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Kurt Cobain

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• Lambiek Comiclopedia - Kurt Cobain
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Kurt Cobain (born February 20, 1967, Aberdeen , Washington , U.S.—died April 5, 1994, Seattle , Washington) was an American rock musician who rose to fame as the lead singer, guitarist, and primary songwriter for the seminal grunge band Nirvana .

Cobain had a generally happy childhood until his parents divorced when he was nine years old. After that event, he was frequently troubled and angry, and his emotional pain became a subject of, and catalyst for, much of his later music . As a teenager, he moved between various relatives’ houses, stayed with friends’ parents, and occasionally slept under bridges while he began to use drugs and take part in petty vandalism as forms of teenage rebellion. Cobain was musically inclined from an early age, and in the mid-1980s he began to play with members of the local “sludge rock” band the Melvins (who would themselves go on to earn a measure of national fame in the 1990s). In 1985 he created a homemade tape of some songs with the drummer of the Melvins that later caught the attention of local bassist Krist Novoselic . Cobain and Novoselic formed Nirvana in 1987 and thereafter recruited a series of drummers to record demo tapes with them and play small shows throughout the Northwest .

One of the group’s demo tapes found its way to Jonathan Poneman of the Seattle independent record label Sub Pop, which signed the band to produce its first single, “Love Buzz”, in 1988 and its first album, Bleach , in 1989. The album had a unique (and soon-to-be signature) sound that mixed the rawness of punk rock with pop hooks, and the group soon became a target of major record labels. With new drummer Dave Grohl (who joined the band in 1990) Nirvana released its major-label debut, Nevermind (1991), which featured the hit single “ Smells like Teen Spirit ”; it became the first alternative-rock album to achieve widespread popularity with a mainstream audience. Nevermind catapulted Nirvana to worldwide fame, and Cobain came to be hailed as the voice of his generation, a title that he was never comfortable with.

In 1992 Cobain married Courtney Love , then the leader of the band Hole, and the couple had a daughter that same year. The following year Nirvana released its final studio album, In Utero , in which Cobain railed against his fame. Cobain had long suffered from depression and chronic stomach pain. He treated his issues with drugs: Cobain was a frequent user of heroin in the years after Nirvana’s breakthrough, and he took a variety of painkillers in an attempt to numb his constant stomach agony. In March 1994 he was hospitalized in Rome after overdosing and slipping into a coma in what was later characterized as a failed suicide attempt. One month later he snuck out of a Los Angeles-area drug treatment centre and returned to his Seattle home, where he shot and killed himself.

Cobain’s death marked, in many ways, the end of the brief grunge movement and was a signature event for many music fans of Generation X . He remained an icon of the era after his death and was the subject of a number of posthumous works, including the book Heavier than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain (2001) by Charles R. Cross and the documentaries Kurt & Courtney (1998) and Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (2015). In addition, a collection of his journals was published in 2002. In 2014 Nirvana was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame .

Kurt Cobain

• Born February 20 , 1967 · Aberdeen, Washington, USA
• Died April 5 , 1994 · Seattle, Washington, USA (suicide by gunshot)
• Birth name Kurt Donald Cobain
• Height 5′ 9″ (1.75 m)
• Kurt Cobain was born on February 20 1967, in Aberdeen, Washington. Kurt and his family lived in Hoquiam for the first few months of his life then later moved back to Aberdeen, where he had a happy childhood until his parents divorced. The divorce left Kurt's outlook on the world forever scarred. He became withdrawn and anti-social. He was constantly placed with one relative to the next, living with friends, and at times even homeless. Kurt was not the most popular person in high school as he was in public school. In 1985 Kurt left Aberdeen for Olympia where he formed the band Nirvana in 1986. In 1989 Nirvana recorded their debut album Bleach under the independent label Sub-Pop records. Nirvana became very popular in Britain and by 1991 they signed a contract with Geffen. Their next album Nevermind became a 90s masterpiece and made Kurt's Nirvana one of the most successful bands in the world. Kurt became trampled upon with success and found the new lifestyle hard to bear. In February 1992 Kurt married Courtney Love , the woman who was already pregnant with his child, Frances Bean Cobain . Nirvana released their next album Incesticide later that year. The album appealed to many fans due to the liner notes, which expressed Kurt's open-mindedness. In September 1993 Nirvana released their next album, 'In Utero', which topped the charts. On March 4, 1994, Kurt was taken to hospital in a coma. It was officially stated as an accident but many believe it to have been an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Family and friends convinced Kurt to seek rehab. Kurt was said to have fled rehab after only a few days from a missing person's report filed by Courtney Love . On April 8th Kurt's body was found in his Seattle home. In his arms was a shotgun, which had been fired into his head. Near him laid a suicide note written in red ink. It was addressed to his wife Courtney Love and his daughter Frances Bean Cobain . Two days after Kurt's body was discovered people gathered in Seattle, they began setting fires, chanting profanities, and fighting with police officers. They also listened to a tape of Courtney reading sections of the suicide note left by Kurt. The last few words were "I love you, I love you". - IMDb Mini Biography By: Tony Russomanno <[email protected]>
• Spouse Courtney Love (February 24, 1992 - April 5, 1994) (his death, 1 child)
• Children Frances Bean Cobain
• His unclean hair and unshaven appearance
• Raw agonizing voice
• Smashing instruments and stage equipment after shows
• Garbled,Incomprehensible Singing
• Shoulder-length blonde hair
• Said he eventually wanted to experiment with filmmaking. He even wrote a script for a horror movie.
• The last movie he watched before his death was The Piano (1993) .
• During a Nirvana concert, he witnessed a girl being groped in the audience. Without missing a beat, he threw his guitar to the ground (a Martin D-18E electric guitar, one of the rarest electric guitars ever made and worth a significant amount of money), dived into the audience and angrily confronted the man who groped the woman. Upon returning to the stage, Cobain and the other band members openly mocked the man as he was being forcibly led out by security.
• Died at 27 years old, making him a member of the "27 Club"; The 27 Club is a group of prominent musicians who died at the age of 27. Other members include Rolling Stones co-founder Brian Jones , guitarist Jimi Hendrix , singer Janis Joplin , guitarist Alan Wilson , The Doors frontman Jim Morrison and Amy Winehouse .
• John Lennon 's song "In my Life" was played at his funeral.
• Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.
• I'm not well-read, but when I read, I read well.
• I'm not a death rocker, and I don't wear black.
• I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not.
• I think people who glamorize drugs are f**king *ssholes and if there's hell they'll go there.

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Kurt Cobain Biography

Birthday: February 20 , 1967 ( Pisces )

Born In: Aberdeen, Washington, United States

Kurt Donald Cobain was an American singer-songwriter who rocked the music world with his band ‘Nirvana.’ He displayed artistic traits since early childhood. However, he had a troubled youth because of his parents’ separation. Finding solace in music, he started with playing the guitar and eventually went deeper into the world of music. Albums, such as ‘Bleach,’ ‘Nevermind,’ and ‘In Utero’ were some of his very popular ones. ‘Nirvana’ signing with ‘Geffen Records’ came as a major accomplishment in his career. Although he continued to grow exponentially on the professional front, his personal life was marred by his severe drug addiction. Plagued by health and family issues, he constantly struggled with depression and drug addiction issues throughout his life. However, his exemplary song writing skills helped ‘Nirvana’ sell over 25 million copies in the U.S. and over 75 million records all over the world, making him an iconic personality in the field of rock music.

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Also Known As: Kurt Donald Cobain

Died At Age: 27

Spouse/Ex-: Courtney Love (m. 1992)

father: Donald Leland Cobain

mother: Wendy Elizabeth (née Fradenburg)

children: Frances Bean Cobain

Born Country: United States

Died Young Guitarists

Height: 5'9" (175 cm ), 5'9" Males

Died on: April 5 , 1994

place of death: Seattle, Washington, United States

U.S. State: Washington

Cause of Death: Suicide By Firearm

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What was kurt cobain's impact on the music industry, what were some of kurt cobain's most memorable quotes, what inspired kurt cobain's songwriting, what was the significance of nirvana's album nevermind.

Nirvana's album "Nevermind," released in 1991, is widely regarded as a landmark in the history of rock music. The album's raw energy, catchy melodies, and emotional depth catapulted Nirvana to mainstream success and played a major role in popularizing grunge music globally.

How did Kurt Cobain's legacy continue after his death?

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He is a well-known member of the ‘27 Club,’ a list of musicians and actors who died at the age of 27. Numerous books, documentaries, and films, based on Cobain’s life and death, were released after his death.

See the events in life of Kurt Cobain in Chronological Order

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Kurt Cobain Biography

We'll Always Remember

Kurt Donald Cobain  (February 20, 1967-April 5, 1994) was the lead singer and guitarist for Nirvana. Cobain was born in Aberdeen, Washington and helped establish the Seattle music scene, as well as the style known as Grunge. He was married to the Lead Singer of the band Hole Courtney Love in which in 1992 the couple had a daughter named Frances Bean Cobain. In 1994 Cobain committed suicide in his home’s greenhouse, despite all of the rumors spoken about his death the police deemed it suicide and left the case closed until briefly reopening it in 2014.

In 2014, Cobain along with his band mates Krist and Dave were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of fame during the first year they were eligible.

