Nirvana, possibly the greatest band of all time?

In your opinion. The Beatles spawned a lot more rip-off bands than Nirvana and the grunge bands did, yes. It should also be mentioned that the Beatles were one of the first "boy bands". Listen to their pop-laden syrupy early albums. It took them years to develop into the more "profound" band that did The White Album, Revolver, Sgt. Peppers, and Magical Mystery Tour. Their early stuff, like Help was hardly revolutionary IMO.

I think you can see some of the same growth with a band like Nirvana. Their willingness to be "unplugged" and experiement with different sounds later in their run shows their growth. At the end, it seemed Cobain was going for a more folky sound than slowed down punk to me. Who knows what their next full album after "In Utero" may have sounded like? Unfortunatly, we'll never find out. Of course, I am very biased, because I feel Nirvana represented me and much of my generation. I think that comparing them to a band like "Creed" is a dig. To me "Creed" sounds like a (bad) Pearl Jam cover band with the sappyness of pop stuff like the "Goo-goo Dolls"!

 

For all of you who keep mentioning the Beatles. Just keep this in mind. If it wasn't for The Beach Boy album called Pet Sounds then the Beatles would have never made Sgt.Peppers. The Beatles were HEAVELY influenced by that album and by the Beach Boys in general and both bands are great friends.

 

Scary, but true.

 

For all the people saying Cobain ripped off the Pixies and all, the only way you know that is b/c Cobain said so.

Wrong, I know it because I can hear it when I listen to the Pixies. They also use Sonic Youth alot, e.g. A song on Confusion is Sex is almost identical to a Nirvana song as far as riffs go.

 

To the know-nothing who said that "Help" was not as profound as the later Beatles stuff:

You must be one of those people who only like the odd stuff the Beatles put out. But you can NEVER fully appreciate the transition they made. They were not a boy band. They were not formed by a corporation. They wrote their own songs, played their own music and changed the WORLD. All of their albums have amazing songs on them. Their cover songs outdid most of the original singers. And on that album "Help", there is a song called "Ticket to Ride". The drumming on that song is what influenced the drummers of most heavy metal bands. They were ALWAYS pushing the envelope from their 1st song, to their last.

 

The fact that the Beatles had their origins in pop-laden nonsense is irrelavent. By the mid-to-late 60's they were taking far more risks with their music than most of their contemporaries and had (have) a tremendous impact on not only the music of their contemporaries, but also all the music after that.

Grunge lasted barely a few years after Cobain killed himself. How's that for impact on music? For comparison, let's look at the span of Jimi Hendrix's career (1967-1970), which was shorter but much more fruitful than Nirvana's. Forget about the "who knows what his next album would sound like" arguments; for all I know, Hendrix might completely botched his New Rising Sun album had he lived to complete it.

As for the music of Nirvana specifically, they've got a few really catchy tunes, but their musical repertoire seems really limited (loud guitars, but pretty standard chord progressions), Kurt Cobain's vocals vary from mumbling to downright incomprehensible, and when you really get down to it Nirvana catered only to the subculture of angst-ridden teens fed up with the excess of the music industry.

EDIT: GAP, forget ripping off the Pixies or Sonic Youth. "Drain You" and "On A Plain" sound a hell of a lot like "Smells Like Teen Spirit".

 

Nirvana was an aweomse band. That was it. When you sit down and think about it, most of the true grunge bands were already formed, they didn't come together after Nirvana: Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and I think the Smashing Pumpkins. There were a few wanna bes like Candlebox, but they went away. Stone Temple Pilots was signed in an effort to capitalize on grunge, yet they managed to grow and evolve and bcome a kick ass band.

 

Apparently no one read my last post, since everything I addressed (what Nirvana did and didn't do) was basically ignored...



But, anyway...

That is an insult to Nirvana! Creed? Creed sucks!

Come on. You can't just say "so and so sucks" and have it be a cogent arguement. Back it up; saying something "sucks" is not good enough.

If you look at the amount of time that Nirvana was around, and the amount of influence they held, they were obviously the most influential band of all time. The Bestles may have had more #1 hits, but they were around for over 15 years. So that doesn't make them very special.

