This was what i posted on the 10th if August.. 18 days and 8 posts later, i still haven't done what i said.. and since a certain someone has pointed this out, I'll go right on ahead and do it.
Each of the points i set out to prove wrong in this post are tweets I received.
Myth 1:Kurt was not a good guitarist.
Rolling stone magazine ranked Kurt 11th in it's list of "100 greatest guitarists of all time".Although i have to accept that it's a pretty high placing for Kurt, I still think that Kurt was a great guitarist. To people who say he single handedly abolished the whole "guitar solo" part in rock songs, i agree with you. NIRVANA's songs never had a huge guitar solo( with a few exceptions like School,Aneurysm) and whatever little riff was there was more often than not a slight modification of the verse(Come as you are, About a girl). Most of the time Kurt did not even bother to learn the solos and they ended up being different from performance to performance. All said and done, Kurt's use of feedback and distortions was spectacular. There was this on concert(Mtv live and loud) where he has a guitar duel with Pat Smear where his playing is just mind blowing. Kurt's guitar riff's were simple consisting of mainly a few chords but they were amazing all the same.
Now listen to his performance on MTV unplugged. It's just acoustic guitars and with the ambience and everything it just sounds heavenly(My mom sits down and listens whenever i play this dvd!!!). His guitar solo at the end of "the man who sold the world" is beyond words.
At the end of each concert Kurt would just jam like mad and then bring his guitar near the amplifiers and monitors. Feedback would fill the place and the crowd would go crazy(Reading festival '92).That guitar sound was priceless
Being a good guitarist in my book doesnt mean who can play the fastest or the loudest or play the hardest songs. It was in playing riffs that blended with the song's melody.When Kurt developed the hybrid "jag-stang" guitar he called himself an "anti-guitar hero".
If you look back to his "bleach" days where his lyrics weren't as good as in his later stages, he compensated by playing fast and complicated hooks.
Kurt always admitted he was no "Virtuoso" . He once remarked about Seogvia "I can never be as good a guitar player as Segovia, but the flipside he probably could never have play like me". Kurt created his own style that fit seamlessly into his songwriting and thats what mattered.
NIRVANA were a three pice band and for Kurt to sing like he did and also play the leads was just awesome.Yeah, he let his playing be guided by instinct rather than technical proficiency, but who cares?When he cranked it up, he could make a racket. when he mellowed down, he could sound beautiful.Kurt never proclaimed to be this "hot , hair metal guitar players" who play half an hour solos.
What brought about the whole misconception that he was a bad player was that his lyrics were so great that the guitar just faded in caomparison. But Kurt always said "Music first, lyrics second".On songs like "love buzz" he plays some really fast riffs.
just because he didn't, did not mean he couldn't.
The bottomline is that Yes! he wasn't this great technical player but what he did with the guitar is still pure magic.
I didn't think i'll have so much to say so the rest of the myth's in the days to come.
P.S: That's Kurt in a photo from 1989 while doing one of his crazy dives.Upside down,mid air and still playing.. OH YEAH!