Kurt Cobain was born on February 20, 1967 in Grays Harbor County Hospital in Aberdeen, Washington. His parents were Wendy Fradenburg (born 1948), a waitress, and Donald Leland Cobain (born 1946), a mechanic. The family lived in Hoquiam, Washington. On April 24, 1970 his sister Kimberley was born. In 1976 his parents divorced after 11 years of marriage. Kurt lived with his dad in Montesano, Washington. Both of his parents got remarried and Kurt had step siblings In 1979 he went to live with his mom in Aberdeen.

Kurt attended Aberdeen High School and befriended a gay student there. He later stated he was gay, just to “piss off homophobes. He dropped out when he realized he didn’t have enough credits to graduate.

Later in 1985, Cobain formed his first band “Fecal Matter”, with Dale Crover, Greg Hokanson, Buzz Osborne, and Mike Dillard. The band lasted for a year. The group’s sole recording was issued as the  Illiteracy Will Prevail  demo tape, which remains unreleased officially with exception of the song “Spank Thru”.

Kurt and Krist had a Creedence Clearwater Revival cover band that was not successful. They later founded Nirvana in 1987.

Nirvana Years

During the early days of the band Kurt was very unhappy with the band’s inability to draw in large crowds that lead he band to rotate drummers on almost a regular basis. Eventually after sometime the band settled on Chad Channing, whom they recorded their first album with Sub Pop Records in 1989, titled Bleach. It was however after the recording of this album Cobain became unhappy with Channing’s drumming style which eventually lead them to let him go and hire Dave Grohl in his place. The band didn’t return to the studio to record again until April of 1990 where they recorded the song “Polly” that was to take its place on their next studio album Nevermind that was to be released the next year.

In 1991, of May 2nd through June of the same year the band would return to the studio once again to create the album that would change the Seattle music scene forever. It was during this period the Album Nevermind was created that put out the star single “Smells like Teen Spirit” that became a hit song upon its release. It was this album that pushed Micheal Jackson’s Dangerous album off the number one spot on the Billboard 200 chart. Along with the star single “Smells like Teen Spirit” the album also produced three other top hit singles “Come as you are”, “Lithium”, and “In Bloom”. Upon the release of the album in September 24, 1991 the album opened up a whole new audience for the new genre of music opening the pathway for bands such as Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden. During this period Nirvana was considered the “Flagship band of Generation X” and frontman Cobain found himself reluctantly anointed by the media as the generation’s “spokesman.” Cobain’s discomfort with the media attention prompted him to focus on the band’s music and, believing their message and artistic vision to have been misinterpreted by the public, challenged the band’s audience with its third studio album  In Utero .

Political Views

Cobain struggled to reconcile the massive success of Nirvana to his underground roots. He also felt persecuted by the media, comparing himself to Frances Farmer. He began to harbor resentments for people who claimed to be fans of the band yet refused to acknowledge, or misinterpreted, the band’s social and political views. A vocal opponent of sexism, racism and homophobia, he was publicly proud that Nirvana had played at a gay rights benefit supporting No-on-Nine in Oregon in 1992, in opposition to Ballot Measure Nine, a ballot measure, that if passed, would have prohibited schools in the state from acknowledging or positively accepting LGBT rights and welfare.

Cobain was a vocal supporter of the pro-choice movement, and had been involved in Rock for Choice from the campaign inception by L7. He received death threats from a small number of anti-abortion activists for doing so, with one activist threatening Cobain that he would be shot as soon as he stepped on stage.

Personal Life

In 1990, Cobain started dating Courtney Love after they have met at a club. Two years later, Cobain and Love got married after learning that Love was pregnant with their only child, Francis Bean Cobain. The couple remained married until Cobain committed suicide in 1994.

Legal Issues

In 1985, Cobain was arrested for spray painting the words “God is gay” on a building in a town near Seattle.

A year later, Cobain was arrested again for spray painting. Instead of spraying words, he painted Shaggy and Scooby-Doo have “relations”.

In 1993, Cobain was arrested for assaulting his then-wife, Courtney Love, at their Seattle house. Police reports said that they found guns at the time of the arrest. Courtney Love denied Cobain ever assaulted her.

On April 5, 1994 Kurt Cobain died in his Seattle home. His body remained in his home for three days before it was discovered. The truth of his death remains unknown. Many people speculate that he did not commit suicide and was murdered. Many people also believe that Kurt did commit suicide. However, facts surrounding his death strongly point to his wife murdering him for the money. In a note found in his wallet, he talks about how he hates his wife and calls her bad names. He died from a shot gun wound, but it is not known if he shot himself in the head or somebody else killed him.

“I’d rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not.” -Not from Kurt Cobain, True source unknown

“Wanting to be someone else is a waste of who you are.” -Not from Kurt Cobain, True source unknown

“It’s better to burn out than fade away.” -On Suicide Note, but from the song “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” by Neil Young.

“Nobody’s a virgin. Life f*cks us all” -Not from Kurt Cobain, True source unknown

“I’m a much happier guy than a lot of people think I am.” -From Kurt

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Kurt Cobain: 1967–1994

By Anthony DeCurtis

Anthony DeCurtis

K urt Cobain never wanted to be the spokesman for a generation, though that doesn’t mean much: Anybody who did would never have become one. It’s not a role you campaign for. It is thrust upon you, and you live with it. Or don’t.

Whatever importance Cobain assumed as a symbol, however, one thing is certain: He and his band Nirvana announced the end of one rock & roll era and the start of another. In essence, Nirvana transformed the ’80s into the ’90s.

They didn’t do it alone, of course – cultural change is never that simple. But in 1991, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” proved a defining moment in rock history. A political song that never mentions politics, an anthem whose lyrics can’t be understood, a hugely popular hit that denounces commercialism, a collective shout of alienation, it was “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” for a new time and a new tribe of disaffected youth. It was a giant fuck-you, an immensely satisfying statement about the inability to be satisfied.

Photos: Rare Kurt Cobain Images, Artwork and Journal Entries

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Cobain’s life and music – his passion, his charm, his vision – can be understood and appreciated. His death leaves a far more savage legacy, one that will take many years to untangle. His suicide note and Courtney Love’s reading of it say it all. In his last written statement Cobain reels from cracked-actor posturing (“I haven’t felt the excitement . . . for too many years now”) to detached self-criticism (“I must be one of those narcissists who only appreciate things when they’re alone”) to self-pity (“I’m too sensitive”) to a bizarre brand of hostile, self-loathing gratitude (“Thank you all from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach”) to, of all things, rock-star cliches (“It’s better to burn out than to fade away”).

Left with that, Love careens from reverence (“I feel so honored to be near him”) to pained confusion (“I don’t know what happened”) to exasperation (“He’s such an asshole”) to anger (“Well, Kurt, so fucking what? Then don’t be a rock star”) to sobbing, heartbreaking guilt (“I’m really sorry, you guys. I don’t know what I could have done”).

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But suicide sends its own remorseless message. True, it is the ultimate cry of desperation, more harrowing than any scream Cobain unleashed in any of Nirvana’s songs. True, he was in agony and saw no other way to end it. But suicide is also an act of anger, a fierce indictment of the living. If the inability to live is “sensitive,” the ability to live comes to seem crass. “You’re so good at getting over,” the final message runs. “Get over this.”

At 27 years old, Kurt Cobain wanted to disappear, to erase himself, to become nothing. That his suicide so utterly lacked ambivalence is its most terrifying aspect. It all comes down to a stillness at the end of a long chaos: a young man sitting alone in a room, looking out a window onto the Puget Sound, getting high, writing his goodbyes, pulling a trigger. You can imagine the silence shattering and then collecting itself, in the way that water breaks for and then envelops a diver, absorbing forever the life of Kurt Cobain.

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Kurt Cobain

Kurt Donald Cobain was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and musician. Kurt Cobain was the founder of Grunge band Nirvana . He was the front man of the band. Kurt Cobain was one of the greatest rockstars the world has ever seen. He was the main reason for Nirvana’s success. It is unfortunate he committed suicide at the age of 27.

Kurt Cobain was born on February 20, 1967. He was born in Aberdeen, Washington. He was born to Wendy Elizabeth and Donald Cobain. He was of Irish, English and German descent. Kurt Cobain had a musical background. He was a talented kid. He was described to be a happy child. His parents divorced when Kurt Cobain was 7 years old. Since then he changed a lot.

He formed nirvana with schoolmate Novoselic. They formed nirvana in 1987. The band released songs in the next couple of years. They attained worldwide fame after including drummer Dave Grohl . The band became a major hit in 1991 with the release of Nevermind. With the success, they became the pioneer of Grunge music. He was the main songwriter for the band. He co-wrote classics like Smells Like Teen Spirit, Come as You Are, Lithium and All Apologies. Smells Like Teen Spirit is regarded as the band’s best song. Kurt Cobain’s death ended the Seattle grunge band Nirvana. The band sold multi million copies of their songs. Kurt Cobain has made a mark on history. Nirvana had a small yet memorable run.

Kurt Cobain was addicted to drugs. Particularly he was addicted to heroin. Kurt Cobain met Courtney Love in 1990. Courtney Love, herself is a musician. The couple grew close through their mutual interest in drugs. They eventually married in 1992. Love gave birth to Frances Bean Cobain in 1992.