Where are you getting your Beatle information from? They weren't around for 15 years: they had their first moderate hit in England in 1962 and broke up in 1969 (officially in 1970). Beatlemania didn't arrive on American shores until 1964. This is roughly a span of 6 to 7 years.

Now, take the span of time between the release of Bleach (1989) and Unplugged (1994). Inclusively, that's six years--roughly the same time the Beatles were the biggest band in the world--and five albums. In the same time span, the Beatles managed to release 12 albums, all of which were critically acclaimed and shot up to the top of the charts.

The transformation of the Beatles is nothing short of astounding: Imagine if, during the course of about 6 years, NSync (circa "Bye Bye Bye") evolved into Radiohead (c. The Bends), into the Chemical Brothers (c. Exit Planet Dust) and into Nirvana (c. In Utero). That was The Beatles from, oh, 1964 to 1969.

And the Beatles were not "very special?" Name another band that influenced music--not just rock music--society, and pop culture more than the Beatles did. They were both the most critically acclaimed and the most popular and influential band of the past century, a feat not often accomplished by any other band. They continue to influence bands today and one of the people they influenced, in fact, was Kurt Cobain.

Nirvana changed the music industry in a simple 5 years. That is something to be praised for. Also look at the fact that the Beatles, were not in it for the music after the first couple years of fame. They got pissed because of the title of "band leader" and so they broke up. How lame? Very lame.

I don't exactly understand the latter part of this comment, but I'll try to respond anyway.

That Nirvana changed the music industry is not being disputed here. They did change it (like I said in my previous post). But, again, it was only temporarily. Their particular musical movement ended around 1996, when there was a new resurgence in pop music. Certainly, Nirvana deserves praise, but the Beatles didn't just revolutionize music for a few years--they're doing it even to this day.

I think that they were more dedicated to their music than any other band in the history of music.

You can't prove that, so why bother making such a claim?

The Beatles spawned a lot more rip-off bands than Nirvana and the grunge bands did, yes. It should also be mentioned that the Beatles were one of the first "boy bands". Listen to their pop-laden syrupy early albums. .... Their early stuff, like Help was hardly revolutionary IMO.

That's true. The Beatles were essentially the first big "boy band." But, the fact that they broke away from the mold and created such innovative music makes them very different and unique. Still, even in 1965, around the time when Help! was released, they were already beginning to produce songs through internal reflection and introspective thought, rather than exclusively writing love songs.

Again, Nirvana is a great band... but, certainly not the greatest.

 

"The transformation of the Beatles is nothing short of astounding: Imagine if, during the course of about 6 years, NSync (circa "Bye Bye Bye") evolved into Radiohead (c. The Bends), into the Chemical Brothers (c. Exit Planet Dust) and into Nirvana (c. In Utero). That was The Beatles from, oh, 1964 to 1969."

Hey! You stole that from Spin Magazine!

Anyway, I agree with what you just said. While Nirvana was a very good band, they certianly weren't the greatest.


DarthNut,
the nuttiest guy around.

 

Oh, whoops. Forget to give credit there. Here's the link to that quote, in case people want to know. I thought the statement was enlightening so I put it in there.

EDIT: I don't want the list to get into the way of the debate in here. I'm just throwing that in this thread to give credit for the quote.

 

FYI, They list the Beatles at #1, while Nirvana at #5.

DarthNut,
the nuttiest guy around.

 

I think that The Beatles, R.E.M (can't believe they haven't been mentioned here), Nirvana, Radiohead, and maybe the Pixies are the best bands in the world ever.

 

Nirvana , possibily on of the most overrated bands of all time. SO bascily if your band is popular and your singer dies that makes you great ..? oh god... what will they say about Drowning Pool.

 

So according to Jedi Lord, Soundgarden was grunge ?

This is all new to me. Go back and Listen to Louder then Love and BadMotorfinger. I don't think they sound like grunge at all. I think the Media (MTV) moslty made that misconception. IMO they just lumped every band at that time from that area as grunge. Sound garden will always be a hard rock band to me. I mean Chris Cornell's screams are practicly Power metal.

By the way has anyone heard the leaked Cornell/Rage project ? I did not like it, it sounded each party was stuborn and did not want to sound different. The music and his vocals just clashed IMO.

