Listening to Nirvana is making me appreciate GN'R more

[Philipm787]

4 hours ago, Len B'stard said:

'it's so phoney how he tried to put off this image of a troubled person'

Uh...he must've been mildly troubled to have blown his head off with a shotgun surely?

Or did he?

[wasted]

2 hours ago, EvanG said:

They always said in a lot of interviews that all they wanted was to have enough succes to being able to live off their music and play clubs but that they didn't care about top ten records or any of that. There's nothing ''fake'' about that, success definitely was hard for them to take, especially Kurt who was such a private guy anyway. Kurt always said that his favourite time in the band was right before Nevermind started selling because there was a buzz of excitement in the air but things weren't ''crazy'' yet because of all the fame and succes. When Nirvana became the most popular band on the planet for a short while in early 1992 and everyone wanted something from them (even U2, Metallica and GnR asked them to tour) he decided to cut touring and crawled away in a cheap apartment to do nothing but paint and do drugs, instead of living a famous rockstar life at the height of his fame. What a phony!

Of course he must have enjoyed that millions of kids around the world liked his music, who wouldn't? We're talking about someone who grew up in a shithole where succes was unheard of and who was always considered a loser by everyone. I've said this before in here, his best friend once said that Kurt wanted to play a rockshow for 100,000 kids and at the same time he felt the punk guilt for wanting that in the first place. He was very contradictive. 

 

I think you can feel that in any walk of life. Especially kids that don't want to get office jobs or aspire to middle class life. There's possibly a lot of kids that didn't want what their parents wanted. Or didn't appreciate that the war was over, there was no post war boom. In a way he did get in with a load of lefties. Kind of typical anti establishment, anti yuppie, anti boomer gen xers. High school seemed to carry weight. All the categories of people and that's how you defined yourself. Everyone knew who they were. I do wonder if he like a lot of people, you are who you are, in your 20s and he played that out. It's microcosm but it ends. There's a certain cache or success in being the king of slackers in your 20s. There's rewards. But by the late 20s, with his addictions and wife and baby. Suddenly he realised oh actually I'm just an idiot but it was too late. In your 20s there is hope all these ideas about politics and who the president is and which music is cool and who you are might add up to something. But by the time a he rode that wave probably more extremely than most he was in the end just a guy with massive heroin habit and really absolutely nowhere to go ideologically in his mind he was just a sold out old punk. He had some ideals but really they mean jack shit. Mark Lanegan when Screaming Treees ended he was broke and took a painting job some labouring job. I couldn't see Kurt doing that just being a regular joe. He was way to o famous for that. But he was kind of normal in that pseudo intellectual bohemian thing. But then on the other side you are playing stadiums. But is he anymore pretentious than Perry, Anthony, Axl? Not really he just wasn't tough enough to just go fuck it. He wasn't arty slash psycho kick boxer. There was really nothing in the rock pig lifestyle for him. I don't think he was banging groupies. His drug use seems more self medicating than thrill seeking. I think even those 100k kids in the crowd he felt guilt about what they were really buying into. He questioned it, he was leading default. If there were some liberal political ideas around Nevermind, In Utero is just junkie rock. There's very little political ideals there. There's no mission left. There's stuff about him, lines you read into but nothing really to get fired up about. There's not much romance to it. There's no wine drinking in France like Dylan. There's no Keef rogue lifestyle. There's no motorbikes or boxing fantasies. First line of the record is Teenage angst has paid off well now I'm bored and old. Well damn, where do you go from there?

[EvanG]

I understand some people might think of him as fake because of all the contradictions... he once wrote in this journal that he wouldn't mind ''sucking up to the big wigs'' in order for his band to make it, and then post-Nevermind he was complaining about fame and succes, but there is so much more than meets the eye. This guy was so poor that he was homeless and living in his car after they recorded Nevermind, and then a few months later he was a famous rock star and on the cover of Rolling Stone... if you're already an unstable person to begin with, try to deal with that! Even the most grounded person in the world would have a hard time dealing with something like that. I think he got more than he bargained for and he found out eventually that being in a succesful band and doing the same thing on stage every night is just another job and his passion was gone. Combine that with the pressure, the heroin addiction, the crazy wife situation which was heading for a divorce, the depressions, etc.