Duff McKagan said he met Kurton a flight. Duff also said Cobain was happy to see him. That was not a normal feeling due to Nirvana and Guns n Roses’ history. Their front men Axl Rose and Cobain hated each other. In April 8, 1994, Kurt Cobain was found dead at his home. She shot himself with a shotgun. It was reported he died three days earlier. The death was confirmed as a suicide. Cobain was under heroin influence at the time.

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Inside Kurt Cobain's Final Days Before His Suicide

Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain ’s close friend, Mark Lanegan, hadn’t heard from the rocker for about a week in April 1994 when he began to fear the worst. “Kurt hadn’t called me,” he told Rolling Stone later that year. “He hadn’t called some other people. He hadn’t called his family. He hadn’t called anybody... I had a feeling that something real bad had happened.”

Lanegan’s intuition proved to be correct. On the morning of April 8, an electrician found 27-year-old Cobain dead of an apparent suicide in a greenhouse above the garage of his Seattle home. According to Rolling Stone , a 20-gauge shotgun was lying across his chest, and, as a medical examiner’s report later revealed, Cobain, who had already been dead two and a half days at that point, had a high concentration of heroin and traces of Valium in his bloodstream. The magazine also reported that he was identifiable only by his fingerprints.

Cobain wanted to quit Nirvana

Because he had been missing for six days prior to his dead body being discovered, many tried to piece together the last days of Cobain’s life. By all accounts, he had already been in a downward spiral for years before he died, battling depression and chronic drug addiction. In an interview with MTV, Cobain’s wife, Courtney Love , claimed that not long before her husband’s suicide, he told her that he hated being in Nirvana and couldn’t play with them anymore and only wanted to work with R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe. All things considered, his loved ones’ alarm reached a fever pitch.

His loved ones staged an intervention

In fact, following Cobain’s failed suicide attempt in March 1994, Love, along with several of his friends and bandmates, enlisted the help of intervention counselor Steven Chatoff. “They called me to see what could be done,” Chatoff explained to Rolling Stone . “He was using, up in Seattle. He was in full denial. It was very chaotic. And they were in fear for his life. It was a crisis.”

In late March, Love, Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear, along with several other friends went through with staging an intervention at Cobain’s home. During the meeting, Love reportedly threatened to leave Cobain , with whom she shared daughter Frances Bean , and his band also issued an ultimatum of breaking up the band, should he not agree to seek treatment at a rehabilitation facility.

READ MORE: The Destructive Romance of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love

Cobain bought a shotgun six days before using it to kill himself

Several days later, Cobain would do just that, but first, he paid a visit to pal Dylan Carlson, who also participated in the aforementioned intervention, at his Seattle home on March 30. Citing problems with trespassers on his property, Cobain asked for help securing a firearm. “He seemed normal, we’d been talking,” Carlson later said. “Plus, I’d loaned him guns before.”

Per Carlson, Cobain gave him about $300 to buy a 20-gauge shotgun and a box of ammunition from Stan’s Gun Shop. Knowing that Cobain was about to depart for treatment near Los Angeles, Carlson said that his friend’s need for the purchase did give him pause: “It seemed kind of weird that he was buying the shotgun before he was leaving. So I offered to hold on to it until he got back.”

Cobain, however, insisted on keeping the weapon himself, and, according to police, he likely dropped off the gun at his home before traveling to Exodus Recovery Center in Marina del Rey, California, later that day.

He spent two days in rehab before fleeing the treatment center

On April 1, Cobain phoned Love with a cryptic message. According to an account, the Hole frontwoman gave a local Seattle newspaper, he said, in part, “Just remember no matter what, I love you.” Later that night — after spending just two days in rehab — staffers said he alerted them that he was stepping out to smoke a cigarette on the patio. Love explained that’s when he allegedly jumped over a more than six-feet-high brick wall and disappeared.

Police suspect he flew back to Seattle where he spent his final days wandering, with neighbors claiming to have spotted an ill-looking Cobain in a park near his home dressed in a heavy coat, which they deemed inappropriate for the April weather. Others have suggested he may have spent a night with an unidentified friend at his nearby summer home.

READ MORE: Kurt Cobain: The Inspiration and Meaning Behind Nirvana's Hit 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'

An electrician discovered Cobain's body more than two days after he shot himself

By April 5, however, law enforcement officials believe Cobain had barricaded himself inside the greenhouse where an electrician who came to the home to install a security system discovered his body, days later. Love later recounted to MTV that after taking drugs, Cobain used the shotgun Carlson had helped him purchase days earlier to shoot himself in the head, thus ending his short life. She also said that her husband left a note in red ink that she read from at a Seattle memorial service.

The loss of the talented musician remained unimaginable for his adoring fans, as well as all of those who knew him personally. "I remember the day after that I woke up and I was heartbroken that he was gone,” Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl later recalled. "I just felt like, 'Okay, so I get to wake up today and have another day and he doesn't.'"

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My Time with Kurt Cobain

In early 1992, when I first met Kurt Cobain, he and Courtney Love were living in a little apartment in a two-up-two-down building on an ordinary street in the Fairfax section of Los Angeles. I had flown there from New York to interview him for a Rolling Stone cover story, the one with a famous photograph of him wearing a homemade T-shirt that said “Corporate Magazines Still Suck.” I was nervous. Not much was known about Kurt at that point, other than he was this guy from Seattle who screamed in his songs, smashed his guitars, and might be a heroin addict. He was also the most celebrated rock musician on the planet.

It was dusk when a taxi dropped me off at his place. Courtney greeted me at the door and graciously offered me a plate of grapes. There was a tiny, dimly lit living room with no furniture, LPs and guitars strewn around the floor, and a small Buddhist shrine with burning candles. As “Norwegian Wood” played faintly on a crappy stereo, Courtney led me down a short hallway to the bedroom. I got to the door and opened it to find Kurt lying in a little bed in a little room, his back against the wall, facing the doorway, his shocking blue eyes gazing at me through the subdued lighting. His bare feet stuck out past the bedsheets, and his toenails were painted a rosy hue. The smell of jasmine flowers wafted through the screen of the window above his head. To this day, whenever I smell jasmine I’m transported to that moment.

“Hi,” he said, and two things struck me instantly. The first was: oh, wow, I know this guy. He wasn’t some sort of rock-and-roll space alien—he was actually like a lot of the stoners I went to high school with. (I was kind of a stoner in high school myself.) All the nervousness went away. The other thing I realized is uncomfortable to say: I sensed that he was one of those rock musicians who dies young. I’d never met someone like that before or even known many people who had died at all. I just sensed it. It turns out that a lot of other people around him did, too: his bandmate Dave Grohl sensed it, and so did Kurt’s wife, Courtney Love. Even Kurt’s own mother acknowledged it. It just wasn’t something that anyone would say out loud at the time.

I sat down on a little footstool next to his bed, started up the tape recorder, and began asking him questions. I asked Kurt what he was like as a kid, and he said something about being small for his age. I stood up, unfurled my wiry five-foot-six-inch frame, and said, in a theatrically manly voice, “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” We exchanged smiles, and our bond grew from there. Somehow I got to talking about Arlo Guthrie’s “The Motorcycle Song” and how I’d play it on the family record player and run around the house pretending I was a motorcycle. And Kurt said, “I did that, too!” He said that his parents had divorced by the time he was ten years old and he’d been melancholic ever since. I told him how I’d felt the same way about my own parents’ divorce, when I was the same age. We grew up on the bands that so many American kids of our era did—Kiss, Cheap Trick, Queen, Black Sabbath—before having our lives changed by punk rock. So here I was, a bespectacled college-boy Rolling Stone journalist from New York City, connecting with a high-school dropout from the rural timber town of Aberdeen, Washington, whose dad worked in a lumber mill counting logs. But that didn’t make me anything special—a whole lot of people could have connected to Kurt Cobain. The beautiful thing was, he had a knack for conveying that in song, and in the most ineffable way.

As I was talking with Kurt, he was experiencing heroin withdrawal. He told me he was in bed because he was nursing a cold, which made sense—he was coming off a tour that had gone from Australia to New Zealand to Singapore to Japan to Hawaii. All those shows and travel would naturally take a toll on anybody, even someone who had just turned twenty-five. It didn’t really seem like he had a cold, but I ignored that. Like many people around him, I just didn’t want to know. Which is ridiculous—I was a reporter .

A few months after the Rolling Stone story came out that April, in 1992, the magazine sent me to England to cover the big Reading Festival, whose final day featured a bill almost entirely composed of grunge bands, with Nirvana headlining. I was staying at the Holiday Inn, where a lot of the bands stayed, too. One evening, I was standing in the lobby, spacing out for a moment, when I swore I felt something gently pass over the top of my head, like a hand an inch away. I ignored it and waited for whoever it was to give up and introduce themselves, but there wasn’t anyone near me. Finally, I turned around, and there, twenty feet away, was Kurt, staring at me with his laser-beam eyes.

I walked up to him. He was glad to see me and said that he liked my Rolling Stone story. In retrospect, I can see why: the article served his purposes. I quoted an anti-drug speech he gave—which he seemed to think let him off the hook for using drugs. I acknowledged that he was truly in love with Courtney, who was getting a lot of grief from the media. I took his crippling stomach pain seriously, which few people did. And I let him plug some of his favorite bands, which helped him feel a little better about his burgeoning fame. In the hotel lobby, we furthered the connection we’d made during the interview. I bought him a vodka-and-orange-juice at the packed bar, and we chatted a bit before the swirl of acquaintances and gawking onlookers compelled Kurt to retreat to his room.

