David Bowie was one of the most versatile musicians of all time, as he never confined himself to one style and managed to release numerous successful albums, each distinct from the others. He also reinvented his visual identity multiple times, embodying personas like "Ziggy Stardust", "The Thin White Duke," and many others. Bowie served as a significant inspiration to artists and fashion designers worldwide. Throughout his extensive career, the musician shared his thoughts on various topics in interviews, including his opinions on other artists. One of those artists was Nirvana, the band fronted by the late Kurt Cobain. David Bowie's opinion on Nirvana Probably the biggest connection between Bowie and Nirvana was "The Man Who Sold the World", song written and released by the British musician in 1970 on the album of the same name. Nirvana decided to cover that track 23 years later during their performance on MTV's Unplugged. Their version became a huge hit and younger generations might not even be aware that the track was not originally written by the American band. Two years after the tragic death of Kurt Cobain at the age of 27, David Bowie talked about that version in an interview with Dutch television. (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage) "It's a very sad rendition of course because is so tight up with his own life and death. So it takes all these different shades for me. Because I always remember, fairly clearly, my own state of mind when I was writing it." "Which I guess it was something near to a mystical state that a 19-year-old could get into (laughs). I remember it was at the time that I was sort of studying Buddhism, my 15 minutes of Buddhism. So it is interesting that it changed, it had two mystical states. The time I wrote it and recorded and the time that he recorded and things that led up to his end after that," David Bowie said. Curiously, Kurt Cobain really discovered more about David Bowie's music after he was older. It was the former Nirvana drummer Chad Channing, who was in the band from 1988 to 1990, who introduced him to older Bowie albums. At the time, Cobain only knew a few songs of the British musician, like "Let's Dance". It was the former Nirvana drummer Chad Channing who introduced Cobain to early David Bowie records https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fregObNcHC8&pp=ygUadGhlIG1hbiB3aG8gc29sZCB0aGUgd29ybGQ%3D Channing recalled that in an interview with Song Facts in 2014 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage). "We were in Boston and we stopped by this record store. I found this copy of 'The Man Who Sold the World'. It was a cool copy, it had the poster and everything and I was going 'Oh, this is great'. Those guys (Kurt and Krist) weren't familiar with the record. I said '(It's David Bowie). Do you like David Bowie?' They were like 'The only David Bowie we are familiar with are Let's Dance' and stuff like that'." "So I was kind of surprised, like 'Really? Wow'. (I said) 'You gotta hear some early David Bowie for sure'. So when I got the opportunity I made a tape of the record at somebody's house or something like that. Well, we were touring around, I just went ahead and popped ahead the tape in and just let it roll and stuff. After a bit, Kurt turned around and said to me like 'Who's this?'." "Kind of like knowingly, you know, just being familiar with the voice and stuff. I said: 'This is David Bowie, this is 'The Man Who Sold the World' record. He's like 'This is really cool' and (I said) 'You should check out 'Hunky Dory' and stuff. Eventually, I'm sure he did. He totally dug it," Chad Channing said. David Bowie and Cobain were similar in some aspects https://youtu.be/DGgARdavuM0 Although David Bowie and Kurt Cobain didn't make the same kind of music, they were similar when it came to how they planned their career. Usually, when a musician releases a successful album, he tends to keep doing that kind of music during the rest of his career. That certainly wasn't what Bowie did and Cobain also never wrote and played a certain kind of music just to please the audience or the business. In Michael Apted’s documentary Inspirations (1997), David Bowie advised creative people and said exactly that. “Never try to please everyone. I believe that you don’t learn that until you pass the time. But never work for other people in what you do. Always remember that the reason for starting work was that there was something inside you. (Something) that, if you could manifest it in some way, you would learn more about yourself and about coexistence with the rest of society. It is terribly dangerous for an artist to meet other people’s expectations. It is when people produce the worst job,” David Bowie said.
