Nirvana's 'Nevermind' Released 20 Years Ago Today, and the Psychic Numbing Began

On Sept. 24, 1991, Geffen Records released an album by a little grunge band from Seattle that was recorded at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California.

Rolling Stone ranked Nirvana's "Nevermind" the 17th greatest album of all time, and the No. 1 album of the 90s.

Sound City Studios is one of the crown jewels of the San Fernando Valley. Neil Young, Rage Against the Machine, Fleetwood Mac, Pat Benatar, Elton John, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash, Metallica and many other big names have all recorded songs or albums at Sound City Studios.

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Last night I did something I haven't done in a very, very long time. I listened to an entire album from beginning to end.

I listened to Nirvana's "Nevermind" all the way through after noticing a story online that today was the 20th anniversary of the album's release.

I was 13 when "Nevermind" was released.

13.

I long to love things as much as I did when I was 13. I long to sit in a movie theater and be as blown away by it as I was by "Terminator 2." When I sit down in a theater for "Cowboys and Aliens," that's what I want. I want that feeling, that "13" feeling. I want to be awed and inspired and humbled and excited about the world. It never comes. I just get, well, "Cowboys and Aliens."

I deeply long to love a piece of music as much as I loved "Nevermind." I'm listening to it now again, as I type, like I used to do when I was a kid sitting on my bed and flipping through magazines with my Walkman on or CD player on. Right now, "On a Plain" is bleeding into my ears, infesting my brain again, like an old virus turned on.

"Nevermind" was one of the first CDs I ever owned, when I made the jump from tapes to CDs. For Christmas in 1991, I received a CD player boom box from my parents, along with four CDs from my older brother -- "Nevermind," Metallica's black album and Guns N' Roses' "Use Your Illusion I" and "Use Your Illusion II."

I don't know if what I have to say about Nirvana matters. I know the album was one of the most important artistic experiences of my life, but that don’t make me rare or unique in this world.

I've read and seen and heard many recollections of Nirvana in my years, and the thing that I think is overlooked is how perfect and smooth and easy Nirvana's ascension to top of the mountain was.

But it's just so difficult for me to tell if those memories are correct.

I was 13.

When you are 13, everything is changing. Your body is changing, your mind is changing, your outlook is changing. It made perfect sense to me then that music would also be changing. I wonder now if it made as much sense to everyone else who was not 13. There is perhaps not a greater or worse year than 13. The whole world is still ahead of you, but for the first time you can really see the world for what it is.

We credit Kurt Cobain today with changing rock and roll and hard rock forever, with cleansing its decaying glam metal, decadent soul. Rolling Stone said it put "warrior purity back in rock & roll." I credit them, too, but people forget how it all made perfect sense back then. Nowadays we call the band "revolutionary" but revolutions didn't happen in the 90s. It was just something that happened one day on TV, when the greatest band to ever come along, came along. They were just there, and we were waiting for them. I greeted them like I greeted a close friend at a bus stop that was three minutes late.

I loved the bands that Nirvana is credited with washing away from the top, like Poison, Motley Crue and Guns N' Roses. I loved them to my core. A year later, Nirvana’s takeover didn't make me hate those bands; it just made me indifferent to their passing. In fact, I hardly noticed they were gone. That was the beginning of the indifference to the whole world that Nirvana started to unleash in me, and in others my age. The numbness. After 13, sensory overload started to occur. I started to love things less. I was less impressed with the world, and I started to see it as something that was there for me, not me for it.

Like Louis C.K. pointed out on his great FX show recently, by the time I was 20, I was convinced I was too interesting a person to have a s***ty job. I think that's Cobain's fault.

"For 20 years, you've just been taking and sucking up education and love and food and iPods," said C.K. "Just sucking it up and judging it. 'Ugghh, it's really good, but not really. I like that one.' You've just been selecting and absorbing s*** that you didn't earn."

