In Kurt Cobain’s suicide note, the musician expressed his desire to burn out rather than fade away. Twenty years on from his death on April 5, 1994, the evidence suggests he got his wish: Cobain’s legacy is still everywhere.
When the Nirvana frontman became famous during the grunge explosion of the early ’90s, so did almost everything around him — the music he liked, the people he hung out with, even the clothes he wore.
Ahead of Nirvana being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Thursday at Barclays Center, here’s a list of the top nine things Kurt helped to popularize (whether he meant to or not).
1. Seattle
Before Nirvana made it big, Seattle’s big cultural claim to fame was being the birthplace of Jimi Hendrix. But Nirvana’s 1991 breakthrough helped other local bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Mudhoney gain national exposure, and the city earn its title as the birthplace of grunge.
2. Courtney Love
In 1991, very few people had heard of Love or her band, Hole. Once she got together with — and, in 1992, married — Cobain, she was suddenly a celebrity in her own right. For better or worse.
3. David Bowie
True, Bowie had already been a superstar by the time Cobain hit it big. But at the start of the 1990s, Bowie was in a career lull. When Nirvana covered his “The Man Who Sold the World” during an influential “MTV Unplugged” performance in 1993, Ziggy Stardust was introduced to a new generation who hadn’t been old enough to appreciate him in the 1970s and ’80s.
4. Daniel Johnston
Cobain was a huge fan of this schizophrenic Texan singer, citing his album “Yip/Jump Music” as a favorite and often wearing a shirt featuring Johnston’s drawings. To this day, Johnston still performs and records for fans who were mostly converted through Cobain’s patronage.
5. William S. Burroughs
The “Naked Lunch” author was already a literary giant, but Cobain helped turned Nirvana fans on to him when they collaborated on the 1994 spoken word recording “The ‘Priest’ They Called Him.” Burroughs later described Cobain as “fragile and engagingly lost.”
6. Lead Belly
Singer Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter was another artist given a new lease on life thanks to Cobain, who called the folk/blues artist (who died in 1949) his “favorite performer.” Nirvana ended their “MTV Unplugged” performance, and subsequent live album, with “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” — a riff on Lead Belly’s interpretation of the folk song “In The Pines.”
7. Sub Pop
The then-tiny Seattle-based indie label released Nirvana’s first album, “Bleach,” in 1989 — two years before the band’s career-making major-label debut, “Nevermind.” Who knows if Sub Pop would even be around today if not for Kurt & Co.? But a
quarter-century on, the label is still going strong and releasing records by acclaimed new talent such as Dum Dum Girls and Father John Misty.
8. Flannel
Yep, you have Cobain to thank for flannel’s mid-’90s fashion ubiquity as something everyone had to tie around their waist.
9. Sam Bayer
Cobain loved an underdog and rejected anything too polished — so Bayer was hired to direct the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video because his demo reel was the worst of all the candidates. Because of that clip, Bayer became one of the biggest video directors of the next two decades, working with Green Day and directing the 2010 reboot of “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”