Muppets and Grunge

“I miss the comfort in being sad”

Nirvana, Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle.

I was watching The Muppet Movie the other day and I realised how much of an influence the Muppets had on much of great 1990s American art. Kurt Cobain was Animal. Animal was grunge. The Muppets is one of the few things in what is ostensibly children’s television to not shy away from sadness and the causes of it. Remember when Mr. Hooper died on Sesame Street. Big Bird asking where he’s gone. And the human adults taking the time to sit him down and talk about death with him and how it was okay to be sad. That blew the world’s minds.

I don’t remember where I was or when it was that I learned about death. I do remember my sister finding out about it. We shared a bedroom then, a big one. She was five, I was seven. Our grandmother had died. Anyway there’d been lots of crying and sadness and then we got taken to bed and my sister asks my mum “Does this mean you’re going to die one day?”

Anyway it was awful because what do you do in this situation. You can’t lie but you can’t upset your kids any further because fucking hell you’ve got to go and deal with your own personal reaction to this and the housework and other shit. Any pause here is disastrous. A pause to a child is confirmation of the truth.

So, there was a pause and my sister starts losing it. Then she realises that she too will die one day and my sister, just five, is having a massive existential crisis. Death is inevitable. He’s coming for us all and one day you won’t wake up from your sleep.

So Mr Hooper dying wasn’t our introduction to death but it will have been for millions of American kids. They showed it on Thanksgiving Day 1983. Kurt Cobain is what, 16. So he’s too old for Sesame Street most likely but I guess he’ll have seen it, it was a massive cultural moment. For a generation of kids that's their introduction to the end of it all. No wonder emo happened. Emo was Grunge plus Elmo.

The Muppets didn’t airbrush death, they just explained it away as part of the natural order of things. Gonzo the undefinable flightless bird came from a fine tradition of glass half empty children’s characters such as Eeyore and Droopy. His perennial sadness wasn’t there to make the other characters seem even happier, it was the other way round. Kermit’s unflappable goodness, Fozzie’s indefatigable efforts to entertain – they put Gonzo’s inner torment into perspective. In the Muppet Movie, a film made memorable by one of the very best soundtracks of all time, Gonzo sings a campfire country lament called “I’mGoing to Go Back There Someday.” The Muppets car has broken down and their journey to Hollywood with it. Rather than have an optimistic, never mind anthem sung by Fozzie or Miss Piggy, it’s Gonzo’s turn in the spotlight.

This song devastated me as a kid. I was that kind of kid mind. It still floors me now. It’s like Bright Eyes by Art Garfunkel.

“Sun rises, night falls. Sometimes the sky calls.

Is that a song there and do I belong there?

I’ve never been there. But I know the way.
I’m going to go back there someday.”

Gonzo is singing about dreams, about flying, about the elusive nature of meaning. But, to me, he’s also singing about the pointlessness of it all, that death is coming anyway and we might as well accept it. It’s not a million miles away from “I miss the comfort in being sad.”

Anyway, I was going to talk about the influence of the soundtrack on artists such as Grandaddy (listen to He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot and then listen to the start of Muppets Rainbow Connection) and Mercury Rev whose albums from Deserter’s Songs onwards show the same affection for the big American music as the Muppet Movie. I was going to talk about that and the influence of Fozzie Bear on Stephen Tombolowsky’s unforgettable Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day (now there’s a movie that I’d love to see a Muppet retelling of). I was going to do quite a lot of things but Death is calling and I haven't put the bins out.