WEIRDLAND: Revolutionaries gone too soon: Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Buddy Holly

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Revolutionaries gone too soon: Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Buddy Holly


Kurt Cobain: “I like the Beatles, but I hate Paul McCartney. I like Led Zeppelin, but I hate Robert Plant. I like the Who, but I hate Roger Daltrey. Sometimes I wish I had taken the Bob Dylan route and sang songs where my voice would not go out on me every night.” -Roy Trakin: ‘How about Iggy and the Stooges? Velvets? Lou Reed?’ -Kurt Cobain: ‘Oh yeah, definitely. Some of my favorite music.'”


Kurt Cobain: “John Lennon was definitely my favorite Beatle. I don’t know who wrote what parts of what Beatles songs, but Paul McCarrney embarrasses me. Lennon was obviously disturbed. So I could relate to that. And from the books I’ve read — and I’m so skeptical of anything I read, especially in rock books — I just felt really sorry for him. To be locked up in that apartment. Although he was totally in love with Yoko and his child, his life was a prison. That’s the crux of the problem that I’ve had with becoming a celebrity. John Lennon has been my idol all my life but he’s dead wrong about revolution… find a representative of gluttony or oppression and blow the motherfuckers [sic] head off.”


Kurt Cobain: “The other day I was driving around in L.A. listening to a college station. They were playing a lot of my favorite bands, like Flipper and The Melvins. I was saying to myself, This is great. And then the DJ came on and went on this half-hour rant about how Nirvana is so obviously business oriented and just because we have colored hair doesn’t mean we’re alternative. And I felt really terrible. Because there is nothing in the world I like more than pure underground music. And to be shunned by this claim that just because you are playing the corporate game you are not honest! You use [the corporate ogre] to your advantage. You fight them by joining them.” Source: flavorwire.com

Any time a great artist dies young and unexpectedly, as fans we often spend our own remaining years wondering what would’ve been, had they just stayed with us longer. Previous generations mourned rockers like Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and John Lennon, while those who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s had our own fallen heroes – from metal gods like Ozzy Osbourne virtuoso Randy Rhoads and Metallica‘s Cliff Burton to Sublime‘s Bradley Nowell, Blind Melon‘s Shannon Hoon and of course, Kurt Cobain. The Nirvana frontman and grunge icon would’ve turned 49 today had he not allegedly committed suicide in 1994, and his legacy continues to burn brightly more than two decades after his passing. Source: diffuser.fm

Buddy Holly was a pioneer and a revolutionary. What has always set his persona apart from others in the rock 'n' roll pantheon is its air of maturity, sympathy and understanding. In the few hectic months of his heyday, between 1957 and 1959, he threw back the boundaries of rock 'n' roll, gave substance to its shivery shadow, transformed it from a chaotic cul-de-sac to a highway of infinite possibility and promise. The truth is that Buddy Holly’s talent developed at a speed that makes the maturing of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, half a dozen years later, seem slow by comparison. As a songwriter, performer and musician, Holly is acknowledged as the progenitor of virtually every world-class rock talent to emerge in the sixties and seventies: The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan... —"Rave On: The Biography of Buddy Holly" (2014) by Philip Norman 

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