 

Nirvana changed the music industry in a simple 5 years.

I think it should be noted that that change was only valid during those five years. How many bands today have a Nirvana or grunge sound? Influence can go away. In this case, it did.

 

Oh, put U2 in my list aswell. Thre are still bands today with a grunge sound, you just have to search hard for them or go to the right places.

 

I forgot to comment on this statement in my second to last post.

For all of you who keep mentioning the Beatles. Just keep this in mind. If it wasn't for The Beach Boy album called Pet Sounds then the Beatles would have never made Sgt.Peppers.

And the Beach Boys never would've made Pet Sounds had it not been for Rubber Soul. And I really hope that wasn't an attempt to undermine the creativeness of the Beatles.

 

Hold on, I don't know who said it, but some one said the Beatles broke up in 1969?

WTF? I don't think so. If you have their album "Beatles 1" than you would find out that they were still releasing albums in 1971. And they're first hit may have been in 1962, but the band had been formed for years before than. So they were around for almost 15 years. That was a stretch that they were around for 15 years, but they were around for at least 12. But you can take that however you want.

So it comes down to a matter of what makes one a great band. Whether it was time and power, or whether it was how long they were together and # 1 hits.

 

Hold on, I don't know who said it, but some one said the Beatles broke up in 1969?

WTF? I don't think so. If you have their album "Beatles 1" than you would find out that they were still releasing albums in 1971. And they're first hit may have been in 1962, but the band had been formed for years before than. So they were around for almost 15 years. That was a stretch that they were around for 15 years, but they were around for at least 12. But you can take that however you want.

It's clear that you know very little about the Beatles. It's also clear that you failed to understand what I wrote before.

First of all, the Beatles as we know them (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr) did not come together until the middle of 1962. They did not score their first moderate hit until early 1963 with "Please Please Me." Beatlemania did not fully hit American shores until 1964. The Beatles unofficially broke up in 1969, but made the break up official in early 1970. Let It Be, their last album, was released in 1970.

So, I was right when I said that they were essentially together for only about 7 years. They were not together for 15 or 12 years, as you said. They were not releasing anything with new material after 1970. And, I ask again, where exactly are you getting your information from?

Nirvana is NOT the "Greatest Band of All Time." They're a very good band, but the Bealtes have that title reserved. I've repeated this throughout my previous posts, yet, somehow, some people fail to see it.

 

There have been new Beatles albums since 1970, but not with any new songs. When Let it Be came out, they were done. As a sidenote, Let it Be was released last, but Abbey Road was, in fact, the final album they worked on.

 

Thanks KW

Anyway, but I think that you are wrong my dear friend. The Beatles were together before 1962. I don't know where your getting your info on this. Their first hit was in 62 or 63, depending on how you want to view it. And as I recall the Beatles actually released their first material in 1959/60. True, you can't find it anymore, but the material does exist. Now if your going to tell me it doesn't. Than I suggest that you do your research, and if you do you will find that the Beatles were formed before 1962.

 

They were together before 1962 (into the 50s, if you don't count Ringo), it's just that they didn't get much attention for awhile. At least, not enough for Decca Records.

 

Told you so!

Na na na na na!

Just kidding.

 

*sigh*

Okay... let me do this again...

John Lennon formed a band in the mid-1950s called The Quarrymen. Not The Beatles.

Around 1957, John met Paul and McCartney soon joined the band. George Harrison would join them eventually. Still NOT The Beatles.

The Quarrymen (with the line up of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe, and Pete Best) change their name to the Silver Beatles around 1960. Still NOT The Beatles.

Around 1961, the band became singer Tony Sheridan's back up band in Hamburg, Germany. Still NOT The Beatles.

In mid-1962, they signed onto the Parlophone label of EMI. Sutcliffe died and they dropped Pete Best from drums. They recruited Ringo and recorded their first single, "Love Me Do/Please Please Me," in mid-1962. THIS is The Beatles.

Thus, the Beatles as we know them (John, Paul, George, and Ringo) did not come together until mid-1962.

EDIT: Spelling.

 

Hmm, that all looks familiar, but I've long been under the impression that the Beatles were more or less together before 1962.