Kurt Cobain died 20 years ago today.
Nirvana were an important part of my youth. I could list all the reasons why I felt they were important and the sort of connection I had to them but it’s the sort of thing that has probably been done over and over in the 23 years since Nevermind was released.
What is more of interest is how long ago that seems, how old it makes me feel and the reducing significance that their impact has had on me over time.
I wonder if this is how our parents generation feel about the Beatles. They’re a band that I dislike for possibly the most stupid of stupid reasons. I don’t see anything original in them because everyone who has come since has ripped them off. So I find their music uninteresting. However, for my parents generation, they were the defining band. They were the ones who changed the way the world worked, which is how I feel about Nirvana.
For my 18 month old niece (and any children I hopefully might have someday), by the time they reach adulthood, Cobain would have been dead for about 40 years. That would mean he’d have been gone two generations. So much could have changed in that sort of time period.
It’s not just the next generations who won’t appreciate the significance of Nirvana. There was a period when I probably didn’t go more than a day without listening to one of their albums. Now, I could easily go a year without doing so. What seemed to be the most important thing in the world at the time is clearly no longer so. I just don’t feel as strongly about them as I used to, although I recogise the effect that they had on my life.
There was a time when I thought that owning every Mansun EP ever released was the most important thing in the world. A couple of decades later, I can’t work out why I had that line of thought. The significance of these events has faded into the past.
When you look at children of today with their obsessions with the heelies and The One Directions and the pogs and the Spongebob Squarepantses, it is difficult to criticise them for being silly and just following fads and having stupid obsessions, as I did the exact same sort of things. I bleached my hair to look more like Cobain, I called my first guitar Mavis after a fictional character from a Mansun song and several other things that I have either forgotten about or am now too embarrassed to admit.
One of the things I find uncomfortable about with growing up is not that I have discarded interests out of choice, but that they have slowly lost their significance.
Past Stew wants to know what the hell is up with Present Stew and why he has sold out on his punk rock values. Future Stew will want to know why Present Stew even cares about this.
Present Stew just wants a dressing gown and a nice pair of slippers.