Kurt Cobain's (apparent)philosophy, 'It's better to burn out than fade away'...

[Foreigner]

After previous trauma and having a very abnormal childhood, you realize it's hard to trust people on certain levels. Most of the trustworthy ones seem to already be paired off By the time you are 30, it's slim pickin's. If I dated men, I would feel the same way about men because I know how they think, and I've seen a lot of bad behaviour. There are trustworthy people of both genders, but they can be hard to find.

At work the other day a co-worker was wishing he was gay because men can get laid so much more easily. I just rolled my eyes. The grass is always greener.

I think if you've always felt like a bit of an outsider then you're naturally going to gravitate to other misfits. While misfits are not mundane, a lot of us have had fucked up lives because of being/feeling different. I spent the first part of my life trying to fit in, and then the next part going as far out as possible. Now I just don't care anymore. So it's hard to find someone who hasn't sold themselves out but who are also stable.

Are you sure about the 30's being slim picking? Seems to me that people in their 20's haven't really clicked fully into adulthood yet and are still living out dramas from their younger years. So far the people I've been meeting in my 30's are much more interesting... granted they tend to play out other narratives like getting married and buying houses. Every now I then I meet the odd unicorn who is outside the box but also stable and I'm like... WHO ARE YOU?!

 

[spacejunk]

I think the whole rock'n'roll myth of living fast and dying young (with a good-looking corpse) is a ridiculous cliche.

Iggy Pop, Keith Richards, Tom Waits - of these guys had died young, the world would've missed out on some great music - especially in Tom Waits' case.

Also, to come back to the Neil Young lyric - he sings "this is the story of Johnny Rotten" when he sings that line.
Rotten/Lydon commented on this in a biography i read recently.

Young actually got the name wrong, presumably - it was Sid Vicious, not Rotten that "burn[ed] out" and died young.
Lydon is typically scathing in his respose to the lyric; he sees Sid's death as completely wasteful, exploitative and pointless.
The "glamourous" myth of heroin in rock'n'roll is nothing to aspire to or admire, he argues - the only people that benefit from an artist dying young is the record company that sells their music posthumously.

It's much cooler to live, he argues - and i agree with him.
Death isn't glamourous. It's all just a cliche about living a "wild" life of excess - of risk-taking, of the myth of rock'n'roll being a youthful, adolescent stlye of music and way of living.
All idealised cliches.
I'm in my 30s and enjoying life just as much - if not more - than i did in my 20s. And my music keeps getting better too, even past the age of 27

I saw Leonard Cohen perform about 5 years ago - and he absolutely incredible, despite his age.
Same with Bo Diddley - shit, he was one of the innovators of rock'n'roll in the 1950s and 60s - but even as an old man in his late 70s - he was still a fantastic performer.

Buddy Holly died young - one of the earliest rock'n'rollers to do so - but did it make his music/career/legacy better than Bo Diddley, who lived to a ripe old age?
I don't think so.
All it does is increase his mystique, increase interest in his music and his life.

Is it better to burn out than to fade away?
It totally depends on the context. I see plenty to live for - but i don't want to live forever.
Having said that, i may feel differently when i'm old and feeling my time running out; but then again, my Grandmother was always open about the fact that she was ready for death, in her final years.

Quality of life is more important to me than how long i do or don't live.

But if you look at it from the point of view of an artist - in this case a rock musician - there is a perception that when people grow out of their "youth".
There are countless examples of this - just look at some of the music made in the 80s and 90s by rock stars of the 1960s.
There is also the superficial - the loss of youthful good-looks as rock stars grew up.

Fans of musicians who died young are sometimes left with their early work, and nothing else.
I get the impression this music is regarded as somehow untainted by the aging process - that somehow older people's musical output isn't as good.
While there seems to be some truth to this idea, i don't think it is an accurate assumption.

But maybe "fading away" means being forgetten - and opposed to "burning out", which could mean burning bright and living every day with the sort of intensity that continually creates great things (art, music, whatever)

Maybe "burning out" can be understood in a way that has nothing to do with self-destruction.

 

[Bella Figura]

^agreed - cobain was a smart guy but you don't quite have the wisdom at 27 to make such a sweeping statement as your farewell.

 

[socko]

Instead of burning out, maybe it's better to change your identity and vanish like Elvis only to be seen from time to time by unreliable witnesses at Walmart. I think Ninae had the right idea, rockstars usually don't age well. They submit to the human condition and get out of shape, their energy runs down, and they lose their looks. Other than Iggy Pop and David Bowie who was great until he died, they're no longer something anybody idolizes. It's not that being old should end their career, but it's some music doesn't seem right if somebody of the wrong age is performing it. Imagine your 90 year old grandpa sing Justin Beaver boy band songs or performing Karoake to Bad to the Bone.

t"s not just their appearance and energy, but their act gets stale. Most did their best work in their youth. For some of them, the music itself does not age well. Some of what sounded good in 1965 sounds old-fashioned today. Styles change and the lyrics themselves are out of touch with the times. Those who survive are performing the same donkey and pony show they were doing 50 years ago. Some of your examples aged well both in their stage presence and their act: Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, and a couple of others. They innovated and reinvented themselves and their music their whole lives, and did it well. Others should have left the stage 50 years ago like keith richards/Mick Jagger (sorry,these two look identical to me, and i cannot tell them apart) , Ozzy Osbourne, bob dylan, etc.

