Almost exactly 20 years after his death, Kurt Cobain and his band, Nirvana, are set to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Thursday (April 10).
Hard to know whe-ther the mercurial musician – who sneered at fame and everyone who sought it – would be amused or appalled by the honour. Either way, it was kinda inevitable.
We could see the Nirvana tsunami coming. (For more on the band’s influence, see page 48.) Tim Perlich, NOW’s music editor in 1990, talked with Cobain just before the band hit town for their infamous Lee’s Palace gig.
The sardonic frontman mischievously claimed that the secret to his songwriting success was laziness. “It just happened to be so much easier to act pissed off and write angry songs than to try to be nice. Hiding behind a bunch of noisy amplifiers and screaming is an easy front” (April 12, 1990, page 25).
Promoter Elliott Lefko later commented that one of his favourite memories of club life in T.O. involved Perlich pushing him aside in the Lee’s mosh pit to save him from getting beaned by one of the beer bottles Cobain was flinging into crowd. Cobain actually crashed on Perlich’s floor that night.
NOW went on to name Nevermind album of the year in the December 27, 1991 edition.
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