What Nirvana Did For Us (the band, that is)

Nirvana - that is, the rock combo featuring Kurt Cobain, David Grohl, and Chris Novoselic (sp?) are often hailed as one of the revolutionary musical greats of rock music (shudder) history.

(If I start to sound like a magazine here, forgive me)

Anyway, for years after Cobain's death, it came to the point that any bad-mouthing of Nirvana was seriously frowned upon - people made you feel like a musical heathen. I for one was never a big Nirvana fan. To give them a chance, I bought their recently (i.e. within the last few years) released Best-Of album, but listened to it once or twice and was still not so impressed. Then again maybe a Best-Of is not the best way to get to know a band as they rarely contain the best of. (e.g. Guns 'N' Roses a typical example).

They are, however, hailed as a lynch-pin in a revolution, which changed the world of music as we knew it. To this, I agree - they were a hugely influential. But this often gets misinterpreted to mean that they were a trio of geniuses who invented punk music, or invented rock music, or were the Beethovens of the 90s, the Shakespeares of music, legends almost. I hate to bring Nirvana fans crashing back to reality, but the reality is far more mundane.
I would argue that their achievement was either a fluke, or a flash of common sense, rather than a wonderfully crafted revolution.

Here is my opinion of What Nirvana Did For Us.

Nirvana cured the world of Wyld Stallyns Syndrome.

Before Nirvana, rock music had a very different face. One only has to look at the major pre-Nirvana rock bands to see what I mean. Expensive hairdos & elaborate costumes, complicated guitar riffs and solos, perfect voices, expensive-sounding synthesisers. It was obvious that an awful lot of effort had gone into producing the likes of Iron Maiden, Guns 'N' Roses, Megadeth, (to a lesser extent) Metallica, etc. Even by just looking at them it seemed they were a class above us. There was always the image. Even the Guns 'N' Roses "couldn't give a shit" image seemed like a really carefully crafted one, as if they cared an awful lot about looking like they didn't care about anything.

This was hardly inspiring for the grass-roots musicians, the garage bands, etc. With the exception of drummers (who all sounded like Rick Allen at the time, even the ones with two hands), the quality required to beat out a Slash-style solo seemed unattainable by mere mortals. It was quite intimidating, because a bunch of lads couldn't sit down one day, say "hey let's start a band", and hope to be even almost as good at their instruments & song-writing as the rock bands of the time. Even if they could afford the equipment, practise space and lessons, they would have to be really serious, or end up like Wyld Stallyns (pre Rufus) with incoherent guitar riffs or solos, in other words, demoralisingly crap.

Nirvana then came along, and what they did was brought the music to the people (or is it the people to the music?). They were the first band to make it really big, with simple chords, and simple meaningless lyrics which don't appear to be about anything, and simple-sounding songs with no major changes.

They made it OK to keep music simple. Now for a bunch of youngfellas to set up a band, with a couple of cheapish instruments, amps and pedals, and only a few weeks or short months of practise (no lessons or voice-training required), could be covering Nirvana songs, and now that it was acceptable (thanks to Nirvana's celebrity status), they could even write their own simple four-chord songs "almost as good as Nirvana", and play them to audiences without being afraid of sounding like a bunch of tone-deaf monkeys with the shakes. They themselves even looked like a normal enough group of messers. They didn't seem to have a carefully crafted image dreamed up by an entourage of costume, make-up & set designers, with days put into making sure your pout looks just right, and this gave the aspiring youngfellas of the scene the impression, "If they can do it, why can't I?"

Had Wyld Stallyns been trying to copy Nirvana instead of Iron Maiden, they would have easily obtained listenability within a few months. But without Nirvana's simple guidance, had they not had the help of a time-machine and a man from the future reassuring them of their destiny, they too would have faded into obscurity after they gave up trying to be like the anthem-producing perceived-demi-gods of the time.

Nirvana paved the road (or bridged the chasm?) from grass-roots messer-music to best-selling music, dragged us out of muscial dregs the 80s, and severely opened our minds to the possibilities of music - a medium previously controlled by the ambitious and well-resourced alone.

But their huge positive influence - ironically - wasn't thanks to their creative genius, but rather their lack of it (or rather their success despite their lack of it). They weren't the Martin Luther Kings of music, rather the Rosa Parkses.

After Nirvana, bands started popping up everywhere in nearly every city, and far more started making it to the point of playing in front of people. And while a huge number of aspiring young musicians still got bored and went home, there was still a large enough pool to move on and start coming up with their own sounds, decide they wanted to move on, stop copying the four-chord distortion simple songs and experiment and be original, leading to the huge diversity of rock music that we have today.

But thanks to Nirvana, it's now possible for a group of friends to get together and form a band good enough to play... and maybe from there, who knows?

It's also possible for people like me not to like their music, but to accept what they've done for the world of music without feeling like we're giving in to the Nirvana lovers.