Music News | Rolling Stone: Courtney Love has big plans for Kurt Cobain's legacy – if she can make them happen. The Nirvana frontman's widow recently said that she hopes to make a biopic, documentary and musical about him. The latter production, she told NME, is "very likely" to happen. Moreover, it's something she and her daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, are hopeful could be done well.
6 comments:
I love me some Nirvana (and Kurt Cobain), and some musical theatre, so what could possibly go wrong with having a musical that combines both of these things? The way musical theatre seems to be taking a turn to making stories out of famous rock albums and things like that is very interesting. For example, American Idiot is a prime example of this sort of Rock and Roll story telling. Also, in an article I remember reading in the past few weeks told us about a musical regarding the life of Bob Marley. Now this, awesome, just awesome. As a sound designer that would prefer to go into concert sound, this movement is an awesome way for people like me to bridge the gap between the two fields. And good on Courtney Love for still finding ways to suck money out of Kurt, I'm sure this is what he would want.
This seems to be following the recent trend of musicals based on popular musical groups that can reach a broad audience through pop culture power. I personally love Nirvana, and have high hopes for this sort of music after the success of Once, Spring Awakening, American Idiot, Rent, etc. As any Nirvana fan would fear though, this show has the danger of being trite and exploitative of a band's fast burning career that ended in tragedy. I hope the songs are cohesive with the storyline, and not just dialogue forced between crowd favorites. Excited to see how it turns out!
While I see how fans would appreciate a musical honoring Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, it seems like the outcome might not be what everyone is expecting. It can be easy for story lines to just string together songs as well as for the musical to misrepresent what the band stood for. Also, depending on how the musical actually turns out as far as representing Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, I'm not sure how Frances Bean would feel about seeing an ill representation of her father. I'm interested to see how this turns out.
Honestly, I don't see this being very successful. The intentions are great, but there would have to be a lot of tweaking in creating a story. Much like they did with American Idiot, they created a storyline that fit the music. While that's all well and good in terms of exploring new aspects of musical theatre, I believe that when you create a show, the songs and the story should feed off each other. Starting with one and going into another might create a disjointed show. All I'm saying is that this kind of work might not please everyone. It could be successful, but I think it might hurt Kurt's legacy more than anything else.
I honestly have no idea how i feel about this. I love Nirvana and Kurt Cobain and i also love theatre and musicals but I feel like Kurt would've hated this. Too flashy for his style. I really hope they don't ruin this and if they do this right and somehow get it to be a compelling and moving and Cobain style story I think it might become one of my favorite musicals of all time. In short it could go awfully or it could be groundbreaking. Right now we are in the waiting place.
If you ask any given white girl, they will tell you that Kurt Cobain never dies in their hearts. But, in reality, Kurt Cobain is totally dead. So it should come as no surprise that people want to resurrect him, and why not resurrect him through a musical? Nirvana is a solid band that arguably kicked off an entire movement (punk in the mainstream), but the punk musical has already been done. American Idiot and Spring Awakening come to mind. So then why make a Cobain musical, one might be asking themselves at a time like this. Is a seminal artist's passing really a decent reason to immortalize them in a musical? At the moment, we don't have a definitive answer, but the closest thing to one we do is Holler if ya hear me, the ill-fated musical based around the life of Tupac Shakur. Now, this musical crashed and burned almost instantly. Fame and infamy are themes Broadway grapples with constantly, but another dead star might just not be the best vehicle to drive down that street this time. I bet this comment smells like teen spirit.
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