Review of indie-rocker Dean Wareham’s memoir Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance. Appeared in the Toronto Star, spring 2008.
Dean Wareham is a rock star – sort of. Like countless indie musicians before and after him, Wareham has spent his career in a no man’s land somewhere between obscurity and mainstream success. His fans are numerous enough that he can earn a living with regular club gigs, but not quite numerous enough to make that living an enviable one.
All of which makes Wareham a refreshing rock memoirist. The genre’s usually given over to tales of fiscal excess and champion debauchery, but Black Postcards, Wareham’s new book, is about as far from Motley Crue’s The Dirt as you can get.
Wareham’s known as the frontman for two cult bands: Galaxie 500 in the late 1980s, and then Luna from 1992 to 2005. Both groups blended dreamy pop and rock-snob taste in influences (Velvet Underground, Talking Heads, Modern Lovers) with Wareham’s expressive guitar solos and somewhat less expressive vocals. He may not seem like a likely author – his doggerel lyrics were usually the weakest thing about his records – but the book shows him to be an observant guy with a wry sense of humour.
A New Zealander by birth, Wareham moved to New York City as a teenager with his family, and began his musical career while attending Harvard. As Black Postcards recounts, in Cambridge he learns the guitar and begins playing with an old high school classmate, Damon Krukowski. Eventually the two of them form Galaxie 500, with Krukowski on drums and his girlfriend, Naomi Yang, on bass.
Galaxie 500 made three cult-classic albums, but the personal dynamics were tense; in one of indie rock’s more legendary breakups, Wareham quit the group suddenly in 1991, deeply embittering his former bandmates. In Black Postcards, Krukowski and Yang do not come off well. Wareham paints the couple – convincingly, it must be said – as controlling, petty, and insecure. They constantly outvote him on band decisions, even though he writes most of Galaxie’s songs. And it’s hard not to seethe on Wareham’s behalf when they berate him just for playing a solo charity gig or, even more absurdly, for stepping into a spotlight onstage.
So Wareham splits the scene and forms a new band. Luna’s story is not as ugly as Galaxie 500’s, but in some ways it’s even more dispiriting. The band begins with promise, but by Wareham’s own estimation, they peak with their third album, Penthouse. They go on to record four more, but Wareham seems to find the process increasingly painful, and to take less and less pride in the end result. And a commercial breakthrough eludes the group: they shuffle from one record company to another and tour constantly, usually playing the same clubs again and again.
Wareham’s candor about these frustrations is the greatest strength of Black Postcards. With a light and self-deprecating touch, he thoroughly debunks standard rock mythologies. The touring life? A thankless grind punctuated by band bickering and misadventures, enlivened only by drugs or tawdry one-night stands. Luna’s recorded legacy? Wareham can barely muster any interest in most of his own albums. The adulation of fans? “If you wanted to try and pick up a girl, you had to make an effort,” he explains. “You had to wade out into the audience immediately after the show, pretend to look busy, and then answer a lot of stupid questions from guys who wanted to know what kind of distortion pedals we use.”
Amid all the cheer, the intra-band dynamics are regular points of interest. The various Galaxie 500 psychodramas stand out, of course. But Sean Eden, Luna’s Ontario-born second guitarist, is also a memorable figure. He comes off as mainly benign but hopelessly neurotic, rerecording his own guitar parts for hours on end in the studio while his bandmates twiddle their thumbs.
Lest readers assume the subtitle of Black Postcards must be sarcasm in action, genuine romance does bloom with the arrival of a new Luna bassist, the beautiful Britta Phillips. She and Wareham fall for each other on the tour carousel and eventually become an item. Wareham, however, is already married, with a young son. After much agonizing and some psychotherapy, he leaves his wife for Phillips. Since Luna’s 2005 breakup, Wareham and Phillips have recorded and toured as a duo.
The torn-between-two-lovers stuff is quite affecting, helped by Wareham’s bold honesty. (To his considerable credit, Black Postcards never once reads like he’s trying to court the reader’s sympathy.) But it would all be much more affecting if we had even the barest sense of either woman’s personality. Throughout the book, both Phillips and Wareham’s wife, Claudia, remain near-total ciphers. Perhaps this springs from an admirable impulse to protect their privacy, but the decision does Wareham’s narrative no favours.
