The road to independent music can be arduous and uphill. Musicians and musicians often have to seek alternative jobs to art in order to achieve their goals, raise the money to release records, buy instruments, and finance their careers with an eye toward a future where they can make a living from music. This is not something exclusive to unknown bands or artists but also to those who achieved massive success and this is the case of Kurt Cobain in his beginnings with Nirvana.
The musician started from a very young age with his fixed idea of dedicating himself to art. Although music was its main discipline, its manifestations in plastic art and cinema were also known. As a teenager from Aberdeen (Seattle), a small town far from the centers of music development, Cobain had to search for it to boost his musical career, something that would end up turning Seattle into the cradle of grunge, thanks to Nirvana and dozens of bands that were born in the 90s.
Among the alternative works to art made by the singer-songwriter of “Something in the Way” it is said to have been janitor at the high school he attended, Aberdeen High School. The money that the guitarist obtained from this work would be destined to finance the first demo of Nirvana, as the bassist remembers Krist Novoselic (via Far Out Magazine): “He was a man who never cleaned his kitchen or took out the trash, or that kind of chore, but Kurt Cobain wasn’t a bum. He basically cleaned bathrooms, that’s how he paid for our demo.”
This work experience of Kurt could be seen years later in the famous video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in which a janitor appears dancing. The truth is that the history of Nirvana has much of a fairy tale since with their second album they conquered the world and became a true rock phenomenon of the 90s. The vertiginous rise in front of the humble origins of its members became overwhelming, Especially for Kurt who became an icon for the youth and, as the story goes, the excessive fame was a lot to assimilate, especially for those who did not comply with the stereotypes of the rocker model.
