William S Burroughs on Kurt Cobains death

>beats
>talent
dude we're young and alive and we do drugs and shit! so profound really flipped my shit when i read on the road for the first time

>dude we're young and alive and we do drugs and shit! so profound really flipped my shit when i read on the road for the first time
Sure Ginsberg and Burroughs reached that level of silliness, but their early writings were dealing with much more than that.

>kills his wife
>too busy slamming skag in Morocco to raise son
>son dies at age 33 after years of addiction

Fucking hilarious that Burroughs of all people is accusing someone of letting his family down.

Poor no brain.

>On the Road
>beautiful
>Naked Lunch
>good

Time to go back to Yea Forums.

Burroughs was an incredibly talented and paradigm changing writer. That being said Naked Lunch and a lot of his other works after are essentially just ramblings of a strung out junkie faggot. It's not one of those books that you read everyday until you finish. It's the type of work you pick up every now and the, read a few passages and remember how sick and evil this world is and always has been. Junky is his greatest work, not despite it's cohesive structure, but because of it. Burroughs proves that he can tell a cohesive and page turning story. That he is indeed a great writer and not just some rich boy-fucker who got lucky and knew the right people.

He seamlessly fused the major 80s alt rock trends (twee, folk, noise rock, punk) into a really accessible pop format, while capturing the general aesthetic of 90s youth (being part of it and all). Take that as you will.

Very well put very poignant

Faces of Yea Forums

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Sounds like his family let HIM down

His family was the reason behind why he was so fucked up.

>His family was the reason behind why he was so fucked up.
This. Especially his parents.

>What artistry did he really achieve?
he was apart of a spoken word song with borroughs and a drone rock project
>Was his slightly abrasive sadsack pop music really art?
his songs were not "slightly abrasive" nirvana was more abrasive than the jesus lizard, shellac, and a ton of other bands considered noise rock yet they're considered pop rock that makes no sense to me.

also besides that fact, hes put on a ton of other alternative and underground bands that would've faded into obscurity and not get the recognition that they deserve. Like daniel johnston, vaselines, boredoms, flipper, Meat Puppets,The Raincoats, earth, half japanese, etc

I don't think Kurt was insightful enough to really turn it into something greater than its parts. He identified the problems with music that was popular at the time, but he replaced it with an ideological sadness masquerading as itself as empathy and emotional honesty. There's a reason grunge imploded so quickly: it had no real foundation to stand on after its pretty, marketable face disappeared.

Nirvana gets an awful lot of undeserved flack.

>he was apart of a spoken word song with borroughs and a drone rock project
Burroughs had completely flanderized himself by that point. The only credit you can give him at that point was that he didn't actually join the Church of Scientology.
>his songs were not "slightly abrasive" nirvana was more abrasive than the jesus lizard, shellac, and a ton of other bands considered noise rock yet they're considered pop rock that makes no sense to me.
Because the abrasive qualities he added never obscured the great pop sensibilities of his songwriting. That an album as accessible as In Utero was his attempt to make himself feel better about selling out only proves his delusion. It probably comes from the punk influence; punk was a great product but it was pretty bad at everything else, especially living up to its own purported ideals.

>That an album as accessible as In Utero was his attempt to make himself feel better about selling out only proves his delusion.
Hard to say. We only ever got the compromised Geffen-approved version of it.

It's not like Bleach was any less accessible.

Agreed. I think his most valuable asset was his deep love for his influences and his ability to translate the current zeitgeist into his music's aesthetic. Though I think had he lived he may had achieved higher planes through his at the time newfound love for blues, folk and the likes.

>Because the abrasive qualities he added never obscured the great pop sensibilities of his songwriting
Why is that necessarily bad though? Half his influences were K Records, twee pop and 70's pop rock.

Yeah I know Williams Burroughs in his later years was friends with various rockers including Al Jourgensen.

Dharma Bums is far more ambitious and better

"So we were hanging out at [Burroughs's] house one day shooting up heroin. He goes and takes out this giant, primitive-looking syringe out of the 1950s from a leather case. Now, I don't know how an 80 year old man manages to find a vein, but he knew what he was doing. So we're all laying around the place high and I notice there's a big pile of unopened mail on the coffee table. I look at one envelope and it's a letter from President Clinton inviting him to the White House for a poetry reading. I get all excited and say 'Wow, do you know how big this is? This is a letter from the president!' And he looks at me and says 'What? Who's president?' It struck me. He didn't even know who was president."

Nirvana had a chance to be impactful and make good art. They didn't. Kurt's success is ultimately what killed him (isolation from fame or Courtney). If had balls he would have started his own label and made art on his own terms. Nirvana was just edgy monkees.

I don't agree with suicide at all.
>be in pain
>want a way out
>kill yourself
>create lifelong pain for the people who cared about you
It's just a fucked up cycle that can be avoided by reworking your life and getting through all your problems. It's hard work but I've had people close to me who very nearly killed themselves several times but made it out and are some of the happiest people I know now.