Nirvana’s concert at Reading was a triumph—and not just because they played at all. The U.K. music press had been speculating that Kurt was too heroin-sick to perform, and the rumor was that Nirvana would cancel. But not only did they play; they played what is widely regarded as one of the greatest rock concerts ever. Along with a gaggle of other journalists, I stood at the back of the stage, looking out at thousands of faces bouncing up and down in huge, rolling swells as they pogoed in the light. Onstage, some freaky guy danced with the band like a blissed-out rag doll, doing what everybody in the crowd wished they had the room to do. The music, including a new song called “All Apologies,” was transcendent.

Late one evening a month or so later, the phone rang. It was Courtney. She wanted to know whether I would like to write a book about Nirvana. “That sounds interesting,” I said, playing it as cool as I could manage, “but could I talk to Kurt about it?” She handed the phone to Kurt. “Hey,” he said, in his cigarette growl. I asked why he wanted to do the book. This was shortly after Vanity Fair had published a story that was used as evidence to briefly relieve them of custody of their infant daughter, Frances. Kurt promised me access to anyone I wanted to talk to, and that I could write whatever I wanted. “Just tell the truth,” he said. “That’ll be better than anything else that’s been written about me.”

Before I began writing what would become “ Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana ,” Courtney would sometimes call me, I think partly to try to frame the narrative and partly to ingratiate herself with the guy who was going to write the book—or maybe it was just because she and Kurt liked and trusted me without even knowing me that well. Her conversation was dense with references to various pharmaceuticals I’d never heard of, like Klonopin and diazepam and Vicodin, as if everybody knew what they were—that’s how Courtney talks, as if you’re intimately familiar with all the arcane things and people she’s mentioning at such high velocity. The pharmaceutical thing was so relentless that one day I walked over to the Strand Bookstore and bought a used copy of the “Physicians’ Desk Reference,” a big, fat book listing all prescription drugs and their uses and effects.

On the walk home, I bumped into a particularly distrustful and controlling member of Nirvana’s management team. This was before any of the interviews for the book had begun. If this manager had suspected I was going to write a lurid exposé about Kurt and Courtney’s drug use, I knew that the book would be cancelled. Of course, this person noticed the Strand bag I was now carrying and asked the very question I was dreading: “Oh, what book did you buy?” I mumbled something and quickly changed the subject, dangling the bag behind my back. I can laugh about it now, but my legs were shaking.

From 1994: a final jolt to the rock world he loved and loathed.

For the next six months, I flew to Seattle to conduct interviews, returning to New York to transcribe, research, and write. Being around intense people like Kurt and Courtney, with their constant drama and palpable charisma, was exciting but also stressful and exhausting. The publication of the book was timed to coincide with the release of the “In Utero” album that September, and, when it was done, the publisher felt that we should let Kurt read the book “as a courtesy”—publishing-biz speak for “He can read it, but he can’t change anything”—before advance versions went out to the press. But, given Courtney’s notoriously combative tendencies, they didn’t want her to see it, so we couldn’t simply mail Kurt the manuscript. Instead, I’d fly out to Seattle and have Kurt read the book in my presence. Kurt completely understood why we had to do it this way—Courtney could make things complicated, we all knew that. So I booked a room at the Warwick Hotel, in downtown Seattle, and flew from J.F.K. with the manuscript. The first night, I took out the thick pile of photocopied paper and a box of the chocolate-covered butter cookies that we both liked, set them on a little desk in the corner of the room by the windows, and waited.

Around midnight, there was a knock on my door. Kurt was sober at that time. Courtney had ordered the car-service driver not to make any detours and had somehow slipped me a tiny note asking me to make sure that Kurt didn’t call any pager numbers: “P.S. Xtra secret don’t tell I wrote this.” Kurt sat down at the desk and began reading. He smoked constantly and read intently. I kicked back on the bed and worked on an article or played solitaire on my laptop. It was very quiet. The only sounds were the distant gurgling of the hotel’s plumbing, a hum whenever the ventilation system switched on, and Kurt turning pages.

Occasionally, he’d pipe up and say, “Yeah, yeah, this reads real good.” Sometimes he would chuckle at something funny or sigh at something painful. A few times, he moaned and asked, “Aw, do you have to keep that in?” I don’t remember every passage that bothered him, but one was about a breakdown he had onstage in Rome, in the autumn of 1989. Every time Kurt objected, I’d explain why it had to stay in the book, and he never pressed the matter. After all, that was our original agreement—to do it any other way would be, as he said in our first conversation about the book, “too Guns N’ Roses.” Once in a while, he’d point out a factual error, like correcting the name of the aunt who gave him his first guitar lessons.

That first night, he got about a third of the way through the book before he started to fade. It was a lot to absorb. I imagine that he was mostly thinking about how this would play to the authorities who wanted to take his child from him. I also think he may have been looking at it as Nirvana’s chief conceptualist, weighing how everything squared with how he wanted the band—and himself—to be perceived.

Kurt, being a student of rock history, knew that the story of a rock band is essentially a legend—in the sense that there’s some wiggle room in the truth as long as it serves the over-all myth. So Kurt was an unreliable narrator of his own story. That’s nothing new—it would be hard to name any rock star who wasn’t the same. It’s up to the journalist to determine what’s true and what isn’t. But sometimes journalists play along because they’re naïve, lazy, or overworked, or they want to be in on the game because it makes for sensational copy. Whatever the reason, it works to the artist’s advantage. I wasn’t rigorous about investigating Kurt’s mythologizing—for one thing, a tight deadline meant that I just didn’t have the time, and, for another, he had charmed me and I unquestioningly bought a lot of his tall tales—which turned out well for him.

The second night was a repeat of the first: me and a guy reading the book I wrote about him, in a generic little hotel room, punctuated by the rustle of paper and the occasional grunt of appreciation or soft chuckle. He told me it was illuminating to read about his entire life in chronological order. Very few people have that luxury. Sometimes he’d take a break, and we’d stand together by the window overlooking Fourth Avenue and talk, eat cookies, or look down to the street, where little gangs of homeless kids swarmed around taxis stopped at red lights, trying to wangle a few bucks out of the cabbies. During those breaks, we didn’t speak about the book—instead, we talked about people we knew in common, music we were listening to, or politics. Sometimes we’d just stare out the window at the city without saying anything at all.

A little before dawn on the third night, he turned over the last page, planted his palm on the top of the stack as if absorbing its vibrations, and took a long drag on his cigarette. Then he got up, walked over to me, and said, “That’s the best rock book I’ve ever read.” He hugged me and looked me in the eye. “Thank you,” he said, and then he was gone.

My publisher was surprised and immensely relieved that Kurt had only a few minor factual corrections. They were expecting him to raise a fuss, possibly to the point that it could torpedo the whole book—which had already happened with another book about the band. What the publisher overlooked was that the most sensational things were said by Kurt himself. But also, once again, I had dutifully noted down Kurt’s key talking points, particularly about being a good, loving parent; that’s all he cared about. The rest was window dressing. There’s a popular misconception that Kurt was just a guileless junkie. But that’s a fallacy. He totally knew what he was doing.

After I was done with the book, Kurt and I became friends. I don’t claim to have been his exclusive confidant or anything, but, every once in a while, the phone would ring in the wee hours of the morning. It was ridiculous that he’d call at such an hour—he didn’t seem to have considered the time difference between Seattle and New York, or maybe he thought that everyone else was as nocturnal as he was—but I always picked up. I worried that he might be in a crisis, and I didn’t ever want to regret that I’d ignored a crucial call.

Usually Kurt would want to rail, sometimes volcanically, about management or the label or the band. And after he’d gotten it all off his chest he’d suddenly realize that he’d been talking completely about himself, pause, and ask, “So how are you?”

In July, 1993, Nirvana came to New York to play a show at the Roseland Ballroom, a cavernous former dance hall in midtown Manhattan. It was for the CMJ convention, which catered to college radio stations and was a key platform for promoting the forthcoming “In Utero.” While he was in town, Kurt had a business dinner with a bunch of “the grownups,” as he disdainfully referred to the various executives involved in the band’s affairs, at a fancy restaurant on the East Side. He asked me to come along—I suppose so he wouldn’t be completely alone with business types. Or maybe he wanted me to see for myself what he was always complaining about.

Eight of us sat around a large, circular table. I sat directly across from Kurt, out of conversation range, but I could see that he was uncomfortable. He was withdrawn and not responding much to anything anyone said to him. Everyone tried to pretend like nothing was wrong. They all ordered food—appetizers, entrées, and wine—but Kurt ordered only a slice of cake. “That’s all you’re going to have, Kurt?” someone asked. Kurt just kind of mumbled.

Kurt excused himself to go to the bathroom. He was gone a long time. I considered the possibility that he had sneaked out of the restaurant. That would have been brilliant. But, eventually, just as I was starting to think that someone should go check on him, he returned. He was high, dazed, his eyelids nearly closed. He was nodding slightly. It was the first time I’d ever been sure that Kurt was high on heroin. Surely everyone else at the table could see this, too, but no one acknowledged it in any way, and the conversation continued around Kurt, as if he were a senile grandparent. It was obvious to me that Kurt got high at that dinner deliberately, as a self-destructive protest.