In fact, whatever Black Postcards’ merits as an honest document of an intriguing career, it doesn’t exactly mark the arrival of a major new literary talent. Stylistically, Wareham mostly relies on flat, offhand declarations that give the book the feel of an as-told-to. (“I was a father now. It was exciting and scary.”) And for content, he relies too much on his tour diaries; huge patches of the book are devoted to tedious city-by-city summary. Black Postcards is a must-read for any fan of Wareham’s music, and should engage general indie-music fans too, but its appeal outside those boundaries will be slim.
Showing posts with label music-related. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music-related. Show all posts
Monday, July 7, 2008
Friday, November 9, 2007
A [ampersand] R
From the Toronto Star, way back in September 2000. Review of Bill Flanagan’s novel about the rock & roll business, A&R.
“A&R,” explains the protagonist of Bill Flanagan’s new book, is a recording-industry term referring to “artists and repertoire,” a holdover from the days when companies matched songs and performers in an effort to churn out hits. These days most pop stars write their own stuff and aspire to artistic integrity, but the A&R tag has stuck – perhaps because the industry continues to view its talent as pawns to be moved willy-nilly on the march to the Top Ten. Flanagan, a longtime rock journalist and current VH1 exec, offers a breezy satire of that perennial campaign in his first novel.
His hero is Jim Cantone, a naive talent scout who’s just made vice-president at WorldWide Records, run by the aging maverick “Wild Bill” DeGaul. While Cantone struggles to remain aloof from the shadowy power struggles that define WorldWide’s corporate culture, the label’s recent signings prepare for their shots at the charts. The punk-pop outfit Jerusalem is Cantone’s pet project; Black Beauty, a seven-woman “cultural collective” of black lesbian folkies, seems destined for the delete bin; and Cokie Shea, a confident young country singer, is discovered after she slips her demo tape into an exec’s pocket at a bar.
Readers will doubtless look for signs of roman à clef, and there are some. (DeGaul’s backstory – he built his “Tropic Records” label into a success, then sold it to a mega-corporation – is a clear nod to Chris Blackwell and Island Records. And the circumstances of Shea’s discovery echo Mariah Carey’s.) But most of A&R’s characters seem modelled less on specific real-life rockers than broad, recognizable types: the temperamental soul diva, the has-been heavy metal star. Unfortunately, the non-musician characters are similarly stereotypical and sketchy. Cantone never seems to develop beyond bland affability, and secondary players, like his wife, barely register at all.
With its hidden agendas, shifting loyalties, and commerce-of-art backdrop, A&R calls to mind Turn of the Century, Kurt Andersen’s fictional funhouse ride through high tech, high finance, and high-concept showbiz. But the book can’t match Andersen’s restless wit or exhilarating pace. In fact, Flanagan – who’s produced some insightful rock journalism – turns out to be a disappointingly artless novelist. His prose rarely rises above the level of serviceable, and his dialogue, uniformly stilted, groans under the burden of exposition. The plotting is haphazard, too. One of the few unpredictable characters, the bitter WorldWide staffer Zoey Pavlov, disappears from the narrative altogether just as her story arc’s getting interesting. And few readers will fail to foresee the book’s “surprise” plot twists.
A&R’s best moments come when Flanagan concentrates on the venalities of the business. As when a talentless arena-rocking oaf blithely steals a promising song from one of his sidemen. Or when Pavlov surveys her gathered underlings with perfectly pitched scorn: “This crew of nitcombs, fanboys, and wanna-bes included ambitious student directors of college radio stations, a couple of badly ironed music editors of alternative weeklies, and two or three self-improving secretaries from WorldWide field offices in secondary markets.” And although references to the Internet threat are few, they do lend the novel an elegaic feel. “A hundred years of keeping ninety-five percent of the money and all the rights! Who’d have believed it? How can we complain?” asks one character, waxing philosophical about the forthcoming death of the industry. A&R makes a convincing case that few should mourn its passing.
“A&R,” explains the protagonist of Bill Flanagan’s new book, is a recording-industry term referring to “artists and repertoire,” a holdover from the days when companies matched songs and performers in an effort to churn out hits. These days most pop stars write their own stuff and aspire to artistic integrity, but the A&R tag has stuck – perhaps because the industry continues to view its talent as pawns to be moved willy-nilly on the march to the Top Ten. Flanagan, a longtime rock journalist and current VH1 exec, offers a breezy satire of that perennial campaign in his first novel.
