If Cobain hadn't died....

I agree except that he had basic singing skills. I think he had the best rock singing voice since John Lennon. Certainly not Neil Young.
Listening to In Utero on vinyl, I think I can finally say that I think it's a masterpiece. We're so lucky with what would come after that we got such a finalized statement of F*** you. I think it's Cobain's immortal statement.

 

His Leadbeally tribute album would have flopped.

 

I don't think Cobain really wanted to be the voice of his generation either. He was given that job by his generation. It just happened. Cobain was messed up that's for sure. At least Jimi's death was an accident rather than a deliberate attempt to end his life.

All we can do is speculate as to what might have been with Cobain. He could've gone on to solo success or he might have just thought "**** it" I'm taking a break which turned into a Jimmy Page type break. Who knows. But the guy was clearly talented. I'm sure he would've continued writing music in some way.

 

..I feel just the opposite...Nevermind is a overpolished basic nineties l.p...oh well..to each his own..

 

Nirvana breaks up.

He divorces Courtney.

He records a solo album and does a small tour of intimate clubs.

He takes a few years off, and re-unites with Nirvana who record a new album in the late 90's.

 

He wasn't a very good singer, and hadn't developed his voice. And wasn't a rock singer by any means. He was firmly in the whole grunge thing.
His voice was ok for the music , but lets face it, it was a return to basics about that time and musical talent wasn't the issue. Just having the passion and something to say was, and he had both.

Best singing voice since John Lennon, hmmmm, well Mr Lennon was certainly a well developed musician but I would rate him pretty far down the rock era totem as a singer. And you are right, Mr Cobain was certainly no Neil Young, but again, I think he would have been similar had he kept up with it and kept advancing his abilities.

 

Seriously, I picture the guy holed up in a room away from everybody and everything tinkering with DAW machines and various musical instruments trying to see what kind of sounds he could get. I think he had the potential to make a masterpiece using only basic music skills on various instruments.
I really think he had it in him to do that. Experimenting not just with music, but with sound in general.

 

Anyone who posted that he would have gone away did not watch the Montage Of Heck doc, which to all accounts of those who knew him, knew that he had to create. He could not stop creating. He painted, wrote, recorded, etc., constantly. He was an artist. Period. He would have done something.....something, had he lived.

The criticism regarding his vocal ability or guitar technique is silly. Like Dylan, right. Doesn't matter....moot point, he's not that artist. He created with the skill he had, he used the tools he had. That would have grown, changed, developed, as artist do. A lot would have depended on his mood of the time. He might have made an acoustic album, an alt pop album, maybe a metal album. Maybe he would have stopped recording and just wrote. Maybe he would have continued with Nirvana, and they would have changed with him. I think Dave would have played a much bigger role in the songwriting had he lived....it seemed inevitable. It was already working it's way in by In Utero.

And, lastly, addressing their diminishing regard, you had to be there. It's kind of the same way Axl Rose can still fill stadiums with his GNR cover band.....he's a legend. You don't have to accept it, but it's the reality. Same with Kurt. He was a legend before he died. We loved Nirvana. A lot of people absolutely loved Nirvana. Pearl Jam (similar fan base situation) hasn't had a real hit in a long, long time, but they still sell out, big. Nirvana would have easily had that kind of core audience built in. Forgetting everything, and fast forwarding 20 years, I'd go see Nirvana tomorrow if they were on tour.....regardless of their output after '95. The Police tour from a few years ago comes to mind. They were just that good.

 

Would've made a guest appearance on Neil Young's "Sleeps With Angels" album...

 

The truth is it didn't just happen. It was orchestrated by the publicity dept at DGC (Geffen).

 

Yeah, he has a history of making experimental recordings at home (sound collages, experimenting with his own recordings, etc).

 

I heard one song and immediately started to seek out the rest. It happens when a band grabs you....and if you are a member of this forum, we can all relate to that feeling. It happened like that. Geffen didn't do crap.
He was a voice of my generation because I said so....not Geffen. Go tell a Beatles fan that Parlaphone and publicity made them love The Beatles. It's insulting to me and the band.

 

if he were going to keep making compelling music, he would have had to rethink his approach entirely - his guitar technique, using distortion, having bombastic drums, the lot.

let's forget for a moment that the guy died, and look at In Utero from a creative standpoint. it's Nirvana's Synchronicity. there's nowhere else you can take them as the band that they were and do anything else with their formula. in that regard, they absolutely went out at the top of their game.

but the Kurt we knew and loved basically did one thing really well (and it was limited). he took it to its logical conclusion on In Utero, with the Unplugged performance as a compelling postscript. if he were to have stuck around and continued with music (again, i don't think he was long for this world, so it's a moot point anyway), he would have had to do a Talk Talk-style reinvention. perhaps that's the road he was headed with Michael Stipe. who knows. dude's dead.

