The void after Nirvana

In death, Kurt Cobain was as influential as he was in life.

Before the 27-year-old husband and father aimed a shotgun at himself in his Seattle home on April 5, 1994, Nirvana's lead singer and songwriter had accomplished amazing things in a short time.

The rock trio's speaking-in-tongues single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had returned loud, sloppy rock guitars to slumbering MTV and radio stations. Nirvana' 1991 album "Nevermind," a mixture of mumbling punk and sharp, clearly produced pop melodies, eventually sold more than 9 million copies. It sparked the grunge movement, of flannel shirts and incomprehensible lyrics, and opened the Rolling Stones' selective rock-megastar world for screaming Seattle kids like Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and Soundgarden's Chris Cornell. But when Cobain died, depressed and struggling with stomach problems and heroin addiction, he took his movement with him. "I'm willing to be the person who goes on the record saying Kurt Cobain's killing himself pretty much was the death of rock," says Gina Arnold, a San Francisco music columnist and author of "Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana" (St. Martin's Press, $13.95, 1993). "There's been a real pall over people's attitudes since then and it's taken five years to shake out," says Arnold, who admits listening these days to "tinkly, innocent pop" like the Spice Girls, Shania Twain and B*Witched. "His death made everybody so sad and there seemed to be nothing to get from being a rock star except for fame and fortune. Which some people are going for, but they're all cynics." From the day Courtney Love wailed her late husband's suicide note to thousands of fans at a Seattle wake, public mourning over Cobain has been intense. MTV played non-stop Nirvana clips for months. The band's posthumous CD, "MTV Unplugged in New York," turned a tortured acoustic version of Leadbelly's old folk song "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" into a hit. Cobain's image, like that of James Dean and Jimi Hendrix, became a generational totem. At first, big record labels flailed for the "next Nirvana," filling the rock-star void with worthy bands Soundgarden and Chicago's Smashing Pumpkins and shallow copycats Bush and Filter. Gradually, modern-rock radio stations stopped taking chances on new music, MTV slowly de-emphasized guitar rock and, without Cobain as grunge's pied piper, the movement petered out. Like Arnold, many Nirvana fans interpret this as a sign of rock's death. But Joe Daniels, drummer for the Nirvana-influenced Chicago duo Local H ("Pack Up the Cats," PGD/Polygram, 1998), finds this thinking premature. "I don't agree with that as far as a musician's standpoint goes. What we play is rock and what we write is rock," he said. "But I do agree in the sense that when he killed himself radio did a turnaround again. Also, MTV did a turnaround. It's like he disappointed people and they said, `OK we're going to banish this and teach everybody else a lesson.' " Citing what he called "sissy frat bands" like Matchbox 20, Daniels said: "Everybody's scared to rock." Though Cobain didn't exactly plan it this way he told the media on many occasions he was just a punk-rock fan who was in the most profitable place at the most profitable time Nirvana occupied rock 'n' roll's center from late 1991 until his death in 1994. Previously unknown Seattle peers the Melvins and Mudhoney surged quickly to grunge royalty; the Meat Puppets, B--hole Surfers, L7 and the Breeders finally received credit (and cash) for their influence. When Cobain killed himself, rock lost its center. Decay, in the form of heroin, crept into the new youth movement. Record labels, radio stations, MTV and the media searched for imitators instead of innovators. For rock fans who had endured the death of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison in the late '60s and the subsequent decline in musical quality, the whole thing seemed familiar. "In the space of seven years, rock went from Jimi Hendrix and the Doors to Journey and Styx," says Jim McGuinn, program director for the Philadelphia modern-rock radio station WPLY-FM. "Perhaps we're seeing that inevitable thing happening here." McGuinn, a 33-year-old Nirvana fan, enthusiastically recalls 1993, the year Nirvana released "In Utero" and the alternative-rock festival Lollapalooza still filled stadiums. "I thought, `Hey, the bands that are my age making music for people my age are starting to win. We're going to take over the world,' " McGuinn said. "And what's happened in the last five years? We lose Nirvana. Alice in Chains is in a drug haze. Soundgarden breaks up. Pearl Jam is reclusive. All the bands that could have become the next generation of Whos and Pink Floyds dropped the ball." The "rock is dead" cry has come up over and over in rock's 40-year history. (The Who even responded in 1974's "Long Live Rock.") When Buddy Holly died in a 1959 plane crash, and Elvis Presley was in the Army, experts declared the new teen culture officially over until the Beatles came along. In the late '70s, when copycat disco bands, coasting country-rockers and pompous art-rock soloists turned rock into mass blandness, fans fretted again until the Sex Pistols delivered punk. Similarly, the dominant rock strains in the late '80s and early '90s included empty Woodstock nostalgia and "hair metal" bands Motley Crue and Warrant until "Smells Like Teen Spirit." So what Next Big Thing will come to the rescue? Maybe it's heavy metal, like Orgy or Rammstein. Or "alternative country," like Lucinda Williams or Wilco, or hip-hoppers such as Lauryn Hill or OutKast. Or even "tinkly, innocent pop" from B*Witched or N'Sync. Maybe a band with guitars in the garage, or a kid with a sampler in his bedroom, knows the answer already. Or maybe, Arnold says, not this time. The Internet, she believes, will completely restructure the music business. Instead of buying albums, consumers will download MP3 music files from their home computers. Touring will change. Rock 'n' roll as we know it will cease to exist. For once, it may not be the Next Big Thing. Says Arnold: "I think the cycles are probably going to be at an end."