His hero is Jim Cantone, a naive talent scout who’s just made vice-president at WorldWide Records, run by the aging maverick “Wild Bill” DeGaul. While Cantone struggles to remain aloof from the shadowy power struggles that define WorldWide’s corporate culture, the label’s recent signings prepare for their shots at the charts. The punk-pop outfit Jerusalem is Cantone’s pet project; Black Beauty, a seven-woman “cultural collective” of black lesbian folkies, seems destined for the delete bin; and Cokie Shea, a confident young country singer, is discovered after she slips her demo tape into an exec’s pocket at a bar.
Readers will doubtless look for signs of roman à clef, and there are some. (DeGaul’s backstory – he built his “Tropic Records” label into a success, then sold it to a mega-corporation – is a clear nod to Chris Blackwell and Island Records. And the circumstances of Shea’s discovery echo Mariah Carey’s.) But most of A&R’s characters seem modelled less on specific real-life rockers than broad, recognizable types: the temperamental soul diva, the has-been heavy metal star. Unfortunately, the non-musician characters are similarly stereotypical and sketchy. Cantone never seems to develop beyond bland affability, and secondary players, like his wife, barely register at all.
With its hidden agendas, shifting loyalties, and commerce-of-art backdrop, A&R calls to mind Turn of the Century, Kurt Andersen’s fictional funhouse ride through high tech, high finance, and high-concept showbiz. But the book can’t match Andersen’s restless wit or exhilarating pace. In fact, Flanagan – who’s produced some insightful rock journalism – turns out to be a disappointingly artless novelist. His prose rarely rises above the level of serviceable, and his dialogue, uniformly stilted, groans under the burden of exposition. The plotting is haphazard, too. One of the few unpredictable characters, the bitter WorldWide staffer Zoey Pavlov, disappears from the narrative altogether just as her story arc’s getting interesting. And few readers will fail to foresee the book’s “surprise” plot twists.
A&R’s best moments come when Flanagan concentrates on the venalities of the business. As when a talentless arena-rocking oaf blithely steals a promising song from one of his sidemen. Or when Pavlov surveys her gathered underlings with perfectly pitched scorn: “This crew of nitcombs, fanboys, and wanna-bes included ambitious student directors of college radio stations, a couple of badly ironed music editors of alternative weeklies, and two or three self-improving secretaries from WorldWide field offices in secondary markets.” And although references to the Internet threat are few, they do lend the novel an elegaic feel. “A hundred years of keeping ninety-five percent of the money and all the rights! Who’d have believed it? How can we complain?” asks one character, waxing philosophical about the forthcoming death of the industry. A&R makes a convincing case that few should mourn its passing.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Rip It Up and Start Again
Review of Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984, by Simon Reynolds. Was in the Toronto Star, 2006.
It used to be that the Velvet Underground was the universally acknowledged grandfather of alternative-minded rock. Today, though, trendy young bands like Interpol and Franz Ferdinand and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are more likely to find inspiration in Joy Division’s ghostly vocals and brittle guitars, or Gang of Four’s jagged groove, or the Talking Heads’ jittery polyrhythms. All of those bands had their heyday in the late 1970s and early ’80s, that fertile few years that followed the punk rock explosion. Other groups from the same period are finding new audiences, too; some, like Wire and Mission of Burma, are even touring and recording again after long hiatuses.
Which means that Rip It Up and Start Again is well-timed. The book throws a spotlight onto the “postpunk” scene – or scenes, rather – by touching on dozens of groups from the U.K. (most of them) and the U.S. (a smattering), including the five named above. In doing so, author Simon Reynolds, a music writer originally from Britain but now living in New York City, is looking to correct a rock-history imbalance: the brief punk movement has been much mythologized, but its musical aftermath, less iconic but more interesting, has been under-considered.
Unlike punk, though, postpunk is fragmented and diverse – a stew of sometimes contradictory ideologies, aesthetic impulses, and musical styles. So Reynolds must look for some common ground from which to start. To that end, he reminds readers that the punk of the Ramones and the Sex Pistols was essentially regressive, backing away from the bombast and pretensions of modern rock in favour of primal three-chord riffery. Postpunk, he argues, is not just the music that followed punk, but the music that followed punk and was also progressively “futurist,” or self-consciously innovative rather than imitative.
