Kurt Cobain
...e Rock n’ Roll lifestyle. Cobain hated the slick, MTV-driven rock establishment so much they took it over. Nirvana replaced the prefab sentiments of pop with hard, unreconstituted emotions. They got rich and went to Number1 and they’re responsible for other bands going to Number1 such as Pearl Jam, Sound garden, and Alice In Chains. Cobain never took his band as seriously as everyone else did, that he once wrote, "I'm the first to admit that we're the '90s version of Cheap Trick." But despite his corrosive guitar playing, he wrote gorgeous, airtight melodies. And finally, he reminded his peers they were not alone, though all the evidence suggests that he was. The fury of Nirvana's music spoke to his generation because they'd grown up more or less the same way. Which is to say: grunge is what happens when children of divorce get their hands on guitars. The teens of the 90s had never heard this different crunching of screaming songs that would eventually become the grunge sound. I would have liked to have met Cobain before his tragic death to ask how he felt about his unexcepted success, and his perception of selling-out his punk band roots. Cobain felt he was attracting the wrong fans who did not understand what his lyrics stood for or where his words came from. Cobain fell into heroin addiction in the early 90s. He said he used it as a shield against the rigorous demands of touring and to stop the pains of stomach ulcers. Cobain was continuously distressed to see that what he wrote and how it was interpreted by some fans were miles apart. He found out that he was no longer in control of his music. He constantly worried his band had sold out. Whatever demons Cobain lived with, his tragic suicide left the music world without...