Right from the opening stuttered refrain, Smells Like Teen Spirit sounds like pure adrenalin, a revolution waiting to happen. Kurt's brief guitar solo is a masterpiece of restraint, remaining note-faithful to the melody, driving it deeper into your brain.
“I was trying to write the ultimate pop song,” he admitted to Rolling Stone journalist David Fricke in 1994. “I was trying to rip off the Pixies. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard. Teen Spirit is such a clichéd riff. When I first came up with it, Krist [Novoselic, bassist] looked at me and said: 'That is so ridiculous.'”
The inspiration behind the song came directly from Nirvana's adopted home town of Olympia WA, the birthplace of Calvin Johnson's K Records and Riot Grrrl. It was written after Dave Grohl joined the band and moved down to Olympia and slept on Kurt's floor. It was one of the last songs written for Nevermind. Cobain sent album producer Butch Vig a cassette of the demo a week ahead of the recording sessions in LA.
Grohl dated Bikini Kill singer Kathleen Hanna for a couple of weeks, and the Nirvana/Bikini Kill couples briefly socialized together, skateboarding and indulging in the occasional spot of vandalism. It was during one of these nights that Hanna spray-painted 'Kurt smells like Teen Spirit' on a wall, referring to the brand of deodorant his girlfriend, Bikini Kill drummer Tobi Vail, wore.
Cobain and Vail split up shortly afterwards, him feeling excluded by her self-assurance and youth (she was 21, he was 23 but she made him feel older). He wanted something more. And as much as he felt energized by her creativity, Kurt was a solo creator. Self-hating and dissatisfied with life in Olympia but not wanting to admit it, and frustrated that his relationship with Vail wasn't progressing as he wanted, Kurt split up with her. It was October 1990.
“He was a wreck," says Grohl.
“Contrary' to popular belief, he broke up with me," Vail states firmly. “The idea that I broke his heart, and that he was helpless and fatally wounded by that, is just stupid romantic tripe. I am sick of being the girl who is blamed for his suffering. That idea doesn't come from anything that really happened."
The famous ‘Over-bored and self-assured' line in Teen Spirit is a reference to both Vail and Cobain's personalities. “Boredom: the desire for desires," as Leo Tolstoy wrote. What was there to do in life, now that the adults had grabbed all the fun adolescent stuff for themselves?
“The songs were confusing," comments Vail. “Who really knows what they are about? They sound great and some of the imagery is strong, but as far as them being about any one person or thing or situation, it's not clear, is it? They seem to be written in code. Smells Like Teen Spirit was supposed to be called Anthem, but Bikini Kill had a song called Anthem, and we got in a big argument, and I won so he had to change it."
The original draft of Teen Spirit included a line later picked up on by Kurt's future wife Courtney Love: “Who will be the king and queen of the outcast tans?” Clearly, it was intended for Vail.
Smells Like Teen Spirit was released in the UK on September 9,1991.
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.