The band Kurt Cobain dismissed as “really talentless”
We don’t just love rock and roll because of the music. We love the subcultures, subversiveness and history. We love Paul Weller calling Freddie Mercury “a cunt” and Paul McCartney calling Pet Sounds the “classic of the century”. We love the fact that Kurt Cobain could not only rattle off a world-changing new sound but stick his head above the parapet and actually have a few things to say after the fact, too.
And boy, did he have a few things to say. As he famously declared, “I like to have strong opinions with nothing to back them up with besides my primal sincerity. I like sincerity. I lack sincerity.” That last sentence is more of a mark of his vulnerability than a comment that holds much veracity. Whether he was standing up for feminism or critiquing bands of the past, he always seemed to be sternly sincere.
For instance, when he boldly opined that Guns N’ Roses were “really talentless people” who wrote “crap music”, there was no doubt that he meant it. By this stage, Cobain was reckoning with the dark side of rock ‘n’ roll. In fact, he even stated, “Rock ‘n’ roll has been exhausted,” just as Nirvana were rising to prominence.
“But that was always male rock ‘n’ roll,“ he added. “There’s a lot of girl groups, just now, within the last few years. The Breeders and the Riot Grrrls all have a hand in it. People are finally accepting women in those kinds of roles.” Well, music didn’t get much more male-orientated than Guns N’ Roses, and they drew the brunt of his ire.
At the time, Axl Rose was courting offence like a troll on Twitter. For example, the lyrics to ‘One in a Million’ reprehensible read, “Police and n******, that’s right/ Get outta my way/Don’t need to buy none of your/ Gold chains today.” And it gets worse still; Rose adds, “Immigrants and f******/ They make no sense to me/ They come to our country/ And think they’ll do as they please/ Like start some mini-Iran/ Or spread some fucking disease.”
”I just had to take this opportunity and spit big goobers all over his keyboards.”
Kurt Cobain
It’s easy to be outrageous, and Cobain creditably pointed this out, rebuffing the toxic tide that certain bands were trying to push into the mainstream. The Nirvana frontman took it upon himself to vilify the band. He tried to steer his own young fans clear of them. If Cobain’s outlook was to push rock ‘n’ roll into a new area, then in his eyes, Guns N’ Roses represented the worst of its history.
Naturally, Rose didn’t like this much. The whole thing came to a head at the 1992 MTV Awards when the bandana-sporting singer spotted Cobain backstage and told him to keep Courtney Love quiet. Metallica’s guitarist Kirk Hammett was there to witness the ugly incident, telling Revolver, “I was sitting there talking to Kurt backstage, and all of a sudden fucking Axl walks up, sees me, and looks at Kurt and … I’m like, ‘Oh no!’ And he goes right up to Kurt and says, ‘What’s your problem, motherfucker, what’s your problem!’ And so Kurt’s like, ‘Whatever, dude.’ … And [Axl’s] like, ‘I’ll fucking beat your ass. Come on. Let’s go!’”
Attempts to try and quell the situation were proving futile, so Cobain simply moved away before things got out of hand. In doing so, a spot of revenge proverbially presented itself, as he would later comment, “I spat on Axl’s keyboard. It was either that or beat him up. I saw his piano there, and I just had to take this opportunity and spit big goobers all over his keyboards.” Needless to say, there was no love lost between Cobain and his “talentless” enemy.
