The first 1970s punk bands Kurt Cobain fell in love with: “In-your-face and compressed”
Although the definition of punk and punk rock remains fairly clear, it’s difficult to think of anyone from any other era who understood and epitomised its core ethos more than Kurt Cobain.
“Punk rock should mean freedom,” he once said, “Liking and accepting anything that you like. Playing whatever you want. As sloppy as you want. As long as it’s good and it has passion.”
With this definition in mind, therefore, Cobain was no doubt one of the ultimate punk leaders and pioneers. Granted, he existed in a different timeline with music that defined and supercharged the entire grunge movement, but when you take all the principles he lived by and how much he valued authenticity in art, punk was no doubt one of the most defining facets of his identity.
And this went beyond the musical sensibilities, shaping the way he felt and viewed the world around him. After all, Cobain knew he was something of an outsider from day one, and found solace in punk music not only because its aggression gave him an outlet for his own dark thoughts and experiences, but also because it gave a platform for those deeper feelings of alienation and disconnection that he later poured into his own music.
When Nirvana first broke onto the scene with Bleach, that was one of the main things people loved about Cobain’s words and stories: that they gave voice to the things people daren’t explore elsewhere, or spotlighted the parts of existence that didn’t exist in other facets of the rock scene. Because that was Cobain’s ethos too, which was not to be the same as other rock bands or fall into the same patterns, using unnecessarily derogatory language just to seem more rock ‘n’ roll.
But suppose it was easier for Cobain to be this way because he was always more authentic than most anyway. Growing up, he genuinely loved punk music because of how it made him feel. He didn’t have much access to it in the microcosm that was Aberdeen, but from the moment he first heard the sounds of Sex Pistols secondhand through Creem covers in the mid-1980s, he knew he’d cottoned on to some kind of calling.
From there, his world opened up, but the problem was that he physically couldn’t be as close to the hustle and bustle of it as he wanted to be. “I would read about [Sex Pistols] and just fantasise about how amazing it would be to hear their music and to be a part of it,” he later explained, “But I was like 11 years old, and I couldn’t possibly have followed them on the tour.”
Another issue was that Cobain’s parents rarely took him to Seattle, so finding an outlet once he’d been exposed to music like that was tough. However, his pursuit never wavered, and his patience and interest persisted enough for him to enjoy those bands and sounds when they finally did leak through into Aberdeen, allowing him to visit local record stores and buy records by Devo and Oingo Boingo.
But when you look at Cobain’s other punk influences, from Black Flag and Tales of Terror to The Clash, it’s easy to see how much all roads lead to Sex Pistols, and how that familiar aggression and cutthroat honesty were things the grunge leader took with him in his own material, shaping how he expressed his views while still appearing soft and vulnerable.
As he explained, “It’s totally in-your-face and compressed. All the hype the Sex Pistols had was totally deserved; they deserved everything that they got. Johnny Rotten was the one I identified with; he was the sensitive one.”
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