And where better to begin than with John Lydon, first known to the world as Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten? After the Pistols broke up, Lydon formed a new band, Public Image Ltd. (PiL), that purveyed rousing rock noise influenced by Jamaican dub, German art rock, and disco. He also billed his new project as a “corporation,” showing that he’d learned something about public-relations theatre from notorious Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren.
From PiL, Reynolds moves on to other first-wave postpunk acts that sprang up all over England in the late 1970s, like Joy Division, the Fall, Throbbing Gristle, and many others. Though dissimilar in style, these acts shared a keen hunger for new sounds (often incorporating electronic and funk grooves), a disdain for rock and roll conventions, and in many cases a passionate left-wing political stance.
The downside to all this is that since bands like the Pop Group and Gang of Four tended toward the shrill and had a fondness for lecturing, a dour and dutiful feel sometimes creeps into the first half of Rip It Up. So it’s a welcome development when, in the book’s second half, Reynolds broadens the focus into “new pop” – acts that worked unabashedly retro influences into their sonic mix and/or cultivated a poppier, radio-friendly sound. His consideration of the ska-revivalist Specials, the synth-pop giants the Human League and ABC, and the fame-craving Orange Juice (whose classic soul-flavoured single gives Rip It Up its title) varies and warms up the tone considerably.
Reynolds has done a great deal of research here, and Rip It Up is a valuable reference. But since it’s essentially a series of miniature band histories, it has limitations. The emphasis is on reportage, not analysis; a few more startling or thought-provoking insights here and there would have given us strength for the long march from group to group (more than 50 groups in all). Similarly, Reynolds’ workmanlike prose struggles to capture or spread a sense of real excitement. He lauds many bands I haven’t listened to in years and others I’ve hardly heard at all, but he rarely inspired me to go back to the records, and I’m usually a soft touch for that kind of thing.
The book’s conceptual rigging sometimes feels a bit shaky, too. Most of the American chapters especially seem like arbitrary detours (even when the bands are undeniably important, like Pere Ubu) and might better have been dropped. And as we get further into the 1980s, decisions about who gets covered, and how much, start to seem like a nightclub bouncer’s velvet-rope whims. Many omissions are perfectly understandable; no one needs to read another few hundred words about how the Clash grew from straightforward punkers into an uncommonly ambitious and adventurous band. Still, for such a wide-ranging book, Rip It Up ends up having a strangely cloistered feel, offering little acknowledgement that this allegedly world-changing collection of groups existed within a wider milieu of rock – even of postpunk British rock – at the time.
All of that said, there’s no other book out there quite like this one, and Reynolds has done some important work in putting together this vast collection of information. (He did more than 100 original interviews for the book, and they go a long way toward enlivening the text.) And he tells plenty of good stories along the way. Like that of Scritti Politti, who began as scruffy agit-prop deconstructionists and later morphed into the smooth MOR-pop stylists that they’re mainly remembered as here in North America. Or the creepy case of Bow Wow Wow, in which Malcolm McLaren took a malleable young pop band, appointed a 14-year-old girl as the lead singer, and marketed their records with a relentless and vaguely sinister campaign of titillation. For students of rock history, an abundance of anecdotes like this should be reason enough to read the book.
It used to be that the Velvet Underground was the universally acknowledged grandfather of alternative-minded rock. Today, though, trendy young bands like Interpol and Franz Ferdinand and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are more likely to find inspiration in Joy Division’s ghostly vocals and brittle guitars, or Gang of Four’s jagged groove, or the Talking Heads’ jittery polyrhythms. All of those bands had their heyday in the late 1970s and early ’80s, that fertile few years that followed the punk rock explosion. Other groups from the same period are finding new audiences, too; some, like Wire and Mission of Burma, are even touring and recording again after long hiatuses.
Which means that Rip It Up and Start Again is well-timed. The book throws a spotlight onto the “postpunk” scene – or scenes, rather – by touching on dozens of groups from the U.K. (most of them) and the U.S. (a smattering), including the five named above. In doing so, author Simon Reynolds, a music writer originally from Britain but now living in New York City, is looking to correct a rock-history imbalance: the brief punk movement has been much mythologized, but its musical aftermath, less iconic but more interesting, has been under-considered.
