November Rain and Smells Like Teen Spirit

"Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles is a nostalgic song about how the transition to a new medium affects an older generation of artists. Older not necessarily in terms of age, but rather in both formal conception and in the perspective of form on content. Depending on the time frame, the song easily could have been titled, "Radio Killed the Vaudeville Star" or "The Internet Killed the Video Star".

However, the concept of a "Star" or centralized celebrity became fully established within the mass delivery systems of the radio and then the television. The power of live performance, whether in dance, theater, sport, is specifically its personal and ephemeral nature. Performance was radically altered in the new context presented by these two mass delivery systems. First, the scope of the audience was greatly expanded. Secondly, the ability to record allowed a specific performance to be replayed continuously. The net effect was that a wider range of people was able to share a narrower, or rather unique, performance.

The convergence of radio and television was exemplified in the music video. Beginning in the early 80's, MTV ushered in a new means of conveying music to a mass audience. MTV, however, was just one of the mass content delivery systems that had been developing since the late 40's and had now reached their apotheosis during that decade. Television had a stranglehold on the popular consciousness, evidenced by the current era of recycling the concepts and brands from the 80's and the early 90's into large-scale franchises. This recycling is a result of two primary factors. The youth of that era are now in the primary consumer age bracket, and, more importantly, that time frame was the last era before the Internet created the openness of access to a vast range of aesthetic choices and broke the hegemony of the dominant media outlets, subsequently fragmenting the audience.

However, the mainstream did not accede immediately to this transition, and the resultant tension created many layered and complex works of art. The videos for Guns 'N Roses' "November Rain" and Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" were both released in 1992 and they both preceded the Internet era, but they respectively heralded the change from the mainstream to the niche.

November Rain - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwu7ixmQk0c
Smells Like Teen Spirit - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXO3OMGKPpw

"November Rain" is a music video that is constantly aware of its theatricality and melodrama, first evidenced by the opening, displaying the title of the song overlaid on an image of the lead singer, Axl Rose, taking sleeping pills from a night stand that also holds a fifth of liquor, an ashtray, and a broken crucifix. The scene then dissolves into a concert hall audience witnessing the entire band onstage, accompanied by extra vocalists and a conductor leading a full orchestra. Within the first twenty seconds, the resonant images of the video are introduced--primarily the Christian imagery and the trappings of theatrical performance. After several quick establishing cuts of the band members, the Christian imagery is reintroduced in an wedding ceremony. These specific images--the Christ statue weeping blood, the various ornate crosses, the grandeur of the ceremony, and the vestments of the priest--create a reference to the Catholic church. For a religion that has been critiqued as overly theatrical, it is the perfect framework to convey the story of this self-consciously elaborate music video.

The symbols of the theater are further established in the middle of the video when the lead guitarist, Slash, walks out alone from the wedding ceremony. As he exits, the artifice of the panorama begins immediately. He is shown alone, in different clothing with his guitar, on a dusty plain in front of a small church that could not contain the expansive previous scene. He is playing a precise guitar solo, but his guitar has no trailing cords or amplifiers within the panoramic view of lunging and swooping helicopter shots. The video has now dispensed with practical concerns and instead relies on the dramatic and the theatrical to create a hyper-reality that can express intense emotion within the space of a nine minute music video.

After an aborted reception, interrupted ostensibly by the "November Rain", the video then transitions immediately to the funeral of the bride within the same church as the wedding. The full trappings of theatricality--open casket, flower arrangements, a full complement of pall bearers--continues and sustains the emotions of the prior drama. The tragedy was structurally foreshadowed by the concerned look of the bride as she leaves the wedding as well as the flowing red wine at the reception, referencing blood and thus reinforcing the connection to Catholicism. The open casket is mirrored--often used to cover facial disfigurement. Again, the themes of appearance and spectacle are recapitulated even to the final scenes.

The video ends with Rose waking up from the dream that seemingly contained the previous narrative. However, the final images are that of the bride, throwing her bouquet of white roses which transforms midair into red and falls on top of her coffin in front of a mourning Rose. The last image is the rain, washing the red from the roses until they become white once more.

