Here We Are Now

by Charles R. Cross

  Many Nirvana fans were outraged, feeling that any item with Kurt’s name attached, even when the brand was Converse, was exploitive. Primary Wave’s Devin Lasker defended the product to the press: “Kurt wore these shoes.” Still, as Ad Age blogger Charlie Morgan pointed out at the time, “He died in the things. I mean, that’s disturbing.”

  Lead singer of Seattle band Death Cab for Cutie Ben Gibbard weighed in to Details: “When I was a teenager, the idea of Kurt Cobain having his own sneaker—that would’ve been like sacrilege,” Gibbard said. But even Gibbard, who like many musicians in Seattle looked upon Kurt as a role model, understood the scope of this particular endorsement. “If they were making ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ into ‘Eight-Piece Box’ for, like, Kentucky Fried Chicken, yeah, that would offend me. But if it takes a Kurt Cobain Converse to remind people to go buy Nirvana records, that’s fine with me.”

  The Kurt Cobain Converse sneakers sold well. Every version of the line, and every model, eventually sold out. The sneakers now sell for a premium on eBay.

  It was initially jarring to me to think about a Kurt Cobain–branded product, but if Kurt was going to endorse anything, it would have been Converse. He probably would have given his authorization if they’d sent him a couple of free pairs. In the end I warmed to the idea, particularly thinking of Kurt’s ENDORSEMENT written on the end of his shoe. I couldn’t bring myself to buy a pair, though.

  If there ever was a compelling case for the power of Kurt Cobain’s name and how valuable that connection is still considered by marketers, it came with Dr. Martens shoes. If Kurt’s name on a product he liked caused controversy for Converse, imagine what happened around an advertisement that evoked his name and image for something he never wore. Thus the 2007 shit storm that sprang up when Dr. Martens decided to use Kurt’s name and likeness without permission in an ad.

  A German army doctor in World War II had designed Dr. Martens boots and shoes, but by the 1960s they were the go-to boots for the English working class. The boots became the choice for UK youth including the Teddy Boys, skinheads, and, eventually, punk rockers. They were imported to the US, but in the 1980s only a couple of stores in Seattle sold them. One was the retail outlet where Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell’s then girlfriend and later wife worked. It is no surprise, then, that Cornell wore Dr. Martens, as did Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and Layne Staley of Alice in Chains (both of those later bands were managed, or advised, by Cornell’s wife). When Grunge took off as a cultural phenomenon after Nevermind exploded, and Seattle rockers were photographed wearing Docs, sales of the brand skyrocketed. Soon Doc Martens were being sold in Seattle’s Nordstrom.

  Kurt Cobain’s association with Dr. Martens, however, was distant at best. If a photograph exists of him wearing Docs, I’ve not seen it. No Dr. Martens were in his personal effects that I had the privilege to see. Prior to 1992 Kurt had no money, and Docs, which still cost $100 a pair in that era, were beyond his pre-Nevermind means. When I asked Courtney if Kurt ever wore them, her response was “NEVER.” But Dr. Martens nonetheless became a fashion choice so strongly associated with Grunge that they became associated with Kurt. This fact did not escape the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. In 2007, as part of the Dr. Martens Forever campaign, the agency put together a series of ads in Great Britain that featured illustrations of legendary rock stars—including Kurt, Joe Strummer, Sid Vicious, and Joey Ramone—in heaven, sitting on a cloud, with their Docs on.

  The ads immediately drew attention, which was probably exactly what Dr. Martens had hoped for, but the discourse went off track when Nirvana fans complained loudly that Kurt never wore the shoes. Even if he had, the idea of Kurt in an advertisement, particularly one that showed him in heaven with combat boots on, was in horrible taste. Fans of the Clash also complained, but the protests about Kurt were loudest, as if he had the highest sanctity.

  Courtney called the ads “outrageous” and demanded they be taken down. Love said Dr. Martens was trying “to commercially gain from such a despicable use” of Kurt’s picture for a product he didn’t use. The Cobain estate had not approved the ad, nor had anyone associated with Nirvana. They were allowed because UK law doesn’t protect the rights of publicity of deceased celebrities in product endorsements. To add insult to injury, the ads appeared on some US websites, where their legal basis was less solid. The advertising agency called that a “mistake.”

