Tony Hawk remembers first time he heard Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’: “Everyone stopped what they were doing”

Tony Hawk has recalled hearing Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ for the first time, noting that “everyone stopped what they were doing”.

The skateboarding legend has reminisced about his memory of the day in a new NBC documentary My Generation, which covers the rise of Generation X in the early-’90s.

In the episode, Hawk says: “I was actually in New York interviewing a band for Thrasher magazine. Someone from the label said, ‘Hey, we have this new Nirvana’, and put it on in the room.”

“Everyone stopped what they were doing and everyone looked around,” he added. “And you just knew. You knew this was it.”

‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was the lead single from Nirvana’s second album ‘Nevermind’, and was released in September 1991. It rose to Number Six on the Billboard Hot 100, and ushered in the grunge era, bringing the Seattle band and several of their contemporaries into the heart of mainstream popular culture.

In October last year, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s daughter Frances Bean Cobain married Riley Hawk, the son of Tony, in San Diego, as officiated by former R.E.M. frontman and Frances’ godfather Michael Stipe.

The couple have been in a relationship since 2021, with Frances confirming she was seeing Riley in January 2022 in an Instagram post.

“I wanted to share a few moments that were captured / created this past year that brought me a great amount of joy. Here’s to hoping everyone’s 2022 is filled with the authentic connections, a lot of warmth & profound discovery of self happy new year,” read the caption of her post.

In April this year, Frances shared a moving post on the 30th anniversary of the death of her father.

“In the last 30 years my ideas around loss have been in a continuous state of metamorphosing,” she wrote. “The biggest lesson learned through grieving for almost as long as I’ve been conscious, is that it serves a purpose. The duality of life & death, pain & joy, yin & yang, need to exist alongside each other or none of this would have any meaning.”

“It is the impermanent nature of human existence which throws us into the depths of our most authentic lives. As It turns out, there is no greater motivation for leaning into loving awareness than knowing everything ends.”