The ostensible purpose of the dinner, aside from dining at a fancy restaurant and putting the bill on the expense account, was to discuss some pressing business decision with Kurt. But Kurt was in no condition to make any decisions. When the check was paid, everyone scattered. So I found myself standing on the sidewalk with Kurt, who was stoned out of his mind on heroin in a city he didn’t know well. I walked him back to his hotel, holding on to his arm—as if he were an elderly person—in case he stumbled. I made sure that he didn’t walk into other people, or traffic.

When we arrived at his hotel room, Courtney was lying on the bed, reading a magazine. She wasn’t surprised that Kurt was high, just disappointed. She’d been working hard to keep him away from drugs, and she scolded him a little bit while he stood there, sheepish and unsteady, offering only halfhearted protests and denials. Then he flopped down on the end of the bed, sidewise, and Courtney nonchalantly put up her feet on his back like he was a sofa cushion. I got the sense that something like this had happened many times before. Kurt was sleeping, or something like it, and Courtney apparently had things under control, so I left them and headed down the hall to stop by a little party the rest of the band and crew were having. Kurt overdosed later that evening. He had gone to the bathroom for a long time. Then Courtney heard a thud. She opened the door—or tried to, but Kurt’s unconscious body was blocking the doorway.

The band and crew’s party couldn’t have been more different from the heartbreaking scene in Kurt’s hotel room: here, there was booze, horseplay, and a blaring boom box. But it, too, became terrifying. Soon after I arrived, one of the guys in the band stepped out the window and onto a broad ledge on the side of the building, several stories above the street. He started walking on the ledge toward the next window of the room—which was maybe ten feet away. I was petrified. He was hammered, not the ideal condition for tightrope walking. I thought that I was about to witness a horrific moment in rock history, but he made it. Everybody in the room cheered. Then one of the crew tried it. And I was petrified all over again, but he made it, too. Then the guy in the band went a second time. By now, I was thoroughly freaked out. But he made it again, and, thankfully, there were no more ledge walks. I made a beeline for the drinks table.

Courtney eventually forced her way into the bathroom and saw Kurt turning blue. Terrified, she sent word out to the band’s crew: pack up the equipment—there will be no show tomorrow, because Kurt is dead. I’m not sure who resuscitated him, or how, but he played a great concert at Roseland the following night.

In October, 1993, I visited Kurt in Seattle while the band was rehearsing for the “In Utero” tour, and one night he invited me to a practice. He claimed it would be boring, but then he said everything about his life was boring. It wasn’t, of course.

The band’s practice space was in a loft building in the SoDo neighborhood, a grim industrial area south of downtown. The long, concrete-floored hallway leading to their room was lined on one side with cremation urns, which were manufactured in another area on the floor. It was late when we arrived, and the entire building was silent. At that point, Nirvana was perhaps the biggest band in the world, but you’d never know it from their rehearsal space. The room was about six hundred square feet, with windows that looked out onto other industrial loft buildings. A small riser for the drum set was as fancy as they got. There was a modest P.A., some ordinary-looking amps, and a couple of standard-issue microphones. They had no soundproofing, no sound person, no special lights, no recording equipment, no well-stocked bar. A few mismatched old chairs were strewn around the room, some concert posters hung on the wall, and there was a small fridge. It could almost have been your band’s practice space.

They fussed with the P.A. a little, and then they were off, running down songs from “In Utero.” Kurt ran the rehearsal, giving specific directions to each of the musicians. They played sections of songs, starting and stopping until Kurt felt that things were right. I suppose this was what Kurt thought was the boring part, but it was illuminating to see how much he controlled things, how exacting he was with music that appeared so rough-hewn. It was difficult to hear some of the flaws Kurt wanted to correct, but when the band fixed them it was obvious that everything had snapped into place.

The following month, Courtney decided that it would be good if I joined Nirvana’s U.S. tour for a little while. I was a relatively steady person, a little older, and drug-free. She figured that I would be good company for Kurt on the road, maybe help keep him on the straight and narrow—if only by example. I don’t know if I accomplished that, and I didn’t wind up spending all that much time with Kurt, but I think that having someone else on the bus did break up a little of the tension and boredom. Sometimes a cloud gathered over the touring party. That was largely due to Kurt’s mental state; his mood, dark or light, pervaded every room, and it depended a lot on whether he’d been fighting with Courtney. But everyone in the band felt some sort of tension: even if they tried to make light of it, Kurt, the bassist Krist Novoselic, and the drummer Dave Grohl felt the enormous pressure of being a world-famous rock group and resented the invasive journalism that comes with it. There were tensions within the band, too.

Once, I stopped by Kurt’s hotel room when he started yelling that he wanted to fire Dave, unquestionably one of the great rock drummers, for being an unsubtle and unspontaneous musician. The thing was, Dave was staying in the room right next door. I hissed at Kurt, “He can hear! ” “I don’t care!” Kurt yelled back, more at the adjoining wall than at me. I was sure that Dave heard the whole thing. Regardless, Dave was already aware of Kurt’s feelings. He told his biographer, Paul Brannigan, that on a flight from Seattle to Los Angeles he had overheard Kurt bad-mouthing his drumming two rows back. Once they landed, Dave told their trusty Scottish tour manager, Alex MacLeod, that he was quitting the band after the last scheduled show. MacLeod talked him out of it.

After we reached Dallas, Kurt called my room and asked whether I wanted to walk around downtown with him, the kindly Pat Smear (an early L.A. punk icon and now a rhythm guitarist on the tour), and Kurt’s daughter, Frances, fifteen months old at the time. We rolled out with Kurt pushing Frances in her stroller, making her laugh with a ridiculous assortment of rude noises. The emptiness of downtown Dallas on a weekday afternoon was baffling to me, a provincial New Yorker, but great for Kurt, who could stroll around without being hassled by fans.

Walking down a wide boulevard, we found ourselves at the edge of a big open space. An enormous flock of grackles circled above, forming an undulating disk so vast and dense that the sunlight filtering through looked gray. It felt apocalyptic. Except for the occasional car, there was not another human being in sight. It dawned on me that this was Dealey Plaza, the site of the John F. Kennedy assassination. There was the former Texas School Book Depository and, surprisingly close by, the “grassy knoll.” Like countless other people, we examined the crime scene, considered the angles, weighed conspiracy theories. Eventually, Frances needed baby supplies, so Kurt rolled off with her to a drugstore. That was the last time I saw Kurt Cobain.

On or about April 5, 1994, Kurt went up to an attic over his garage, took a lot of heroin, and then killed himself with a shotgun. He left a note. Its closing words were “peace, love, empathy.”

The quality of empathy was very important to Kurt; he spoke of it often. Which might come as a surprise, given all the wanton vandalism and assorted other mischief he committed as a teen and indeed throughout his all-too-brief adult life, not to mention his avowed disdain for so many of the people around him. How much empathy did he have when he hit a man on the head with his guitar during a show in Dallas, in 1991?

But maybe, as Kurt claimed, opiates really did still his misanthropic impulses and help him experience empathy, or something resembling it. Maybe his outspokenness about empathy was actually a passive-aggressive plea for people to have empathy for him . At any rate, Kurt avowedly cherished the ability to imagine what other people are feeling, right down to the last moments of his life. In his suicide note, the word “empathy” was underlined twice. His name was in the smallest lettering on the whole page.

Then there’s the question of why he did it. In an outtake from Grant Gee’s 2007 documentary, “Joy Division,” there’s an interview with the iconic English post-punk band’s former road manager Terry Mason. Mason describes what happens almost every time someone finds out that he used to work with the group, whose singer, Ian Curtis, hanged himself, in 1980. “All the time, they’re dancing around their humbug to ask me the big one. They always want to ask that, and it usually starts with the line ‘I’m not a ghoul like the others, but why did Ian kill himself?’ ” Mason says. “Everyone thinks there’s some deep, dark, mystical secret. And there’s not. He was a nice guy, got into a strange situation, and the only way he could think about [it] at that time was to kill himself. Sorry, no secrets.” And then, twenty-seven years after his friend’s death, it looks like Mason might start to cry. But before he does he looks straight into the camera and says, “Cut.”

People often ask me why Kurt killed himself. Actually, what frequently happens is, they wind up telling me why he killed himself. They have their opinions, despite never having met him, and dismiss my firsthand observations of Kurt as incompatible with what they already believe. Very few of them acknowledge this simple, unsensational fact: Kurt had several clinically established risk factors for suicide, including inhuman levels of professional pressure, chronic and severe physical pain, and a heroin addiction that he just couldn’t seem to shake (or didn’t want to). He also had a long family history of suicide.

Both sides of Kurt’s family are marked by suicides. In 1913, his great-grandfather’s sister Florence Cobain, seventeen years old, wanted to go to the movies, but her father wouldn’t let her, so she shot herself in the chest with a rifle. Somehow she survived and lived to be ninety-four. One of Kurt’s great-grandfathers on his mother’s side attempted suicide with a knife. He survived but died later, after purposely reopening the wounds in a psychiatric hospital. In 1938, when Kurt’s grandfather, Leland, and Leland’s brothers Burle and Kenneth Cobain, were young men, their father, John, a deputy sheriff, was sitting on a stool at the beer counter of a store in Markham, Washington, twelve miles southwest of Aberdeen. John apparently reached in his pocket for a cigarette and accidentally knocked his pistol out of its holster. The gun dropped to the floor and discharged, killing him. In 1979, when Kurt was twelve, Burle killed himself with a gun. Five years later, Kenneth did.