 

Anyone else remember Kurt's friend Bobcat opening for them?

 

I'm going with: Living in the Canyon, divorced, a semi-reclusive song doctor, like his contemporary Andy Sturmer. He'd probably have a more mainstream clientele like Butch Walker's than he would have something like Sturmer's very cool cartoon scoring career.

He probably wouldn't be happy about his kid's hipster-doofus fiancée, but would be doing his best with it, so long as she's happy. I don't think that he would understand the hipster phenomenon.

Nirvana would eventually have pulled some sort of "Great Rock 'n Roll Swindle" scenario and reunited in some stubborn and disappointing way "for the money". One time only. If a recording were made, they'd trust the production to Beck.

He'd have his prosperity, but would probably become more defiant and "Chiltonesque" in interviews, when and if someone could get one from him.

 

I think a lot of people forget Kurt Cobain had a major drug overdose in Rome on March 3rd, 1994. He left a suicide note and then OD'd on Rohypnol mixed with champagne. It's a miracle he survived. He was in a coma for 20 hours. From what I've read, he wasn't the same person after that incident. His close friends thought he had brain damage and wasn't the Kurt they knew from before.

From http://www.justiceforkurt.com/investigation/timeline/rome_incident.shtml
"Krist Novoselic noticed a change in Kurt after the coma in Rome and wondered if Kurt suffered brain damage. Krist said, "He wouldn't listen to anybody" and continued "he was fu**ed up". Dylan Carlson also said "He didn't seem as alive. Before he had more to him; after he seemed monochromatic. " Coma's can cause brain damage. Even mild brain damage can cause attention and concentration difficulties, memory impairments, irritability, depression, anxiety, headache, dizziness, insomnia, fatigue, and sensory impairments. Some of these symptoms can last long term."

"When David Haig met Kurt (after Rome) in a downtown hotel he found him tense and emotional, and weeping openly when discussing his marriage. Kurt also complained to him of partial memory loss, insomnia, fatigue and "a buzzing in the top of my head"

"One could wonder about impairment of judgement", (after Rome) Dr. David Bailey, Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California.

After Rome, Kurt returned to Seattle and basically did nothing except run with his junkie friends and shoot up massive amounts of heroin. He did absolutely nothing creative during the last 4 weeks of his life. No painting, no writing new songs. All that stopped after the Rome overdose. In hindsight, the doctors in Rome should have kept in ICU longer. But Courtney Love didn't tell them about the suicide note. She said what happened was just an accident. So that's what everyone in the Nirvana camp thought along with Kurt's extended family. So he flew back to Seattle and didn't get any help.

Not to be a downer, but in my opinion, if Kurt hadn't killed himself in April of 1994 he would have been a Syd Barrrett type drug casualty. Unable to create any new music up to his previous standards due to irreversible brain damage from his Rome drug overdose.
Maybe Kurt knew something was off after Rome too. Since by all accounts he seemed on a suicide mission the last 2 weeks of his life. Taking enough heroin to kill him 3 times over.

On a brighter note, had Rome not happened. I think the home demo "Do Re Mi" is a good indicator of where Kurt was headed musically.
Either way it's still a tragic loss. The guy was a unbelievably talented and just getting started before everything in his personal life went off the rails in March 1994.

 

I think if he didn't die then his friends and family would not have gone through the pain of his loss. I know this sounds rather obvious but when these things happen the people who loved the the person have a great hole in their life and wonder if only they knew more they could have helped. This is the real tragedy of his death and the circumstances that surrounded it. Going even to the deeper sad part is that his kid grew up without a father and only stories.

 

Wanna read my palm?

 

I remember in what was likely one of his very last interviews (in Rolling Stone - I remember buying the issue for the Frank Zappa feature upon his death, so I'm guessing Feb 94 issue released in Jan, since Zappa died in Dec 93. Anyway Cobain was pretty negative across the board in the interview, but what sticks out is that he said he was completely dry as a writer of new stuff and had also used up all his reserves of old unreleased material. He said for the first time in his career he was going to have to creatively start from scratch.

Other things I've read over the years:

Nirvana probably was broken up at the time of his death. During his drug intervention the other members threatened to break up the band if he didn't get clean. Could it have been an idle threat? Maybe, but IIRC around 1999 or so, Grohl confirmed that they WERE broken up technically at the time of Cobain's death, but it wasn't yet made formal (ie legally dissolving the partnership etc) and may not have stuck if he had lived (and almost certainly not if he had gotten clean).

OTOH (I never read this anywhere but someone once told me - based on what I have no idea - so it could be total rubbish) that not only was the band still together at the time of Cobain's death, but they were just about to make Pat Smear a full time, full 1/4 member of/partner in the band.

