Kurt Cobain’s legacy, according to 10 young Seattle musicians, arts workers

Friday, April 5, marks 30 years since one of the most memorable days in Seattle history: the death of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. To many, that 1994 day remains indelible, and is discussed as a time marker like the moon landing or the Kennedy assassination. Cobain was a generational-defining talent who shifted music with 1991’s “Nevermind,” and forever changed the way Seattle was perceived inside and outside the city.

Cobain’s 1994 death by suicide was only one of Seattle music’s many tragic losses, including Mother Love Bone frontman Andrew Wood’s 1990 overdose death, The Gits singer Mia Zapata’s 1993 murder, Alice in Chains’ singer Layne Staley’s 2002 overdose death and Chris Cornell’s 2017 suicide. But even amid the immense tragedy of those losses, none put Seattle in such an international spotlight as Cobain’s death.

But what does he mean to younger generations who weren’t alive to experience that April 1994 day? What does he mean to people who work in the arts and are 30 or younger? The verdict: there is far more to Cobain’s Seattle legacy than “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

“An outlet for emotions” and an LGBTQ+ icon

Clara Too, 23, works at MoPOP where she often walks by Cobain memorabilia, but Cobain first impacted her back in middle school while she was working on a class project about Seattle’s music history.

“As an Asian American female, I was highly conditioned to repress my anger, and listening to this genre of music was one of the only ways I found an outlet for emotions I felt unable to explore otherwise,” Too said.

Loving Nirvana, Too found, also made her love Seattle because the music connected her to the city.

“Maybe we all felt stuck indoors in the gloomy weather,” Too said, “isolated from others in the Seattle Freeze, and just a little too aware of the horrors of capitalism and societal dysfunction. Nirvana resonates with all of us who feel an underlying need to rage against the machine.”

To several of the musicians we spoke with, Cobain made it acceptable to tackle sensitive subjects with their songwriting. Olivier Seavers, 21, works as a producer at Robert Lang Studios, the last place Nirvana ever did a recording session. Seavers says Cobain opened songwriting to include difficult topics. “A lot of grunge lyrics bring to light issues that people weren’t even really aware of,” they said.

When Cobain spoke up for marginalized groups, he was unique among rock stars in that era, Seavers said. “Kurt spoke up for LGBTQ people, women and encouraged people to open their minds,” they said. “As a nonbinary person, I wouldn’t have as much of a chance in this industry today if it wasn’t for him.”

Musical influence across genres

It’s not hard to find musicians who cite Cobain as an inspiration, but what may be surprising is that they don’t just show up in the genre of rock.

Haley Graves, 23, identifies as “Black, queer, pop/punk,” but says she feels his impact and also sees it on other Seattle bands. “I see his influence on a lot of bands, The Black Tones, Kitty Junk and the Black Ends in particular,” she said. Graves says she’s considering adding a Nirvana cover to her own set because she wants to honor Cobain’s impact on her.

Seattle-based rapper and producer Blaise Brooks, 30, was exposed to Cobain at an early age because his father played in Coffin Break, a band that shared bills with Nirvana. (The producer says Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of Cobain and widow Courtney Love, was his first kiss when he was a toddler.)

Brooks said he sees Cobain’s impact on dance music and in hip-hop, too. “All the electronic producers sample Nirvana, and he shows up in plenty of rap lyrics, too,” he said. One example of that: Jay-Z’s 2013 track “Holy Grail,” which uses a line from “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” 

Caspian Coberly is 23, but he’s a seasoned Seattle guitar player who has played nearly every venue in town. He also noted Cobain’s influence in rap.

“Kurt is so consistently name-dropped in rap lyrics,” Coberly said, “that he has become an American cultural touchstone like Elvis, Tupac, [Bob] Dylan, Marilyn [Monroe] and James Dean.”