I didn’t know any of that history when I wrote “Come as You Are,” nor was it the kind of thing I even thought to ask about. All I knew was that I had the distinct feeling that Kurt would not live a long life. But what, if anything, could I do about it? Was it even my place to get involved?

A couple of times, I did get involved. One evening, in 1993, I got a panic-stricken call from Courtney, who told me that Kurt had locked himself in a room in their house. He was distraught, she said, and had a gun and was threatening to use it on himself. She was terrified. So was I. I asked if I could speak with Kurt, but there was no way to get the phone to him. I could hear him yelling in the background. I told her to call the police and to keep me posted. Then I called one of Nirvana’s managers. I relayed what was happening and said that such a volatile person, who did drugs and had a small child, absolutely should not have guns. There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and then a reply: “I’ll take care of it.”

When Kurt started spiralling down, I remembered a visit to his hotel room while he was on tour in New Orleans. We were lying on his bed, talking and watching a Pete Townshend concert on public television with the sound off, and Kurt marvelled at how Townshend was so passionate about making music—even after, in Kurt’s opinion, his music was no longer any good. I’d been a huge Who fan as a teen and noted his respect for his fellow guitar smasher Townshend. Months later, I was part of a team working with Townshend on a project about the history of the Who’s 1969 rock opera, “Tommy.” Townshend had helped his friend Eric Clapton recover from a heroin addiction years earlier and was all too familiar with substance abuse. I asked Townshend whether he might have a word with Kurt about beating heroin and dealing with the slings and arrows of fame. I gave him Kurt’s phone number, hoping that he would call and that Kurt would listen.

An appreciation of Nirvana’s “Nevermind.”

“When Cobain was in deep trouble with heroin addiction in 1993,” Townshend wrote in the Guardian , in 2002, “Azerrad asked if I would contact Cobain, who was in constant danger of overdosing. I had chosen this year to give booze another gentle try after 11 years. When Azerrad approached me, I was not drunk, nor unsympathetic, but I did not make the necessary judgment I would make today that an immediate ‘intervention’ was required to save his life.” To this day, Townshend probably wonders what might have happened had he gotten through to Kurt. That’s the kind of thing that haunts people who know people who have committed suicide: Is there something I could have done? Twenty-seven years later, I still ask myself that question. I tried, but perhaps I could have—and should have—tried harder. The thing is, although I was in my early thirties, I was still immature and naïve. Maybe I wasn’t so well suited to the task.

And there were other people much closer to Kurt. Krist Novoselic had known for a long time that Kurt didn’t exactly have a lust for life. In Krist’s interview with the historian John Hughes for the Washington State Web site, he recalled an early tour when he was reading “ One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich ,” the 1962 classic by the Russian dissident novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Kurt asked him what the book was about, and Krist said it was about prisoners suffering in a brutal Soviet Gulag in Siberia. “And he’s like, ‘Ah, and they still want to live?’ ” Krist recalled. “He was disgusted.”

Krist could have been a crucial port in the storm, but, sadly, Kurt had begun to push his friend away in 1990, when Krist told Kurt that he disapproved of his heroin use. They were never as close again. Things got a little better when they were rehearsing before the recording of “In Utero”—there was the excitement of playing new songs, working with the revered recording engineer Steve Albini, and starting a new, more artistically liberated phase of the band. But, by the time they recorded the “Unplugged” show in New York, in November, 1993, they had become distant again. Kurt surrounded himself with his wife and child and a different set of friends, several of whom were drug addicts, and Krist didn’t feel welcome.

In rereading “Come as You Are” recently, for an annotated version that I’m working on, I began to notice leitmotifs that I had missed when I was in the thick of writing the original. Twenty-eight years can give you some objectivity. One of those recurring themes was how Kurt understood that every good legend has a protagonist and an antagonist. There’s a Greek word for this eternal conflict: agon. The protagonist of this particular legend is Kurt Cobain, but the antagonist changes over the course of his story: Aberdeen bullies; the town of Aberdeen itself; Kurt’s mother; Kurt’s father; various drummers; homophobes; misogynists; racists; the band’s previous label, Sub Pop; his own body; “the grownups”; Pearl Jam; heroin addiction; their current label, Geffen/DGC; and so on. For every setback, there is something or someone else to blame, and when one antagonist left the stage he found a new one, usually embellishing or even manufacturing their sins in order to enhance his own victimhood. There was always, as one of his songs put it, something in the way.

This coping mechanism may have started when Kurt was very little and had imaginary friends. “There was one called Boddah,” his mother, Wendy, told me for the Rolling Stone story. “He blamed everything on him.” Another antagonist was Kurt himself: the self that he hated and wanted to die. In legends, the protagonist is supposed to vanquish the antagonist. That didn’t happen this time. Or perhaps it did.

I thought that I was prepared for Kurt’s death, although I didn’t know whether it would come in days or decades. Then, suddenly, it happened. That’s when I found out that you never really can be prepared for such a thing. I don’t remember much from the weeks and months after. I could outwardly function, but inside I felt catatonic and remained grief-stricken for several years. I can’t even imagine what people who were closer to Kurt went through. “The awful thing about suicide is, the person who commits suicide, their problems are over,” the Joy Division bassist, Peter Hook, said, in a 2020 podcast about the band. “And yet yours, and everybody left behind—his family, his parents, everybody else, in every occasion—theirs is just beginning. And they last all your life.”

Dealing with the death of someone you know is always difficult and strange, but that difficulty and strangeness is vastly compounded when the person was a public figure. When a parent dies, for instance, you can dole out the information at a rate you’re comfortable with. You can tell friends and co-workers one at a time—or not at all. They offer their condolences, share a memory of the person if they knew them, say a few supportive words, and that’s it. But, when it’s a public figure, everyone knows right away. If people know that you knew the famous person, a lot of them will reach out to you, even if they wouldn’t have done the same had a relative died. Often, they have a parasocial relationship with the celebrity, an emotional attachment to someone who did not know them. They tell you, unbidden, what that person meant to them. They don’t seem to understand that you did actually know and love this person, and they knew and loved you, and that you’re on a different level of grieving.

Many people asked what Kurt was really like. The more I explained it, the more my answer became rote, in turn pushing Kurt further and further away, reducing him to a few pat, well-rehearsed anecdotes. This went on for a long time—in fact, decades.

There are the people who tell me with absolute certainty that Kurt was murdered. They have seen a movie about it, or read something on the Internet that left them utterly convinced of this outlandish and highly improbable scenario. I understand that people have trouble coming to terms with the fact that someone they adored so much would do this to himself—and to them—so they look for someone else to blame. At first, I would patiently explain that Kurt was deeply depressed, repeatedly telegraphed what he was going to do, and that there was no evidence to the contrary. Explaining this time and time again only deepened my sadness, so eventually I learned to just abruptly cut off the conversation.

The mainstream news media were largely clueless about Kurt, and often tasteless and cruel. In an episode of “The Larry Sanders Show” that aired after Kurt’s death, Garry Shandling’s character is reading the newspaper. “It turns out the electrician found Kurt Cobain’s body two days after he was dead,” he says. “Talk about grunge.” By far the worst was the crotchety “60 Minutes” commentator Andy Rooney. “Everything about Kurt Cobain makes me suspicious,” Rooney ranted. “This picture shows him in a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee. I doubt that Kurt Cobain ever did enough work to wear a hole in his pants. He probably had ten pairs just like these hanging in the closet—all with fake holes in the knee. . . . If Kurt Cobain applied the same brain to his music that he applied to his drug-infested life, it’s reasonable to think that his music may not have made much sense, either.” I wanted to kick in my television screen.

Sales of “Come as You Are” spiked in the wake of Kurt’s death. I felt awful that I was benefitting financially from this horrific, heartbreaking thing. A wise friend reassured me, “Being a good journalist means being in the right place at the right time. That’s what you did. Don’t feel bad.” That made me feel a little better. The truth is, I would soon need the money—I was so depressed for the next few years that I couldn’t work much. The world became like the iris in old silent movies, when the picture closes up into a circle in the middle of the screen, surrounded by blackness.

For many years, if Nirvana’s music started playing, I would quietly step outside until it was over. I never played it at home, either. Hearing it triggered such vivid, intense memories—and feelings of regret. The music’s strength—it really is an open window into Kurt’s soul—only reminded me of all the hints I’d missed, things I could have done and stupid things I shouldn’t have done. But a few years ago, at a loud bar in the East Village with some friends, several songs from the band’s 1991 blockbuster album, “Nevermind,” started playing at high volume. This time, instead of stepping outside, I stayed and listened. And you know what? Those are great, enduring songs played by a world-class rock band and sung by one of the great rock singers. Despite Kurt’s torment—or in a determined attempt to overcome it—Nirvana made life-affirming music. It made me feel better.