Unlike punk, though, postpunk is fragmented and diverse – a stew of sometimes contradictory ideologies, aesthetic impulses, and musical styles. So Reynolds must look for some common ground from which to start. To that end, he reminds readers that the punk of the Ramones and the Sex Pistols was essentially regressive, backing away from the bombast and pretensions of modern rock in favour of primal three-chord riffery. Postpunk, he argues, is not just the music that followed punk, but the music that followed punk and was also progressively “futurist,” or self-consciously innovative rather than imitative.
And where better to begin than with John Lydon, first known to the world as Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten? After the Pistols broke up, Lydon formed a new band, Public Image Ltd. (PiL), that purveyed rousing rock noise influenced by Jamaican dub, German art rock, and disco. He also billed his new project as a “corporation,” showing that he’d learned something about public-relations theatre from notorious Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren.
From PiL, Reynolds moves on to other first-wave postpunk acts that sprang up all over England in the late 1970s, like Joy Division, the Fall, Throbbing Gristle, and many others. Though dissimilar in style, these acts shared a keen hunger for new sounds (often incorporating electronic and funk grooves), a disdain for rock and roll conventions, and in many cases a passionate left-wing political stance.
The downside to all this is that since bands like the Pop Group and Gang of Four tended toward the shrill and had a fondness for lecturing, a dour and dutiful feel sometimes creeps into the first half of Rip It Up. So it’s a welcome development when, in the book’s second half, Reynolds broadens the focus into “new pop” – acts that worked unabashedly retro influences into their sonic mix and/or cultivated a poppier, radio-friendly sound. His consideration of the ska-revivalist Specials, the synth-pop giants the Human League and ABC, and the fame-craving Orange Juice (whose classic soul-flavoured single gives Rip It Up its title) varies and warms up the tone considerably.
Reynolds has done a great deal of research here, and Rip It Up is a valuable reference. But since it’s essentially a series of miniature band histories, it has limitations. The emphasis is on reportage, not analysis; a few more startling or thought-provoking insights here and there would have given us strength for the long march from group to group (more than 50 groups in all). Similarly, Reynolds’ workmanlike prose struggles to capture or spread a sense of real excitement. He lauds many bands I haven’t listened to in years and others I’ve hardly heard at all, but he rarely inspired me to go back to the records, and I’m usually a soft touch for that kind of thing.
The book’s conceptual rigging sometimes feels a bit shaky, too. Most of the American chapters especially seem like arbitrary detours (even when the bands are undeniably important, like Pere Ubu) and might better have been dropped. And as we get further into the 1980s, decisions about who gets covered, and how much, start to seem like a nightclub bouncer’s velvet-rope whims. Many omissions are perfectly understandable; no one needs to read another few hundred words about how the Clash grew from straightforward punkers into an uncommonly ambitious and adventurous band. Still, for such a wide-ranging book, Rip It Up ends up having a strangely cloistered feel, offering little acknowledgement that this allegedly world-changing collection of groups existed within a wider milieu of rock – even of postpunk British rock – at the time.
All of that said, there’s no other book out there quite like this one, and Reynolds has done some important work in putting together this vast collection of information. (He did more than 100 original interviews for the book, and they go a long way toward enlivening the text.) And he tells plenty of good stories along the way. Like that of Scritti Politti, who began as scruffy agit-prop deconstructionists and later morphed into the smooth MOR-pop stylists that they’re mainly remembered as here in North America. Or the creepy case of Bow Wow Wow, in which Malcolm McLaren took a malleable young pop band, appointed a 14-year-old girl as the lead singer, and marketed their records with a relentless and vaguely sinister campaign of titillation. For students of rock history, an abundance of anecdotes like this should be reason enough to read the book.
Heavier Than Heaven
I wrote about Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain, by Charles R. Cross, for my friend Jep’s website. This was back in early 2002, I think. In retrospect I’ll have to concede that my “nobody cares about or listens to Nirvana any more” lede was probably a case of wishful thinking on my part, though I do still think they were wildly overrated.
Nirvana’s Nevermind album, which propelled Kurt Cobain and his bandmates to multinational superstardom, was released 10 years ago last fall. The rock press duly tried to make an event out of the anniversary – there were retrospective features in Rolling Stone and Spin – but without much success. Over the past few months, we’ve heard more about Courtney Love’s business dealings than Kurt Cobain’s importance in rock history.
