Had to chime in. so, on the Cobain thing, for those of us olds (I think I'm a year or two older than Cobain would have been had he lived), who knows why he struck such a chord? He has an iconic almost James Dean like status now. I think you have to say they were a really influential band. He definitely could right a hook filled song.
Being in my last year or so in college when they hit big, I was basically a metal head kid. I remember hearing Smells Like Teen Spirit and thinking that music with a punk influence could actually be pretty good. It rocked in the same way dinosaur Junior rocked. Those two band brought guitar heroics to folksy R.E.M ish alternative music. Before that I found punk rock kind of irritating. And, of course, they weren't really punk. But, they had a little of that vibe.
The band I really loved from that era was Soundgarden and to a lesser extent Alice N Chains.
Nirvana, Soundgarden and Jane's Addiction did a lot to fuse alternative rock with metal or hard rock for me and changed the way I thought about music. I think they paved the way for what we would eventually call alternative metal. For that I'm grateful. It's a shame though to think what Cobain might have done in the intervening years.
I think despising him misses the point. My belief is no one really wants to be an addict. There is choice involved. But, he clearly had a lot of demons.
I see Cobain as a tragic character, a troubled soul. In sort of a Buddhist tradition, I simply wish him free from suffering.
