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(Examiner) Interesting Grohl debunks Cobain was a genius theory: "Just seeing Kurt write the lyrics to a song five minutes before he first sings them, you just kind of find it a little bit hard to believe that the song has a lot to say about something. "   (examiner.com) divider line 87
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FrankBurns [TotalFark] 2008-10-31 06:06:11 PM  
Preach On Brother Dave, Preach On!!!!!

 
Killer Cars [TotalFark] 2008-10-31 06:15:01 PM  
I thought Kurt was more or less on record saying a lot of his lyrics were just "bullshiat"?

 
Isotope 2008-10-31 06:15:14 PM  
LOL. Yeah, the lyrics in the sleeve did read a bit like magnetic poetry.

 
lrosu79 [TotalFark] 2008-10-31 06:21:45 PM  
He should stick to writing music for more Mentos commercials.

 
FrankBurns [TotalFark] 2008-10-31 06:26:23 PM  
I don't think Kurt was fooling himself, I think all of the idiots who claim him to be a voice of a generation, have fooled themselves.

I think he was laughing and crying the whole way, saying look at the stupid sh*t that these idiots are idolizing. That is why he was so depressed, he realized how stupid we are as a society.

Like the article says, it was a goof of a song, saying what a great idea a revolution was, but that he knew we were too enslaved to commercialism to ever act on the idea.

 
savage henry [TotalFark] 2008-10-31 06:28:58 PM  
Killer Cars: I thought Kurt was more or less on record saying a lot of his lyrics were just "bullshiat"?

x2

 
impaler [TotalFark] 2008-10-31 07:43:01 PM  
confessionsofafanboy.com

1) Hit the big scene before Nirvana
2) Died a real "rock star" death

 
Byn [TotalFark] 2008-10-31 08:00:29 PM  
FrankBurns: I don't think Kurt was fooling himself, I think all of the idiots who claim him to be a voice of a generation, have fooled themselves.

I think he was laughing and crying the whole way, saying look at the stupid sh*t that these idiots are idolizing. That is why he was so depressed, he realized how stupid we are as a society.

Like the article says, it was a goof of a song, saying what a great idea a revolution was, but that he knew we were too enslaved to commercialism to ever act on the idea.


Nail, head, ding-ding-ding and all that.

 
AcheronX [TotalFark] 2008-10-31 08:48:29 PM  
I've seen people write lyrics on the fly that were far worse than anything that Cobain would pull out of his ass. He was a sharp dude.

 
El Freak [TotalFark] 2008-10-31 08:59:15 PM  
Ya know, I don't remember hearing any of this he was a genius and the voice of his generation crap until he stuck a shotgun in his mouth. I was in high school at the time and I don't recall anybody really giving two shiats about him until he died. Nirvana was just another band on the radio. But after he painted the wall with his brains, THEN I started seeing oceans of emo douchebags with Nirvana t-shirts.

 
strangeguitar 2008-10-31 09:29:02 PM  
I dig Grohl a lot. His drumming (especially on the QOTSA album) is awesome. Plus, he put together an incredible metal tribute album using legendary vocalists like Cronos (from Venom), Lemmy, Tom Warrior (from Celtic Frost), and the immortal King Diamond. If you don't have the album Probot...get it now!

 
MagicD 2008-10-31 09:34:31 PM  
I was 21 when Nevermind came out. I saw an interview on MTV Europe with Cobain and Grohl in 1991 while living in Germany. Cobain said the lyrics didn't matter and he wished people would stop reading into them so much. He said it was all about the music.

No matter how much he said the lyrics were crap people insisted he was sending a message. I guess it eventually drove him over the edge. He never wanted to be the voice of our generation...he just wanted to play music. People made more out of him than he was or wanted to be.

 
TeddyRooseveltsMustache [TotalFark] 2008-10-31 09:48:04 PM  
The best thing Nirvana did was get parodied by Weird Al.

 
Lionel Mandrake [TotalFark] 2008-10-31 09:49:53 PM  
You know who else churned out music in mere minutes?

That's right, Mozart. What a hack.

 
Earguy [TotalFark] 2008-10-31 09:53:47 PM  
For what it's worth, ZZ Top's "Tush" was improvised live on stage when they ran out of encores.

REM also has been know to be pretty quick with a lyric now and again.

 
low.dose 2008-10-31 09:56:09 PM  
the worst thing can think of... is to idolize someone that never wanted to be idolized....

 
Big Rock Star 2008-10-31 09:56:34 PM  
Grohl is talking about one particular song... that is some big extrapolating to say that he's slagging off all of Cobain's work.

