2.

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2.3 Grunge Attitude

In this part of my work I want to talk about the attitude of the grunge musicians, above all towards the media, the publicity and the hype they are exposed to. I've read a lot about Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder and so I want to concentrate on these two great songwriters. First of all I must say that I left out the fact that Kurt Cobain is dead in the following text. That way I didn't have to differentiate between past and present because Kurt Cobain used to do what Eddie Vedder did and still does today. I've written all these things which Vedder still does now and which Cobain did until his death in present tense.

There are great similarities between these two musicians:

2.3.1 Spokesmen Of A Generation

As I already mentioned above Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder were called the "spokesmen of generation X" by the music media. But they don't like that name and I also think that it is wrong to call them like that. Vedder once said in an interview: 
        "We [he and Kurt] had similar backgrounds [...] 
        I think that's something that comes out in what we wrote in our songs, definitely.
        [...] But what makes it more similar is the way the people responded to what we wrote 
        and sang about, the intense identification. And I think it was maybe a shock to both
        of us that so many people were going through the same things.
        [...] we kind of wrote these songs for ourselves really. Then all of a sudden,
        there's all these other people who connect with them and you're suddenly the
        spokesman for a fuckin' generation. [...]
        Any generation that would pick Kurt or me as its spokesman - that must be a pretty 
        fucked up generation." 1*).
So this is the story of how this myth came up and how its "victims" think about it. I think that it is wrong to call any person the spokesman of a generation, first of all because there is no uniform generation with the same interests and problems today. What is called generation X isn't a generation in its original sense. It is not a collective of all people born at about the same time but it unites many single individuals who have this no-future feeling which is typical for it. But still Cobain and Vedder aren't spokesmen for generation X because they hadn't got the intention to summarize the mood of any kind of group in their songs. They wrote their songs for themselves and not to reflect the alienation and anger among their generation. This gets obvious when you look at their lyrics. In the songs there are neither political nor religious messages. If there is a message in a song it usually goes out to a dead or lost friend (/girlfriend as well as fellow), like in the songs on Temple Of The Dog for example (see 2.1.5), and therefore is only dedicated to a very small circle of people and not to a whole generation. But after the massive media exploitation some bands wrote songs with a message for or against the media. Usually the lyrics of grunge songs have very personal themes like experiences from the writer's youth or about the problems of his friends or acquaintances. Eddie Vedder's lyrics for example reflected the loneliness and confusion of growing up, often with frequent physical and psychological abuse. So the rage, the anger and the bad experience from his childhood is reflected in his songs as you can read in my interpretation of Pearl Jam's song Alive under point 2.5.1. These people wrote their songs to deal with their problems and to digest their experiences. They wrote them for themselves and not for a whole generation so they can't be called spokesmen of a generation. It is nevertheless possible that a lot of people have gone through similar situations and therefore it might be right to say that Cobain and Vedder have hit the spirit of a lot of people but they didn't do that on purpose.

2.3.2 Superstardom

Antistars Although the grunge musicians never wanted to be stars but just wanted to make music they became extremely popular. But the media wanted them to be big stars. They wanted heroes whom they could commercialise. So they were made superstars by the music business against their will. Here are two statements from Vedder about this subject: 
           -"I'm not a fucking poser, and I'll fight for that. That's
            something I take seriously. I'm not up there [on the stage]
            playing to get women. I'm not up there playing to get money.
            I'm not interested in that. So what am I doing?
            I'm playing for the music."
           -"The one thing about going from the audience to the stage in just three years
            is that you know how it feels to be down there." 1*)
So for him being a star is synonymous with being a poseur and this is also something he hates. It is very important for him to stay himself and not to be changed by the popularity. To express this attitude he still wears the same clothes that he wore before the great success and still drives the same old car. The next thing he says is also true for Cobain and most of the other grunge musicians. They aren't in to get rich by their music but play just for fun, as a hobby or to have created something which gives their lives a sense.
In the second statement it gets obvious that Vedder doesn't feel like a star. He doesn't think that he deserves all the attention he gets and feels a bit embarrassed about it. He prefers to play in little clubs than playing in front of a giant audience in a football stadium for example. First of all because of the club atmosphere and also because such a small club is much more personal. There he can go or jump down from the small stage and join the crowd which is impossible at big shows because the stage is too high and it is too dangerous to dive down into the crowd.
Being a star means standing in the spotlight of the mass media and as it is very hard to cope with the consequences of this, it is probably one of the things that led to Cobain's suicide.

2.3.3 The Media

The media are the biggest enemies of Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder. There is something special about the relationship of these two grunge poets and the media. Cobain and Vedder hate them but they love the musicians because they win them a lot of money. They tried to make them stars against their will by for example labelling them "spokesmen of generation X". Like Cobain and Vedder did, a lot of grunge poets feel raped and abused by media attacks like this one. But it goes even further: their privacy is raked and intimate stories are published and mixed with a lot of falsehoods. They called this the media machine because it really was kind of a machine programmed to exploit the musicians and make a lot of money. The media didn't care about the fact that it destroyed the lives of the musicians. They only saw their profit. That's why the poets hate them. Cobain and Vedder both tried to find their own ways of getting out of the spotlight and away from the trouble with the media. Kurt tried to escape from this hard reality by taking drugs. It didn't help him much but rather made it worse and when he couldn't cope with it all anymore his last exit was his suicide. After Cobain's death the whole media attention was fixed on Vedder. But he found better ways of escaping from the media machine. He and his bands did everything to be as uncommercial as possible. They gave no interviews, cancelled their tours and made no music videos to support their albums Vs. and Vitalogy. This strategy seems to have worked as today the attention of the music industry is focused on other musical styles like British pop music for example.

2.3.4 The New Generation

There is a massive difference between the attitude of the old and the new generation of grunge bands. Most bands of the old generation (especially Pearl Jam and Nirvana) had a very uncommercial attitude as you have already read in 2.3.3. They defied the mainstream culture. But the new bands like Silverchair and Bush rather embrace the music media. They joined the mainstream and now bathe in the success this brings them. So they are much more trend conscious than their predecessors. They have become instruments of the music media. They copied the way the old grunge bands made music but they formed an alliance with the business. Both sides profit of this relationship. But they still pretend to have the grunge ideals like smashing their instruments and wearing torn clothes. For me they are poseurs but that's only my opinion.

After all we can say that grunge is neither an ideology nor a religion (although there are some fanatical Nirvana fans who idolise, adore or even worship Cobain but they are an exception). The Hippie movement was for peace and love and against the Vietnam War. But grunge isn't even a movement. There's something like a grunge ethic, which includes the clothes and the attitude, but as the new grungers don't care for it very much, it perhaps will die out when the old bands are gone. So it is just a musical style that got taken over by the media and influenced fashion.

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