In rock and roll, it’s easy to look back with rose-colored glasses. The details of the lives of the people who made your favorite music blur together in the glare of greatness coming out of what they’ve created. But underneath the surface of any great rock song is a screwed-up web of emotions, lies, and cheap drugs bought hastily from Reggie. The more one looks, the more one realizes that the history of rock music is actually a string of massive bummers. And then, we choose to either tune out the bummers and focus on the art, or try to enjoy the art with the knowledge that it’s actually horribly ugly inside.
On this week’s episode of our heavy metal talk show Last Words, hosts Katy Irizarry (Season Of Mist) and Zeena Koda (Everything’s Political Podcast) speak to Buzz “King Buzzo” Osborne, vocalist and guitarist of heaviest-band-alive contender Melvins. The show’s first topic is a Kurt Cobain memorial that Osbourne doesn’t support based on the ulterior motives he sees behind its construction, not to mention his own memories of Nirvana’s rise to fame.
“That town is relatively slow-moving when it comes to things of that nature, certainly of recognizing something outside the box, but even they couldn’t deny somebody selling a 100 million records from their town,” says Buzz. “They couldn’t deny that, as much as they probably wanted to. And when that happened, I think they expected me to be all lovey-dovey and happy, but I had a very unhappy experience living there and growing up there, and I feel like my life really started after I left there. I don’t have good things to say, good memories, the good ol’ days — I’m not really a good ol’ days person. I look back on a lot of stuff, especially the Nirvana stuff…it’s ruined by how it all ended!
“Honestly, I would rather have him alive and unfamous than famous and dead,” he adds.
Check out the full episode below:
And if that doesn’t have you gently tossing your baby pictures into the fireplace one by one, check out the full uncensored podcast version of the show:
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Words by Chris Krovatin