Which may be fitting, since the critical adoration of Nirvana probably has more to do with lucky timing than with the music’s quality or lasting relevance.
After all, Nevermind was released in a climate of “death of rock” hand-wringing, in the year of Vanilla Ice and “Rico Suave.” So rock writers who feared that the electric guitar would soon become a historical relic wept with relief at Nirvana’s popularity: here was a chart-topping hard-rock band free of embarrassing heavy-metal associations. Never mind that Nirvana were only one pop-punk act among many, hardly the most innovative or even the most tuneful. Never mind that much of the “grunge” that followed the band to the charts was no more creative or ambitious than a typical New Kids on the Block single. Nevermind saved rock and roll!
But for rock and roll saviours, Nirvana made some pretty unremarkable records. Most of their celebrated songs seem half-written, with modest riffs mercilessly overworked and all surprises gone by the third listen. Even “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the band’s signature song, now sounds like a mediocre tune greatly flattered by its arrangement. (Who could dispute that the most thrilling moment is that little drum flourish that heralds the roaring guitars?)
Still, Kurt Cobain’s story is a poignant one: a lonely, alienated youth achieves his lifelong dream of rock stardom, only to succumb to heroin addiction and kill himself at the age of 27. In a recent biography, Heavier Than Heaven, Seattle journalist Charles R. Cross methodically documents Cobain’s short and unhappy life. Cross’s extensive research – well integrated into the narrative – is augmented by a close look at Cobain’s private journals, courtesy of widow Courtney Love. With affection and respect, the biographer captures the human tragedy at the core of the story.
But Cross also remains admirably clear-eyed about his subject’s foibles, and the resulting portrait should debunk any illusion that this was a rock and roll visionary. Throughout Heavier Than Heaven, Cobain comes off as a grasping poseur obsessed with pleasing the cool kids. And in his later days, he was little more than a stupefied junkie.
At least Cobain’s early childhood was relatively idyllic, marked by artistic leanings and a love of music. But his parents divorced when he was nine, and his adolescence was troubled: he tested boundaries and wound up shuttling between parents, relatives, and friends. But he did not, Cross points out, live under a bridge in his hometown of Aberdeen – both Cobain’s sister and his Nirvana bandmate Krist Novoselic discredit that enduring legend.
In fact, Cobain’s talent for mythmaking becomes one of the book’s major themes. The phrase “despite what Kurt would later tell reporters” recurs often, and “Cobain, Kurt Donald, exaggerations by” is one of the heftier index entries. Some of these revisions are minor and even charming: Cobain claimed that the first band he saw in concert had been West Coast punk godfathers Black Flag, while Cross shows that in fact Cobain’s first live rock experience involved the somewhat less cool Sammy Hagar.
More troubling is the larger hypocrisy on which Nirvana’s career was built. After Nevermind broke, Cobain dutifully played the rock-star game – the press, the MTV appearances, the arena tours – while complaining at every juncture that the rock-star game was beneath him. Appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone, Cobain wore a homemade T-shirt reading “Corporate magazines still suck.” But as Cross shows, Cobain was only too willing to let the corporate rock establishment manage his career. After recording In Utero, a harsher followup to Nevermind, Cobain bowed to label pressure and allowed producer Scott Litt to create more radio-friendly remixes of a couple tracks. As Cross writes, “Once again, when challenged by a problem that might affect the success of his record, Kurt acquiesced to the path of least resistance and greatest sales.”
Ironically, one such acquiescence proved to be a seminal moment in the band’s artistic development – though it came too late to be built upon. Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged appearance in November 1993, only five months before Cobain’s suicide, is discussed at length in Heavier Than Heaven, and rightly so: the show served as the basis for the band’s most affecting record. Cobain’s misery found expression in the sombre stage design and downbeat song selection, and the acoustic format forced the band to open up its sound – drummer Dave Grohl played with brushes instead of sticks. Nirvana’s quieter songs (“Polly,” “All Apologies”) were always among their strongest anyway, and here they were spliced with well-chosen covers, including Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World” and the Vaselines’ “Jesus Don’t Want Me for a Sunbeam.” In a nicely weird move, the band also did three Meats Puppets songs in a row (all from Meat Puppets II) – for which the Puppets joined them onstage.
