i pick he has some errors but is not so bad.

I don't know....
Kurt was really good with feedback and weird noises like on Radio Friendly Unit Shifter and other tunes from In Utero
On second thought, I think he's pretty good as a lot of his errors were from hopping around on stage

i think the same (the 2nd thought)

He wasn't as much a 'bad' guitarist, as an average guitarist.
He's perceived as some guitar master (or at least that's the image I pick up ; from music magazines, tab books etc.), when he was a simple guitarist, perhaps he could be defined as 'overrated'.

yeah, it's bullshit that he was some sort of guitar god

i picked yes

he was a pretty sloppy musician, if you think about it :\

the guy's an embarrassment to me
I used to think he was an amazing guitar player
of course, in your early days, Smoke on the Water is a flying feat...

he seems to have not cared about the instrument in which he got paid for...
sad really...
i.e. Smells Like Teen Spirit (live), when he missed the most simple note (the little chimey parts)
and he tried to pass it off as if he "meant" to do it

and his so called "improvisations" were no more than (although really glorified) noise shows...

his best work was from his early career and so on...
just look at his skills for Fecal Matter, Bleach (notably Mr. Moustache and Swap Meet)...
and how much he had declined (simple power chord progressions on Nevermind)

to just being plain out lazy (most of In Utero)...

I chose 'Yes', although he was kinda average...
by average, I mean he wrote some really incredible parts, but rarely took the time to play them well.

I hate the term "overrated". Notice, I said I hate. So I don't care if I hate anymore so I now wonder how far down my life my go with "hate".

Anyways, I don't think Kurt was overrated. I think overrated is merely and only an opinion and can never be a fact. I think of overrated as a fantasy world that isn't real. I don't believe in overrated.

You can be good at the guitar in many different ways. Fast ways. Slow ways. Passionate ways. Raging ways. Doesn't matter. Kurt was a good guitarist. He played from the heart. He sang from the heart. That's why no one can successfully cover Smells Like Teen Spirit with passing vocals because they don't know Kurt Cobain's heart.

If he is overrated or his guitar skills are, then you tell me how did he "accidentally" have SLTS become top of the charts? It was no accident. He could've been oblivious of it's outcome but it was NO accident.

Kurt was a great guitarist. All the rythems were different and creative. Power chords? Yes. Plays guitar like Jesus spoke from a 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade level? Yes, but Kurt is like Jesus for that. They both are human so they are not perfect but on the inside, there's something perfect going on. In JEsus, it was God, in Kurt, it was music.

Bear in mind the fact that someone who personally knew him even said that Kurt was a music library. Try not to compare you thoughts to his too much or over the board because he was definitely something else. He hated WAY a lot of things in life which explains why he sounded so good. Pain brings a good feeling afterwards. It's like endorphin rushes after pain which makes you feel good.

lol, Sara Bareilles's Love Song made it to number one...
explain that one
making it to a chart is easy, and involves careful timing...
at the time he had made it to the charts,
there weren't really any good songs playing in the Top 40 anyway...
it was bound to happen...

Kurt said it himself that he may as well have ripped off "Louie, Louie",
or "More Than a Feeling"

and if people can say that the Offspring ripped off Nirvana, then so be it...
he ripped off the riff to Come As You Are...

What decent hearted musician, steals a riff, and places it as a single on a main-stream album?
much less, creates a music video for this song.

Yeah i have to chuckle at that one too. I voted in the average category.

Kurt Cobain = Not guitar god.... Kurt Cobain = Grunge god.
And for the record I chose NO. He's not a bad player, then agian who here
could have done better than him?
Its not all about the guitar as much as it is about his music.

Hes a realy unique guitarist,but pretty average

He was a pretty average player.

+1

my thoughts exactly

i think he was a good guitarists. maybe he had skills but he didn't use them at all events. idk.
the question should be, what's a good guitarist for you?
imo a guitarist should play with passion and enjoy the whole shit. some good riffs and melodies and everythings fine.