-1

 
John_Rat_Safari 2008-10-31 10:11:54 PM  
El Freak: Ya know, I don't remember hearing any of this he was a genius and the voice of his generation crap until he stuck a shotgun in his mouth. I was in high school at the time and I don't recall anybody really giving two shiats about him until he died. Nirvana was just another band on the radio. But after he painted the wall with his brains, THEN I started seeing oceans of emo douchebags with Nirvana t-shirts.

Suuuuuure - nobody interviewed him, bought CDs/shirts, idolized him, started bands because of them or anything else that was going on before he died - until after he died.

No offense, I don't really care about Kurt, but you're so wrong it's worthy of comment.

He was not obscure, he was famous, before he died.

 
RevMercutio [TotalFark] 2008-10-31 10:23:40 PM  
Lionel Mandrake: You know who else churned out music in mere minutes?

That's right, Mozart. What a hack.


Mozart was a genius. Comparing him to Cobain is insulting.

 
RevMercutio [TotalFark] 2008-10-31 10:24:48 PM  
John_Rat_Safari: El Freak: Ya know, I don't remember hearing any of this he was a genius and the voice of his generation crap until he stuck a shotgun in his mouth. I was in high school at the time and I don't recall anybody really giving two shiats about him until he died. Nirvana was just another band on the radio. But after he painted the wall with his brains, THEN I started seeing oceans of emo douchebags with Nirvana t-shirts.

Suuuuuure - nobody interviewed him, bought CDs/shirts, idolized him, started bands because of them or anything else that was going on before he died - until after he died.

No offense, I don't really care about Kurt, but you're so wrong it's worthy of comment.

He was not obscure, he was famous, before he died.


Fame doesn't equal genius. A lot of people bought Britney merch too.

 
sararenne 2008-10-31 10:26:11 PM  
John_Rat_Safari: El Freak: Ya know, I don't remember hearing any of this he was a genius and the voice of his generation crap until he stuck a shotgun in his mouth. I was in high school at the time and I don't recall anybody really giving two shiats about him until he died. Nirvana was just another band on the radio. But after he painted the wall with his brains, THEN I started seeing oceans of emo douchebags with Nirvana t-shirts.

Suuuuuure - nobody interviewed him, bought CDs/shirts, idolized him, started bands because of them or anything else that was going on before he died - until after he died.

No offense, I don't really care about Kurt, but you're so wrong it's worthy of comment.

He was not obscure, he was famous, before he died.


I agree with El Freak... sortof... Kurt Cobain was famous, people interviewed him, he was on the cover of RS and Spin and others... but he wasn't "the voice of the generation" "the poet" and whatever else they said about him after the gunshot. He was just a rock star. After he died, people I knew in high school (I was a junior in HS when he died), who were "over" grundge, all of a sudden wore black for a year in mourning for Cobain, the cover of every magazine for months were all him, and his new found "genius" and "voice of the angsty" was all people would talk about.
They didnt say the same when he was alive, just he was in a band that made grundge famous... and grundge was on its way out.

 
Bondidude 2008-10-31 10:26:27 PM  
Earguy: For what it's worth, ZZ Top's "Tush" was improvised live on stage when they ran out of encores.

REM also has been know to be pretty quick with a lyric now and again.


Also Ben Folds has been known to make up some pretty funny shiat on the spot while doing live shows.

/Rock this biatch!

 
Saborlas [TotalFark] 2008-10-31 10:41:48 PM  
If my "singing" style involved mangling the words into something that could only be understood by reading a lyrics sheet while listening, OF COURSE I'd say that the lyrics "didn't matter." If I can't be arsed to enunciate, obviously the lyrics are low on my list of priorities.

Dude didn't even invent grunge, he just was the first person to successfully pitch it to a record label willing to make the band an instant sensation.

 
barneyfifesbullet 2008-10-31 10:43:59 PM  
Foo is way better than Nirvana ever were. Easy to see who the talent in Nirvana was.

Cobain is only talked about know because he's dead, however it happened.

Otherwise, he's Mudhoney or Tad.

 
barneyfifesbullet 2008-10-31 10:44:37 PM  
know, now, whatever

 
Bhasayate [TotalFark] 2008-10-31 10:48:31 PM  
There's some good songs though ...

