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Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous
To this I totally agree, and if anything, while I am hugely obsessed with radiohead I never understood the hype surrounding them, I don't see them as all that influential.
I can't agree with this at all. John Lennon was an entirely different kind of artist, and while both clearly had some fun with their music, John clearly took his art as being more serious than Kurt did. John's music often had some kind of purpose or statement, whereas Kurt was mostly having fun with his art, even if sometimes his songs also made somewhat of a cultural or social statement. I don't think Kurt was anywhere near the kind of almost natural intellectual that John was, and it showed in how abrasive John got towards the late 1970s. Kurt was never abrasive, he was just himself. John was himself too, but John's self was a bit more caustic at times. Also, John had a very high opinion of his art and his place in the musical pantheon (in other words he was a bit self-absorbed) whereas Kurt didn't seem much to give a shit about it, if anything, it became clear by 1993/94 that he didn't really care for the spotlight all that much any longer, and it is widely accepted that not only was Nirvana soon to be dissolved, but that Kurt was probably going to go off the radar musically and dive into something more indie or underground, whereas John almost pimped out his final record, and was in fact devastated personally when it didn't have critical acclaim or mass appeal by his fans. John cared about his Billboard numbers and sales charts, Kurt clearly could care less.
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Um, I really don't want to sound like an asshole here, but what T&B said about brushing up on your rock history needs to be repeated. And underlined.
Have you ever attempted to slog through the veritable OCEAN of posthumous Beatles reading material documenting how each songwriter grew into an extreme, of sorts, and how the "Lennon & McCartney" song credits were largely the result of an early desire to distribute credit equally between the two chief songwriters? Well, by the end of it, Lennon was so disgusted with McCartney's pop gloss that he dissed him publicly in his solo albums (which sold downright poorly compared to McCartney's, despite his number of singles that became notable hits.
Lennon hated commercialism by the time the Beatles reached their commercial peak in the late '60s. By the 70's, he was releasing work that would have no place on any Beatles album (Imagine and Plastic Ono Band actually remind me a lot of Nirvana. Especially the vocals, and the grit and sincerity of the delivery.
Lennon wanted fame at first, but I honestly don't think he gave a dick whether his albums sold by the time he was solo. Some of his shit is just painful to listen to. But Plastic Ono Band is as gritty as a Stooges album.