Kurt Cobain was never shy about his fellow musical artists. He championed independent bands from America and abroad, and he dismissed the likes of Guns N’ Roses. While he fell into an ongoing feud with that band’s front man Axl Rose over personal issues, Cobain’s comments on the music were fairly sharp to begin with. Across two interviews in 1991 (via Rolling Stone), he said that Guns N’ Roses “[had] absolutely nothing to say” and that rebellion was standing up to bands like that.
Those remarks, however, seem mild in comparison to what he had to say about Genesis and Phil Collins the following year. In an interview with Melody Maker (via Live Nirvana!), Cobain even gave a dramatic pause to gather his thoughts before venting his feelings about Collins’s work: “You know what I hate about rock? … I hate Phil Collins, all of that while male soul. I hate tie-dyed tee-shirts … I wouldn’t wear a tie-dyed tee-shirt unless it was dyed with the urine of Phil Collins and the blood of Jerry Garcia.”
Cobain’s wife Courtney Love, who was present for that interview, castigated him for the juvenile finish to his remarks. Collins, for his part, made no public reply, though the Chicago Tribune saw in his notably not-avant-garde album “Both Sides” album a suggestion of musical fatherhood to Cobain’s rebellious generation.