I think Johnny Rotten/Liden is the biggest disappointment you list. He was doing something cool in the 1970s, and a couple of his early PIL releases were OK, but then he turned into a YUPPIE. That's the point when he should have stopped releasing music to the public, and he certainly should not be popping up on MTV every 5 minutes. He now lives in some frilly Malibu Barbie Dreamhouse and has produced nothing but elevator music sung in his characteristic falsetto or whatever is the name for it for the last 30 years. I think the only people who find him menacing any more are old ladies.

It's a tragedy that anybody ever died from that lifestyle. Instead of burning out, they should have entered a graceful early retirement. So many who are still performing today are only shadows of what they once were.

I think the whole rock'n'roll myth of living fast and dying young (with a good-looking corpse) is a ridiculous cliche.

Iggy Pop, Keith Richards, Tom Waits - of these guys had died young, the world would've missed out on some great music - especially in Tom Waits' case.

Also, to come back to the Neil Young lyric - he sings "this is the story of Johnny Rotten" when he sings that line.
Rotten/Lydon commented on this in a biography i read recently.

Young actually got the name wrong, presumably - it was Sid Vicious, not Rotten that "burn[ed] out" and died young.
Lydon is typically scathing in his respose to the lyric; he sees Sid's death as completely wasteful, exploitative and pointless.
The "glamourous" myth of heroin in rock'n'roll is nothing to aspire to or admire, he argues - the only people that benefit from an artist dying young is the record company that sells their music posthumously.

It's much cooler to live, he argues - and i agree with him.
Death isn't glamourous. It's all just a cliche about living a "wild" life of excess - of risk-taking, of the myth of rock'n'roll being a youthful, adolescent stlye of music and way of living.
All idealised cliches.
I'm in my 30s and enjoying life just as much - if not more - than i did in my 20s. And my music keeps getting better too, even past the age of 27

I saw Leonard Cohen perform about 5 years ago - and he absolutely incredible, despite his age.
Same with Bo Diddley - shit, he was one of the innovators of rock'n'roll in the 1950s and 60s - but even as an old man in his late 70s - he was still a fantastic performer.

Buddy Holly died young - one of the earliest rock'n'rollers to do so - but did it make his music/career/legacy better than Bo Diddley, who lived to a ripe old age?
I don't think so.
All it does is increase his mystique, increase interest in his music and his life.

Is it better to burn out than to fade away?
It totally depends on the context. I see plenty to live for - but i don't want to live forever.
Having said that, i may feel differently when i'm old and feeling my time running out; but then again, my Grandmother was always open about the fact that she was ready for death, in her final years.

Quality of life is more important to me than how long i do or don't live.

But if you look at it from the point of view of an artist - in this case a rock musician - there is a perception that when people grow out of their "youth".
There are countless examples of this - just look at some of the music made in the 80s and 90s by rock stars of the 1960s.
There is also the superficial - the loss of youthful good-looks as rock stars grew up.

Fans of musicians who died young are sometimes left with their early work, and nothing else.
I get the impression this music is regarded as somehow untainted by the aging process - that somehow older people's musical output isn't as good.
While there seems to be some truth to this idea, i don't think it is an accurate assumption.

But maybe "fading away" means being forgetten - and opposed to "burning out", which could mean burning bright and living every day with the sort of intensity that continually creates great things (art, music, whatever)

Maybe "burning out" can be understood in a way that has nothing to do with self-destruction.

 

[w01fg4ng]

But if Dylan had died already he wouldn't be able to enjoy the fruits of his labor.


You know, the small stuff like fans writing him letters praising him, looking back fondly on the memories, growing old with his music and receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature.

 

[herbavore]

Living out the full cycle of life is a trip. I highly suggest you all go for it.

 

[Burnt Offerings]

eh...to hell with junkie navel-gazing and fatalism. It just seems like excuses made for really poor decision making, to me anyway. Had Cobain lived a full life he could've been an inspiration to young people like himself who were passionate about music (beyond what he had already accomplished in that respect). Instead, well

 

[treezy z]

I always look to people who shoot themselves in the head at a young age for advice on life, particularly if they leave a young child fatherless.

 

[Yourbaker]

There is a moody dark side to most high functioning, specialized individuals. Getting past the 20's alive is a goal worthy of embracing. In working with youth, it's made even more challenging when their idols die young. When a budding young architect kills themselves it doesn't send the same message as the budding young musician.

Traditionally we see entertainers fade from the glory years of their 20's, the comebacks just don't have the same newness. Although I do hate 20 year old me for the stupid decisions I did make, I'm very glad one of them was not check out early, life has altered to make staying well worth the inconvenience.

 

[Xorkoth]

I dunno, it's true that there are many cases of musicians fading from glory as they get older, but it's not even close to a definite thing. I saw Bob Weir recently, he's quite old now but he sounded incredible, he was fully on his game. I am a musician, and I'm 33. I am unquestionably producing the best stuff of my life right now, I feel more inspired than ever.

