Eleven years...

Saw this as a headline on AOL yesterday. (Yes, I still use AOL. When you’ve had the same email address for ten plus years it is really difficult to change). This week is the eleventh anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death. And I do remember where I was eleven years ago this week. Within a few days of Cobain’s passing I took the GRE, attended my godfather’s wedding, and purchased Sarah McLachlan’s “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy”. I have no idea why I can remember all of those things, I just do.

The real point is there is still a debate as to the impact of Cobain and Nirvana and what would the world have been like if he had lived (or in a better scenario, not married Courtney Love). There are certain undeniable points. Smells Like Teen Spirit was the first huge grunge hit. It took over the MTV airways and, other than Metallica’s Enter Sandman, at one point seemed to be the only video MTV showed in 1991. Following up with Come As You Are was incredible and to me, that song put the nail in the coffin of hair metal.

But it is true to say that it wasn’t just Nirvana. Pearl Jam breaks a few months later and goes on to more mainstream success. Remember, Eddie Vedder is the one who makes the cover of Time magazine, not Kurt. Add in all of the other Seattle bands and it was not just Nirvana. In Utero didn’t have the same punch as Nevermind and at the time of Kurt’s death you already had the feeling that the band was spinning out of control and was not long for this world.

The real reason was that they became too successful and Kurt had no idea how to deal with it. I mean, here was a guy who grew up on the punk rock ethos and was very happy to play in small clubs and make good music. Suddenly he is selling millions of discs and his face is all over magazines and he is being named the voice of a generation and the guy just could not handle it. I’m not sure that many people could. There are a few souls who seek attention so much that they revel in that type of spotlight but you knew Cobain wasn’t one of them. I still remember him joking that he wanted to make the follow up to Nevermind a polka record, something that would not sell so he could just go back to being a guy in a band again.

Even if it would have lasted I don’t know where it would have gone. I could never see Nirvana doing the big stadium shows like Pearl Jam ended up doing. I mean, it would have been three guys on stage dwarfed by huge Jumbotrons with no light show, no theater, just three guys playing music. We did miss out on a lot of great songs though and I still feel that along with the tragic loss of Jeff Buckley, the musical heart of Gen X left us before it ever really got started.

So what happened eleven years ago? Did Gen X lose its spokesman? Or did we just realize that our moment in the national conscious was reaching its end? The person that the media had claimed as our spokesman had left us and it was time to declare the end of grunge, the end of the alternative, the return of the mainstream. It was time to start bringing in the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys and everyone else who could sing off key and gyrate vaguely in time to the music. It was time to move on to Generation Y.

It still doesn’t seem like it was eleven years ago. That much time could not have passed. I mean, wouldn’t we have more to show for it?