Grant Mullen is 28, and plays in the rock band Naked Giants. He said that Cobain impacted him as a musician, but even greater is the effect he saw on Seattle culture. “I see it in our amazing arts community, progressive politics and in the vivid individuality that makes our city what it is,” Mullen said. “But there is also a lasting impression of his death … and others, that’s a sobering reminder of the necessity of mental health care for myself, artists and for all.” 

That was echoed by Seattle actor Nabilah Ahmed, 30, who sees Cobain as a “radical” figure for the way he embraced movements outside mainstream culture. “It was an embodiment of the nihilism that defined the artistic movement he was a part of,” she said. “What makes him radical to me is his willingness to do away with individualism … Kurt thrived and healed among his friends. That is truly anti-establishment thinking. As an artist trying to find my own way, it inspires me to be brave and open with others.”

An inspiring figure — and the park that remembers him

Search “Cobain” on Google Maps and you’ll find Viretta Park, which sits next to the Denny-Blaine house Cobain died in. (His widow, musician Courtney Love, sold the home in 1997, and left Seattle.) The park, to which Nirvana fans regularly flock, is as close to a local memorial as exists.

Tourists interested in music make up a large number of Seattle visitors, said Tracey Wickersham, of Visit Seattle. “Without any doubt, a significant part of that is interest in grunge, and Kurt specifically,” she said.

Musician Coberly lives in the neighborhood and has been to the park, a place people go to pay homage.

“Even in a city with as rich a musical history as Seattle,” Coberly said, “Kurt has been the preeminent music icon. The level of reverence for Kurt within Seattle is immeasurable.”

Audrey Wilkinson, a 20-year-old University of Washington student, says she spent a lot of her youth visiting Seattle’s Cobain-related sites. She says it was his artistic work though that has had the largest influence on her. Wilkinson creates fanzines, in part inspired by the pre-digital era of grunge.

“It’s a veneration process for me, a nostalgia for something I wasn’t even a part of,” Wilkinson said. “The internet took over and changed everything permanently, and makes these physical fanzines feel tangible, and very in line with the aesthetic of Kurt Cobain.”

Wilkinson was one of several people we spoke with who said that while they saw Cobain as an inspiring figure, they weren’t perfectly comfortable with how often his image is used as iconography. “When I see ‘Nevermind’ shirts at Target,” Wilkinson said, “I realize we are strained from the ethos of hyper-accelerated commercialism.”

Those T-shirts have a different emotional impact on Gabe Senn, 28, a social worker and Love’s nephew, who was too young to have met Cobain.

“A day doesn’t go by when I don’t see half a dozen people in Nirvana T-shirts,” Senn said. “It’s a constant reminder and a constant grief for the family.”

For Senn, Cobain was a “generative figure” who proved to the world the power of creativity. “I love being loosely related to someone who espoused equality, anti-war sentiments, feminism, LGBTQ rights, trans rights and more,” said Senn. “I’m sure Kurt would have had pride flags all over his house.”

More than anything else, Senn said, Cobain’s support of “people who were different” helped transform culture.

“Being a supporter of ‘outsider culture’ is also a way to give other people permission to be themselves,” he said. “That itself almost defines Seattle and has from its beginnings.”

If there’s a sign where the next 30 years of Cobain fans may come from, 12-year-old Archie Vaughan may be the best example. Archie’s father, Matt, owns Easy Street Records, so Archie has “grown up in a record store.” But only recently, in seventh grade, did he begin to connect with Cobain and Nirvana.

“Kurt inspires how I want to play music,” Archie said. “He stood up for a lot of topics, and was different from other rock stars, and he gave a lot of people a voice to speak on political issues.”

Archie’s comments likely will never show up on an official tourist brochure, but like the others, he emphasized how it’s impossible 30 years after Kurt Cobain’s death to separate the image of Seattle from that of Cobain.

“Kurt and Nirvana,” he said, “symbolize this city. … It shows people that in this place, we’re different. That makes me proud.”