Kurt Cobain would have turned 50 today

As someone who graduated high school in the ’90s, the revelation that Kurt Cobain would have turned 50 today doesn’t just make me feel old (it does) but also had me thinking about just how much Kurt and his music meant to my generation. I’ll never forget listening to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the first time and then wishing Much Music would just play the video over and over again. Once I got my copy of Nevermind, I was hooked. The energy was contagious. The sound was like nothing I’d ever heard… it was like a mix of Led Zeppelin, The Ramones, The Beatles and David Bowie all in one. And judging from my CD collection just a couple years after Nevermind was released, my taste in music was never the same.

The more I learned about Kurt and Nirvana, the more I loved them. I remember reading that Kurt’s favourite singer was Freddie Mercury, and at the time I barely knew who Freddie was. But I knew if Kurt thought he was the best he must have been amazing so I did some research and began to learn more about Nirvana’s influences. Queen, Zeppelin, The Stooges, Bad Brains, R.E.M…. I dug deep into the libraries of those artists all due to Kurt.  And when I found out Kurt didn’t know how to read music, it was just confirmation that he was more like me than other rock stars. Throw in the fact that all of this was happening in Seattle, the closest American city to where I grew up, and it’s easy to see how he became one of my biggest musical influences.

Just like I’ll never forget hearing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on Much Music for the first time, I’ll never forget buying a copy of their 1st album Bleach at West Edmonton Mall while on a junior high volleyball trip, waiting outside HMV on release day for In Utero and then sitting in shock in a hotel in Banff when I returned from a day of spring skiing to find out that one of my musical heroes was gone on April 4th, 1994.

Even after his death, Kurt was guiding my musical sensibilities. When Nirvana’s perfect acoustic/live album Unplugged in New York was released, the two songs that jumped out of the speakers were “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” and “The Man Who Sold The World”. I’d never heard these Nirvana songs before (and I’d heard almost every song Nirvana had recorded at that point), so when I found out one song was originally by blues man Lead Belly and the other by David Bowie, I naturally began digging into the careers of those two iconic artists. And I can now say that Lead Belly and David Bowie are two of my favourite artists ever. Thanks Kurt.

It’s hard to imagine what Nirvana would have sounded like in 2017 if Kurt hadn’t left us so soon. Would they have gone in a more acoustic direction, like their Unplugged album and some interviews suggest? Would Dave Grohl have stayed in the band or eventually felt the need to break free so he could let his own immense musical talents flow? Would the band have imploded under the weight of their own success? We’ll never know.

Thank you Kurt. While I miss growing old without more Nirvana, I’ll always be in your debt for opening my ears to SO MUCH and proving that different is good.