Kurt was a drug addict and didn't want to go through the work to get past his pain.

As heartbreaking as the whole story is, Frances losing her father and all of that, Krist's recounting of the last time he saw Kurt is devastating.

He tracked down Kurt who was living with his drug dealer (or a drug dealer either way) avoiding his family and every one else. Krist had assembled a van full of instruments and pleaded with Kurt to come with him and go on a trip to get away from everything and he said that Kurt's response was just "No" and he closed the door.
>I crie evertim

Junky is really amazing when it comes to bringing attention to drugs. The honest, matter of fact POV it's told in males it one of the best anti-drug pieces ever, while also managing to show addict's reasons to get on the drugs. It's a great read, I think it helps people understand addiction. Queer is a pile of shit though.

Al is probably close to the same state now.

Nirvana made at least a few great songs

Hey, who here knows what William Burroughs has in common with Patton Oswalt?

Ministry are more relevant now than ever

youtube.com/watch?v=hTkywyKV-9U

>It's not like Bleach was any less accessible.
Totally inaccessible to mainstream music buying public at the time, it only appealed to a niche market.

>Nirvana made at least a few great songs
Those were all covers.

wasn't that the case for literally every 90s alt rocker tho. courtney's dad was a druggie who gave her acid when she was like 4, and her mom was literally one of the original SJWS

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That's really sad
If Kurt could've just go with him.

>We only ever got the compromised Geffen-approved version of it.
We did??? what album was that?

junky is a must read for anyone with drug fascination
nothing could have been more potent in convincing me not to fuck with opiates

Cobain's music wasn't innovative or anything but it's more cerebral than many acts of comparable popularity. He name dropped bands like Swans, Half Japanese, Daniel Johnston, Sun City Girls, etc

so? his music doesn't sound like any of those
i dont care about kurt cobain's top 50 or daniel johnston t shirt or the "mythos" or whatever. the music is shitty radio rock

Shitty radio rock is Foo Fighters, Creed, Nickelback, Bush, Five Finger Death Punch.

Nirvana may have influenced all that, but they were a step beyond that dreck.

I think people like you don't even know why you shit on nirvana at this point

only on here and in the comment section of AIC/PJ/Soundgarden videos

FOR YOU

DAMN

Kinda. I think Norman Mailer summed it up far better during Naked Lunch's obscenity trial (that could have got the book banned in America):

>"But what is fascinating to me is that there is a structure to the book, you see, which is doubtless imperfect. I think one reason we can’t call it a great book like REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST or ULYSSES, the imperfection of this structure. There is no doubt as to the man’s talent while it was, perhaps, excited and inflamed by drug addiction, it was also hurt. This man might have been one of the greatest geniuses of the English language if he had never been an addict. Through this there is a feeling of great torture in the composition of the book. What comes through to me is that there also is style, the subconscious going through all the various trials and ordeals of addiction, he still holds on to a scheme in the book; and there is a deep meaning. It is curious the way these themes keep recurring."

Don't forget GNR videos.

whats the patrician nirvana album to go with lads?

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Nirvana was corporatized punk and the only reason they got popular is because Kurt was a cutie, and he knew it and that's why he killed himself. He was brought up in 80s socialist anarchist punk circles and he wanted to be the real deal but he ended up being a pop star and he couldn't respect himself.

The 90s killed Kurt. Authentic counterculture couldn't exist in that miserable decade. Beavis and Butthead substituted.

>this meme again
If only Kurt hadn't intentionally signed with Geffen and agreed to shoot MTV videos. No, the truth is he wanted to be a rock star and get his band and his friends' bands on MTV and the radio, but once he actually got there, he realized that being a celebrity isn't as much fun as it looks, in fact it actually kind of sucks.

90s pop culture was pretty much just corporatized counter culture the entire decade.

fitting the decade culminated in straight up manafactured mickey mouse club acts like nsync and britney spears and even shit you'd think is offputting to the popular crowd like "radical extreme sports" and "trailer trash" culture (numetal) became mainstream and commodified.

I don't see how your account is incompatible with my account. He valued authenticity, then he sold out, and he killed himself because he didn't like being a sellout/didn't like being a celebrity, whatever, there's no difference.

He was a beautiful idiot and a marginal talent who got hoodwinked by the cultural malaise of the 90s.

"Yeah, we're totally alternative not like those corporate plastic MTV guys like Bon Jovi and Poison."

(this festival brought to you by MasterCard--Go Places)

>Because the abrasive qualities he added never obscured the great pop sensibilities of his songwriting.
how is that his fault, that only proves how good he was at utilizing it. Point was that nirvana has abrasive songs, especially by mainstream standards, and even entry level noise rock standards

the only legit 90s subculture was norwegian metal

>the only legit 90s subculture was norwegian metal
>not skateboarding

Skateboarding got totally commodified by the end of the 90s dude. X Games, Surge, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, etc

I thought the last time Kurt saw Kris was at the airport where they had a fight?

lol NORMIE Mailer

>not reading Lonesome Traveler
fuckwit