The word “Grunge,” as an adjective and not a noun, had been kicked around in rock ’n’ roll for decades before it came to describe a generation. Lester Bangs used it in an October 1972 record review of a metal band in Creem. Before that, it appeared in liner notes to a reissue of a 1957 Johnny Burnette Trio album, where the rockabilly guitar playing was described as “grungy.” Mark Arm of Mudhoney is often credited with coining the term, but he says he heard it from friends in Australia where edgy singer-songwriter Tex Perkins was dubbed “the high priest of grunge.” The first print use of “Grunge” in the Northwest can be traced to a letter to the editor by Mark Arm that appeared in the Seattle fanzine Desperate Times in 1981. In it, Arm complained about the band Mr. Epp and the Calculations: “Pure grunge! Pure noise! Pure shit!” Arm just so happened to be the lead singer for Mr. Epp.
Sub Pop Records first used the word in promotional materials describing Green River, a group that included Arm—plus Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard, who later formed Pearl Jam. “Ultra-loose GRUNGE that destroyed the morals of a generation,” the release read.
That Green River record was produced by Jack Endino, who could have trademarked the Grunge sound as well as the name. Kurt hired Endino to produce early demos in 1988. The result of that first demo tape, and a few other lucky breaks, caused Sub Pop to sign Nirvana. With that deal in hand, Nirvana recorded their debut, Bleach, at Reciprocal, with Endino producing. Most of that album would qualify as Grunge, yet “About a Girl” was “pure pop,” in Endino’s words. Kurt told Endino he had listened to Meet the Beatles for three hours straight before writing that song.
The sessions for the entire Bleach album cost just $600, an indication of both how basic the studio was and Endino’s low rates. Sub Pop was so poor they couldn’t front that small sum, and Kurt didn’t have it either, of course. Kurt had to borrow the money to pay the studio from Jason Everman, who played bass in Nirvana briefly. Everman told me Kurt never paid him back. But Bleach would earn Nirvana mostly positive reviews and garner them airplay on college radio stations. It was a start.
By 1989, Sub Pop bands were generating a lot of attention in Europe, and specifically in the UK. There were several competing weekly music publications in England that were always searching for the next big thing, and it was there where “grunge” became a term to describe a movement, instead of one style of music. In a British newspaper, Mark Arm described the streets of Seattle being “paved with grunge.” Almost overnight, “grunge” became “Grunge,” as the British music press began using the name in headlines. Looking for something to write about now that punk had faded, they grabbed hold of Seattle bands, and “Grunge” appeared in nearly every headline. Mark Arm hated that he’d started the trend, but he couldn’t stop it. “It seemed a way to pigeonhole every band from Seattle,” Arm said. “These bands didn’t sound alike, but suddenly, what had been an adjective became a noun.”
The media in the US also needed a way to describe the fashion, music, and lifestyle shifts that were embodied by youth in Seattle, and so “Grunge” made its way back home. As with every cyclical youth-cultural trend—from greasers to hippies to punks—there was a shred of truth to the trend, but also much projection, exaggeration, and amplification in how the press reported it. If the eighties had been an era personified by yuppies, blue-collar no-nonsense Seattle was the antidote. Seattle was a city of bookstores and coffee shops that helped support a lifestyle that was contemplative. All those espresso shops needed baristas—the job Matt Dillon’s character had in Singles—and those positions were perfect for musicians. Still, the only person I knew in Seattle in 1991 who dressed like Matt Dillon in Singles was Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament. That should come as no surprise, as Dillon wore many of Ament’s clothes in the movie.
But the media has always fed on trends and movements, and when a handful of Seattle bands gained international attention—and when one of those bands (Nirvana) sold thirty-five million albums—something had to be made of it in the press. As these Grunge “trend” stories began to appear in magazines and newspapers over the world, there was the inevitable backlash in Seattle where many, including Kurt Cobain, felt that a varied and diverse music scene with hundreds of bands had been condensed to one word. Kurt was a good enough music critic—he had once imagined himself as a fanzine editor—to know that there were major differences between the sounds of Nirvana and the more metal-leaning Soundgarden, but both were now classified as Grunge. In nearly every interview Kurt or Nirvana did henceforth with radio or television, they were asked about Grunge. While Kurt was happy to have his music influence other bands, and to also be able to wear a T-shirt adorned with the logo of his favorite indie band when he was on television, he didn’t want to be seen as the leader of a youth movement. He usually refused to answer questions about Grunge, or responded with sarcasm. He never specifically addressed why he hated the term so much, but many other Seattle musicians told me why they disliked it—because it diminished their individual artistry and turned their art into a commodified and marketed trend.
