Guns N' Roses vs. Nirvana

When I was 13, my friend, Philip, came up to me with a tape with Nirvana’s Nevermind. He let me borrow it so I could bring it home and copy it.

Nirvana was one of two bands that meant a lot to me. The other one was Guns n’ Roses. My friend Tommy and I bought the new Bravo every Wednesday after school and cut out all the pictures of Guns n’ Roses and shared them between us.

Immigrants and faggots

We’d sleep together and swing our hair and play guitar on a tennis racket, like these girls.

I didn’t understand much of what they were singing, cause I’m from Denmark and was just learning English, but many years later when I read the text for one of my favorite songs from back then, One In A Million from the G N’ R Lies album, I was disappointed:

Immigrants and faggots
They make no sense to me
They come to our country
And think they'll do as they please
Like start some mini Iran
Or spread some fucking disease

Sperm and eggs

About a year after Philip handed me Nevermind he came up to me with another Nirvana tape. This one was yellow.

Nirvana came from the underground, but had had enormous commercial success with Nevermind. Still, they weren’t about to sell out. And they made Incesticide (the yellow tape) to prove it. It consisted of half-finished songs with raw production and no potential for the hit lists.

Back then I couldn’t read much English. Or I didn’t care. But later I’ve kept re-reading the liner notes that the singer, Kurt Cobain, wrote in the cover of Incesticide:

At this point I have a request for all our fans. If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us - leave us the fuck alone! Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records.

Last year, a girl was raped by two wastes of sperm and eggs while they sang the lyrics to our song "Polly." I have a hard time carrying on knowing there are plankton like that in our audience. Sorry to be so anally P.C. but that's the way I feel.

Come as you are

While Nirvana stood for something and touched something in people, especially in the outsiders, Guns n’ Roses never became more than a bunch of hillbillies who made good rock n’ roll.

Nirvana was no protest band with a political agenda or a clearly defined critique of this-or-that. But they had opinions about the things that surrounded them. And they weren’t afraid to express them. And in my opinion those were mostly good opinions.

They described emotions that many of us had, young and confused in a cold and alienated world, trying to hang on to something that was real and beautiful.

And when they refused to sell out and wanted to stay true to themselves it was about more than playing raw grunge rock, wearing worn out clothes and having dirty hair. It was also about defending the outsiders.

Kurt Cobain had been an outsider himself and he wasn’t going to forget that just because all of a sudden he was the one on stage in front of thousands of people, who thought he was the shit.

But why do I write this now, 20 years later?

Maybe because assaults on women, homophobia and marginalization of people of colors are still solid parts of rock music. And because there are still very few bands that dare take a stand against these things.

Because it still makes me smile that Nirvana was brave enough to express an opinion that could have cost them a lot in a racist, homophobic and misogynist rock world in the most fragile moment of their career just after their breakthrough.

And because if Nirvana could, so can you!