For me, it started then. It started at 13, at "Nevermind."

Nirvana's music either paved the way for or amplified many other bands — Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction, The Pixies, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Hole — that also only deepened my indifference to the world. I was so beaten into indifference by them, by everything, by CNN, by the Persian Gulf War, by the Exxon Valdez oil spill, by the Menendez Brothers. They were all just things that happened on TV and I knew that absolutely nothing could ever be done about them. And nothing ever was.

Those my age didn't have real problems then because were told by everyone that we weren't allowed to have them. We were just told by our parents and grandparents to suck things up and judge them.

"What would all these young people be doing if they had real problems like a Depression, World War II or Vietnam?" Andy Rooney asked on 60 Minutes, confused and dismayed about why a man he'd never heard of who killed himself was overshadowing the death of Richard Nixon on the news cycle, and why a bunch of kids were crying about a man they had never met.

He was right. I was a part of the saddest, most pathetic, useless generation to ever walk the earth, and I knew it. It might not have been so bad if I wasn't constantly reminded of that fact by every grown person. So I started selecting and absorbing and judging it all it. We were so useless, even our own chosen leader didn't want anything to do with us, and left us.

I still loved Kurt Cobain just as much if not more by the time he blew his head off with a shotgun my junior year of high school, but by that time I was indifferent to that as well. I walked up to a group of guys in the hallway who were talking about it, and one of them told me, "Kurt Cobain killed himself." Of course he did, I thought. Makes perfect sense. Hasn't anyone been actually listening to the songs? I felt a little like Rooney, I must admit. I didn't get the kids crying either, and I loved him, too. I did.

"Why are you crying?" I thought.

It's quite arguable that never did anyone with so much leave this world by choice. It seemed to me at the time that because of that he had earned the right to do it. He'd climbed the mountain, he'd gotten to the peak, and he'd looked out over the full horizon. It was a definite, distinct choice that I felt I had to respect.

Looking back, I think I really wanted to cry like them. I wished I could feel it, really feel it inside, but so much had been numbed. 

Duff McKagen of Guns N' Roses had a similar reaction, and he actually knew the man. Aside from both being in the two largest bands on the planet at the time, they had sat next to each other on a plane ride from Los Angeles to Seattle one week before Cobain's suicide and gotten drunk together.

Both were from Seattle, and both loved punk music. Both had infused it into different forms of rock, creating hybrid music that spoke to millions around the world. And both were hardcore heroin junkies at the time.

When asked if he was surprised that it was a suicide, McKagen thought for a moment.

"No ... I mean, it's shocking. Absolutely shocking. Anything like that is going to be shocking. But was I ... I didn't fall out of my chair in surprise. It's not like the guy was jumping around for joy the night before."

"On a Plain" by Nirvana

'll start this off without any words
I got so high I scratched 'till I bled
I love myself better than you
I know it's wrong so what should I do?
The finest day that I've ever had
Was when I learned to cry on command
I love myself better than you
I know it's wrong so what should I do?

I'm on a plain, mmmm
I can't complain, mmmm
I'm on a plain, mmmm

My mother died every night
It's safe to say, quote me on that
I love myself better than you
I know it's wrong so what should I do?
The black sheep got blackmailed again
Forgot to put on the zip code
I love myself better than you
I know it's wrong so what should I do?

I'm on a plain, mmmm
I can't complain, mmmm
I'm on a plain, mmmm

Somewhere I have heard this before
In a dream my memory has stored
As a defense I'm neutered and spayed
What the hell am I trying to say?

It is now time to make it unclear
To write off lines that don't make sense
I love myself better than you
I know it's wrong so what should I do?
And one more special message to go
And then I'm done, and I can go home
I love myself better than you
I know it's wrong so what should I do?

I'm on a plain
I can't complain
I'm on a plain
I can't complain
I'm on a plain
I can't complain
I'm on a plain
I can't complain
I'm on a plain...