Nirvana's remaining members: "dismayed and disappointed" with use of Kurt on Guitar Hero 5

Fri, 11 Sep 2009

As LickLibrary announced Aug 28th, Guitar Hero had included Kurt Cobain on their forthcoming edition of the Guitar-playing simulation game. Now it seems, after all the usual legal wrangling between Dave Grohl and Courtney Love, both Krist Noveselic and Grohl have blasted the game’s use of Kurt's character.

The problem is not due to any kind of dishonourable portrayal of Cobain however, but the due fact that his character can be used to play any of the 85 songs that are featured on the game. These songs are as diverse as Bon Jovi and Elton John. After friends, family, and fans alike were subjected to the ordeal of seeing Kurt rocking out to Bon Jovi’s 1986 hit “You Give Love A Bad Name”.

After Courtney Love had publicly blamed Dave Grohl for the entire furore, the remaining Nirvana band-members made a joint statement saying:

"We want people to know that we are dismayed and very disappointed in the way a facsimile of Kurt is used in the Guitar Hero game. The name and likeness of Kurt Cobain are the sole property of his estate - we have no control whatsoever in that area.

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. 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.

It’s hard to watch an image of Kurt pantomiming other artists’ music alongside cartoon characters. Kurt Cobain wrote songs that hold a lot of meaning to people all over the world. We feel he deserves better."

The following is some of the footage which has caused the uproar. 

LickLibrary invite you to have your say on our forum...

Related Material:

Learn to Play Nirvana
Nirvana - Jamtrax
Nirvana Tuorials