It was just a stupid Sum 41 song on the radio – and not even the whole thing – but it reminded me of a few years back when I was working in the studio with young punk bands. Good, fun stuff.
My sense of fun is pretty congested these days. Everything has to have such depth of substance for it to be worth anything – or so I tell myself. I’m always sticking my nose into some thick book of theology or spiritual reflection – and I enjoy it immensely, but I’ve forgotten the power of a few simple chords played REALLY LOUD.While I’m busy trying to understand the complex movements of Rachmaninov and the off-beat time signatures of Dave Brubeck, there are small groups of kids out there banging on their instruments just for the heck of it. I daresay their music will move me a fair bit if it hits me at the right time. And it will remind me of my youth which, at only 30 years of age, is not that far away chronologically but seems so far away that it must never have happened.
Mostly, I miss the anger. Anger? It was all someone else’s – Kurt Cobain’s and Zack de la Rocha‘s and Chuck D‘s and Mark Solomon‘s. I never had much of my own, but that didn’t stop me from partaking in the catharsis. My middle-class Canadian life afforded me precious few encounters with the ‘real world’ these artists knew. I had no abusive father, no alcoholic mother, no overly troubled sister… for the most part my life was the life that these people probably wanted. Ironically, I always wanted to be them – until Kurt killed himself.
I must be one of those narcissists who only appreciate things when they’re alone.” Kurt said in his suicide note, “I’m too sensitive. I need to be slightly numb in order to regain the enthusiasm I once had as a child.”
I didn’t understand Kurt Cobain but I did understand his music. It was something loud and precious and bold, but not beautiful in any sense of the word unless you called it a beautiful mess. The day he shot himself we drove around our small town in my friend’s yellow 1969 Valiant (yes, actual picture below), Nirvana blaring from the speakers.
A fair bit of anger emerged that day along with shock and grief. Sitting in the passen
ger seat of that car, music at a volume that it could easily be heard on both sides of the street, I waited to catch someone’s eye and when I did I’d just stare. My stare was all about saying “It was you – you did this to Kurt Cobain! Why didn’t you love him?”
I didn’t understand as an 18-year-old kid that the problem wasn’t that more people didn’t love Kurt – it was that Kurt didn’t love himself. An even bigger problem was that Kurt didn’t love Jesus, even though he was loved BY Jesus.
Kurt’s wife Courtney had some thoughts on love that she shared with the crowd that had gathered to mourn:
“I want you to know one thing, that 80′s tough love bull—-, it doesn’t work, it’s not real, it doesn’t work. I should’ve let him, we all should’ve let him have his numbness. We should’ve let him have the thing that made him feel better, that made his stomach feel better, we should’ve let him have it, instead of trying to strip away his skin. Now you go home and tell your parents: ‘Don’t you ever try that tough love bull—- on me, cause it doesn’t f—— work.’ That’s… that’s what I think.”
What was Kurt Cobain’s life? A tragic triumph? A sad waste? I’m sorry he had to go through the pain he did, but I’m glad we have on record one of the only things that made that pain go away – at least for moments in time.
So do I really love rock and roll? Nah, can’t say that I do. I can be infatuated at times, but with a few exceptions its all candy, and it will rot your teeth. Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, Rachmaninov – these are things you learn to love. They’re like the girl in school who doesn’t catch your eye at first but becomes the most beautiful girl in the world the better you get to 
know her.
The tragic, drugged-out rock star persona is a sham; kids around the world would do well to recognize that fact. We buy this BS and put these tortured artists on pedestals and ultimately contribute to their untimely deaths, after which they become “immortals”while the fat record execs they rail so violently against – well, they keep getting richer and fatter while Kurt has passed into eternity.
And no matter how screwed up, how reckless with their lives, no matter how many sons and daughters they left behind fatherless, if they die young, they’re automatic candidates for sainthood. Don’t tell me rock and roll isn’t our religion.
Can’t handle the fame? Shun the limelight as often as you can. Damage your career until it is on a level you can handle.
The real hero here is Eddie Vedder.