Cross himself doesn’t look too closely at Nirvana’s music in Heavier Than Heaven. Most rock bios feature long and windy exegeses of each record, but Cross mostly restricts himself to trolling Cobain’s morbid lyrics for clues to his state of mind. (He points out that five of the six MTV Unplugged cover selections mention death, for instance.) But he is capable of striking insight. In relating a funny story about Cobain’s late discovery of the Knack’s wretched Get the Knack, Cross notes that Krist Novoselic “had a better grasp of the larger rock oeuvre…. Krist knew what was kitsch, while Kurt sometimes erred in this category.” Occasionally one wishes Cross would offer more such musical perspective.
The book’s only major failing, though, is its kid-glove treatment of the monstrous Courtney Love. No one who has followed Cobain’s career (or Love’s) could fail to see her as manipulative and opportunistic, but Heavier Than Heaven is heavy on oh-please lines like “He was a mystery to her, and Courtney was attracted by the unexplained.” There’s some evidence here of Love’s materialism – she pushed Cobain to buy a Lexus, and to headline Lollapalooza “to shore up their financial future” – but Cross consistently downplays such episodes, and readers have to pay close attention to catch them. It’s hard not to assume that Love’s co-operation with the biography – and her forking over of Cobain’s journals – explain the author’s uncharacteristically soft touch on this subject. (Speaking of those journals, in February 2002 Love negotiated a multimillion-dollar deal to publish them separately – despite the fact that, as Cross’s book shows, they’re often mortifying to Cobain’s memory. Reportedly she has never read them in entirety herself.)
Still, Cross charts Cobain’s life with a strong instinct for narrative and detail, and crafts a perceptive portrait of a conflicted and often fascinating man. (Though Cobain craved stardom and excess, he remained shy and awkward throughout his life – he’s doubtless the only rock giant whose sexual conquests failed to number in double digits.) And the closing chapters, detailing Cobain’s spiral toward suicide, effectively combine suspense, dread, and sadness. Cobain’s importance to rock and roll may be overstated, but his story of suffering is still powerful.
Nirvana’s Nevermind album, which propelled Kurt Cobain and his bandmates to multinational superstardom, was released 10 years ago last fall. The rock press duly tried to make an event out of the anniversary – there were retrospective features in Rolling Stone and Spin – but without much success. Over the past few months, we’ve heard more about Courtney Love’s business dealings than Kurt Cobain’s importance in rock history.
Which may be fitting, since the critical adoration of Nirvana probably has more to do with lucky timing than with the music’s quality or lasting relevance.
After all, Nevermind was released in a climate of “death of rock” hand-wringing, in the year of Vanilla Ice and “Rico Suave.” So rock writers who feared that the electric guitar would soon become a historical relic wept with relief at Nirvana’s popularity: here was a chart-topping hard-rock band free of embarrassing heavy-metal associations. Never mind that Nirvana were only one pop-punk act among many, hardly the most innovative or even the most tuneful. Never mind that much of the “grunge” that followed the band to the charts was no more creative or ambitious than a typical New Kids on the Block single. Nevermind saved rock and roll!
But for rock and roll saviours, Nirvana made some pretty unremarkable records. Most of their celebrated songs seem half-written, with modest riffs mercilessly overworked and all surprises gone by the third listen. Even “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the band’s signature song, now sounds like a mediocre tune greatly flattered by its arrangement. (Who could dispute that the most thrilling moment is that little drum flourish that heralds the roaring guitars?)
Still, Kurt Cobain’s story is a poignant one: a lonely, alienated youth achieves his lifelong dream of rock stardom, only to succumb to heroin addiction and kill himself at the age of 27. In a recent biography, Heavier Than Heaven, Seattle journalist Charles R. Cross methodically documents Cobain’s short and unhappy life. Cross’s extensive research – well integrated into the narrative – is augmented by a close look at Cobain’s private journals, courtesy of widow Courtney Love. With affection and respect, the biographer captures the human tragedy at the core of the story.
But Cross also remains admirably clear-eyed about his subject’s foibles, and the resulting portrait should debunk any illusion that this was a rock and roll visionary. Throughout Heavier Than Heaven, Cobain comes off as a grasping poseur obsessed with pleasing the cool kids. And in his later days, he was little more than a stupefied junkie.
