Tributes Commemorate ‘Nevermind’

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the release of Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” a landmark album that changed the direction of rock by bringing to the masses raw, punk-driven music filled with Generation X angst. Various commemorations are unfolding around the date, from TV specials to magazine tributes.

Spin magazine has leader Kurt Cobain on the cover of its Sept. 4 issue, and VH1 marked the anniversary of “Nevermind” with a news special, “Grunge,” earlier this month. Rolling Stone tracked down the infant on the “Nevermind” cover photo and restaged the famous underwater shot showing the boy, who is now 10, in its Sept. 13 issue.

Charles R. Cross’ new Cobain biography, “Heavier Than Heaven,” is generating intense interest among Nirvana followers. Cross, who conducted more than 400 interviews and was granted unprecedented access to Cobain’s private journals by his widow, Courtney Love, offers some striking revisions to the popular image of Cobain. He writes that though the singer publicly complained about the burden of stardom, privately he yearned for fame and made some of the career moves necessary to achieve it.

Of more than a dozen Cobain biographies published over the last decade, Love has called Cross’ book “the first one that’s not nonsense.”

All the attention has pumped up sales of “Nevermind,” which in recent years has steadily continued to sell 4,000 to 5,000 copies a week, according to SoundScan. Sales increased in August to around 7,000 per week, dipping back below 6,000 during the week following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when retailers reported lower sales for most albums.

A Nirvana CD boxed set being assembled by Cobain’s former bandmates, bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl, was to be released in time for the “Nevermind” anniversary, but it remains in limbo because of a legal dispute between Love and the Nirvana members over rights to the band’s previously unreleased material.