It may well be a law of nature that when you defeat the empire, you become the empire. Cobain and Nirvana had challenged corporate power from within, but the adaptability of those structures saw them drawn unwittingly into the middle of the machine. Cobain was too honest to give in, but also too exhausted to keep running ahead. The more successful Nirvana became, the less he was able to control his own message, to represent something other than the symbol he had become – the constructed symbol of a rock’n’roll star, a polite focus for suburban rebellion, even in spite of the challenging art he made.