I think that when people drug themselves out and get all on the rock star/ego trip, they tend to burn out later in life, but plenty of people don't do that.

 

[Kaden_Nite]

Anyone interested in this topic, I recommend checking out this 1994 interview/documetary with John Frusciante. It was 2 years after he'd left the chilli peppers (the first time) and he had started using heroin and cocaine quite heavily. It gives a pretty good insight into the mindset that a lot of musicians in that scene at that time seemed to have regarding death, drug use and the lifestyle in general. He talks a bit about Kurt's death, there's an interview with River Pheonix and a few others. First few minutes are in Dutch, the rest is English.

 

[sigmond]

it seems his philosophy was hippie/buddhist/nihilist.

gets your aggression out playing punk rock and if you really must kill something make sure its yourself.

 

[-=SS=-]

Well, if Kurt Cobain was around today he might be bald and fat or a joke to everyone. There are advantages to dying young.

It's a shame that so many of those celebrities filled with genuine angst and despair departed so early, it would have been very interesting to see their characters develop, remain static, or change their tune completely. And then we have far too many celebs who are still around and refuse to just sort of fuck off already, like Bono, Geldof, Madonna..

I don't agree with Kurt's philosophy though when your direction in life is one of total hedonism, waste, and self-destruction. If you have some more justified, constructive or selfless reason to be burned out faster, then fair enough I'll support that as being better than existing as another useless meatsack that lives well beyond what a person should and becomes a drain on everyone around them.

 

[socko]

Bono, Geldof, Madonna..

Yes, Bono is one of the worst. He's what this thread should be about.That yellow-eyed sell-out is a parody of a musician. He is a celebrity activist, and he fancies himself an elite and an intellectual while he sings and dances for peanuts at the feet of the real elite. He is probably the most hated modern performer, so hated in fact, that when he relased a free iTunes album, the loudest public response was how to delete it. He hasn't done anythign good since the 1980s and should have exited the stage decades ago.

 

[Bella Figura]

At least U2 have given up on pretending they've done anything of worth in the past 20 years and have gone back to touring their old shitty songs...

 

[socko]

How is that working out for thme? It's hard to picture relatively old people performing some of that music they did in their youth. Some music is very age-specific.

 

[theMerovingian]

I really like Nirvana and the obvious talents of Kurt Cobain but the lad was deeply troubled. He had the talent, a gift but he was tormented by inner demons that he struggled with and I believe he would have trouble explaining to others and remedied his condition with explicit over the top heroin use and yea drug use in general. Myself I believe a lot of what Cobain believed in and what he actually did in life was in huge contradiction and he knew this but pretended otherwise and that tore him up on the inside. I read that book on him just cant think of the name now so thats my own belief on his spiel. It was a waste of such a talent and cultural figure unfortunately.

 

[iLoveYouWithaKnife]

Instead he died at 27... and for what? Heroin?

but did he? or did he use heroin to help mask the incredible amount of pain he felt and couldn't deal with in this realm.

 

[Xorkoth]

Yeah the heroin certainly didn't help. He shot himself in the head though, the heroin was a panacea to help shut out the pain. It certainly must have contributed though, I know when I used opiates to mask the pain, once the addiction progressed far enough I felt tremendously more depressed and out of control than before I started masking it. But yeah it wasn't like an accidental heroin OD.

I actually watched a quite convincing documentary on how some suspect that Courtney Love had him killed, various things don't seem to add up including the position of the gun on the ground. I guess they had just split up or something too, and he wasn't going to give her any of the money. Something like that. Lots of letters and recorded calls that seemed to paint a pretty condemning picture. I wish I could remember the name of the documentary, it was really well done.

Either way he was clearly an extremely depressed individual even before heroin.

 

[iLoveYouWithaKnife]

^ I think you are talking about soaked in bleach. honestly, I couldn't even finish watching the documentary. In my opinion, I just hate that there is always a conspiracy theory behind any artist, musician/troubled soul who dies early. it's happened with Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Jim Morrison, John Lennon not to mention the countless theories with Biggie and Tu Pac and such. It's sad really. Anyway that people could create another story to make money has already been done 10X over.

The truth is, we don't know how the gun was found; we just go off of speculation of what the "reports" said; or the stupid report that says he had so much heroin in his system that he wouldn't even be able to handle a shotgun because his heroin levels were so high he should have od'ed. That's crap right there because 1) he was a hardcore junkie and 2) just because high levels of heroin were in his system doesn't mean that that was all from one shot of dope. That could have been built up from days and days of use, for however long heroin could be detected in his system.

My belief is that he was incredible depressed and couldn't deal with the fame. He didn't want to be "the spokesperson for our generation" because he felt like more than half the people that listened to his music didn't even fucking understand him. He didn't want to be idolized. I've had one person argue with me that he wasn't suicidal. It's like, ugh, a month previous to his death, he attempted suicide... are you kidding me right now?

Anyway, if you want to see a real good documentary, I suggest Montage of Heck.