  Given the brouhaha that followed, it was no surprise that Dr. Martens fired its advertising agency and issued a public apology. “We are really, really, really sorry,” Dr. Martens CEO David Suddens said, with rare forthrightness for a corporate head. “We do think that it is offensive. We made a mistake. My message to Courtney Love is: this is something we shouldn’t have been doing.” A Saatchi & Saatchi spokesperson defended the ads, saying, “We believe the ads are edgy, but not offensive.”

  The Dr. Martens controversy shows how powerful and important Kurt Cobain’s endorsement is still perceived to be within the marketplace, and that Kurt’s integrity is still a valuable entity. What Kurt wore mattered, and still matters, to millions of fans, to apparel marketers, and to high-fashion designers. His individual fashion sense—however accidental, however rooted in practicality and necessity—created ripples that are still being felt within the apparel industry. Kurt Cobain may be long gone from this world, but from the catwalk to casual styles sold at Target, his choices in clothing are still having an impact.

  FOUR

  THE PERFECT SEATTLE MOMENT

  Aberdeen & Seattle

  Kurt Cobain was born in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1967. Despite his strong association with Seattle, he only lived in that city for eighteen months. He spent twenty years in Aberdeen, though, or in surrounding Grays Harbor County. His work and life were shaped by his time in Aberdeen, and he, in turn, transformed Aberdeen.

  The most powerful music always comes with a sense of place that informs both the musician creating the song and the listener hearing it. A song’s setting is an entry into our imagination and a way to turn the singer’s world into our own. Sometimes place is specifically evoked in a song’s lyrics, as in Otis Redding’s “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay,” or it may be used as metaphor, as in Bob Dylan’s “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again.” And sometimes a song is set in an emotional place, an internal world with no physical address.

  Kurt Cobain wrote roughly one hundred songs, and nearly half of those were either written in Aberdeen or informed by imagery from the city. No song is as closely connected with both Aberdeen’s physical place and Kurt’s emotional connection to it as “Something in the Way,” from Nevermind. The enduring power of this song with listeners—and the lure of the actual physical place to fans—illustrates how Kurt’s work transformed one tiny, real part of the world.

  “Something in the Way” uses only nine lines of unique lyrics and is remarkably simple in structure. The chorus repeats the title’s four words, with Kurt stretching out every syllable with a deliberateness of pronunciation that is in complete contrast to how he sings “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” The song’s narrator is underneath a bridge, where his tarp has “sprung a leak,” and he is living off “drippings from the ceiling.” A listener travels to the emotional center of a man who feels his presence in the world is an impediment rather than a blessing. It succeeds because the minor chords perfectly suit lyrics about the universal feeling of disconnection. This was a common theme for Kurt, and a central one in his catalog of songs.

  The lyrics of “Something in the Way” don’t actually mention Aberdeen, but Kurt said in several interviews he had written the song about when he was homeless and living “under a bridge.” He didn’t actually “live” there, as the bridge in Aberdeen he was referring to crosses a tidal river, which means the water ebbs twice a day, and Kurt was too sensitive a sort to live outside in any case. Still, Kurt’s explanation became a central one to his mythology, as did the bridge itself. The Young Street Bridge sits just two blocks away f
rom Kurt’s childhood home, a fact that itself says much about how disconnected he felt from his family. The bridge is only a hundred meters long and looks no different on its surface from the road on either side. The underside is visually striking only because concrete pillars rise from the water to stand next to rotted supports from an old pier. The effect is of many broken vertical shapes, askew in different angles.

  The Young Street Bridge spans the Wishkah River, a small tidal offshoot of the larger Chehalis. The Wishkah River’s water is muddy, opaque, and always brown from tidal runoff, and the spot also inspired the title to the 1996 Nirvana live album From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah. There are just thirty square yards of riverbank under the Young Street Bridge, enough for a dozen people to sit, but when the water rises, that space is greatly reduced.