At least Cobain’s early childhood was relatively idyllic, marked by artistic leanings and a love of music. But his parents divorced when he was nine, and his adolescence was troubled: he tested boundaries and wound up shuttling between parents, relatives, and friends. But he did not, Cross points out, live under a bridge in his hometown of Aberdeen – both Cobain’s sister and his Nirvana bandmate Krist Novoselic discredit that enduring legend.
In fact, Cobain’s talent for mythmaking becomes one of the book’s major themes. The phrase “despite what Kurt would later tell reporters” recurs often, and “Cobain, Kurt Donald, exaggerations by” is one of the heftier index entries. Some of these revisions are minor and even charming: Cobain claimed that the first band he saw in concert had been West Coast punk godfathers Black Flag, while Cross shows that in fact Cobain’s first live rock experience involved the somewhat less cool Sammy Hagar.
More troubling is the larger hypocrisy on which Nirvana’s career was built. After Nevermind broke, Cobain dutifully played the rock-star game – the press, the MTV appearances, the arena tours – while complaining at every juncture that the rock-star game was beneath him. Appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone, Cobain wore a homemade T-shirt reading “Corporate magazines still suck.” But as Cross shows, Cobain was only too willing to let the corporate rock establishment manage his career. After recording In Utero, a harsher followup to Nevermind, Cobain bowed to label pressure and allowed producer Scott Litt to create more radio-friendly remixes of a couple tracks. As Cross writes, “Once again, when challenged by a problem that might affect the success of his record, Kurt acquiesced to the path of least resistance and greatest sales.”
Ironically, one such acquiescence proved to be a seminal moment in the band’s artistic development – though it came too late to be built upon. Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged appearance in November 1993, only five months before Cobain’s suicide, is discussed at length in Heavier Than Heaven, and rightly so: the show served as the basis for the band’s most affecting record. Cobain’s misery found expression in the sombre stage design and downbeat song selection, and the acoustic format forced the band to open up its sound – drummer Dave Grohl played with brushes instead of sticks. Nirvana’s quieter songs (“Polly,” “All Apologies”) were always among their strongest anyway, and here they were spliced with well-chosen covers, including Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World” and the Vaselines’ “Jesus Don’t Want Me for a Sunbeam.” In a nicely weird move, the band also did three Meats Puppets songs in a row (all from Meat Puppets II) – for which the Puppets joined them onstage.
Cross himself doesn’t look too closely at Nirvana’s music in Heavier Than Heaven. Most rock bios feature long and windy exegeses of each record, but Cross mostly restricts himself to trolling Cobain’s morbid lyrics for clues to his state of mind. (He points out that five of the six MTV Unplugged cover selections mention death, for instance.) But he is capable of striking insight. In relating a funny story about Cobain’s late discovery of the Knack’s wretched Get the Knack, Cross notes that Krist Novoselic “had a better grasp of the larger rock oeuvre…. Krist knew what was kitsch, while Kurt sometimes erred in this category.” Occasionally one wishes Cross would offer more such musical perspective.
The book’s only major failing, though, is its kid-glove treatment of the monstrous Courtney Love. No one who has followed Cobain’s career (or Love’s) could fail to see her as manipulative and opportunistic, but Heavier Than Heaven is heavy on oh-please lines like “He was a mystery to her, and Courtney was attracted by the unexplained.” There’s some evidence here of Love’s materialism – she pushed Cobain to buy a Lexus, and to headline Lollapalooza “to shore up their financial future” – but Cross consistently downplays such episodes, and readers have to pay close attention to catch them. It’s hard not to assume that Love’s co-operation with the biography – and her forking over of Cobain’s journals – explain the author’s uncharacteristically soft touch on this subject. (Speaking of those journals, in February 2002 Love negotiated a multimillion-dollar deal to publish them separately – despite the fact that, as Cross’s book shows, they’re often mortifying to Cobain’s memory. Reportedly she has never read them in entirety herself.)
Still, Cross charts Cobain’s life with a strong instinct for narrative and detail, and crafts a perceptive portrait of a conflicted and often fascinating man. (Though Cobain craved stardom and excess, he remained shy and awkward throughout his life – he’s doubtless the only rock giant whose sexual conquests failed to number in double digits.) And the closing chapters, detailing Cobain’s spiral toward suicide, effectively combine suspense, dread, and sadness. Cobain’s importance to rock and roll may be overstated, but his story of suffering is still powerful.
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