Kurt Cobain

Cobain was born on the 20th of February 1967 in Hoquaim, a small town 140 kilometres south-west of Seattle. His mother was a cocktail waitress and his father was an auto mechanic. Cobain soon moved to nearby Aberdeen, a depressed and dying logging town
Cobain was for most his childhood a sickly bronchitic child. Matters were made worse when Cobain's parent's divorced when he was seven and by his own account Cobain said he never felt loved or secure again. He became increasingly difficult, anti-social and withdrawn after his parent's divorce. Cobain also said that his parent's traumatic split fueled alot of the anguish in Nirvana's music
After his parent's divorce Cobain found himself shuttled back and forth between various relatives and at one stage homeless living under a bridge
When Cobain was eleven he heard and was captivated by the Britain's Sex Pistols and after their self-destruction Cobain and friend Krist Novoselic continued to listen to the wave of British bands including Joy Division the nihilistic post-punk band that some say Nirvana are directly descended from in form of mood, melody and lyrical quality.
Cobain's artistry and iconoclastic attitude didn't win many friends in high school and sometimes earned him beatings from "jocks" Cobain got even by spray painting "QUEER" on their pick-up trucks. By 1985 Aberdeen was dead and Cobain's next stop was Olympia. Cobain formed and reformed a series of bands before Nirvana came to be in 1986. Nirvana was an uneasy alliance between Cobain, bassist Krist Novoselic and eventually drummer and multi-instrumentalist Dave Grohl.
By 1988 Nirvana were doing shows and had demo tapes going around. In 1989 Nirvana recorded their rough-edged first album Bleach for local Seatlle independent label Sub-Pop
In Britain Nirvana received a lot of recognition and in 1991 their contract was bought out by Geffen, they signed to the mega-label, the first non-mainstream band to do so. Two and a half years after Nirvana's first C.D. Bleach was released they released Nevermind, a series of different, crunching, screaming songs that along with it's first single Smells Like Teen Spirit would propel Nirvana to mainstream stardom.
Smells Like Teen Spirit became Nirvana's most highly acclaimed and instantly recognizable song. Not many people can dechiper it's exact lyrics but Cobain used a seductive hookline to hook the listener. Nevermind went on to sell ten million copies and make a reported $550 million (US) leaving Nirvana overnight millionaires. Cobain was shocked at the reception of his highly personal and passionate music repeatedly telling reporters that none of the band ever, ever expected anything like this. It quickly became obvious that the obsessively sickly and sensitive 24yr old was not going to cope well with the rock'n roll lifestyle. "If there was a rock star 101 course, I'd really have like to take it," Cobain once observed. Cobain fell into heroin in the early 90's, he said he used it as a shield against the rigorous demands of touring and to stop the pain of stomach ulcers or an irritated bowel. Through the touring and pressure Cobain continued to write his very personal acutely focused lyrics.
Cobain was distressed to find out that what he wrote and how it was interpreted could quite often be miles apart. He was appalled when he found out that Polly a heavily ironic anti-rape song had been used as background music in a real gang-rape. He later appealed to fans on the Incesticide liner notes "If any of you don't like gays or women or blacks, please leave us the fuck alone." It was to no avail, Cobain found that as an overnight millionaire musician control was something he had very little of. Cobain also worried that his band had sold-out, that it was attracting the wrong kind of fans (i.e the type that used to beat him up.)
In February 1992 Cobain skipped off to Hawaii to marry the already pregnant Courtney Love. Later in the year Nirvana released Incesticide and in August Cobain had hospital treatment for heroin abuse. Shortly after Frances Bean Cobain was born. In early 1993 In Utero was released into the top spot on the music charts. In Utero was widely acclaimed by the music press and it contains some of Cobain's most passionate work. In Utero was a lot more open than Nirvana's previous albums. Songs like All Apologies and Heart Shaped Box detailed aspects of Cobain's sometimes shaky marriage, other songs like Scentless Apprentice detailed the agonies and struggles of Cobain's experiences.
Nirvana embarked on a support tour and recorded and filmed an "unplugged" (acoustic) performance for MTV in November of 1993. Nirvana's choice to honour bands and people that had influenced them and Cobain's passionate and intense vocals especially on "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?"silenced many of their who had labeled Cobain talentless. Rumours circulated that the MTV Unplugged compilation would be Nirvana's last album and the band were splitting up.
Cobain was a gun fanatic and always had several in his possession or in various forms of confiscation. In the northern winter of 1993-94 Nirvana embarked on an extensive European tour. Twenty concerts into the tour Cobain developed throat problems and their schedule was interrupted while he recovered. While recovering Cobain flew to Rome to join his wife who was also preparing to tour with her own band.
On March the 4th Cobain was rushed to hospital in a coma after an unsuccessful suicide bid in which he washed down about fifty prescription painkillers with champagne. The suicide bid was officially called an accident and was not even made known to close friends and associates. Several days later he returned to Seattle. Cobain's wife, friends and managers convinced Cobain, who was still in deep distress to enter a detox program in L.A. According to a missing person's report filed by his mother Cobain fled after only a few days of the program.




