Describing Nirvana’s music as a single genre is challenging, given the diverse range of styles they explored. From ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ to ‘Very Ape’ to ‘Paper Cut’, each song feels like it could belong to a different band entirely. Despite Kurt Cobain’s myriad influences, his heart was always drawn to punk rock, a genre he became enamoured with after witnessing the Sex Pistols perform for the first time.Before Cobain even started working on writing songs of his own, he had already been connecting with music from an early age. Growing up in Aberdeen, Washington, Cobain was mostly interested in the kind of music that he heard on the radio, singing along to everything from The Beatles to The Monkees, depending on the day.
Once he started to get deeper into rock music, the sounds of hard rock really set him on his course, appreciating the massive riffs from outfits like AC/DC, Aerosmith, and Led Zeppelin. While Cobain had absolutely no time for the borderline misogynistic lyrics behind many of his favourite bands’ songs, he was on the ground floor when the punk explosion first started happening.
As the biggest names in the music started to look more like pampered rock stars compared to their early days, artists like Ramones and The Clash were concerned with bringing rock to ground zero. No gimmicks, no makeup, no mile-long guitar solos… just playing every song for the sake of playing.
Even though many groups had the aesthetic down to a tee, Sex Pistols were one of the most effortless bands of punks that ever came together. While none of them claimed to be a musical prodigy when they first picked up a guitar, Steve Jones and John Lydon had a distinct vision to cause as much chaos as possible whenever they played, brandishing songs that seethed with anger like ‘God Save the Queen’.
While Glen Matlock stood out as one of the few musicians in the band who could convincingly play his instrument, his look was far too nice for the punk crowd, eventually being replaced by Sid Vicious. Despite being unable to play bass that well and often being too strung out to play, Vicious was everything punks could have wanted, becoming the spiky-haired answer to James Dean.
After Cobain started getting in tune with underground music through the Melvins leader Buzz Osborne, he was taken aback by what Vicious looked like, saying, “As far back as Creem magazine when they followed The Sex Pistols around on tour in 1978. I remember seeing that picture of Sid Vicious and just going, ‘Oh, wow. That’s [what] real rock and roll has to be. Look at the blood on his face.’”
Cobain may have loved what he heard, but when he went about writing his own songs, that sense of melody from his youth crept back in. While the tracks on Nevermind still had the punk rock ethic, it was impossible to get pieces like ‘In Bloom’ out of your head from the moment you heard them. It was still punk, but Cobain found himself bringing the genre above ground once grunge broke through to the mainstream.
