Michael J Fox on his love for the 1990s grunge scene
Cinema listings in the 1980s were filled to the brim with big-budget blockbusters and tender coming-of-age stories. Steven Spielberg rose further to global acclaim with family favourites like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and the Indiana Jones series. John Hughes won generations of teens over with The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. And somewhere in between, Michael J Fox became an icon of the era as the face of Back to the Future.
Existing somewhere between those two spaces, as a time-travelling sci-fi flick and a tale of a teen navigating family, fate, and romance, Back to the Future seems emblematic of the era. Though the trilogy flitted between timelines with ease, taking viewers to 1955, 2015 and even 1885, its iconography was intrinsically linked to the 1980s. The silver DeLorean, Marty McFly’s crimson vest and matching Nikes, even the vision of a future with flying cars and hoverboards came to epitomise the style of the 1980s.
At the centre of it all was Fox, wielding a Gibson guitar and a charm that would easily win over generations of audiences. The star became one of the defining actors of the era, finding further success in Teen Wolf and, later in his career, as Stuart Little. Even now, decades later, Fox is still associated with the decade of cinema that spawned his success, but his interest in the arts extends far beyond it.
In fact, when it comes to music, Fox experienced a blip during the 1980s. While speaking with USA Weekend, the Back to the Future star shared his love for the music of his youth, of the 1960s and 1970s, but admitted that he “took the ‘80s off”. This makes sense, given how busy his schedule must have been during this era. Fox couldn’t have had too much time to sit and listen to the radio.
However, Fox fell back in love with music in the 1990s, particularly with the burgeoning grunge scene. The era spawned some of the most exciting new guitar music that audiences had seen in a long time, including fuzzy shoegaze and catchy Britpop in the United Kingdom. But it was a genre from a little closer to home that endeared itself to Fox: grunge music. The 1980s had provided initial glimpses at the burgeoning scene, with gritty guitars and nihilistic lyrics, but the genre came into its own in the early 1990s.
This was largely down to the grunge scene in Washington, which spawned some of Fox’s favourite artists of the era, namely Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. These three names became integral to the grunge movement, pushing it beyond local venues and labels and into the mainstream. They injected guitar music with a new sense of life, making it exciting again to new audiences.
Their sludgy sound proved to resonate beyond the walls of grubby underground venues, winning over the admiration of listeners across the world, including Fox. Nirvana enjoyed particular commercial success – their signature track ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ not only became a staple of the genre, but won them chart success, too. Decades later, the grunge music of the 1990s retains a cult following, and Kurt Cobain remains one of the most iconic rock frontmen of all time.
