracted to install an alarm system at the Cobain house
stumbled upon the body. After his death, Kurt Cobain was quickly anointed
as a spokesman for Generation X, as well as a symbol of its tortured
angst.
Novoselic and Grohl planned to release a
double-disc live album at the end of 1994, but sorting through the tapes
proved to be too painful, so MTV Unplugged in New York appeared in its
place. The album debuted at the top of the British and American charts, as
a home video comprised of live performances and interviews from the band's
Nevermind-era, titled Live! Tonight! Sold Out!, was issued at the same
time (the project began prior to Cobain's passing and was completed by
surviving bandmembers).
In 1996, its electric counterpart, From the
Muddy Banks of the Wishkah, was released, debuting at the top of the U.S.
charts. Following Cobain's death, Grohl formed the Foo Fighters (early
rumors that Novoselic would also be a member of the band ultimately proved
to be false) -- releasing their self-titled debut album in 1995, followed
by The Colour and the Shape in 1997 and There Is Nothing Left to Lose in
1999. Novoselic formed the trio Sweet 75, releasing their debut in the
spring of 1997, and also appeared along with former Dead Kennedys'
frontman Jello Biafra and former Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil on the
2000 live set Live From the Battle in Seattle under the name the No W.T.O.
Combo.
By the late '90s, research began by
Novoselic for a proposed box set of previously unreleased songs from
throughout Nirvana's career. The project was supposed to surface in the
fall of 2001 (to coincide with the tenth anniversary release of Nevermind),
but legal problems began to surface. In 1997, Grohl and Novoselic formed
the Nirvana L.L.C. partnership with Courtney Love (who manages Cobain's
estate) -- a company that required a unanimous vote by all three regarding
future albums, photos, and anything else Nirvana-related. When all three
couldn't agree on the songs to be included on the box set, the matter was
taken to court as Love attempted to dissolve the partnership. The project
was ultimately shelved indefinitely as any legal decision was tied up in
court. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine & Greg Prato, All Music Guide
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Nirvana - nirvana - NIRVANA -
Nervana - Norvana - Kurt Cobain - Kurt CoBane - Krut Cobain
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