Evidence of the Seattle backlash toward the use of the word “Grunge” came with one of the most delicious spoofs ever pulled on a major newspaper. In 1992, New York–based magazines had begun to regularly send writers to Seattle to document “the scene” and capture the essence of Grunge. They would fly into town, hang in local clubs, try to catch the “flavor” of “the scene,” and look for juicy quotes. As a result, locals, particularly musicians, became resentful when asked about Grunge by out-of-towners.
Sub Pop was ground zero for anything related to Grunge, at least in the media’s mind, and reporters were desperate to try to break a Grunge exclusive. In November 1992, a New York Times reporter was assigned to write about “Grunge culture.” The writer phoned Sub Pop, and Megan Jasper answered the phone. When the reporter asked her if fans of Grunge had a lingo, Jasper informed him, sarcastically, that there was a secret “Seattle Grunge language.” The writer took the bait. On the spot Jasper made up several nonsense sayings, telling the reporter they were Grunge code words known only within Seattle culture.
The list was titled “Grunge Speak” when it was published in The New York Times the next day. “Lamestain” was what a Grunge musician would call an “uncool person” and a derogatory term, the Times reported. “Wack slacks” was the name for now-fashionable ripped jeans like Kurt’s. When rockers in Seattle said they were “swingin’ on the flippity-flop,” it meant they were hanging out. “Bound-and-hagged” was staying home on a weekend night. What made “Grunge Speak” even more strange was that in the same article, Sub Pop’s Jonathan Poneman was quoted on how people in Seattle resented the intrusion of media attention: “All things Grunge are treated with the utmost cynicism and amusement . . . because the whole thing is a fabricated movement, and always has been,” he said.
Seattle howled at the “Grunge Speak” piece, including Kurt Cobain. This was truly the funniest thing that had ever happened in the Seattle music scene, but it also illustrated the insanity of the phenomenon of Grunge. Seattle was being treated as if it were some newly discovered tribe, with its own customs, dress, and language. Entertainment Weekly wrote the next year, in a true moment of hyperbole, “There hasn’t been this kind of exploitation of a subculture since the media first discovered hippies in the sixties.”
While everyone in Seattle laughed at the New York Times story, and we even wrote about it in The Rocket, several weeks passed before the rest of the country caught on. Finally, the Chicago magazine The Baffler reported that The New York Times had been had. Rather than admit they erred, the Times declared it was actually The Baffler who had been hoaxed, and that the “Grunge Speak” list was real. The Times went so far as to demand The Baffler apologize. They didn’t, of course, but it is worth mentioning that The New York Times has never run a correction, and twenty years later “Grunge Speak” is still posted on the newspaper’s website without any indication that it’s a hoax. Either someone at that paper truly b
elieves that people in Seattle used (or still use) the term “bloated, big bag of bloatation” to describe a drunk, or Grunge is responsible for the longest-running prank ever pulled on The New York Times.
Around the time of “Grunge Speak,” I hit my own apex of how crazy Grunge had become when another gullible out-of-town reporter phoned The Rocket. He was from an eastern Canadian newspaper and claimed a story had just come over the Canadian wire services about how officials were concerned Seattle would be overrun with teenagers. Public-safety leaders, this guy said, were quoted as predicting that a million youth were headed for Seattle, like the influx San Francisco saw during the 1967 Summer of Love. This reporter claimed his wire story said Seattle police had already installed barricades to control crowds. I laughed and told him he’d been had.
But this tenacious reporter wouldn’t let go. He kept calling back, thinking he was on to an exclusive, and that I could help him confirm it. He insisted I “look out my window” to make sure this army of flannel-clad teens hadn’t already arrived. For a half second I wondered if I was the one getting hoaxed. But things had been so crazy that year, and so beyond what I’d ever imagined, I did look out the window. There was, of course, no mass of teenage runaways filling the streets of Seattle.
