Stories come from a strange place. They start out as simple ideas or emotions that, for whatever reason, resonate a little louder than the world surrounding them. And when you key in on that, they go from simple ideas and emotions to vast conspiracies in the heart, the head, the spirit. To say that the relation between the original idea and the finished project is tenuous, at best, is often a kind understatement.
To that end, I should say that this is about a story I wrote in collusion with the often imitated but never matched Tyler Kent. We titled it “This is Not a Love Song.” We're big fans of it. But how could we not be? Besides penning it, it's about our favorite things: beer, girls and the Clash. In short, it's about friendship.
But that's not where the story started for me. The story started for me with the phantom whispers of October 1991.
Nirvana's “Smells Like Teen Spirit” debuted on MTV's 120 Minutes and was placed into regular daytime rotation not long after. The unmistakeable death that hair metal suffered was almost instantaneous and I remember it well. The heshers on my bus couldn't talk about anything else.
“...and then the audience climbs out of the bleachers and starts moshing with the band. They start throwing stuff around. Everything is destroyed. It was wicked rad.”
True story. I swear.
By the end of the year, Nirvana was selling 300,000 copies a week.
Released around the same time, August 1991 to be more precise, Pearl Jam's Ten didn't see the immediate success of their cross town rival. But by the second half of 1992, it was just as pervasive. Later, lead singer Eddie Vedder was splashed across the cover of Time magazine for an article he didn't take part and the band made their first appearance on Saturday Night Live. My preppie neighbor's excitement was more than palpable.
This defined the rift between Nirvana fans and Pearl Jam fans. And make no mistake. There was a rift and it was huge, maaaan.
Ten was short on the anarchic glee that made Nevermind so enjoyable for so many. It's stories were dark and somber, short on irony but stacked in melodrama. It's influences were unabashedly classic rock even when tempered by Vedder's punk rock ethos. It was criticized by many, including Kurt Cobain, as a corporate shilled placebo for the alternative nation. Nonetheless, it's success, both commercially and culturally, was rivaled only by Nevermind.
It could be argued that these two albums and the bands they represented were symbolic of the dynamic tension between the collective id and ego of American teens at the time. In retrospect, it's reminiscent of the same way that the Sex Pistols and the Clash had represented the malcontent youth of England a decade and a half before. Nirvana held court as the movement's nihilist jester while Pearl Jam stole from the rock and roll canon to make something of their own.
The instant celebrity thrust upon Pearl Jam formed them into a fierce and fighting combat ready unit. If there was ever a more confrontational sophomore effort from a band than Vs., I haven't heard it. Railing against the world at large, the album wasn't so much a shot across society's boughs as a declaration of war upon the world at large. This galvanizing effect never really happened for Nirvana, though.
Instead, Cobain satirized his celebrity status (and the “grunge” movement as a whole) with the venomously titled “I Hate Myself and Want to Die.” Contributed to the Beavis and Butthead Experience, the song was, at one point, slated to be the title track to their followup album In Utero. Fearful that the faithful masses would miss the irony of it all, they removed the song and it's title from the album. Sadly, by April 1994, the song title didn't seem so ironic.
On the surface, Cobain's suicide seemed an inevitable indictment of the turbulence of the times. The ensuing overdoses of Hole's Kristen Pfaff and Blind Melon's Shannon Hoon only confirmed this. Pearl Jam was already under siege from the demands of their own career and would soon withdraw. They'd re-evaluate and re-imagine their career trajectory with no less than Neil Young acting as their consigliere. The spirit of '91 had given way to something much darker: a rock and roll machine that ate its young.
The larger implications, both personal and public, were lost on teenage me. I didn't realize until a few months ago how commonplace all of this seemed to us as kids. My parents would gnash their teeth and wring their hands as they wept about the “darkness of the old days and how it was all happening again.” They had their Hendrix, their Joplin, their Morrison. We had Kurt. It seemed a given to us, in that day and age, that death was just a part of the gig. Looking back now, it makes me sad to think of how cynical and desensitized that seems.
In the space of less than four years, it felt like a whole decade had come and gone. We spent the rest of the nineties huffing the vapors of those first few years as we chased the dragon from grunge to alternative to brit-pop to electronica. Still, it has to be said: what a magnificent dragon it was.
In 1993, it wasn't uncommon to see Living Colour, 10,000 Maniacs, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soul Asylum, Bjork, and yes, even the Spin Doctors marketed in the same section of the record store. This was the epic greatness that was Alternative music- even if the label seemed like an oxymoron or an anachronism. To me, it's hard to imagine a period in music freer from the constraints of style or form.
And yet, it's harder to imagine a larger disappointment than Cobain's death. In that single moment, the direction of Alternative rock changed forever. As a fan of music, its hard not to engage in Rock and Roll String Theory. The what ifs and coulda, shoulda, woulda's will forever commandeer late night last call pub conversations and stoner talk.
My own personal Rock and Roll String Theory revolves around closing the gap between Nirvana fans and Pearl Jam fans. In my alternate reality, Nirvana and Pearl Jam reached out to one another at the height of the public frenzy. They hunker down in Bad Animals studio and produce a split single.
Yes, Virginia, they solve their differences with a piece of vinyl. Nirvana does two songs on side A with Pearl Jam doing two songs on side B. (In my alternate reality, I play the shit out of side B.) But larger than the idea of the collector's item they create, I'm fascinated with the idea that two titanic singular voices come together to produce a piece of art that says, “Fuckit. We are music. Turn us up.” And the kids do. Much to their parents' displeasure.
And now you see how a simple idea, like a split single that never happened (and probably never could), spins out into a thousand plus words that you've just slogged through.
I wrote a novel. The title is This is Not a Love Song. I wrote it with Tyler Kent because, like that split single that I always wanted, I wanted a novel out there with two distinct voices and like a sucker, he agreed. I wrote it with Tyler Kent because it's about friendship and loyalty and the sanctity of youth and a rockin' soundtrack to boot. Its about the music we love, the girls we don't want to love and the friends that hold us steady in between.
Maybe it is a love song after all.