As a guitarist he was nothing special. Yes, he wrote a lot of good songs with catchy riffs, but that doesn't make him any good at guitar playing itself. He had neither anything unique about his technique, nor about his style of playing.

Most of his errors were out of jumping around on stage, lying on the ground, or just because he was to fucking lazy. If you guys tried to move around like that while playing, you'd fuck it up as well. I think he wasn't that bad, he just didn't really give a shit after a while. I don't really care either.

And talking about his bleach guitar feats, he fucked up just as much in the Bleach era as later on.

I wouldn't say he's a bad guitarist.

I was referring to his stuff on the album...
of course, Bleach era live was perhaps the worst of it...
he obviously didn't have the passion to want to do it...
as noted in his fabled "fair-well" note...

the Bleach era was comical for me...
Kurt, using his microphone wide-screen (why?!!)...
having his vocals muffled, as he thrashes about...
trying to play without messing up...

Ramones style, equipment cutting out,
the band, in between tracks,
yelling at their sound guy to, turn the monitors up...
turn the vocals up, turn the guitar up...

ha, isn't that punk rock?

ha, my friend... even punk rock bands performed better than this...
well... well... no, they didn't...
but that is not the point here... lol

Nirvana had a punk ethos, did they not?

To call them punk would be unjust...
They never really played punk (unless you count songs like "Territorial Pissings"),

To call the Offspring, or even Green Day punk seemed an unjust in the 90s...
But to say that the Offspring were ripping off Nirvana,
Would mean that "Nirvana wasn't punk"...

of course, if we're talking about the ethos here...
Then in that case, no, Nirvana was the opposite of "true" punk either way...
DIY, do it yourself...

No mainstream distribution, no outside help...
Even in their Bleach days they were running under the Sub-Pop label...
Not that, there's anything wrong with distribution, or even exposure...

of course, I doubt that any of you have been here:
http://www.punksucks.8k.com/ruby.htm

Search through the site contents that are visible on the left
If anything in that site interests you
Then "nobody was punk".

Al that makes that era my favourite.
But I think he actually did care about the music back then. It got gradually less after Nevermind.

Did Nirvana not consider themselves a punk band?

They considered themselves a bit of everything I guess.

Yeah Grunge, New-Wave, Punk Rock, Alternative, probably even more

I think the punkrock thing was more about the image than the music.

yeah, Nirvana's music was more rock

I think he was a good guitarist.

Dave: Nirvana is simple, sounds like kids music.

Kurt didn't show in Nirvana his power on the guitar, in my opinion.
At this time there was also no internet pages with guitar tabs/notes, so he heard songs and tried to cover it. example: "white lace & strange", "Moby Dick"..

to say you are a million different genres when you are barely one is terrible,
think about Avril Lavigne,
she will now eat her words to have once claimed that she was punk rock...
and I don't blame her...

now, you may be influenced by a genre...
but that does not give you the right, nor mean you are said genre...

about tabs... no...
there was no internet, but just like today, there were song books...
cassettes... vinyl records...

I train by ear a lot of the time anyway,
and so do many guitar players...

I think he was more than just a "good" guitarist... Even if most of his songs were just "power" chords... And I also think he didn't show all of his playing skills...and he had a lot !.

like...
you gotta give us a defense as to what made him so good...
the only real good things I heard him do were the A notes on Love Buzz...
which I can do...
but that wasn't even an original...

but that is only difficulty...
he did write decent melodies, I'll give him that...

He was a good noiser, we have to admit that. RFUS intro, Scentless Apprentice solo, Endless Nameless. That doesn't make him a good guitarist, but at least that was something original in his playing.

Mentioned that just so that this point won't be forgotten. I guess most people consider him good guitarist just because he wrote catchy melodies, not for his noise experiments. Seriously guys, if Kurt was "good", than what about Jimmy Page, Jimmy Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Chuck Schuldiner and tons of other guitarists who had their own unique technique and style of playing?

i think dave did a better job of that in the early 90s demos of his

not to give disrespect to nirvana's songs of course, but i'm just sayin'

Noise making was his style.
I find it more original than all the great players out there who don't have much that's unique, that just play fast and all sound the same.