  Kurt spent some time here as a teenager, where it served as a sanctuary from the world of adults and a place of reflection. Nirvana fans have inflated the legend of the bridge because of Kurt’s stories about it, and because of the many incorrect rumors that the bridge was where he first did heroin. Kurt experimented with drugs in Aberdeen, but probably the most he ever did under the bridge was smoke pot or get drunk.

  The underside of the bridge already had graffiti during Kurt’s time, some painted by him, but it has become a shrine of sorts now: every square inch of available space is filled with messages from fans to, or about, Kurt, many in foreign languages. It has become a way station along the Nirvana fan pilgrimage and one of the most popular tourist attractions in Aberdeen. Fans come seeking a part of Kurt, and the tiny underside of the bridge is the most significant landmark they can locate in his hometown.

  Kurt is long gone from Aberdeen, and from this world. Still, the Young Street Bridge remains connected to him, transformed by a song.

  Aberdeen, Washington, could not be a more unlikely place for a rock star to grow up. It was settled by trappers but became a center for timber because the natural harbor offered easy access to the nearby Pacific Ocean. That fueled initial development, but its remote location—two hours from Seattle—stymied large-scale growth. Most early logging operations were clear-cuts, which felled large swaths of virgin timber and ultimately damaged the habitat for endangered species like the spotted owl. The most obvious effects of the practice of clear-cutting are the huge swaths of stumps that cover hillsides near Aberdeen, unexpected ugliness in a region of majestic natural beauty.

  Kurt grew up in an era when the timber industry was already on the decline, and unemployment was nearly twice as high in Aberdeen as in other parts of Washington State. Overfishing and overlogging had depleted remaining resources, and numerous attempts by various entities to develop more diverse employment bases had been mostly unsuccessful. One of the only recent growth industries has been a prison that opened in 2000 and has become among Aberdeen’s largest employers.

  When Kurt was born on February 20, 1967, his father worked at a service station. They lived at 2830½ Aberdeen Avenue in nearby Hoquiam, though Kurt was born at the hospital in Aberdeen. The Cobains eventually moved to a house in the northeast part of Aberdeen, near the Young Street Bridge, in a neighborhood nicknamed Felony Flats because many local troublemakers lived there. Kurt himself was arrested twice during his time in Aberdeen, for graffiti and possessing alcohol as a minor.

  That “half” address of 2830½ Aberdeen Avenue, where Kurt lived as a baby, would prove to be a trend. It was one of five homes in which Kurt would reside over the span of his life with “half” addresses: they were all shacks or cabins or parts of apartments or converted garages that had been carved out of other proper houses. In that manner, nearly every house Kurt ever lived in, with just a few exceptions, had a something-in-the-way feel, as if they were tacked on to other residences, never true homes—and those who lived there were just on the edge of homelessness.

  Aberdeen was itself a city Kurt thought was disconnected from the rest of the world by culture and economics, but sometimes it was literally isolated. The main road into Aberdeen abuts a cliff, and occasionally, after heavy rains, a rock or mud slide blocks the road. On those days, Aberdeen isn’t just metaphorically isolated from the rest of the world—it is physically cut off, too.

  Johnny Marr, the guitar player of the Smiths and later Modest Mouse, told me he had a theory that the influential music cities of Northern England and Washington State had commonalities. “They share working-class economics,” he told me, “and the kind of people who live in a rainy city.” To Marr, both Manchester and Seattle create or attract a certain breed of musician, one with an edge. “It’s more than just the gray sky and the rain,” he observed. “It’s more about the attitude. It’s an indoor culture in both those places.” Both Seattle and Manchester are known for guitar-based rock with dense layers of vocals, distortion effects, and drum beats that often shift tempo rather than lay down a consistent rhythm.

  And if Marr’s observation on indoor culture is true for Seattle and Manchester, it is even truer for Aberdeen, which gets eighty-four inches of rain a year, twice that of Seattle or Manchester. Aberdeen’s extreme weather has always gone hand in hand with a preference for harder music—garage rock and heavy metal. “By the early sixties, Grays Harbor was a hotbed of garage rock,” John Hughes, the former publisher of the Aberdeen Daily World newspaper, told me. Hughes also observed links between the region and Northern England: “Grays Harbor has a gritty, Liverpool-like appetite for loud, live music.”

