(Credits: Far Out / Nirvana)
For such an iconic emblem, Nirvana’s drugged-out smiley face logo curiously doesn’t appear anywhere on their records or single covers.
It’s a face for merchandise. Some official, many bootleg, but the black tee and yellow grinning mug with deathly cross-eyes and a little tongue ever-so-slightly loose out of the left-hand side, and if you’re lucky, sporting the “Flower sniffin’, Kitty Pettin’, Baby Kissin’, Corporate rock whores” caption on the back, seemed to explode in earnest after frontman Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994. Before long, the ubiquitous tee was uniforme de rigueur for every early 2000s metal/goth/grunger along with their wallet chains and Limp Bizkit hoodie.
Just how popular the emblem’s become may have left Cobain cold. Across Nirvana’s album and EP covers, the art direction always pursued a certain artistic edge and refined intellect. There’s Nevermind’s swimming baby, poignantly added with a fishooked dollar bill at Cobain’s creative behest, or the stirring anatomical angel exploring motherhood and birth that graces In Utero. An artist himself, it’s Cobain’s collage work that adorns 1992’s Incesticide compilation, and In Utero’s foetus back cover spread across the Nirvana frontman’s own living room.
Even the band font, used as early as 1989’s Bleach debut, displays the smart Onyx typeface at odds with his punk peers for its elegant character.
But somewhere along the line, the band must have given at least a cursory thumbs-up. The fact is, the famous Nirvana smiley first appeared on a 1991 poster for a pre-release party at Seattle’s Re-Bar, organised by DGC Records, 11 days before Nevermind‘s official drop. At this point, Nirvana were still just one of many bands of the city’s alternative underground, having only just released ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ the previous day after a week or so of radio promo, and not quite aware of the Billboard conquering monster the album’s lead single would grow to.
So, for a minor industry event for an album no one’s expecting to prove so phenomenal, the little smiley flyer was a pretty inconsequential piece of promo, likely met with diffidence rather than the considered artistic direction of future record sleeves. A little of Harvey Ball’s smiley from 20 years previously, perhaps a jokey pastiche of the acid-house movement’s beaming grin, whatever’s behind the face, authorship has been disputed ever since. Geffen Records’ then arts honcho Robert Fisher claims to have doodled the Nirvana smiley, while others maintain it was drawn by Cobain’s hand.
So, what was the smiley face?
With no verified artist to name, the exact gambit point of the Nirvana smiley remains a mystery.
There are theories. Some point out the emblem’s mashed bliss as illustrating the band name’s ode to Dharmic release, or, just as likely, merely a fun image of a fan monged on drugs. Elsewhere, rumours persist that Cobain was inspired by the marketing for Seattle’s The Lusty Lady strip club, where badges and shirts plastered with a very similar smiley with swirling whirls for eyes were popular among the local music underground.
More poignantly, but perhaps plucked from the romanticised mythos that surrounds the late Nirvana frontman, legend has it that Cobain spotted such a drawing at the Young Street Bridge he allegedly slept under in nearby Aberdeen, the locale that inspired Nevermind’s haunting ‘Something in the Way’ coda. We’ll never know, but it’s likely the little smiley innocuously slapped on that quiet-before-the-storm party promo in 1991 will tower as tall as Motörhead’s Snaggletooth or Misfits’ Crimson Ghost across the rock landscape for many years to come yet.
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