Tribute acts don’t usually involve lycra — but an Adelaide Hills cyclist and Nirvana fan has paid homage to a trailblazing album by blazing a trail of his own.
Key points:
- Peter Stokes recently took to the streets of Adelaide to mark the 30th anniversary of Nevermind’s release
- The 150-kilometre journey took him eight hours and was accompanied by the music of Nirvana
- He now wants to increase his own personal album of Strava artworks
On the 30th anniversary of the release of the band’s hit album Nevermind, Peter Stokes recreated its famous cover art, which shows a baby swimming towards a dollar note.
With the help of the popular app Strava, which tracks exercise, he traced out the artwork, using the streets of Adelaide as his canvas.
While the journey itself took eight hours, Mr Stokes said it had been months in the planning — and he listened to the Nevermind album for the entire 150-kilometre trek.
“Definitely it was something I’d thought about a lot and been quite keen to do, to be a tribute to what I think is a really great album,” he said.
Nevermind — which includes the hits Come As You Are and Smells Like Teen Spirit — was released on September 24, 1991.
Mr Stokes timed his tribute to coincide with the 30th anniversary of that date and embarked on his tour of Adelaide’s streets — stretching from Campbelltown in the north-east to Plympton in the south-west — on Friday.
“The face was really difficult … but it’s good enough,” he said.
“We’ve got so much green space, so many parks which, from my point of view for doing this, are great to be able to cut through and take shortcuts.”
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)Mr Stokes does not just confine his portraiture to pop culture — last year, he also completed a depiction of composer Ludwig van Beethoven.
His method, he said, involved “getting up pretty early” to beat the traffic.
“Usually I’m starting the day at 3:00am or 4:00am,” he said.
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)Nevermind remains an iconic album cover and an emblematic image of the grunge movement, but it has also been controversial.
Last month it was revealed that Spencer Elden, who appeared as a baby on the album’s cover, had launched a lawsuit alleging the cover amounted to child exploitation.
But for Mr Stokes, the album, the band and the songs are likely to remain perennial classics.
He’s already setting his sights, and his handlebars, in the direction of even more ambitious street art projects.
“I’d kind of be really keen to do some major artworks,” he said.
“I did start playing around with trying to design one for Van Gogh’s Starry Night, but that got a bit tricky, so I might have to try some simpler artworks first.”
