Passage Of Time Even Though Kurt Cobain Is Gone, His Many Fans Will Never Let His Music Die

We love you/We miss you - inscription on a park bench near Kurt Cobain’s house.

Saturday marks the first anniversary of the day Kurt Cobain’s body was found in his Seattle home. Nirvana’s leader isn’t coming back.

But in some ways, it’s like he never left.

Discussing the singer’s suicide “is strange for me,” said Marco Collins, music director at Seattle alternative station KNDD-FM 107.7. “Nirvana has still been one of our top requested acts. To me the band’s legacy is living on - it’s not waned at all.”

The band’s “Unplugged in New York” CD, which came out in November, is at No. 25 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart and has sold more than three million copies. “The Man Who Sold the World,” a song off the CD, is at No. 11 on the Billboard modern rock chart.

But what happens when this disc runs its course? There will be more music. Of course it won’t be new music - bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl live on, but there is no Nirvana without Cobain. But there are live recordings of the band, unreleased stuff. Don’t expect them to stay unreleased for long.

Geffen Records, the band’s label, isn’t talking about any new Nirvana releases - or Cobain’s death, for that matter.

Andy Schuon was a disc jockey at Seattle rock station KISW-FM 99.9 in 1983-84 - back when a teenaged Cobain was jamming with friends in Aberdeen. Now Schuon is MTV’s vice president for music and programming and helps decide what gets on the music channel.

“The thing that Kurt Cobain and Nirvana did, along with a small handful of other artists, was serve as the catalysts for the ‘90s music revolution,” Schuon said. “They were an important rock group with great songs and great lyrics.”

Schuon doesn’t see Cobain’s influence fading.

“It’s similar to the Jim Morrison situation. Like the Doors … we didn’t get enough before he passed away.”

At midnight Saturday, MTV will air a two-hour Nirvana tribute, featuring performance clips and interviews. And from time to time, Schuon said, MTV will air “Live and Loud,” a show Nirvana filmed in Seattle in late 1993.

The channel will continue to play songs such as “About A Girl” and “The Man Who Sold the World” from Nirvana’s “Unplugged” appearance late last year.

“They’re very popular and it’s a bittersweet thing,” Schuon said. “You feel a sense of happiness, yet sadness that that’s it….

“I know Kurt was really proud of ‘Unplugged.’ Artistically it was really brilliant and a great moment.”

Cobain will miss the “Unplugged” debut of his widow Courtney Love, and her band, Hole. Their show premieres at 10 p.m. April 17.

“I think Kurt was a songwriter that was writing songs that were going to be around for awhile whether or not his life ended a year ago or whether he died when he was 50,” KNDD’s Collins said. Then, giving in to the present tense, he added, “He writes songs that connect with people.”

It’s that connection that keeps Cobain’s records on the charts, his videos on TV, his face on magazine covers. It’s that connection that brings people to Viretta Park, the small patch of green next to the Seattle house where Cobain killed himself.

So many have come, so many keep coming. To cut the stares, Love has lined her chain link fence with black plastic. She has a guard and a German shepherd and security cameras and forbidding signs on her gate.

Beware of dog.

No trespassing.

Love has talked of creating some sort of public memorial for her husband. She seems to have little choice, if she wants some solitude.

So what about Nirvana’s surviving members?

Bassist Novoselic is writing a book and getting political. His main focus seems to be the fight against censorship, and he has spoken against state efforts to limit minors’ access to certain kinds of music. Earlier this year, he helped form JAMPAC, the Joint Artists and Music Promotions Political Action Committee.

“The music community represents a broad constituency,” Novoselic said in February. “The idea behind JAMPAC is to give that constituency a bigger voice in political affairs.

Grohl has formed his own band, the Nirvanaesque Foo Fighters. But this time he’s singing and playing guitar, not drumming. The group - Grohl, Pat Smear (who played guitar with Nirvana for awhile) and bassist Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith (both of Seattle’s Sunny Day Real Estate) - made its first public appearance March 3 in Portland. On May 11, the Foo Fighters will play at the King Theater in Seattle with punk legend Mike Watt.

Collins can’t rave about Grohl’s band enough. He’s seen the Foo Fighters live (“they were so tight”) and heard their recordings (“some amazing pop songs”). He predicts the band’s disc - when it’s finally released - will be “easily the best to come out in ‘95.”

So what about that debut record? It looks like the Foo Fighters will make it soon for Capitol, where Gary Gersh, the man who signed Nirvana to Geffen, is now president and CEO.