Gen X Ruminations: The Wake of Casagemas
It certainly wasn’t unprecedented. In May of 1980, the charismatic lead singer of Joy Division was found dead having committed suicide in his kitchen. While the band was beginning to draw attention to itself, they had not yet attained international recognition — though that would come later. It would come as result of what happened afterwards. Surviving members Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris would go on to form New Order and lead the New Wave revolution.
Ten years passed. I’ve already noted many of the major pop culture developments of the 1980s, but by the end of the decade the newness of MTV and the many performers it had brought to our attention was waning and there were some very valid questions about the future of rock and roll. Guns N’ Roses had assumed the torch relinquished by classic rock but much of the genre was trapped in a spiral of 80s hair bands that produced very little that was noteworthy. And, the party boys of Los Angeles weren’t aging well as the 90s began.
In recollection, the manner in which history repeats itself is intensely bittersweet. It’s also a bit frightening in its fidelity. In the great Northwest, a new sound was rising but hadn’t quite captured national attention. It was led by a band called Mother Love Bone and, to repeat myself, an extremely charismatic lead singer named Andrew Wood. They offered a return to rock and roll that was real, and brutal and unflinching in both the lyrics and blistering delivery. A rock and roll that lived and died on stage without glitz or the California sunshine. This rock was born out of days of rain and impenetrable primeval forests and intravenous self-numbing.
Andrew would not witness its glorious ascendance. In March of 1990, Andrew died from what were referred to as “complications from overdose”. I really find that to be overly nuanced. I mean, he died from a heroin overdose. As his close friend Chris Cornell would recall, he was kept in a comatose state until Chris, who had been traveling, was able to return and be by his side to watch them remove life support and let Andrew go.
Following his untimely departure, two members of Mother Love Bone pressed on and formed a new band. Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard merged with Mike McCready and vocalist Eddie Vedder to form the core of Pearl Jam. Their first album, Ten, in 1991 won immediate notice and skyrocketed the band to international fame. To this day, Ten remains one of the best-selling rock albums in history and songs like Alive, Even Flow and Jeremy went on regular rotation on MTV. They were matched by another Seattle band that had been building momentum since the late 1980’s: Nirvana. My experience of hearing Smells Like Teen Spirit, from Nirvana’s album Nevermind was, again, a case of history repeating. Just as I had done years before when I first gazed on the video of U2’s New Year’s Day, I froze when I first heard the austere, melancholy two-note chime laid over a low, grinding bass line. I knew I was hearing something different and I needed to pay attention. The party was over and with tight, rhyming couplets Kurt Cobain helped to usher in a new age that compelled me to kick a non-existent amp off a non-existent stage. With Pearl Jam’s anthems, and Nirvana’s nihilism, rock and roll lurched up from its gurney and was ready to beat your ass into the ground.
And we liked it. We wanted more. A spotlight was cast on the entire Seattle scene and “grunge” became a thing. Alice In Chains and Soundgarden (fronted by Chris Cornell) provided the final two pillars that would lead us all into the “decade before the end”. (It’s laughable now, but many believed something truly apocalyptic was coming with the end of the millennium.)
But it wasn’t just about a return to rock. I mean, sure, the roaring guitars got the blood pumping with bone-crunching chords replacing the tiresome virtuosity that had come to characterize the “metal” of the 80s. (With all due respect to Steve Vai, how many scales can you pack into a solo?) But what also set grunge apart was a return to actual songwriting. Not songs about girls or parties or girls at parties, but songs about everything and nothing. Vedder sang of childhood memories and tragic figures on the edge of society. Layne Staley conveyed unrelenting torment and hints of a less-than-ideal domestic life (real or imagined) shaped by a prior generation’s experience in Vietnam. Cobain, consistent with the title of one early Nirvana album, Bleach, poetically revealed the awkward and often inane nature of our world and existence. And Cornell? Cornell gave voice to an anger that struck at a non-existent god out of a frustration, and depression, that could be vented no other way. He was, unquestionably, the greatest rock vocalist of his generation. (Technically born in 1964, the last year of the Boomers, but fuck that. We GenX’rs have claimed him and he will always be ours.) This was our crank-it-up-in-the-car music and the Boomer’s will have to forgive me if I favor it over Smoke on the Water. I my dreams, Cornell’s inhuman highs blast from my gaping mouth as I destroy the teen talent show that never was.
I mentioned something about history repeating. It can be a heartbreaking thing to witness. Nearly thirty years after he stormed the national stage with Soundgarden, Chris Cornell would be found dead in his hotel room in Detroit. It was in May, 2017 — the month that Ian Curtis had chosen to take his life — and, like Ian, he had hung himself. Chris was at the height of his power, but seemed unable to fully shake a depression that had plagued him throughout his life. A depression, possibly amplified over the years, by the lingering loss of a good friend decades earlier. Perhaps, in the end, this was what “complications of overdose” truly denotes.
