Kurt Cobain's Legacy Lives On, 16 Years After His Death

It was 16 years ago today that the world lost one of the more talented musical voices of our era. When Nirvana's Kurt Cobain took his own life on April 5, 1994, it struck a blow to American music, and snuffed out a musical force that was very much in its prime.

For many of us of a certain age (and that age gap is actually quite wide) and into punk rock, we all can remember the first time we heard Nirvana. For me, it was actually the house music being played in a club while I was waiting for the Red Hot Chili Peppers to go on stage. I asked a friend who knew who was being played. Within a few days, I had a copy of Sliver, and I was on my way to being a pretty a hardcore fan of the band.

There are some "true punks," and I use that term reeeeeally loosely, who liked to discount Nirvana for their commercial success, saying that they couldn't be punk because they were too successful, and that they had a large frat boy/football player contingent of fans, and while the latter is true, commercial success was never really a big determining factor, as there have, and always will be a ton of wildly successful punk bands and records alongside those bands laboring in obscurity.

What Nirvana gave to the world was a kick start to a punk scene that needed it. They helped hoist punk rock back into a spotlight. Granted, they paved the way for a lot of horrible bands - the Nickelbacks and Creeds probably never would have happened without Nirvana, but that's like blaming Rites of Spring for all the awful screamo bands they influenced - but truly, you can hear their influence across the boards in music, and even bands without an apparent influence owe the band for inspiration (all of us of a certain age rocked Nevermind repeatedly throughout the early '90s, and indeed many close friends of mine had been into the band since Bleach).

Additionally, so many of the commercially successful punk bands today owe a lot of their respect to the way Nirvana shifted the view of what could be commercially successful in the eyes of a label. Nirvana was a band that helped create the current crop of "sell outs" (a term again used very loosely), bands that discovered they could be on a big label and sell more records without changing their stance. Granted, it caused them to also foist a lot of crap onto shelves and radio (Candlebox? I'm looking at you), but they also made it possible for good bands to get contracts and gave more exposure to punk rock.

No Nirvana? No Green Day. At least not the one you know today.

If Kurt Cobain were still alive today, would things be different? Maybe. Maybe he'd be a bloated caricature of himself, maybe he'd still be making great music. Who knows? But really, that point is moot, because he's not here, but his legacy is and like it or not, Nirvana left an indelible mark on the face of punk rock in the states that can't be erased - not even 16 years after the band was brought to a tragic end.

Photo by Frank Micelotta/Getty Images