DBWI: Kurt Cobain commits suicide.

It is a pretty well known part of rock history that Rock Legend and Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain struggled with serious depression and drug addiction, as he mentions in his autobiography "All our pretty songs". This seemed to be at its worse in early 94 where he even began to grow estranged from Courtney Love. What if instead of seeking professional help he chose a more extreme way to end his pain through suicide?

How would this effect the growth of Alternative Rock/Grunge? Along with his bandmates?
 
I really can't think of a world without the dominance of alternate rock. What could replace it, Hip-Hop? Anyway, without the voice of the generation, I think the band would probably still be around, however, in a different, less "violent" sound. However, Cobain essentially held the band together, and without him, imagine the impact on Nirvana, or the entire grunge rock movement. Rock itself could possibly dissolve into a more softer tone, and music itself would probabvly be taken over by the Hip-Hop or pop scene. Now that wouls be scary;).
 
Well he probably wouldn't have gotten fat from eating some of his problems.

I wouldn't call him fat at all. He used to be almost anorexic looking back in the 1990s! He's just a bit larger than the average guy now. That's probably because he's like 46 now. Most guys that age are a bit out of shape but he's certainly not overweight (you should have seen him in the early 2000s when he definitely WAS though) Wasn't his birthday just a few days ago BTW? I heard it was a huge celebration at his Seattle home.
 
I remember reading some TL where he shot himself on April 5 1994, just two days after my birthday and the police found out on the 8th.

Music is absolutely horrible in that TL. There's this awful thing called "Dubstep" which isn't really music at all. Apparently it does exist in Britain though! :eek: I'm so glad that garbage never left the British isles and took off elsewhere though.
 
I can't imagine music would be too different. But at least we wouldn't have had to hear that duet with Katy Perry from the Grammies last year.
 
I can't imagine music would be too different. But at least we wouldn't have had to hear that duet with Katy Perry from the Grammies last year.

Honestly, I enjoyed Kurt taking the Indie Princess and doing a hardcore song with her, he's older now but the man still has his touch.

OOC: Given the Butterfly's and the supposed loss in popularity of "Pop" and "Upbeat Rock", in this TL I think Katy Perry would make her success with Indie Rock, or Folk Rock of some sort.
 
The world would be spared his embarrassing Scientology phase. His horrible 1999 song Xenu Rising did more to kill rock in the early 2000s then anything else. Indeed, it took until 2005 to see rock music recover after a half a decade of Post Acid House and Neo-Disco (which dispite it's heavy sampling of 70s sounds is really just a continuation of hip-hop, no matter what neo-disco fan boys will tell you!) rulling the air waves in the US. When Alt rock did come back, it had to compete with the other two genres. It's only now in the 2010s that ALT rock is on top agian. Not that the 2000s didn't have some Alt rock hits mind you, but by then Post Acid House and Neo-Disco where so entrenched that they got all the number one hits with ALT rock hits scoring slightly lower, but still near the top of the Pop Charts. That is until Soundgarden's hit "Rebirth" album in 2010 of course. If I recall, all the top ten hits of 2010 with the exception of Kanye West's cover of "staying alive" where from Soundgarden's Rebirth.
 
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The world would be spared his embarrassing Scientology phase. His horrible 1999 song Xenu Rising did more to kill rock in the 2000s then anything else. Indeed, we're only seeing rock music recover now in the 2010s after a decade of Post Acid House and Neo-Disco (which dispite it's heavy sampling of 70s sounds is really just a continuation of hip-hop, no matter what neo-disco fan boys will tell you!) rulling the air waves in the US.

I really can't think of a world without the dominance of alternate rock. What could replace it, Hip-Hop? Anyway, without the voice of the generation, I think the band would probably still be around, however, in a different, less "violent" sound. However, Cobain essentially held the band together, and without him, imagine the impact on Nirvana, or the entire grunge rock movement. Rock itself could possibly dissolve into a more softer tone, and music itself would probabvly be taken over by the Hip-Hop or pop scene. Now that wouls be scary;).
((This post that came before yours implies that Alternative Rock has become a "Dominant" genre, since it was posted first it is already Canon, your post contradicts that.....))
 
((This post that came before yours implies that Alternative Rock has become a "Dominant" genre, since it was posted first it is already Canon, your post contradicts that.....))
OOC: Okay, I'll edit it so that Alt Rock is still a "dominant" genre, while at the same time still incorporating some of my original ideas.
 
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Who cares? Ever since he went clean all his songs have been garbage.
Which is exactly why neo-disco and post acid house had such an easy time taking off in the early 2000s. Well that and the fact that the 2000s where a rather unpleasant decade making people long for more escapist music then in the 90s. What with the New Years terrorist attacks in 2000, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, the great black out of 2002, the gas crisis, Hurricane Kalvin destroying New Orleans, the gas crisis, and so on, people wanted to be cheered up, not listen to songs about social allienation. Neo-Disco and Post Acid House offered songs about drinking, having lot's of sex and enjoying the good life. It may seem trite, but when times are bad, a large portion of the population usually retreats into fantasy.
 
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I wonder if Grohls side project would have been more successful?
That said, I read somewhere that the build up to him quitting in 96 was basically down to Krist and Pat trying to bully Dave out of doing the Foo Fighters at all.
I do wonder what would have happened if he'd tried more than one FF album before going full time with Probot. Not that I'm complaining miind, I prefer the way Probot's second album went way better anyway.
 
I wouldn't call him fat at all. He used to be almost anorexic looking back in the 1990s! He's just a bit larger than the average guy now. That's probably because he's like 46 now. Most guys that age are a bit out of shape but he's certainly not overweight (you should have seen him in the early 2000s when he definitely WAS though) Wasn't his birthday just a few days ago BTW? I heard it was a huge celebration at his Seattle home.

Reason #3,753 for his generation identifying with him as a representational icon ;)


When you think about how each generation rebels musically against the one before and what it took to rebel against the likes of Cobain and NIN --neo-disco!-- I can't help but think of Albert Einstein's prediction that World War Four will be fought with rocks and sticks. :D
 

Heavy

Banned
We would have been robbed of the quite frankly hilarious war of the words that raged in the music press between Cobain and Chad Kroeger throughout the early 2000s.

Honestly, I don't really like Nirvana or grunge (or alternative rock in general) for that matter (at all), but I can recognise which is the better band, and I've never been able to understand all those pissant YouTube comments hailing Nickelback as "the gods of rock and roll" (seriously, what the hell) and describing Cobain as a "wannabe pretender to the throne" and so on.
 
Well, he did get involved in politics in his later life, even had a failed bid to become a congressman for the democrats. He forced to republicans, in his state at least to become more progressive in order to defeat a celebrity candidate.
 
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