Cobain was cited in the Seattle area with a shotgun. Days later on the 5th of April he barricaded himself into the granny flat behind his mansion, put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. On Thursday April the 7th ~ two days after a medical examiner says Cobain shot himself and the day before his body was found police say Courtney Love herself was taken to hospital in L.A. for a drug overdose. Released on bail, Love checked herself into a rehab center but left soon after a friend called her the next day with news of Cobain's death.
Cobain's body was found when an electrician visiting the house to install a security system went round the back of the house when no one answered the front door and peered through windows. He thought he saw a mannequin sprawled on the floor until he noticed a splotch of blood by Cobain's ear. When police broke down the door they found Cobain dead on the floor, a shotgun still pointed at his chin and on a nearby counter a suicide note written in red ink addressed to Love and the couples then 19 month old daughter Frances Bean.


The note ended with the words "I love you, I love you." Two days after Kurt Cobain's body was found about 5,000 people gathered in Seattle for a candlelight vigil. the distraught crowd filled the air with profane chants, burnt their flannel shirts and fought with police. They also listened to a tape made by Cobain's wife in which she read from his suicide note. Several distressed teenagers in the U.S. and Australia killed themselves. The mainstream media was lambasted for it's lack of respect and understanding of youth culture



This is a series of Interviews with Kurt
The Fender Frontline Interview, Kurt Cobain
CHUCK: Nirvana has become a Big Rck Story, but the music still seems to be the most important part of the story. How proud are you of the band's work?
KURDT: It's interesting, because while there's a certain selfish gratification in having any number of people buy your records and come to see you play - none of that holds a candle to simply hearing a song that I've written played by a band. I'm not talking about radio or MTV. I just really like playing these songs with a good drummer and bass player. Next to my wife and daughter, there's nothing that brings me more pleasure.
CHUCK: Is it always a pleasure for you to crank up the guitar, or do you ever do battle with the instrument?
KURDT: The battle is the pleasure. I'm the first to admit that I'm no virtuoso. I can't play like Segovia. The flip side of that is that Segovia could probably never have played like me.
CHUCK: With Pat Smear playing guitar in the touring lineup, has your approach to the instrument changed much?
KURDT: Pat has worked out great from day one. In addition to being one of my closest friends, Pat has found a niche in our music that compliments what was already there without forcing any major changes. I don't see myself ever becoming Mick Jagger, but having Pat on stage has freed me to spend more time connecting with the audience. I've become more of a showman. Well maybe that's going too far. Let's just say that having Pat to hold down the rhythm allows me to concentrate on the performance as a whole. I think it's improved our live show 100%.
CHUCK: On In Utero and in concert, you play some of the most powerful "anti-solos" ever hacked out of a guitar. What comes to mind for you when it's time for the guitar to cut loose?
KURDT: Less than you could ever imagine.
CHUCK: Krist [Novoselic] and Dave [Grohl] do a great job of helping to bring your songs to life. How would you describe the role of each player, including yourself, in the Nirvana sound?
KURDT: While I can do a lot by switching channels on my amp, it's Dave who really brings the physicality to the dynamics in our songs. Krist is great at keeping everything going along at some kind of even keel. I'm just the folk- singer in the middle.
CHUCK: You're a very passionate performer. Do you have to feel the tenderness and rage in your songs in order to perform them?
KURDT: That's tough because the real core of any tenderness or rage is tapped the very second that a song is written. In a sense, I'm only recreating the purity of that particular emotion every time I play that particular song. While it gets easier to summon those emotions with experience, it's a sort of dishonesty that you can never recapture the emotion of a song completely each time you play it.
CHUCK: It must be a very odd feeling for Nirvana to be performing in sports arenas these days. How do you get along with the crowds your attracting now?
KURDT: Much better than I used to. When we first started to get successful, I was extremely judgemental of the people in the audience. I held each of them to a sort of punk rock ethos. It upset me that we were attracting and entertaining the very people that a lot of my music was a reaction against. I've since become much better at accepting people for who they are. Regardless of who they were before they came to the show, I get a few hours to try and subvert the way they view the world. It's not that I'm trying to dictate, it's just that I am afforded a certain platform on which I can express my views. At the very least, I always get the last word.
CHUCK: Do you see a long, productive future for the band?
KURDT: I'm extremely proud of what we've acomplished together. Having said that however, I don't know how long we can continue as Nirvana without a radical shift in direction. I have lots of ideas and ambitions that have nothing to do with the mass conception of "grunge" that has been force-fed to the record buying public for the last few years. Whether I will be able to do everything I want to do as a part of Nirvana remains to be seen. To be fair, I also know that both Krist and Dave have musical ideas that may not work in the context of Nirvana. We're all tired of being labeled. You can't imagine how stifling it is.
CHUCK: You've made it clear that you're not particulary comfortable being a "rock star", but one of the things that tracks like Heart-Shaped Box and Pennyroyal Tea on In Utero make clear is that you're certainly a heavyweight when it comes to songwriting. You may have job sometimes, but is the writing process pleasurable and satisfying for you?
KURDT: I think it becomes less pleasurable and satisfying when I think of it in terms of my "job". Writing is the one part that is not a job, it's expression. Photo shoots, interviews...that's the real job part.

