This week marks the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album. And to celebrate it, the surviving band members released a deluxe remastered reissue of the landmark album, complete with b-sides, rarities, live tracks and demos.
Bands do this all the time, mainly to squeeze out additional bucks from their fans, and often it’s not worth it. Who really needs to hear reissues of Def Leppard albums not titled “Pyromania” and “Hysteria,” after all?
But “Nevermind” is a different story. For many, like me, the album is the soundtrack for our youth. I was a junior in high school when it was released, 16 years old and about to turn 17. An awkward nonathlete with plenty of acne, I spent hours each day listening to my favorite rock albums, as the music allowed me to escape from the crappiness of the world.
Before “Nevermind,” many of my favorite bands and artists were those I saw on MTV, back when it actually played music (a bit of a cliché phrase now, but there’s a lot of truth in it). This meant I listened to a lot of Guns N’ Roses, Skid Row, AC/DC, Poison and Aerosmith – all bands I still like to this day, but all of which often focused their attention on drugs, money and girls.
I remember spending the entire summer waiting for Guns N’ Roses to release “Use Your Illusion 1” and “Use Your Illusion 2,” two long-delayed albums I figured would be the release of the decade. They finally came out on Sept. 17, 1991, and seemed every bit as good as I hoped them to be.
One week later, Nirvana released “Nevermind,” to little fanfare. This three-piece Seattle, Wash., band wasn’t known to a mass national audience, as its first album, “Bleach,” was more of an underground punk album on an independent label, Sub Pop. I knew nothing about the band and the album upon its release.
At the time of its release, though, MTV started playing a video from the album, which was released by Geffen Records, the same label that had just released Guns N’ Roses’ two new albums. The video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was murky, dark and fairly simple. The band, led by Kurt Cobain, performed the song in a high school gym for a younger audience on a set of bleachers.
Something about the video, and the song, struck a chord with viewers, as it slowly became one of the station’s most requested videos. I remember watching it a few times, barely able to interpret the lyrics, and thinking this was different. After a few more times, I went out and bought the album.
The rest of the album was much like the first single. The lyrics were often incomprehensible, but there was something about each song that was memorable. It was as though someone had managed to make The Beatles a punk rock band with John Bonham at the drums. The songs were instantly catching, but at the same time completely distant. They all begged for repeated listens.
And so I listened, many and many times over again. Within a couple of weeks, I wrote a review for my high school newspaper, long before much of the national media had even realized Nirvana was the next big thing. I don’t have a copy of my review, but I remember praising the heck out of it and telling fellow classmates they needed to get it.
By January, the album made it to the top of the charts, kicking Michael Jackson’s new album off its perch, much to the surprise of everyone. Thirty million worldwide album sales later, it’s become a classic generation-defining album that still influences music today.
Kurt Cobain couldn’t handle the success, and sadly took his own life in 1994 after releasing just one more album, “In Utero.” Some say his suicide has helped the legacy of the band, although I would disagree. The music speaks for itself.
People who disagree should take a look at another band still making music, U2, which will also release a 20th anniversary deluxe edition of one of their landmark albums, “Actung Baby,” next month. This album came out more than a decade after the band’s first album, and after releasing other great albums. The original lineup is still intact, and tragedy has not helped make the band a legend. A decade later the band would release another great album, “All that You Can’t Leave Behind,” proving Nirvana could have had the potential to be beyond great.
We’ll never know, but at least we have “Nevermind” to enjoy. Deluxe version and all.
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Originally published in The Portage County Gazette on Friday, Sept. 30, 2011.
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