“Good morning Vietnam,” grinned Kurt Cobain as Nirvana shambled onto the main stage at Reading Festival, early in the day on August 23, 1991. A hardcore of fans lost their shit. But most of those in attendance had little idea that the trio from Seattle were about to change the world.
A month and a day later, with the release of unheralded second LP Nevermind, they did just that.
Rock music was in a strange place at the beginning of the 1990s. Although inimitable icon Iggy Pop would headline on that first visit to Little John’s Farm, punk – in its traditional form – was virtually dead. The giants of glam rock had begun to wither. And, although metal would adapt to endure, its skull-throbbing heaviness and basis either in high fantasy or historical horror struggled to grab less high-minded listeners. New alt. icons like Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr. and The Fall offered compellingly different sounds, but couldn’t captivate on a massive scale. Then the four quick-strummed power chords of Smells Like Teen Spirit rattled over the airwaves and grunge ruled the world.
“The UK definitely responded to Nirvana way before America,” explained drummer Dave Grohl in BBC documentary When Nirvana Came To Britain. “You guys are the first – with everything. This definitely feels like a second home.” But as with everyone else, Nevermind changed the game. With their roots in the dirt of America’s Pacific Northwest, but their heart with the disaffected youth of Generation X, the restlessness, irreverence and barely-sublimated hurt of songs like In Bloom, Come As You Are and Something In The Way struck like lightning with the youth of the world, but particularly British kids living in the wreckage of 11 years of Thatcherite government.
That electricity still crackles in the work of the UK bands that followed in their wake, too, from pop-rock contemporaries Bush and Ash to rule-breaking firebrands Mogwai and Biffy Clyro.
When the band returned to Reading Festival a year and a week after their first visit, Kurt emerged for their closing headline set in a wheelchair and hospital gown, making light of the rumours of his heroin use and personal disintegration for easily the most famous performance in the event’s storied history. Less than two years after that, those very real personal struggles would see the frontman take his own life. But with one all-time classic album and its captivating moment in time, it was already assured that nothing would ever be the same.