Ten Years Gone

[dougo]

Kurt Cobain died ten years ago yesterday, April 5th, 1994. His body wasn't found until April 8th, so I guess that would be an additional day to memorialize if you missed it yesterday.

I remember waking up to the radio that day discussing a body being found in the attic of his house, but people thought he was in Europe and it was some crazy fan who snuck in or something; I don't remember exactly when I learned that it was confirmed to be his body, later that day at work or maybe even some days later (there was a lot of confusion).

It was a sad month, seeing his face everywhere (TV, magazine covers, t-shirts). It was strange to see the attention his death got in the national media, when at the time grunge was still not quite fully mainstream; and even then, he was just a guy in a popular band with a nasty drug habit who offed himself, and didn't seem to deserve the Lennon-like level of public mourning. On a personal level, however, his death did affect me deeply; Nirvana was never my favorite band or anything, but it and he represented a lot of things that were important to me, like the way the culture was changing (or the way I wanted it to change) as my generation was coming of age. Well, that's kind of vague, and not the whole of it, but I can't really put into words all of how I felt connected to him and how I wanted to see (and hear) him succeed (whatever that meant).

I'm curious about how the world would be different had he been able to do what he needed to survive (starting with a divorce, most likely), but I can't say that I wish he were alive because I don't really think it would be that different. I sometimes wonder the same thing about Hendrix surviving, but I've pretty much decided his soul would have been crushed by the '70s anyway. Instead I just fervently hope that Frances Bean will turn out OK and manage to put together a good life for herself.

[Also, MLK was assassinated 36 years ago the day before yesterday. I only know this because the U2 song "Pride" has the line "early morning, April 4". I hadn't noticed the nearness of those dates before, huh.]

Comments

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I don't have anything against hip-hop. There's some fantastically creative stuff going on in the hip-hop/R&B world (Missy Elliott, Outkast, the Roots, Jay-Z, N.E.R.D.) and I don't think it's going away anytime soon. The main thing that depressed me about the fall of grunge in the mid '90s was the rise of dancing boy bands and young divas; I realize that the next generation deserves their share of the pop culture focus, but it felt like we only got about 5 years or so in between the Boomers and them. I'm glad for the White Stripes, though.