To paraphrase Chuck D, Kurt Cobain didn't mean shit to me. Now that's not to be taken as "I didn't like him as a person and I'm glad he's been dead for twenty years," but at the time of his death I was less than grieved at his demise. Perhaps I was just heartless at fourteen.
Truth of the matter is, when Nirvana broke big I was young and not as passionate about music as I would later be, thanks to the Beatles. And while I liked the occasional Nirvana tune, I didn't get into them like a lot of my peers. Indeed, it took me ten years to get around to buying a copy of Nevermind, and that one didn't exactly take up a permanent home in my CD collection (in fact it has long since been sold). I did get around to reading books about the band (Michael Azerrad's great Nirvana bio Come As You Are, Christopher Cross's bio of Cobain), but the fact is that I just don't care that much about Nirvana.
In much the same way that I feel about the Godfather movies, I acknowledge the importance of Nirvana to the pop-music landscape without necessarily being a fan of theirs, even on a casual basis. I like the Foo Fighters all right, and some of Nirvana's songs are pretty good. But I never drank the Kool-Aid that the band were "our generation's Beatles" (whosever generation that was, it probably wasn't mine). I am sad that Cobain felt like he had to end his life. But do I think we missed out on more of that kickin' Nirvana sound? Meh, probably not.
Like I said, it's been twenty years since he died, and somewhat predictably I'm being told by the various entertainment conglomerates that I should mark the occasion by purchasing magazines or books about the main man of Nirvana (much in the same way that the Beatles' fifty-year anniversary of appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show saw a surplus of books and magazines marking the occasion). I don't behoove anyone making money off this anniversary, I just feel less than willing to part with my money in order to fuel it.
In his first book, Rob Sheffield talked about how, the weekend Kurt's body was found, he and his friends talked about how they weren't surprised Cobain had ended his life, and how they even had fun at his expense. It's probably a coping mechanism to deal with sad things by using humor, I've done it myself for sure. Kurt Cobain was a fellow human being who, as it turned out, wasn't that psyched about being famous, and his pain was real. But asking us to mourn him anew twenty years on, so you can sell some cheap book or magazine or t-shirt with the man's face plastered on it and nothing new about why his music might have mattered to some people? I'm good, thanks.
Nirvana will never be one of my favorite bands, or even one of my "they're alright" bands. I'll take a pass on remarking on what Cobain's passing means to me because (as it turns out) it doesn't mean that much to me personally. Oh sure, we could talk about the absence of a similarly large presence in alternative rock since his death (that's a legitimate topic of conversation), but truth be told, his music didn't mean that much to me at the time or even now. He entertained me, I'm sure, but did he mean anything to me? Signs point to "no."
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