If I was living with this kind of nonsense, imagine Kurt, as the supposed “leader” of a nonexistent “movement,” and the amount of absurdity he was dealing with. He was pestered by reporters everywhere he went. When he was asked about the “Seattle scene” by a journalist, Kurt said, “All scenes are relevant, but they all phase into nothing, or go away. . . . They are claiming we finally put Seattle on ‘the map.’ What map?”
That silly Canadian wire-service report about the masses of kids did contain a tiny bit of foreshadowing, however. Out my same window, seven years later, there actually were hordes of kids, thousands instead of millions, fighting police behind barricades. Clouds of tear gas drifted up into my office during one wild week in November 1999. That month Seattle’s streets were filled with angry youth for protests that would be known as the Battle in Seattle, the WTO riots.
If during the Summer of Grunge reporters were looking everywhere to land the ultimate Seattle story, Kurt was the biggest game of them all, and they hunted him in every nook of the Pacific Northwest. He wisely chose to spend that summer living in Los Angeles awaiting his daughter Frances’s birth and did not return to Seattle until the fall. He couldn’t hide completely, however. The September issue of Vanity Fair captured both Courtney and Kurt. It was the single most controversial article ever written about them. The headline read: STRANGE LOVE: ARE COURTNEY LOVE, LEAD DIVA OF THE POSTPUNK BAND HOLE, AND HER HUSBAND, NIRVANA HEARTTHROB KURT COBAIN, THE GRUNGE JOHN AND YOKO? OR THE NEXT SID AND NANCY? The story contained allegations of drug use, of Frances being born in poor health, with Courtney described as a “train-wreck personality.” When Los Angeles County’s child protective services stepped in to threaten to take Frances away, Kurt was beside himself. Just a day after Courtney gave birth, Kurt went to the delivery room with a loaded pistol, intending for the two of them to commit suicide together. He was talked down by Courtney, and Eric Erlandson of Hole helpfully whisked away the gun, but the incident shows how on the edge Kurt was. Guns and suicide were already established parts of his world, even with a one-day-old daughter next to him.
But something also shifted with Kurt in the season of Grunge, and the change ultimately affected his legacy for the better. Kurt had always been liberal, and Nirvana had played several antiwar benefits before they became famous. But by 1992, Kurt was motivated to speak out on social issues he felt important. Perhaps he thought that if he was going to be asked the same questions about Grunge over and over in every interview, he’d better shift the control and use these opportunities to affect change. He chose to discuss feminism, bigotry, racism, and intolerance, topics he spoke about in every interview he did for the rest of his life.
The transformation was, in some ways, remarkable. Kurt Cobain, who previously had spent most of his spare time watching inane television or playing with his Evel Knievel action figures, became the most outspoken man in rock ’n’ roll. His pro-feminist stance and his support of gay rights became almost crusades for him at this point. If Grunge gave Kurt a soapbox, he was going to use it for good.
The most obvious example of Kurt’s new outspokenness came in his liner notes to the B-side collection Incesticide, which was released at the end of 1992. The notes are unlike any other liner notes ever penned by a rock star. They are more of an open letter to fans, and the public, than a description of the music on the album. In them, Kurt urges “homophobes” to no longer buy his albums. He wrote: “If any of you, in any way, hate homosexuals, people of a different color, or women, please do this one favor for us—leave us the fuck alone. Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.”
With this battle cry, Kurt was trying to do something during the mad year of Grunge that was unheard of in the marketplace of pop culture: he was attempting to self-select who bought his records. Nirvana’s initial fan base was made of their peers, progressive fans who came out to tiny clubs to watch a band touring in a van. But as Nevermind broke massive, Nirvana no longer had one type of fan. That bothered a control freak like Kurt, particularly as Grunge became a label he was saddled with, and particularly when Nirvana’s audiences began to grow.
And when his music was co-opted, Kurt became enraged. In those same liner notes Kurt wrote about a real-life incident of two men in Reno raping a girl while they sang lyrics to the song “Polly” from Nevermind. Kurt said they were “two wastes of sperm and eggs.” Hinting at his own suicide, or at least retirement, he added, “I have a hard time carrying on knowing there are plankton like that in our audience.” Kurt was particularly upset that “Polly,” a song he wrote about a newspaper account he’d read of the torture and rape of a fourteen-year-old girl, would then later be used as a soundtrack to another horrific crime. The song had displayed his extraordinary creative mind, written from the view of the attacker in the deplorable crime, but it was set into a catchy pop song. Oddly, Kurt wrote three separate songs over the course of his career about rape, one on every album Nirvana put out: “Floyd the Barber,” “Polly,” and, obviously, “Rape Me.”