As far as Cobain not allowing Grohl to contribute to the songwriting - that's false. For one thing Grohl got a Nirvana B-side 'Marigold' (which IIRC was only Nirvana'a bass player (I'm not even going to try to spell his last name) on bass and Grohl on everything else. Also Grohl has stated that he once (near the end of the band/Kurt's life - and I suppose maybe also after Kurt's own admitted writer's block/dry spell had set in) played a new song he wrote to Cobain that he was particularly proud of, and Kurt responded by saying something like - 'Great song! - Cool - now its not up to me anymore to have to write all the songs myself', to which Grohl replied that he was just asking Cobain for his opinion as he respected him as a writer - he wasn't submitting the song for consideration to be on the next Nirvana album. Grohl has stated that he always saw it as Kurt's band and NEVER attempted to push himself as writer/singer/guitarist, at least in part because he didn't want to risk/be responsible for messing the band up. BTW Cobain knew from the start that Grohl was a songwriter, since Grohl said that while living with Cobain during or near the time of recording Nevermind, Grohl would usually be in the living room with a guitar and a four-track writing songs, while Cobain was in his bedroom writing in his journals (that Courtney Love released as a book after his death).

I think its safe to say that unless he got himself clean from drugs and got some proper and intensive mental health treatment very soon, he would have either accidentally overdosed or committed suicide anyway. Within weeks or months probably, and almost certainly IMO within a year or two max.

He said (IIRC in the Rolling Stone interview I mentioned above) that the marriage wasn't going great and that he had massive guilt at the thought of leaving his daughter with a broken home if/when they got a divorce. He had a broken home himself and swore to himself that he would never put his own child through that.

Had he lived who knows what would have happened?

If he lived (that IMO assumes he got clean and got proper mental health treatment) he likely would have gotten a divorce, and (assuming Love didn't also get clean) he probably would have been awarded sole custody (though I'd imagine he'd send her to live with his own mother and/or sister most of the time).

As far as music - well there was that Michael Stipe collaboration that he, Stipe and Love had all confirmed was in the works (talking stage at least). I have a feeling he would have - not retired, but for lack of a better word "removed himself" from being a "rock star". Instead I see him concentrating on his visual artwork and after 3 or 4 years in seclusion, getting the occasional gallery showing, whether his art would be worthy of it or not (because of who he is).

While doing that he would write songs occasionally and leisurely (building up his reserves of material) and eventually would come back to the music world on his own terms - whatever those might be (my guess is sometime between 2002-2006).....

 

It's fun to speculate.

I imagine, for starters, that Nirvana might have backed Neil Young instead of Pearl Jam.

I could see Kurt doing an American Recording-type solo lofi album, like John Frusciante.

For some reason I imagine he might have been influenced by Radiohead's OK Computer and the post-Slint scene, and made experimental Enoesque recordings.

 

If Kurt saw how mainstream music began to change in the mid 90s and the direction it kept going, that alone may have driven him into further depression and would have made him even more disillusioned with the music industry. He probably would be like Lauryn Hill and leave the music industry and become a recluse somewhere in France like Johnny Depp and they'd play music together and drink wine and share their views on life, the world, music and art. Someone would eventually make a documentary with them together in deep conversation and going through their lives sharing their views, playing music together and it would become a standard viewing for any aspiring artists. Seriously, anything could have happened. Seems like a ridiculous thread but I suppose we all like to fantasize since we like music along with the other arts.

 

It's always wishful thinking to take the "bad sides" of an artist away and then hoping for a happy end. Kobain was obviously a very troubled person, very unhappy and also a very extreme character. That led to some interesting songs - but also to his sad ending. So we have to take it as it is.
If he didn't have these inner conflicts he sure might be still alive, but we might not have heard from him at all. Cause he had lived a regular family life and never started Nirvana, maybe he had played in a cover band.....

 

I think you're right that Cobain rejected the mantle of "voice of his generation" that was thrust upon him--but who thrust it upon him? Was he voted that position by the fans? No, it was the chattering classes, the rock critics and journalists--mostly from the punk generation--who finally felt that their day arrived, that all their championing of that form was finally justified --in the form of Cobain, who played a type of music that owed just as much to classic rock as it did to punk.

 

It's hard to speculate what might have happened with someone of that mindset. Not my kind of music, but he was talented for what he did. When I first heard Nirvana I liked them.

 

From what I remember, me and my friends liked Nevermind, Ten and the other breakthrough Grunge albums at the time, but it was already considered somewhat passé by the time In Utero and Pearl Jam's second album came out and a lot of Grunge clonebands came on the scene. I guess the novelty wore off and we were already looking for the 'next big thing'. Cobain's suicide basically changed the whole way we looked at the band, instantly elevating Nirvana to legendary status. I guess if things would have happened differently, they'd be on the same level as Pearl Jam today, solid cult status but not many people who consider them to be truly legendary or groundbreaking.