“I can’t waste my time on that”: the game-changing band Kurt Cobain thought had no talent
The whole road to creating the grunge movement wasn’t something that happened overnight. The Seattle scene had been going strong for years long before Nirvana debuted their video for ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, but once everyone had had their fill of spandex-clad rock and rollers coming out of California, Kurt Cobain screaming at the top of his lungs may as well have been a godsend. Although Cobain was never afraid to wear his mainstream influences on his sleeve, he didn’t think that everyone necessarily deserved a chance at the spotlight.
But becoming as famous as Nirvana were wasn’t exactly what Cobain had in mind, either. Dave Grohl had talked about Cobain having great ambitions to be a part of one of the greatest bands in the world, but when he found out about all the baggage that went along with it, being the voice of a generation wasn’t the kind of responsibility that he was comfortable with, especially when it was all done in service to a record like Nevermind.
Outside of being critical about the mix of his magnum opus, Cobain also had reservations about the groups that did wind up getting popular out of Seattle. He held Soundgarden in high regard and considered Melvins one of his heroes, but acts like Pearl Jam had far too much in common with classic rock for him to care all that much.
It’s not hard to see why, either. Eddie Vedder may have been unmistakably honest about the pain that he felt inside, but compared to everyone else who had a primal approach to their musicianship, Cobain only needed to take one look at Mike McCready soloing and roll his eyes. But that’s not McCready’s fault, though. Many bands got their roots from blues, so maybe it was a case of McCready’s style having too much in common with Guns N’ Roses.
“They’re really talentless people, and they write crap music.”
kurt cobain
Considering everything that was coming out of Los Angeles at the time, though, Axl Rose was far from the frontman that everyone thought of when looking at the Sunset Strip. He was far more aggressive and could get to the point when talking about anything he wanted, but as far as Cobain was concerned, what Rose was doing was arguably worse than the glamorous side of the city.
Whereas most groups at least had a following for a reason, Cobain felt that Guns N’ Roses were a complete waste of time, saying, “I can’t even waste my time on that band because they’re so obviously pathetic and untalented. I used to think that everything in the mainstream pop world was crap, but now that some underground bands have been signed with majors, I take Guns N’ Roses as more of an offence. I have to look into it more: They’re really talentless people, and they write crap music, and they’re the most popular rock band on the earth right now. I can’t believe it.”
Coming from the underground Seattle scene, Cobain most likely saw their transition into larger-than-life rockstars as another major offence. The casual misogyny and prejudice probably didn’t help matters, but looking at how many lavish ballads they had in their arsenal, like ‘November Rain’, Cobain probably felt the band had a whole lot of nerve calling themselves fans of punk rock.
Then again, the fact that both of them traded lines back and forth in the press may have been a case of them not understanding what the other was trying to say half the time. They approached rock and roll in a much different way, but whereas Cobain wanted to say his piece every time someone gave him a microphone, Rose was the school bully type who figured the best way to settle a score was with fists first.
