Step 1. First meetings. I got hold of a copy of Nirvana's first album the same week that I bought Metallica's Black Album (the Spinal Tap one...) Compared to Metallica's latest offering, it sounded fresh not moribund, lean and hungry rather than bloated, funny rather than po-faced. Our eyes locked across the floor of Jumbo Records and I was smitten
Step 2. Obsession. I started 'accidentally' bumping into Nirvana everywhere. I opened a copy of NME (My first one had them on the front cover, along with the baffling headline 'Are Nirvana the Guns and Roses it's okay to like') in the 6th form common room and there they were. They were like the cool weird girl who sits by herself in the corner of the party. I was buying bootlegs, rare Tour only cassettes, limited edition 7 inches with awful b-sides, I was starting to have a problem. Nothing creepy mind, not like that thing with Winona Ryder that I started in 1995...
Step 3. Going steady. Suddenly we were an item, we even dressed alike. I got a stock of tartan shirts, ripped jeans, cardigans and Converse All-Stars. Things were going well, Nevermind came out and suddenly everything was cool. Everyone else started to notice Nirvana and I could say with a smug smile 'yeah, well I've been into them for ages'. "Oh you're so cool', no-one said, but I didn't care...
Step 4. The cracks start to show. Nirvana was hanging around with it's cool new friends and didn't have any more time for me. It was also spending a lot of time with that Crazy Lady Courtney Love. We didn't see each other so much any more, and when we did the magic had gone a little bit. I went to see Nirvana play live in 1993 and it was like they didn't care. The sound was awful, they played 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' half way through the set with an apologetic shrug and it seemed like they just didn't care about me any more.
Step 5. Trying to re-kindle things. A belated attempt was made to patch things up with In Utero, but it was plain that things would never be the same again. It wasn't a shadow of how things were before. We tried, but it was becoming apparent that it was over between us.
Step 6. Breaking up. I was hung over on the floor of my friends house when he told me Kurt Cobain had killed himself (I was also in a similar state, by complete coincidence when he told me Princess Di was dead. I had to stop hanging around with him shortly afterwards for the sake of famous people everywhere) and it seemed strangely like the only way the relationship could have ended. With the benefit of years and hind-sight, it wasn't a tragic death of a tortured artist, but rather a sad end to somebody who had mental health problems, a drug addiction and no-one to turn to. I remember being in a club shortly afterwards and the DJ played 'Smells like Teen Spirit' and the dance floor turned into a strangely passive-aggressive mosh pit with everyone slowly slamming into each other. It seemed an odd but poignant articulation of everyones unspoken grief.
Step 7. Moving on. Like that first girlfriend who is so cool that breaking up feels like the end of the world, but afterwards you realise that she opened your eyes to lots of new things, after Nirvana things were never the same. Indie bands were on Top Of The Pops, there were huge amounts of amazing bands getting press coverage, and more importantly being signed to labels, getting albums released and touring the UK. Plus there were at least two amazing albums to listen to and enjoy.
And now I'm bored and old. Nirvana are the band, more than any other, that remind me of my age. I think it's the fact that, unlike bands from that era who are still going, kids in Nirvana t-shirts I see today were not even born when Nevermind came out, and will never see them play on the reunion circuit. And I can say 'yeah, well I was into them first' and they will say 'so what Grandad' and I'll smile a wry smile like I was remembering that first crazy girlfriend*, after whom everyone else I met would be measured...
* Any resemblence to any ex-girlfriends, living or dead, is purely co-incidental
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