After Kurt wrote “Rape Me,” he felt he had to explain himself to the media. He told Spin, “It’s like she’s saying, ‘Rape me, go ahead, rape me, beat me. You’ll never kill me. I’ll survive this and I’m gonna fucking rape you one of these days, and you won’t even know it.’” In the same interview Kurt said he hoped In Utero would shift some of rock’s “misogyny.” “Maybe it will inspire women to pick up guitars, and start bands—because it’s the only future of rock ’n’ roll.”
Rape became just one of many social issues Kurt often spoke out against, and Nirvana performed several benefit concerts for anti-rape groups. They also played benefits for anti-hate groups, against racism, and for gay rights. The more mainstream Kurt’s music became and the more Nevermind sold, the more he felt the need to try to control his agenda. Nirvana played mostly loud, raucous guitar rock, and that style of music—be it Grunge or heavy metal—primarily attracted a young male demographic that oftentimes felt concerts were a place to work off aggression or party. That stereotype had fit Kurt at one point in his youth, but once he saw his own countenance reflected back at him from his concert crowds, he tried to shift that vibe. He tried to pick bands who were less mainstream to open concerts for Nirvana. Mirroring his comments on women being the future, he also gave opportunities to female-fronted bands like L7 and Shonen Knife.
In some ways, Kurt was successful in gaining back some control. Grunge became a much more finely nuanced musical movement than heavy metal, and there were opportunities for females that hadn’t really existed within hard rock before. Courtney’s band, Hole, inspired a generation of young women as well, and so did Babes in Toyland, the Breeders, Veruca Salt, and Seattle’s own Seven Year Bitch.
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sp; Kurt promoted these groups whenever he did an interview and wore T-shirts with their names on them, and that was one of the reasons he was often cited as being a feminist. He was comfortable with that title, and both he and Courtney used it to describe him. “No one ever talks about how many of these rock guys were just sexist, asshole jocks who used alternative rock to maintain the same misogynistic power they had in high school,” Courtney Love once told me. Kurt, she said, was different. And I think she was right.
Kurt’s feminism has inspired several academic studies. Cortney Alexander wrote her master’s thesis on gender identity in Grunge, focusing primarily on Kurt. She titled it after one of Kurt’s quotes: “I’m Not Like Them, but I Can Pretend”: A Feminist Analysis of Kurt Cobain’s Gender Performance. The blog Gender Across Borders has written, “Cobain often identified himself with women, racial and gender minorities because he felt alienated from the cultural expectation of masculinity.” The blog The Individualist Feminist has a separate page devoted to Kurt. It calls him an “outspoken feminist” and quotes, by chapter and verse, every mention he made that supported women’s rights in the press. There were many.
Kurt was not the first—nor would he be the last—rock star to address social issues, but because he had the biggest pulpit in music in the early nineties, his words were heard and had an effect. He had also grown up in an environment where overt homosexuality was not tolerated, and where bias and violence toward sexual minorities were part of the fabric of life. Once he was famous, he often spoke out in support of gay rights. In 1992, he did an extensive interview with The Advocate simply because he knew that magazine had an audience of gay readers. Kurt made headlines around the world when he told the magazine he was “gay in spirit” and “probably could be bisexual.” He inflated parts of his own childhood history, claiming he was often beaten up around Aberdeen because some thought him gay (none of his friends confirm these beatings, and doubt they happened). Kurt also said he’d been arrested in Aberdeen for spray-painting HOMO SEX RULES on a wall (the police report of this arrest specifies it was actually the nonsensical slogan AIN’T GOT NO HOW WATCHAMACALLIT). His interview with The Advocate presented him as pro-gay from a much younger age than when he actually became politically aware. Kurt did this, at least in part, because he very much wanted to be embraced by the gay community, and because he felt a kinship to gays and lesbians as outcasts judged by society, which is how he viewed himself.
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