Until recently, I hadn’t read anything about Nirvana, either. I didn’t want other people’s reminiscences and speculation to muddy my own memories. “Who put these fingerprints on my imagination?” Elvis Costello once sang. I didn’t want someone else’s fingerprints on my memories. But my strong desire to put my experience with Nirvana behind me was nothing compared with how Kurt felt. “I wish nobody ever knew what my real name was,” Kurt says in “Come as You Are.” “So I could some day be a normal citizen again.” His desire reminds me of a daydream I still have now and then, in which Kurt faked his death. He staged it so he could quit everything, run away somewhere, and start a new, anonymous life. In this fantasy, I’m walking down the street and I recognize him. He’s disguised somehow, maybe with a big beard and a baseball hat pulled down low, but his laser-blue eyes instantly give him away. He sees me, too, but we just nod at each other, smile, and keep walking.

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40 Facts About Kurt Cobain

Written by Karlee Stock

Modified & Updated: 10 Sep 2024

• Celebrities Facts

Kurt Cobain, the enigmatic frontman of Nirvana, remains a towering figure in music history. Born on February 20, 1967, in Aberdeen, Washington, Cobain's life was a blend of creativity, rebellion, and personal struggle. Why does Kurt Cobain still captivate fans decades after his tragic death? His raw, introspective songwriting and distinctive vocal style defined the grunge movement of the 1990s. Cobain's influence extends beyond music, impacting fashion, art , and social justice. From his early days as a singing toddler to his rise as a rock icon, Cobain's journey was marked by profound highs and lows. Despite his untimely death in 1994, his legacy endures, inspiring new generations.

Key Takeaways:

• Kurt Cobain's early exposure to music and rebellious youth shaped his unique persona, leading to his rise to fame with Nirvana and his lasting impact on the music world.
• Kurt Cobain's legacy continues to inspire and resonate with fans and musicians worldwide, with his advocacy for social issues and his raw, emotive vocals defining Nirvana's sound.

Early Life and Family

Kurt Cobain's journey began in Aberdeen, Washington , where his early experiences shaped his future. Here are some key moments from his childhood and family life.

• Kurt Cobain was born to Donald and Wendy Cobain. His parents divorced when he was nine years old , profoundly affecting him and influencing his music.
• Cobain started singing at the age of two and by four, he had written a song about a trip to the park. This early exposure to music laid the foundation for his future as a songwriter and musician.
• Kurt has a sister, Kimberly, who is three years younger. Born on April 24, 1970, Kimberly has spoken publicly about her brother's struggles and the impact his death had on their family.

Rebellious Youth

Kurt's teenage years were marked by rebellion and a search for identity. These experiences contributed to his unique persona .

• Cobain was arrested a couple of times as a teenager. The first arrest was for spraying graffiti on the wall of a bank in 1985, including the phrase: “Ain'T goT no how waTchamacalliT.” The second arrest was for walking across a roof while intoxicated in May 1986.
• Before his rise to fame, Cobain worked as a swimming instructor for pre-school kids. This gig might have inspired the cover of Nirvana's album "Nevermind," which features a baby swimming towards a dollar bill.
• Kurt's first gig was a hair metal band called Sammy Hagar and his band Quarterflash at the Seattle Center Coliseum in March 1983. Although he later claimed his first concert was by The Melvins or Black Flag, several friends confirm that it was indeed a hair metal band.

Musical Influences and Early Bands

Kurt's musical journey was influenced by various artists and bands, shaping his unique sound.

• As a young teenager, Kurt loved the Steven Spielberg film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." He could recite the dialogue off by heart and even copied Richard Dreyfuss's obsessive mashed potato sculpting from the film.
• Nirvana originally had several awful band names, including Pen Cap Chew, Ted Ed Fred, Skid Row (later picked up by a New Jersey rock band), and the charmingly-titled Fecal Matter. Thankfully, they settled on Nirvana.
• According to his journals, while the first punk album he bought was The Clash's Sandinista, he preferred the music of John Lydon and the Sex Pistols. This preference reflects his affinity for raw, rebellious music.

Rise to Fame

Kurt's rise to fame with Nirvana was meteoric, marked by iconic performances and groundbreaking music.

• In 1993, Kurt Cobain performed a gig after overdosing on heroin earlier that day. Despite turning blue, he recovered and went on to play the show and do a magazine photo shoot.
• Kurt's favorite book was "Perfume" by Patrick Süskind, subtitled "The Story Of A Murderer." This historical novel inspired Cobain to write the song "Scentless Apprentice," which appears on Nirvana's album "In Utero".
• In 1993, Kurt claimed that the follow-up to "In Utero" would be "pretty ethereal, acoustic, like R.E.M.'s last album." He had struck up a friendship with Michael Stipe , and this collaboration would have resulted in a more acoustic album.

Personal Life and Relationships

Kurt's personal life was as tumultuous as his career, marked by intense relationships and personal struggles.

• Kurt Cobain was married to singer Courtney Love. The couple had a volatile relationship but shared a passion for music, with Love fronting the band Hole.
• Cobain was heavily involved in the songwriting process for Nirvana. He wrote the majority of the band’s songs, often drawing from personal experiences and emotions.
• The term "grunge" was commonly associated with Nirvana’s music. Their sound, characterized by its raw and gritty nature , became synonymous with the grunge movement of the 1990s.

Advocacy and Influence

Kurt used his platform to advocate for social issues and influenced countless artists.

• Kurt Cobain was an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights . He openly expressed support for the community , using his platform to promote equality and acceptance.
• Nirvana’s album "In Utero" received critical acclaim. The band’s third and final studio album showcased a darker and more introspective side of Cobain’s songwriting.
• Kurt Cobain was known for his distinctive vocal style. His raspy and emotive vocals became instantly recognizable and helped define Nirvana’s sound.

Legacy and Impact

Kurt's legacy continues to inspire and resonate with fans and musicians worldwide.

• Nirvana’s music continues to influence musicians to this day. Bands like Foo Fighters, Muse, and Weezer have credited Nirvana as a significant influence.
• Kurt Cobain was a talented visual artist . He created many drawings and paintings throughout his life.
• Nirvana’s final studio album was "In Utero," released in 1993. This album further solidified the band’s status as one of the most influential bands of their generation.

Iconic Moments

Kurt's career was filled with memorable moments that left a lasting impression on fans and the music industry.

• Kurt Cobain was known for his punk rock fashion sense. His style, characterized by worn-out flannel shirts and ripped jeans , became iconic and a symbol of the grunge movement.
• Nirvana won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in 1995. Their compilation album "MTV Unplugged in New York" garnered critical acclaim and recognition from the music industry.
• Kurt Cobain tragically took his own life on April 5, 1994, leaving a lasting impact on the music world .

Honors and Tributes

Kurt's contributions to music have been recognized and honored in various ways.

• Nirvana was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. The band’s influence and contribution to the music industry were recognized with this prestigious honor.
• Kurt Cobain’s first band before Nirvana was called Fecal Matter. This band was formed in 1985 and featured Cobain on guitar and vocals.
• Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love first met in early 1989 at a Dharma Bums gig, with Nirvana performing as the opening act .

Behind the Scenes

Kurt's life behind the scenes reveals more about his personality and creative process.

• Nirvana’s final studio album, "In Utero," was produced by Steve Albini. Albini’s production style emphasized raw, live recordings, which suited Cobain’s vision for the album .
• Before forming Nirvana, Cobain had auditioned to be in the Melvins but was rejected.
• While still a teenager, Cobain lived at a friend’s house for eight months and slept on the sofa .

Unique Hobbies and Interests

Kurt had several unique hobbies and interests that showcased his multifaceted personality.

• When Nirvana was on the rise, Metallica sent them a fax that read: “We really dig Nirvana. Nevermind is the best album of the year. Let’s get together soon, Metallica. PS, Lars hates the band.”
• For many years, Cobain enjoyed making Super-8 films. One of these movies contains a scene in which Cobain commits suicide .
• In his free time, Cobain liked to buy big hunks of meat from the grocery store and then go out into the woods to shoot at them with a variety of guns.

Struggles and Challenges

Kurt faced numerous struggles and challenges throughout his life, both personally and professionally.

• For a time, Cobain would often throw up before each show. This pre-show ritual highlights the intense pressure and anxiety he faced as a performer.
• In June 1976, shortly after his parents divorced, a young Cobain scribbled onto his bedroom wall, “I hate Mom, I hate Dad, Dad hates Mom, Mom hates Dad, it simply makes you want to be sad.”
• One of Cobain’s friends, Carrie Montgomery , once said that he “made women want to nurture and protect him. He was a paradox in that way, because he also could be brutally and intensely strong, yet at the same time, he could appear fragile and delicate.”

Final Years and Reflections

Kurt's final years were marked by introspection and a search for meaning.

• Cobain came close to joining the Navy, even meeting with a recruitment officer at one point to discuss enrolling.
• A line from one of Cobain’s journals reads: “I have met many minds able to store and translate a pregnantly large amount of information, yet they havent an ounce of talent for wisdom or the appreciation of passion.”
• Cobain recorded his first songs in December 1982 at his Aunt Mari’s house. These early recordings involved a guitar, bass, and drums .
• After performing “Territorial Pissings” on Saturday Night Live, Cobain and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic began French-kissing. SNL refused to air the footage on reruns.