Actually Hendrix was the first guy to experiment with feedback, and Thurston Moore was even more wild noiser than Kurt. Not to mention that there was not so many original about the whole noise making itself.

Typical opinion of a person who haven't heard that much of really good guitar players. Sorry, nothing personal.

listen from 4:35 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wtiNzci1Wc
Is that also "playing fast" and "sounding the same"?

I have heard a shit loud of great guitarists dude, and I have been playing guitar for quite a long time now, so I guess I know what I'm talking about. What I mean is, people that don't know anything about playing guitar, automatically think the faster you can play it the better you are. And by saying noise-making was his style doesn't mean I said he was the first. It was just something he did.

Can you do the A notes on Love Buzz? does it mean Kurt was a bad guitarist ?

many people can play Jimmy Page's solos and it doesn't mean Jimmy was a bad guitarist...

I think you won't never admit Kurt WAS a very good guitarist...although doing fast solos and all that doesn't mean being a good guitarist, I'm pretty sure Kurt was able to do them...in spite of the fact that he rarely played them onstage...

Yup, that's absolutely right. (And in fact, I think that Cobain was a better guitar player than Malmsteen. Seriously. But it's not that much a compliment to Kurt's playing, but rather an "appreciation" of Malmsteen's musical writing skills.) Still, I don't see how this makes Kurt any good at guitar playing. I mean, his riffs were catchy, but simple (not only from the technical point of view) and not really original, solos often resembled vocal part.

About noise making and "style" stuff - um, I did mention RFUS and all, but are there really that many Nirvana songs with good noise parts? I can remember four, no - five, if you count IHMAIWTD intro. The majority of songs were simply a couple of power chords - that was his style, if you call that style.


He wasn't. Kurt himself said that he never cared for his skills after learning how to play power chords.

he was sloppy as hell, though
listen to the simplicity of the Smells Like Teen Spirit intro...
now listen to it live...

additionally, he was accused of plagiarism...
plays with his mids all the way turned up (to which the engineer has to work around this)

(hear the demo form of Sappy to hear this, with Chad on drums from 'Sliver')

he makes entirely too much noise...
noise is cool to make, but you try to listen to a five minute intro devoted to noise
not so easy is it...

in all that time, he could have easily worked on a riff...

You've clearly not listened to enough Sonic Youth.
The Diamond Sea, anyone?

They do actual stuff with noise though,
whilst using theoretics...
plus, they had an interesting take on tuning, in that,
"standard is standard",
and it goes to show that,
you can still be experimental but make music...

Kurt just smashed a bunch of guitars, lol
why jump out of a perfectly good airplane, eh?

In studio it wasn't done that much, but live it was quite common wasn't it?

Oh, come on, that noise making was more about jumping on the drums, fucking the cameras and trashing the guitars, not something experimental. Some simple feedback produced in the process is not really a noise making in its common meaning.

i think he realised he didnt need to play 10 minute solos or really complex stuff

but he had his own style which was awesome and some pretty cool solos

Simple feedback. I don't know if you play guitar but I think you'd have a hard time trying to get anything to sound anywhere near some of it. There are techniques used to produce that kind of feedback. Sure, I can stand against my amp and jump around on drums but it wouldn't sound the same. Like you say, he did just fuck around most of the time, but sometimes he produced some stuff that sounded awesome.

I'm the same way
I'm not really capable of the patience to learn each and every note of a solo..... let alone a solo that lasts for 20 minutes
Led Zeppelin... cough... cough

Lead is actually pretty important, I think, for a guitarist, and rhythm is just as important and possibly even more. A solo cannot be crafted without a riff and key. I'm kind of talking out of my ass right now

but killing jokes ripped off the Damned with that riff.