Smells Like Dollar Signs: the Flap over Cobain on Rock Band 5

We’re all sellouts
Some are more blatant than others. Aerosmith and Bon Jovi are at least up-front about it. They will happily ham it up for anyone who offers them a big enough check.
Who are we to argue?
The person who is unemployed or behind on their mortgage, or who has been slaving away in bar bands for thirty years certainly wouldn’t.
It’s the hypocrites you have to watch out for. There are those who publicly bleed integrity and sanctimoniousness, but behind the curtain are revealed to be not much more than the Bon Jovi’s of the world.
Of course they don’t buy up tickets for their shows at face value than re-sell them to scalpers like some of the bands mentioned, but you never know.
Courtney Love is angry because Activision is using Kurt Cobain’s likeness on Guitar Hero 5 to not only sing the Nirvana songs he wrote and sang, but also to possibly sing along to songs by other bands- yes even Bon Jovi.
I don’t play it, but someone showed Cobain’s avatar “singing” “You Give Love a bad name” along with the cartoon backing band on YouTube and it was pretty disturbing. At least to someone who was around in the early 1990’s and saw Nirvana break huge with Nevermind, playing music that didn’t play by the “rules” but still was very popular. Bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam came up with the punk scene, and although they did get signed by large record companies, took pains to maintain their artistic integrity and independence.
To us late thirtysomethings and fortysomethings, it is unsettling, but to the kids who play Rock Band, Cobain is just another dead or aging rock star. Most kids nowadays couldn’t tell Bon Jovi from Nirvana, and wouldn’t care even if they could. It’s all of us old people getting riled up.
Love is angry, and even though she agreed to use Cobain’s likeness for the game, she said that she thought that he would only be singing Nirvana songs.
“You are correct in stating that Ms. Cobain (Love) is extremely upset at Activision’s use of Mr. Cobain’s image in a video game allowing him to sing songs of others. Kurt’s songs have a unique and special meaning to his fans and his image and legacy is extremely important to Ms. Cobain.” said her lawyer.
Cobain's old bandmates, Krist Novolesic and Dave Grohl agree.
“While we were aware of Kurt’s image being used with two Nirvana songs, we didn’t know players have the ability to unlock the character.” Adding, “This feature allows the character to be used with any kind of song the player wants. We urge Activision to do the right thing in ‘re-locking’ Kurt’s character so that this won’t continue in the future.” They said in a joint statement.
Somebody’s lying, or somebody’s lawyer didn’t do his job. Both the game company and Love have high-priced lawyers looking through the documents, and it’s hard to believe that somebody didn’t catch the clause where Cobain would be aping along to Bon Jovi songs.
Everybody got paid. Activision will sell a ton of games, Cobain’s estate and the other artists featured on the game will get paid and get additional exposure for their music. Nobody is starving off this deal.
It’s one of two things. Activision is either greedy or ignorant, or perhaps telling the truth. Love may be telling the truth, but it also may be a face-saving measure to something she either agreed upon or overlooked.
It’s either dollar signs or ignorance, and I’m picking dollar signs.
Integrity or not, Nirvana signed the big record contract. Even Love’s band Hole had a large record contract in the 1990’s, Grohl’s band the Foo Fighters has been churning out radio-friendly music for years now. All have been well paid, and there is nothing wrong with that. With the money, comes compromise, I’m sure. Nobody is innocent then, nobody is innocent now.
Now comes word that Iggy Pop has agreed to use his likeness for a Lego version of rock band.
No one is innocent.