Thursday, September 10, 2009
National Skyline Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic Agree: Guitar Hero Got Guitarded
Posted by Tracy Moore on Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 5:22 PM
Last week, someone posted on Facebook about the ridiculousness of this latest version of Guitar Hero, which features Kurt Cobain's likeness. I watched it and agreed, although to some extent, at this point, I have to admit my cynicism leaves me fairly blase about this stuff. Courtney Love is a trash clown, right? I'm not shocked that she's auctioned off her husband's bits one by one; I'm shocked that she hasn't gone all the way and started a clothing line of ratty $4,000 cardigans that come with complimentary Jag-Stangs and spiral-bound notebooks.
But today I received a statement from Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, who've managed to stay respectable, and have now been motivated to publicly explain that they knew his image was being used for two Nirvana songs in the game, but not that you could "unlock" the character and thus, as the video above shows, have Kurt Cobain singing songs such as Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name"--a total disgrace to grunge's fallen hero, says them. The reason? Courtney Love is denying having anything to do with his avatar being a playable character. Weird, since she controls his estate and therefore his likeness, something Grohl and Novoselic have no power over. And game-maker Activision says it's on the up and up as well:
"Guitar Hero secured the necessary licensing rights from the Cobain estate in a written agreement signed by Courtney Love to use Kurt Cobain's likeness as a fully playable character in Guitar Hero 5," said an Activision representative.
Love says she's going to "sue the shit" out of them anyway. Read the Grohl/Novoselic statement after the jump.
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.
Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl
Comments (9)
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dead or not, i can't imagine any living artist putting up with this either. of course, i've never really played any of these games, so for all i know they do it all the time.
Kurt Cobain was dead before most of today's 15-year-olds were alive.
SOEMTHING TO THINK ABOUT!!?!?!
It's sad to watch him rap at the beginning. But kind of funny, though.
"burrito says:
I've always thought Cobain was highly overrated. "
Yes, Kurt Cobain was, indeed, overated. But he was a great musician, you can't deny that. Nothing compared to John Lennon, but a great musician as well.
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