I have largely refrained from analyzing the symbolism of the various images of "November Rain" other than to highlight how those images create a specifically heightened, artificial, and theatrical quality to the entire music video. The trappings of theatricality and Catholicism are just that--trappings. Within the context of the song, the orchestra has few functions other than to add sonic depth to the guitar arrangements. There are no solos, no major melodies invoked by the large string section--just chords and vamps. The Christian symbols are presented in a flurry of cuts and edits without any explanation or overarching narrative. Instead, both the orchestra and the church add something specific to the video--the aura of gravitas. Preachers, pallbearers, and the conductor all costumed in full regalia unquestionably invoke a historical tradition that extends far past the origins of Rock and, as previously mentioned, add an element of heightened emotion in the limited emotional timeframe of the nine minute music video.

The dramatic, even melodramatic, aspects of the video, when taken out of context, can easily be dismissed as laughable, overblown and even ironic. Few videos would have the audacity to show a figure of Jesus weeping blood as anything more serious than a joke. However, "November Rain" is not a joke and the conflux of theatricality, Catholicism, and Rock is completely, almost painfully sincere.

This sincerity is created primarily through tension between the appurtenance of tradition and gravitas created by the theatrical/Catholic elements and the brashness and rebellion of Rock music. It is no coincidence that the conductor of the orchestra, wearing tails and a white tie, shares the same glam hairstyle as Duff and Slash. Furthermore the clothing of each band member--especially that of Axl Rose--do not conform to traditional dress in the staid, traditional service of the wedding. They are, instead, an extension of their stage personas. Slash is wearing his signature top hat and his shirt is completely unbuttoned. Rose's coat is intricately embroidered and his shirt is heavily ruffled. In fact it calls into mind the costume of the Beast in the Disney film of the previous year. It is so elaborate that it threatens to overwhelm the wedding dress worn by model Stephanie Seymour. Starting with a pan shot from the feet up, the dress is revealed to be extremely high cut above the garter. The upper bodice is contrastingly heavy and structured, creating a virgin/whore dynamic that, in music video, is comparable only to Madonna's "Like a Virgin".

The tensions between the desire to refer to a serious traditional background and the necessity to maintain the excess and hedonism portrayed, for example in the previous Guns N' Roses' video "Welcome to the Jungle," create a hybrid video that aspires to both the rebel and epic melodrama. This clash, this uneasiness is proof of the sincerity of the work itself. If the video used purely classical imagery, it would either lose its vibrant force as a part of the Rock mainstream or become completely ironic, deliberately clashing form and content. However, if it abandoned the symbols of the past, it would stand isolated, seemingly unable through the conventions of Rock music alone to carry the extreme emotional drama.

After viewing the elaborate, cinematic, and highly structured video for "November Rain", the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" seems to be the complete antithesis. Rather than multiple locations, this video is set within a darkened high-school gymnasium with bleachers and basketball nets. The band consists of only three members rather than an entire range of instrumentation. The narrative is simple, even minimalist--a band plays in front of a young audience that gradually becomes more chaotic until both band and audience are moshing together. This minimalism is very important when considering the Baroque excess of the previous video. It reflects the main cycle of destruction and rebirth that has characterized Rock music since its inception. Note that both videos portray the bands playing in front of the audience. In "November Rain" the audience is totally passive, existing only to add to the aura of the theatrical. In "Smells Like Teen Spirit", the audience is shown as active participants, even to the point of disrupting and destroying the band and its instruments. As the dominant form of the music becomes too crafted and excessive, a new movement arises that emphasizes purity, simplicity, and just plain rocking. The fundamental example was the advent of Punk in the late 70's. Nirvana was the vanguard of Grunge in the 90's that swept away the primacy of Metal--of whom Guns N' Roses was an exemplar.

