The band Kurt Cobain called “an untalented piece of shit”
When Nirvana hit it big, Kurt Cobain was unwilling to play the typical music industry game. While he may have liked the idea of making music that millions of people could relate to, he wasn’t ready to accept the baggage that came with it, often speaking whatever was on his mind whenever he gave interviews. Although Cobain may have been relatively levelheaded once off the stage, he didn’t mince words when he thought a band was terrible.
If there were any one band that Cobain didn’t take to, it would have to be Guns N’ Roses. Starting a feud after declining the chance to tour with them, Cobain was always candid about how much he hated the LA-based hard rock outfit, thinking that they were making the most misogynistic rock music that the world had ever heard.
That’s not to say that Cobain wasn’t a fan of traditional hard rock. Outside of the various punk albums that he picked up on from his teenage years, the young songwriter was also known for being an avid fan of all types of hard rock music, listing projects by bands like Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith among his favourite albums of all time.
While Zeppelin and Aerosmith may have broken down the boundaries for how much fun hard rock could be, a different kind of music was slowly growing out of Los Angeles. With the release of Van Halen’s debut album, hair metal was just starting to make waves in the music scene, but it would an artist from the other side of the world to make it truly mainstream.
Storming out of New Jersey, Bon Jovi became one of the biggest rock success stories of the 1980s, riding the wave of glam metal as far as it would take them on singles like ‘Livin on a Prayer’ and ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’. Just like all hair metal acts, though, Jon Bon Jovi knew that he needed a different look once the likes of Pearl Jam started to take over the world.
Reframing himself as a rootsy rocker on albums like Keep the Faith, Bon Jovi had reinvented themselves as a darker band than before, featuring songs that dealt with serious topics rather than partying the night away. While many hair metal bands followed their lead, Cobain saw through the shallowness of the hangers-on of hair metal.
During an interview with Nirvana, Dave Grohl even remembered a conversation one of their photographers had with the hair metal icon, telling him that he wanted to be decked out in flannel and look like the Seattle scene. After being asked about what he thought, Cobain replied, “It just proves he’s a desperate, untalented piece of shit. Bon Jovi could be one of the nicest people in the world… his music sucks, but I don’t even want to bother with expressing those kind of opinions anyway”.
Although Cobain wanted to avoid any rock band drama at the time, there was no competition between him and the last gasps of the hair metal movement. After years of being told to party all night, fans were looking for something with more substance, and in Nirvana, they had found the leaders of the next generation of hard rock.
