By: Greg Cote
When artists become famous quickly, what kind of future awaits them?
In Kurt Cobain's case, we'll never know. But he left behind a few clues.
What is most inspiring about Cobain is how much he accomplished and how quickly his musical horizons expanded in a short period of time.
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Would his creative unrest continue? If Cobain were alive today, he would be 57 years old.
Who would you collaborate with and how would you fit into the musical and cultural landscape?
Cobain was prepared to deal with unpredictable circumstances, in part because of unique qualities he was not known for - adaptability and a sense of humor.
Cultural historians and journalists tend to see Cobain as an unhappy, depressed junkie from the grunge era, a symbol of a doomed generation.
It is not commendable for him or for them, because it reduces Cobain to a caricature or a statue.
One wonders what Cobain would have thought of the concrete statue that was unveiled in his hometown of Aberdeen, Washington in 2014.
On the 20th anniversary of his death, Cobain is depicted as a grunge cliché, with ripped jeans and a tear rolling down his cheek.
What's missing from the praise of Saint Kurt that has become an industry over the past three decades is the idea that Cobain actually had an insane, if somewhat dark, sense of humor.
In songs, snippets of lyrics and astonishing comparisons, it is seen that he not only appreciated the absurdity of his incredible fame and success, but also that he himself contributed to it.
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Teenage rebellion
In Nirvana's Serve the Servants, Cobain sang, "Teenage rebellion paid off/Now I'm old and bored" (Teenage angst has paid off well/Now I'm bored and old).
You can read this as cynical and hopeless, but it also shows that Cobain can laugh at himself.
Almost nothing he did was transparent.
What made him an interesting artist - the complexity, the contradictions, the layers of interpretation that you peel back like an onion, and the way he put words together encourages you to do so - also set him apart as a person.
How calculated it was, we will never know.
But my contribution to the parade of hyperbole about Cobain is that he is probably the most complicated rock star since Bob Dylan, a mainstream performer who turned obscurity into an art form.
It indicates that he didn't want to do the same thing, and I suspect he wanted to turn Nirvana into a lifetime touring money-making machine like the Rolling Stones.
Regardless of all the flaws, the weeping statue in Aberdeen suggests what could have happened if Cobain had lived.
In this sculpture, he is shown sitting on a bar stool that appears to be shaped like a guitar like the acoustic-electric Martin model he used during his performance on MTV Unplugged in 1993, which has since become a classic.
In November 1993, a few months before his death, Cobain spoke excitedly about his next move.
He wanted the next album to have more acoustic instruments, more complex arrangements, something that would throw him deeper into introspection and the dark beauty of Nick Drake or Skip Spence (founder of the band Moby Grape) compared to the anger that burns everything in front of him from the songs Milk It or Rape me.
Access that is defined in the album MTV Unplugged in New York was one possible step forward.
On that album, Cobain found new inspiration by immersing himself in the music of his heroes and inspirations: Ledbelly, The Meat Puppets and The Vaselines, as well as David Bowie.
He reduced the songs to the most basic: voice, guitar, a little bass and drums.
In the song Pennyroyal Teand you only hear him and the guitar. "Am I playing here or not?" drummer Dave Grohl asked before the song started, but Cobain waved him off.
He is not ready to limit himself to only one musical genre, which he performs with the same collaborators.
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Soul digging
Just a few months before, Cobain sounded uncertain, questioning himself about Nirvana's latest album. In utero "What should I be? What else can I say? What else should I write?"
MTV Unplugged offered some answers, a way to get out of boredom and irrelevance.
REM's Michael Stipe said he and Cobain discussed working together in the weeks before his death.
And it is quite possible to imagine Cobain not as (like many of his colleagues) a man who lives on the account of old glory, organizing a tour of Nirvana on the occasion of its 35th anniversary, but as a musical vagabond, who appears in a wide variety of projects, like his colleague from Seattle, Mark Lanegan (singer of the band Skriming Triz).
He would no longer be at the center of popular culture, but he certainly would not be nostalgic either.
Cobain was never comfortable in the spotlight, once saying that he wanted the fame of John Lennon, but also the anonymity of Ringo Starr.
My guess is that he would continue to go in some new direction in search of inspiration, like Dylan, Lanegan, Lou Rude or Neil Young, and not turn into a greatest hits jukebox.
He probably wouldn't be such a big star anymore, because he never wanted constant media attention.
But he would still be relevant, because he wouldn't settle down and would be curious enough to keep exploring.
"What else could I be?" would be a question that would be answered every few years.
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Who could he collaborate with?
Artists who have a tendency to take musical risks and are adorned with a lively sense of humor would appeal to him: Josh Homme from the band Queens of the Stone Age's, his old friend Caitlin Hanna from the bands The Julie Ruin and Le Tigre or Jack White.
Whether Cobain would hold the place is another question.
Maybe he'd run off to tour with his 80s heroes, the punk metal band the Melvins, as their millionaire Pride tour worker.
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