  The first Aberdeen band to be signed to a major label wasn’t Nirvana but the thrash-metal band Metal Church. Their self-titled debut in 1984 sold seventy thousand copies and was picked up by Elektra Records. Kurt Cobain grew up a fan of that band—he liked thrash, and death metal, too. He also most likely took his frequent alternative spelling of his own name, Kurdt, from Metal Church’s lead singer, Kurdt Vanderhoof.

  A bigger local influence on Kurt, though, were the Melvins, who sold very few records in the eighties but provided him the template for punk rock itself. When Kurt first saw the Melvins perform in a grocery-store parking lot in Montesano, Washington (the band took its name from the manager of that grocery store), just a few miles east of Aberdeen, he wrote in his journal, “This was what I was looking for.” He wrote it twice, and underlined it.

  The Melvins played around Aberdeen for a few years but made very little money. (Kurt would help get them a major-label record deal with Atlantic in 1993, and even coproduced their Houdini album; one of his first publicly displayed artworks was a portrait of the members of the band Kiss painted on the side of the Melvins’ band van, the Mel-Van.) In 1988 the Melvins left Aberdeen, as Kurt had done just months before: he moved sixty miles west to Olympia in 1987, and it was there where he wrote most of the songs that would end up on Nevermind. Though he’d return to his hometown for the occasional gig or to visit friends and family, Kurt wouldn’t live in Aberdeen again.

  When Nirvana rose to international attention in 1991, so did Aberdeen. The city was often featured when the media first began to profile the band. Many Aberdeen residents were not comfortable with the association, particularly in light of the fact that Kurt repeatedly talked about Aberdeen as if it was filled with hicks. In one band biography release he wrote for Nirvana in 1988, Kurt described Aberdeen as full of “highly-bigoted redneck snoose-chewing deer-shooting faggot-killing logger-types who ain’t too partial to ‘weirdo new wavers.’” Needless to say, Kurt did not win fans at the Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce with this depiction of his hometown.

  Things soured further in 1992 when Kurt’s drug addiction became news. Though drinking and taverns were central to Aberdeen life, newspaper stories about heroin embarrassed the town’s leaders because their association with Kurt was still so strong. Of course, Kurt’s suicide in 1994 brought the kind of infamy few towns would seek. “Some joked that it was a revolting development for Aberdeen to be famous for Nirvana,” says John Hughes. Aberdeen had already had run-ins with media stereotypes in previous decades. The town’s downtown
core was once so populated with brothels that in 1952 Look magazine cited it as “one of the hotspots in America’s battle against sin.” Residents seemed quicker to embrace that ribald past (a local tavern even sold T-shirts that read ABERDEEN WHOREHOUSE RESTORATION SOCIETY) than their connection with Kurt. There were several attempts immediately after Kurt’s death to have something officially named after Kurt in Aberdeen, but all failed outright. One local sculptor created a statute of Kurt, but the city wouldn’t allow it on a public street. Eventually, the statue was put on display inside a muffler-repair shop.

  Aberdeen doesn’t have a bookstore that holds literary events, so when I did a reading for Heavier Than Heaven there in 2001, it was held at the library. That was appropriate in a way, as Kurt passed many days of his youth reading books in that building. There was one element, however, that I wasn’t expecting: protestors. One held a sign that said, DON’T GLORIFY DRUGGIES. But this being Aberdeen, with a small-town friendliness even in matters of heated debate, that particular protestor ended up coming to the reading and buying my book anyway. My impression of Aberdeen residents over the years has been a little different from Kurt’s experience. I’ve run into “snoose-chewing” rednecks, but I’ve also met many educated, well-read intellectuals. Many are even proud of their famous musicians.

  But not all. In 2004, for the ten-year anniversary of Kurt’s death, the mayor of nearby Hoquiam put forward a proclamation honoring Kurt. The proclamation was essentially a piece of paper stating that Kurt lived in the town as a baby, and issuing it officially would have cost the city nothing. It failed to pass when some suggested it would signal a public endorsement of drug use. “What kind of message is this sending to my kids?” Hoquiam city council member Tom Plumb asked.