Kurt Cobain's Lasting Impact

Kurt Cobain's life and music continue to resonate deeply with fans around the world. His raw talent, unique voice , and rebellious spirit helped shape the grunge movement and left an indelible mark on rock music. Despite his struggles with addiction and mental health , Cobain's artistry remains a beacon of authenticity and emotion. From his early days in Aberdeen to his rise as Nirvana's frontman , Cobain's journey was filled with both triumphs and tribulations. His influence extends beyond music, touching fashion, art, and social justice. Though his life ended tragically, Cobain's legacy lives on through his powerful songs and the impact he had on countless artists and fans. His story serves as a reminder of the complexities of fame and the enduring power of genuine expression. Kurt Cobain will always be remembered as a true icon of his generation.

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Your complete Kurt Cobain reading guide: Journals, biographies, and more

Reading to remember

On the 25th anniversary of Kurt Cobain 's death, HarperCollins ' Ecco published Serving the Servant , a fascinating biography of the Nirvana frontman by none other than Danny Goldberg, the band's iconic manager. ( Available for purchase. ) The book works to reframe Cobain's legacy by blending Goldberg's memories with information and files that have previously not been public. As Cobain is remembered, it's vital reading—though hardly the only book out there worth your time. Here, EW has rounded up the essential Cobain reading list.

Journals by Kurt Cobain

Arranged in close chronological order and kept in their rawest form, Journals is a necessary read for any Cobain fan: a collection of his writings, from scrapped notes and letter drafts to wild sketches and shopping lists, which offer unparalleled access into his interior life. The No. 1 New York Times best-seller was originally published in 2002. "The publication of this unintentional autobiography of the famously talented and infamously troubled artist is a vast leap in the mythologizing and marketing of Kurt Cobain," EW wrote at the time of release. "And the journey from Cobain's hands to a store near you involves healthy measures of the serendipitous and the surreal."

Heavier Than Heaven by Charles R. Cross

Charles R. Cross' definitive biography of Cobain traces his life story via more than 400 interviews and intimate access to the Nirvana frontman's private journals and lyrics. Despite its breadth and close sourcing, Heavier Than Heaven drew criticism for Cross' subjective account of Cobain's final hours.

Love & Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain by Max Wallace and Ian Halperin

This 2004 best-selling book, co-written by Ian Halperin and Max Wallace, arrived as a controversial work of investigative journalism. Drawing on dozens of hours of conversation audiotapes obtained by the authors, Love & Death makes the argument that Cobain was murdered, with his then-wife Courtney Love a potential conspirator. The book is a product of a rigorous decade-long process for Halperin and Wallace.

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck by Brett Morgen

A companion to the HBO documentary of the same name, Montage of Heck includes extensive interviews, gorgeous animation stills, and previously-unseen photography as filmmaker Brett Morgen put on screen. It doesn't shed a ton of new light on Cobain, but it's perfect reading for those who've yet to check out the heartbreaking, illuminating documentary.

Godspeed by Barnaby Legg & Jim McCarthy & Flameboy

This explicit, starkly visual homage to Cobain combines biographical details with interpretations of the artist's internal struggles. Barnaby Legg and Jim McCarthy constructed their story accordingly, while the vivid, nightmarishly provocative art came courtesy of Flameboy.

Kurt Cobain: The Last Session by Jesse Frohman & Glenn O'Brien & Jon Savage

Get inside of Cobain's final photoshoot with Nirvana, which took place in August 1993. In The Last Session , 90 stunning photographs present a dazzling final visual memory of the man, capturing him in a plethora of extreme, intense emotional states.

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Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain Paperback – April 2, 2019

• Print length 448 pages
• Language English
• Publication date April 2, 2019
• Dimensions 5.25 x 1.13 x 8 inches
• ISBN-10 0316492442
• ISBN-13 978-0316492447
• See all details

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About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hachette Books; Updated,Expanded edition (April 2, 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0316492442
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316492447
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.2 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 1.13 x 8 inches
• #28 in Rock Music (Books)
• #30 in Rock Band Biographies

About the author

Charles r. cross.

Charles R. Cross graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle with a degree in creative writing. At the UW, he served as editor of the Daily in 1979, and caused a major ruckus when he left the front page of the newspaper blank. The only type was a small line that read “The White Issue,” in deference to the Beatles’ White Album.

After college, Cross served as editor of The Rocket, the Northwest’s music and entertainment magazine, from 1986 through 2000. The Rocket was hailed as “the best regional music magazine in the nation” by the L.A. Reader, and it was the first publication ever to run a story on Nirvana. Cross wrote stories on such seminal Northwest bands as The Wailers, Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and hundreds, if not thousands, of lesser-known bands. In addition to The Rocket, Cross’s writing has appeared in hundreds of magazines, including Rolling Stone, Esquire, Playboy, Spin, Guitar World, Q, Uncut, and Creem. He has also written for many newspapers and alternative weeklies, including the London Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Seattle Times, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He has lectured and read at universities and colleges around the world, and has frequently been interviewed for film, radio, and television documentaries, including VH1’s "Behind the Music."

Cross is the author of seven books, including 2005’s Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix (published by Hyperion in the U.S., and Hodder in the U.K.). His 2001 release, Heavier Than Heaven: The Biography of Kurt Cobain (Hyperion/Hodder), was a New York Times bestseller and was called “one of the most moving and revealing books ever written about a rock star” by the Los Angeles Times. In 2002, Heavier Than Heaven won the ASCAP Timothy White Award for outstanding biography. Cross’s other books include the national bestseller Cobain Unseen (Little Brown), Backstreets: Springsteen, the Man and His Music (Harmony, 1989); Led Zeppelin: Heaven and Hell (Harmony, 1992); and Nevermind: The Classic Album (Schirmer, 1998).

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Customers say

Customers find the book amazing, compelling, and a quality product. They describe the biography as great, extraordinary, and comprehensive. Readers praise the writing quality as well-written, enjoyable, and beautiful. They say it paints a clear and vivid picture of the genius artist. Opinions are mixed on the heartbreaking aspect, with some finding it profound and thoughtful, while others say it's dark and sad.

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Customers find the book amazing, engrossing, and well-researched. They say it reads more like a story and is a quality product.

"Still reading, but it’s a genuinely good book . I normally don’t buy biographies in general, but it’s about Kurt...." Read more

"...An engrossing and well researched book by Charles Cross that will keep the reader totally absorbed while already anticipating the bitter end to come...." Read more

"...who wasn't au fait with Cobain and Nirvana but, as I was, I thoroughly enjoyed the book ...." Read more

"...He said it has been awhile since he read a book straight through. A wonderful read that he could not put the book down." Read more

Customers find the biography comprehensive, definitive, and well-written. They say it gives a real insight into Kurt's personal life. Readers also mention the author does a fantastic job of telling Kurt Cobain's story.

"...much more than what was in the tabloids since Cross' level of interviewing goes very deep ...." Read more

"...It was a great biography , and was challenging in some aspects - that is, the work itself was both detailed and sparse, objective and subjective,..." Read more

"This is a comprehensive and definitive biography of Kurt Cobain, the sensitive, conflicted and brilliant leader of the band Nirvana, chronicling his..." Read more

"...I think the author did a fantastic job of telling Kurt's story and I found it thoughtful and engaging throughout...." Read more

Customers find the book well-written, enjoyable, and beautiful. They say the author does an amazing job showing the tormented life of a young boy. Readers also mention the book is cogent and detailed.

"... Cross writes well and the flow of the story is excellent...." Read more

"From the beginning, the flow of the text was enjoyable and Cross' description of Kurt was dead on...." Read more

"...It did make an interesting story , however, and as a whole I was able to get a good handle on a portrait of a man that I truly did not understand,..." Read more

"...I found the book well written albeit sad ...." Read more

Customers find the book beautiful, saying it paints a clear and vivid picture of the genius artist. They appreciate the excellent structure and detail without getting boring. Readers also say the author did an excellent job of presenting Kurt Cobain in a way that neither glorifies nor glorifies him.

"...It is the epitome of a classical and elegant potrait of a very much mis-understood and tragic icon of music mythology...." Read more

"...Charles Cross did an excellent job of presenting Kurt Cobain in a way that neither glorified nor condemned him...." Read more

"...this book paints a clear and vivid picture of the genius artist that so many people may not realize just how great and valuable his life was." Read more

"...I couldn't put it down. Excellent structure and great detail without getting boring ." Read more

Customers find the content captivating, engaging, and intense. They also say the book is haunting.

"...With thorough research and great psychological depth this biography proves worthy of its subject, one of the greatest rock musicians of all time...." Read more

"...job of telling Kurt's story and I found it thoughtful and engaging throughout ...." Read more

"This book is very haunting , but in a good way...." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the book. Some find it profound, thoughtful, and engaging, while others say it's dark and sad.

"...aspects - that is, the work itself was both detailed and sparse, objective and subjective, truthful and anecdotally uncertain in many portions...." Read more

"By far the most depressing book I’ve ever read…grew up on Nirvana and expected some sad stories. I wasn’t ready...." Read more

"...author did a fantastic job of telling Kurt's story and I found it thoughtful and engaging throughout...." Read more

"...thought this was a fantastic biography... Difficult reading at times, tragic , heart-breaking, hard to understand...." Read more

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