I like "I think I'm dumb"

And, yes, I remember the jokes, "Well, Kurt, we think u r dumb too for shooting yourself"

hell his mom said, "he's gone and joined the stupid club"

 
Nemo's Brother 2008-10-31 10:51:47 PM  
Foo is just poppy, top 40 neutered rock.

 
davynelson 2008-10-31 10:58:29 PM  
honestly
cobain was right place right time

cuz he wuddn't no genius
in any sense of the word


i'm not dissin the dead
he was alright

and that's good enough
gosh darn it

 
Gilligan_Buddy 2008-10-31 11:02:29 PM  
barneyfifesbullet: Foo is way better than Nirvana ever were. Easy to see who the talent in Nirvana was.

Nirvana was pretty well known and big on the college scene before April 90, when Grohl joined Nirvana. The talent lies elsewhere within Nirvana, not with Grohl.

 
Insolent 2008-11-01 12:07:48 AM  
impaler: 1) Hit the big scene before Nirvana
2) Died a real "rock star" death


Alone, 86 pounds and found dead after a week?

Give me a bottle of Jack, some blow, and VW Beetle.

/loved AIC

 
SuperCatBarf [TotalFark] 2008-11-01 12:07:54 AM  
There are exceptions, but generally rock lyrics don't mean anything. I've never listened to a Nirvana song and thought, "wow, man, that's deep."

What I liked about Nirvana was the way the songs sounded nothing like Hair Metal or mainstream pop of the era. It was guys actually rocking out in hi-fi. Millions agreed and Poison and the like were finished, and Michael Jackson stopped being a superstar/weirdo and become just a weirdo.

It opened up opportunities for tons of new music, some of which actually made the mainstream for awhile. Then came Pearl Jam (or more specifically, Eddie Vedder) and Candlebox, and made it all suck ass again.

 
FeedTheCollapse 2008-11-01 12:12:08 AM  
MagicD: People made more out of him than he was or wanted to be.



I think this is true now.

Don't get me wrong: I like Nirvana, but I have to seriously question someone's knowledge or taste in music when they put Nevermind in their all-time top ten or anything like that. Nirvana was good, but nothing that hadn't been done by numerous bands before them. I give them credit for putting bands who were otherwise destined to languish in obscurity some mainstream attention, but that's about it.


/Krist Novoselic is doing robocalls for Chris Gregoire here in WA.

 
peewinkle 2008-11-01 12:26:22 AM  
impaler: 1) Hit the big scene before Nirvana
2) Died a real "rock star" death


so what?

 
MikoSquiz 2008-11-01 01:04:25 AM  
Sample Dave Grohl lyric:

When I talk about it, carries on, reasons only knew
When I talk about it, aries of treasons all renew
Big me to talk about it, I could stand to prove
If we can get around it, I know that its true

When I talked about it, carried on, reasons only knew
But it's you I fell into
Well I talked about it, put it on, never was it true
But it's you I fell into


/so um, yeah

 
STRYPERSWINE 2008-11-01 01:09:15 AM  
Cobain is the biggest example of "The Emperor's New Clothes" that I can think of. Talentless hack propped up on stage every night to make money when he should have been in hospital where he couldn't hurt himself or others, which he eventually did.

 
Wasted Pixels 2008-11-01 01:14:25 AM  
According to Heavier Than Heaven (which Grohl rather notoriously didn't contribute to in any way), Kurt's habit of writing lyrics five minutes before recording a track was posturing; he'd work on lyrics for months (or even years) in some cases, then pretend to write them "on the fly" in the studio.

My hunch has always been that Cobain was very insecure about his ability as a lyricist, and pretending to not give a fark about lyrics was a good way to deflect criticism of his lyrical style and inarticulate delivery.

 
Third_Uncle_Eno 2008-11-01 01:40:53 AM  
didn't Kurt Cobain write a song about a section of Nirvana so -called "fans".... i forget the song title, but i remember some lyrics "he likes all our pretty songs [...] likes to shoot his guns [....] but be don't know what it means"

was he talking about retarded redneck hillbillies? or just all the non-grunge fans? or just the kind of people who like the surface of Nirvana, the radio songs, etc. etc. ????

 
NiveK- 2008-11-01 01:41:18 AM  
STRYPERSWINE: Cobain is the biggest example of "The Emperor's New Clothes" that I can think of. Talentless hack propped up on stage every night to make money when he should have been in hospital where he couldn't hurt himself or others, which he eventually did.

yea what a no talent hack,

its only been what, 14 years since he died, and people still talk about him and listen to his music

obviously hes terrible

 
Third_Uncle_Eno 2008-11-01 01:44:52 AM  
forgot the slashies:

/ likes Pearl Jam better
/// takes "nevermind" out for a listen every few years
//// to the major music magazines who beat it into our brains every couple of years: yup... 'nevermind' was a landmark. had a bunch of great songs. etc. stop beating us over the head with it to "remind" us.
// is/was one of those fans of just their 'radio songs'
// thinks "Ten" is one of PJ's weakest records [the second half does nothing for me at all]

 
mandingueiro 2008-11-01 02:30:14 AM  
duh.

 
carmody 2008-11-01 02:41:51 AM  
I never heard anybody say he was a genius, but he clearly was able to express himself in a way that resonated on a deep level within millions of people. So that's a sort of genius, I'd say.

 
manofmanyhats 2008-11-01 02:43:07 AM  
Fark U Danm we could have quite the conversation on music i see.

