The band Kurt Cobain always wanted to match: “One of the most popular alternative rock bands”
For many grunge bands, having ambitions as an artist was the last thing on their minds. Every piece of the music scene was about being yourself as much as possible and even daring to say that someone liked Led Zeppelin or, worse yet, Van Halen would have been laughed out of the room by any Melvins fan. Even for a scene with a few snobs about real rock and roll, Kurt Cobain had a certain band in mind when putting together his masterpieces.
But before Nirvana even broke out onto the scene, grunge didn’t have a set sound yet. Melvins may have laid the groundwork for what many people think of as grunge, but that heavy-as-hell riffing over a few atonal parts was miles away from what Soundgarden, which in turn was on another planet compared to what Mother Love Bone sounded like.
And although Cobain claimed to be a massive Melvins fan, his music didn’t always fit in with their sound, either. He had been interested in making great guitar hooks and melodies that could make people sing along, and that didn’t really suit what Buzz Osborne was doing, hence why he wasn’t accepted as one of the group’s guitarists back in the day.
Regardless of who accepted them at the time, though, Cobain always held onto his punk rock ethos. He could make a great pop song when he wanted to, but throughout the recording of Bleach, he never seemed completely satisfied until that same catchy tune was buried underneath a wall of guitar fuzz and feedback. Then again, if anyone wanted that kind of music, they would probably find it better going back to Sonic Youth.
While Sonic Youth was still a punk band at heart, they seemed to miss the boat on the golden age of the genre. So now that they had punk and post-punk to work with, albums like Daydream Nation were the epitome of what alternative rock would become, complete with some of the most bizarre guitar tunings and favouring raw noise over trying to sound like the next Jimmy Page.
Even when Nirvana hit the big time, Cobain held onto his ambition of following in the footsteps of Sonic Youth, saying, “I would have been comfortable playing to a thousand people. That was basically our goal–to get up to that size of a club, to be one of the most popular alternative rock bands like Sonic Youth.”
Cobain did get his wish to some extent, but there was no chance that people would pick a song like ‘Kool Thing’ over ‘In Bloom’ any day of the week once the alternative explosion happened in 1991. While Kim Gordon had been the one who recommended Nirvana join Geffen Records, they had become the kind of band big enough to overpower any other alternative rock act that came their way.
Cobain may not have understood the hype that Nirvana was getting in their prime, but sometimes it’s not about playing to the “right” kind of audience. Regardless of how artists want their music to be perceived, it can get so powerful that the mainstream comes to them instead of vice versa.
