"HOMOSEXUAL SEX RULES"
June 4th 2008 12:53
[Just because I love him..Part 1]
At the age of 18, Kurt Cobain was arrested for spraying the above slogan on the side of a bank in his redneck run hometown. According to Rolling Stone Magazine, the contents inside his pockets (taken from a police report) included: a guitar pick, a key, a beer, a cassette and a mood ring. The cassette was from a punk band called Millions of Dead Cops.
Never quite fitting into a town where the main trade was logging, Cobain found his own ways to profess his disgust and anger at the world. Rather than graffiti serving as the act of rebellion, he focused more on the use of walls and cars as means of communication. In other words, shit stirring. He liked to scrawl the word “Queer” on the side of trucks owned by local loggers, and “God is Gay” was also popular on his list.
Apart from being kicked out of home at 17 yrs for dropping out of school and playing music, the effects of his parents divorce seemed to have embedded themselves into him, forming a major part of who he was to become.
Before Cobain’s parents split when he was eight years old, his mother told Rolling Stone that as a child “He got up every day with such joy that there was another day to be had. It kind of scared me because he had perceptions like I’ve never seen a small child have. He had life figured out really young. He knew life wasn’t always fair”.
Despite having a sense of the bigger picture as a young child, Cobain never recovered from the divorce. His mother commented that his entire demeanor changed and figments of the Kurt Cobain we know began to emerge. “It just destroyed his life. He changed completely. I think he was ashamed. And he became very inward.. It just devastated him” she told Rolling Stone.
Cobain resented the stardom and the extent of success that was caused by Nirvana’s second album, Nevermind. The irony of his underground punk rock band becoming mainstream, coupled by his instant celebrity status went against the very roots of the band, and particularly Cobain himself. Jocks that taunted him through high school were blindly singing along to the groups most famous song, Smells Like Teen Spirit. A lot of the audience simply weren’t understanding the lyrics or the true fuel behind them. According to Rolling Stone an especially large sting came when the jock mocking song Territorial Pissing was used as the background music to a football show. Cobain even composed the song In Bloom around this very issue, with a sneeringly catchy tune and lyrics, “He’s the one who likes all the pretty songs/ And he likes to sing along /And he likes to shoot his guns /But he don’t know what it means.”
In August 1991, director Samuel Bayer was roped into making the film clip for Smells Like Teen Spirit. Immediately Bayer and Cobain butted heads, with the director not giving the video quite the satanic edge that Kurt was pushing for. In stead of abandoned cars sprinkled in the background and kids burning money, Cobain was forced to settle for the ‘directors cut’ of slightly less whorish looking cheer leaders and less destruction overall. Rolling Stone quoted Bayer saying “Kurt was so pissed off with me, he refused to lip sync! So I went to management and said, ‘If Kurt doesn’t pretend to sing, we don’t have a video”. So of course Kurt had to agree in the end and lip synced with an extra spark of vindictiveness, glaring aggressively into the camera and according to the director, ironically “created something quite wonderful”.
To be continued... x.
At the age of 18, Kurt Cobain was arrested for spraying the above slogan on the side of a bank in his redneck run hometown. According to Rolling Stone Magazine, the contents inside his pockets (taken from a police report) included: a guitar pick, a key, a beer, a cassette and a mood ring. The cassette was from a punk band called Millions of Dead Cops.
Never quite fitting into a town where the main trade was logging, Cobain found his own ways to profess his disgust and anger at the world. Rather than graffiti serving as the act of rebellion, he focused more on the use of walls and cars as means of communication. In other words, shit stirring. He liked to scrawl the word “Queer” on the side of trucks owned by local loggers, and “God is Gay” was also popular on his list.
Apart from being kicked out of home at 17 yrs for dropping out of school and playing music, the effects of his parents divorce seemed to have embedded themselves into him, forming a major part of who he was to become.
Before Cobain’s parents split when he was eight years old, his mother told Rolling Stone that as a child “He got up every day with such joy that there was another day to be had. It kind of scared me because he had perceptions like I’ve never seen a small child have. He had life figured out really young. He knew life wasn’t always fair”.
Despite having a sense of the bigger picture as a young child, Cobain never recovered from the divorce. His mother commented that his entire demeanor changed and figments of the Kurt Cobain we know began to emerge. “It just destroyed his life. He changed completely. I think he was ashamed. And he became very inward.. It just devastated him” she told Rolling Stone.
Cobain resented the stardom and the extent of success that was caused by Nirvana’s second album, Nevermind. The irony of his underground punk rock band becoming mainstream, coupled by his instant celebrity status went against the very roots of the band, and particularly Cobain himself. Jocks that taunted him through high school were blindly singing along to the groups most famous song, Smells Like Teen Spirit. A lot of the audience simply weren’t understanding the lyrics or the true fuel behind them. According to Rolling Stone an especially large sting came when the jock mocking song Territorial Pissing was used as the background music to a football show. Cobain even composed the song In Bloom around this very issue, with a sneeringly catchy tune and lyrics, “He’s the one who likes all the pretty songs/ And he likes to sing along /And he likes to shoot his guns /But he don’t know what it means.”
In August 1991, director Samuel Bayer was roped into making the film clip for Smells Like Teen Spirit. Immediately Bayer and Cobain butted heads, with the director not giving the video quite the satanic edge that Kurt was pushing for. In stead of abandoned cars sprinkled in the background and kids burning money, Cobain was forced to settle for the ‘directors cut’ of slightly less whorish looking cheer leaders and less destruction overall. Rolling Stone quoted Bayer saying “Kurt was so pissed off with me, he refused to lip sync! So I went to management and said, ‘If Kurt doesn’t pretend to sing, we don’t have a video”. So of course Kurt had to agree in the end and lip synced with an extra spark of vindictiveness, glaring aggressively into the camera and according to the director, ironically “created something quite wonderful”.
To be continued... x.
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Comment by Mountain Fog
Infognito
And well written, quite often I get bored with the spotted rehash of mini=biog for musicians, well doen and look forward to the next post!
cheers
fog
P.S. I wonder if he ever sang, "I'm a lumberjack and I don't care.." out loud in the streets? That was, (in case you don;t know) a Monty Python sketch sending up lumberjacks and homophobia...and probably suggesting some were not so 'unfriendly' in the woods, so to speak!
Comment by wilson-pon
Comment by Clementine
clementine
Love it.
Comment by Johnny Come Lately
Jack's Back
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
Comment by Tully Smyth
I pie you.