 
Unhip1 [TotalFark] 2008-11-01 03:56:42 AM  
Nirvana derailed the second coming of pop.

Grohl's commentary is equally applicable to most of what would be considered the Canon. Even massive songwriters like Lennon/McCartney often realize they have hits on their hands after working on a song with vaguely coherent lyrics for hours.

I didn't see much in Nirvana that was remarkable. I bought Nevermind when it was first released and sold it back after two weeks. There wasn't much new to learn there, songwriting-wise.

 
SuperCatBarf [TotalFark] 2008-11-01 04:28:22 AM  
Fark U
Don't try to school me, Blind Melon guy.

 
kingflower 2008-11-01 05:18:56 AM  
strangeguitar: I dig Grohl a lot. His drumming (especially on the QOTSA album) is awesome. Plus, he put together an incredible metal tribute album using legendary vocalists like Cronos (from Venom), Lemmy, Tom Warrior (from Celtic Frost), and the immortal King Diamond. If you don't have the album Probot...get it now!

Probot kicks ass. I love the song with Lemmy.

 
Sano88 2008-11-01 06:08:56 AM  
Third_Uncle_Eno: didn't Kurt Cobain write a song about a section of Nirvana so -called "fans".... i forget the song title, but i remember some lyrics "he likes all our pretty songs [...] likes to shoot his guns [....] but be don't know what it means"

was he talking about retarded redneck hillbillies? or just all the non-grunge fans? or just the kind of people who like the surface of Nirvana, the radio songs, etc. etc. ????


The song you're referring to is "In Bloom"

I always used to think in that song he says "What it means to be a man." but its actually "What it means and I say yeah." I learned this after having to sing it on rock band... After that I realized I was trying to inject meaning in to his lyrics.

/agrees with Dave

 
browntimmy 2008-11-01 06:19:48 AM  
Fark U: Oh yeah, and Butch Vig is the real talent who made Nevermind happen.


Meh, Nevermind isn't Nirvana's best record, anyway.

 
RevMercutio [TotalFark] 2008-11-01 06:45:15 AM  
barneyfifesbullet: Foo is way better than Nirvana ever were. Easy to see who the talent in Nirvana was.

Cobain is only talked about know because he's dead, however it happened.

Otherwise, he's Mudhoney or Tad.


I wouldn't go that far. Even at their peak, neither Mudhoney nor Tad were as big as Nirvana before Cobain's suicide.

I'm also of the opinion that overall, Grohl is more talented than Cobain (remember that the first Foo album was almost entirely Dave, and he didn't put the band together until afterwards), but this doesn't mean Cobain wasn't good.

Unhip1: Nirvana derailed the second coming of pop.

I disagree with this, too. the particular "pop" at that time was splintering already when Nevermind started igniting.

 
archie leach 2008-11-01 06:51:15 AM  
Third_Uncle_Eno: didn't Kurt Cobain write a song about a section of Nirvana so -called "fans".... i forget the song title, but i remember some lyrics "he likes all our pretty songs [...] likes to shoot his guns [....] but be don't know what it means"

was he talking about retarded redneck hillbillies? or just all the non-grunge fans? or just the kind of people who like the surface of Nirvana, the radio songs, etc. etc. ????


He was talking about all of the frat-boy jocks, who had no idea what it was like to be angsty outsiders, but were inundating Seattle club gigs at the time of the initial wave of grunge hype (before Nevermind really took it nationwide)...

/It's "but he knows not what it means when I say 'Ahhhh'..."

 
STRYPERSWINE 2008-11-01 09:43:06 AM  
NiveK-: STRYPERSWINE: Cobain is the biggest example of "The Emperor's New Clothes" that I can think of. Talentless hack propped up on stage every night to make money when he should have been in hospital where he couldn't hurt himself or others, which he eventually did.

yea what a no talent hack,

its only been what, 14 years since he died, and people still talk about him and listen to his music

obviously hes terrible


You know who else people still talk about a lot long after he killed himself?

 
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