However, Nirvana's video also has a suite of images that affect the tone and theme of the work as greatly as "November Rain". During the opening pan, several cheerleaders are shown in a loose formation. Later in the video, their uniforms are shown to bear the representative "A" for anarchy. This identification immediately signals the rebellion and upheaval present in the music. However, by juxtaposing cheerleading with anarchy, these paradoxical elements combine to create the sense of irony. Another ironic element is the character of the bald janitor. In the video he is shown separate from the rest of the cast, swaying back and forth with a mop. He may be enjoying the music, but since he is shown asynchronous from the main beat as well as not participating with the rest of the audience, he becomes separate from them as a character--to be incongruous, to be humorous, and to be ironic.

The minimalism presented in the video is also influenced tonally by the need for destruction and anarchy. Many shots of the band are in slow motion and often the notes or drumbeats played are not matched to what is presented on screen. Tellingly, the primary guitar solo of the video shows Cobain restringing his guitar and then using both hands to finger notes near the head of the guitar. The final chaos drops any pretension that the band is playing the music being heard as the audience is shown carrying cymbals, bowling over the bassist, and watching Cobain destroy his guitar.

This destruction signified the desire to remove from Rock the convoluted symbols and epic pretensions that reached their height in "November Rain". In essence, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was the anti-video, denying any need to heighten or evoke any emotion other than its own nihilistic energy. The song itself reinforces this notion lyrically since, at the time, Cobain's singing was considered unintelligible. "Weird" Al Yankovic created an entire parody song, "Smells Like Nirvana," revolving around this fact.

However, by creating its own language of chaos--paradoxical images, slow motion, quick cuts, unsynced musical performance--this video created the groundwork for irony and a retreat from sincerity. Cobain was not a disingenuous or insincere performer--see his performance of "All Apologies"--although Nirvana's videos are not always as straightforward--see "In Bloom". As mentioned before, Punk had already gone through the stage of destruction and renewal, but the key difference is now that this rebellion and nihilism had been exposed heavily to the mass market through the medium of the music video.

Both videos of "November Rain" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" gained widespread popularity during 1992. Both singles reached the top ten on Billboard charts. However, Guns N' Roses would not have another song in the top 40 whereas multiple singles from Nirvana's Nevermind reached top ten positions. Nirvana was the sea change that signaled a new generation of listeners that had abandoned the pomp of the 80's Rock bands and gravitated towards the new Grunge aesthetic of nihilism, apathy, and irony. However, listening to the music of Nirvana, or other Grunge bands such as Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, very little irony or apathy is present. This movement retreated from the almost absurd sincerity and pretension represented by Guns N' Roses. The mass media codified this retreat not as a return to open simplicity, but rather as a recoiling away from all sincerity. Thus the portrayal in video becomes ironic, not entirely through qualities of the songs itself. Rather than create a new visual language or investing their symbols--clothing, posture, piercings--with meaning, the music video instead interpreted this new aesthetic as solely a denial of the previous generation, resulting in a movement portrayed as apathetic and ironic. Some bands, like Pearl Jam, realized the effect of the mainstream on interpretation and retreated from the popular view.

By aligning with this specific interpretation of Grunge, mainstream Rock had now lost its grip on sincerity, however pretentious or bizarre. It is no coincidence that Meat Loaf's "I Would Do Anything For Love" can be considered the last mainstream rock epic on video. This loss, however, applied primarily to Rock music. Two other forms in the 90's had begun to supplant Rock's place as the dominant form for artistry and popularity. Hip Hop, with the advent of Gangsta, maintained for an extended period of time an almost maniacal grip on integrity and sincerity. Furthermore as the business of music became more savvy, SoundScan revealed that mainstream Country music was dominating the charts in the 90's, and the marketing and subsequent effects on musicians were manifold.

This column began with a discussion on the mainstream and how the Internet permanently fragmented the audience. Nirvana was in the mainstream, but it was representative of the last movement in Rock that can be considered the dominant popular form. As irony became more developed and self aware, its messages retreated further away from the simple and sincere. The mainstream thus focused on more easily marketable paths which resulted in opposite directions--the rebirth and almost naked commercialization of the boy band culminating in The Backstreet Boys, and the hyper developed sense of integrity and street credibility culminating in 50 Cent. The Internet, with its immediate access and range of choice, finally directly realigned audience with artist without the mediated exchange of the major labels.