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Coincidiendo con el vigésimo aniversario de la muerte de Kurt Cobain, Associated Press ha hablado con Neil Young, Beck, Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day) y Win Butler (Arcade Fire).

Young muestra su pesar por no haber podido echar una mano a Cobain cuando pasaba por malos momentos.

Me parece triste que no tuviera a nadie con quien hablar y le dijera, “Sé por lo que estás pasando pero no está tan mal”. Realmente no es tan malo. Simplemente parpadea y todo desaparecerá. Todo estará bien. Tienes muchas otras cosas que hacer. ¿Por qué no simplemente te tomas un descanso? No te preocupes de todos estos gilipollas que quieren que hagas todas esas mierdas que no quieres hacer nunca. Deja de hacerlo todo. Diles que se vayan a tomar por culo y aléjate. Eso es. Eso es lo que le habría dicho de haber tenido la ocasión. Y casi tuve la oportunidad pero no pasó.

Beck por su lado recuerda cuando compartió escenario con Nirvana tres años antes de que se publicara “Nevermind”.

Recuerdo que salieron y (Cobain) salió haciendo una peineta, se lo hacía al público. Había estado en muchos conciertos de punk y a muchas bandas cuando era más joven donde los conciertos eran bastante agresivos o beligerantes, pero esto era algo completamente diferente. Recuerdo que sonreía, había cierto elemento juguetón, pero también era algo amenazador y recuerdo que solo empezar a tocar, todo el público estalló de una manera que no había visto nunca antes… Se hicieron con el público desde la primera nota. Aún no habiendo logrado nunca el éxito, aún recordaría eso. Me dejó una gran impresión. Recuerdo pensar en su día, “¿Qué es esto? Aquí está pasando algo” y tras eso me hice fan.

Armstrong recuerda que había visto escrito el nombre de Nirvana en graffitis en locales en los que tocaban.

El tío compuso canciones bonitas. Cuando alguien va de forma tan sincero directo al corazón de lo que son, lo que sienten, y fue capaz de ponerlo ahí, no sé tío, es fantástico. Recuerdo que cuando salió “Nevermind” pensé, “Al fin tenemos a nuestros Beatles. Esta era tiene al fin sus Beatles”. Y desde entonces no ha vuelto a pasar.

Win Butler de Arcade Fire, hoy con 33 años, recuerda como descubrió al grupo con la salida de “Nevermind”.

De golpe, toda dinámica social de mi instituto cambió de forma que esos chavales inadaptados que quizá venían de un hogar roto y que fumaban cigarrillos en la parte de atrás y que no tenían dinero para ropa bonita, estaban, de un extraño modo, al mismo nivel que el resto. Yo era ese chaval raro que no sabía donde encajar y tener esa especie de voz en la cultura. Tengo la sensación que fue un periodo mágico para la música alternativa con Janes Addiction y REM y Nirvana. Era como ver todos esos frikis de diferentes ciudades de Norteamérica y te quedas en plan, “Oh, guau”.

IN ENGLISH

With the 20th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death this weekend, musicians everywhere have been paying homage. AP collected reflections from a handful of artists ranging from ones who influenced him to musicians he inspired, including Neil Young, Beck, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong and Arcade Fire’s Win Butler. One thing they all agreed on is that in just a short period of time, Cobain changed their lives.

Kurt Cobain Tributes: Living in Nirvana

For Young, who wrote the album Sleeps With Angels following Cobain’s suicide, the rock vet still feels remorse that he – or anyone – couldn’t reach out to the Nirvana frontman during his time of need.  To this day, he still knows what he would have told Cobain had he gotten the chance. «I think it’s sad that he didn’t have anybody to talk to that could’ve talked to him and said, ‘I know what you’re going through, but it’s not too bad,'» he said. «‘It really isn’t bad. Just [expletive] blink and it will be gone. Everything will be all right. You’ve got a lot of other things to do. Why don’t you just take a break? Don’t worry about all these [expletive] who want you to do all this (expletive) you don’t want to do. Just stop doing everything. Tell them to get [expletive] and stay away.’ That’s it. That’s what I would have told him if I had the chance. And I almost got a chance, but it didn’t happen.»

Beck cherishes a memory of a time he shared a concert bill with Nirvana, three years before Nevermind came out. While the singer didn’t remember who the headliner was at the show, he can clearly recall Kurt Cobain – it was the moment he became a fan. «I have a memory of them coming out and he had his middle finger up, was giving his middle finger to the audience,» he said. «I’d seen a lot of punk shows and I’d seen a lot of bands when I was younger where the shows were pretty aggressive or confrontational, but there was something completely different about this. I remember he had a smile on his face, there was a kind of playfulness, but it was also a little menacing, and I remember the minute they started playing, the entire audience erupted in a way I hadn’t seen before. . . . They had the audience from the first note. Even if they had never become successful, I would still remember that. It made a big impression. I remember at the time thinking, ‘What is this? Something’s going on here,’ and I was a fan after that.»

Armstrong knew of Nirvana before he really knew what Nirvana was, having had seen their graffiti in clubs when Green Day toured in 1990. He told AP that when he heard the trio’s debut, Bleach, he didn’t think much of it, but now he regards Cobain as a Lennon- or McCartney-type figure. «The guy just wrote beautiful songs,» he said. «When someone goes that honestly straight to the core of who they are, what they’re feeling, and was able to kind of put it out there, I don’t know, man, it’s amazing. I remember hearing it when Nevermind came out and just thinking, ‘We’ve finally got our Beatles. This era finally got our Beatles.’ And ever since then it’s never happened again.»

Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler, who is 33, discovered Nirvana in the wake of Nevermind, and he still remembers the impact it had on him and his friends. «All of a sudden, the whole kind of social dynamic at my junior high changed where these kind of misfit kids who maybe come from a broken home and they’re smoking cigarettes in the back and they didn’t have money for nice clothes were in a weird way on the same level as everyone else socially,» he said. «I was sort of like a weird kid who didn’t know where I fit in or whatever and just to have that kind of voice be that big in culture, I feel like that was a magical period of alternative music where we had Jane’s Addiction and R.E.M. and Nirvana. It was like seeing these kind of freaks from all the different cities of North America and you’re like, ‘Oh, wow.'»