Kurt And Courtney Sitting In A Tree, Kurt and Courney interview in Sassy, By Christina Kelly

It's 1:00 PM and I've been sitting in this East Village restaurant since noon, waiting for Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and Hole's Courtney Love to arrive for our interview. On this particular rainy afternoon Nirvana has the number-one record in the country, the awesome Nevermind, which has sold, like, three million copies. The album was their first major label; their debut, Bleach, was released on Sub-Pop back in 1989 and sold only 50,000 back when they were just a northwest punk trio with an underground following. Their sudden, massive and shocking success has made the band sought after by media ll over the world. And the anti-mainstream Kurt has blown off everyone from Rolling Stone to the New York Times. Also, at this time, all kinds of major labels are trying to woo Hole (the foxcore band whose drummer was included in our February piece on girl drummers) away from Caroline, which released their first record, Pretty On The Inside. I should be worried that they're not going to make it to this interview, but I've been told that Kurt and Courtney are both Sassy readers, and I just know they're going to show up.
As I'm assuring the waiter again that the rest of my party will be here any minute, Kurt and Courtney walk in the door. I wave, and they come over to my table, apologizing for being late. Courtney's in this cool black midi-dress, a fuzzy old sweater, and brown vintage pumps. She keeps playing with her bleached hair, covering her face with it and making it stand up and stuff. Courtney says she's 24, but I think she could be older. She's not classically pretty, but wears her offbeat looks well. Kurt, who probably really is 24, is very cute, with incredibly blue eyes which are set off nicely by his pink streaked hair. However, he is so skinny that I would like to force-feed him a solid meal. He's wearing disintigrating jeans and a cardigan over an ancient Flipper (the band, not the TV show) t-shirt. His black sneakers have holes in them. "He's got the number-one record," says Courtney, in her scratchy voice, "and he only has one pair of shoes."
I mention that I saw their engagement announced on MTV when Nirvana's video was number-one. Says Kurt, "It was embarrassing, but it was also kind of neat." Courtney says, "I thought it was kind of dorky." She's wearing an engagement ring, circa 1906, with a ruby or something in the middle. Kurt has one too, an ornate band. "Sorry about this zit," she says, pointing to her cheek. "Zits are beauty marks," says Kurt.
Kurt has a very sweet way about him, almost shy. He'll sit there and not talk, but not in a hostile way- besides, it's hard for anyone, even me, to get a word in edgewise with the loquacious Miss Courtney. But he'll definitely answer any question. I ask how they met. "I saw him play in Portland in 1988," says Courtney. "I'm from Eugene. I thought he was really passionate and cute, but I couldn't tell if he was smart, or had any integrity. And then I met him at a show about a year, or something ago." "Butthole Surfers," says Kurt. "And L7," adds Courtney, "I really pursued him, not too agressive, but agressive enough that some girls would have been embarrassed by it. I'm direct. That can scare a lot of boys. Like, I got Kurt's number when they were on tour, and I would call him. And I would do interviews with people who I knew were going to interview Nirvana, and I would tell them I had a crush on Kurt. Kurt was scared of me. He said he didn't have time to deal with me. But I knew it was inevitable." Kurt adds, "I would just like to say I liked Courtney a lot. I wasn't ignoring her. I didn't mean to play hard to get. I just didn't have the time, I had so many things on my mind." "He had to write a hit record," says Courtney.
The turning point for their relationship was last September. Courtney was meeting with a record company exec. "He said to me, 'What do you want? I can make you a big star,'" says Courtney, whose band is based in L.A. "And I said, 'I want to see Nirvana in Chicago.' So he got on the phone and spent, like, $1000 and bought me a ticket and I went. And that is when we got together."
Before you knew it, they were boyfriend and girlfriend. And now they're planning to get married as soon as possible (maybe by the time you read this), both wearing dresses. Kurt likes wearing dresses because they are comfortable and he says he looks best in baby-dolls with flowers on them. "In the last couple months," says Kurt, "I've gotten engaged and my attitude has changed drastically, and I can't believe how much happier I am. At times I even forget that I'm in a band, I'm so blinded by love. I know that sounds embarrassing, but it's true. I could give up the band right now. It doesn't matter, but I'm under contract." What a wonderfully sweet thing to say. I can't believe it when Courtney tells me that a friend of hers called her up in Europe and told her not to go out with Kurt: "She told me, 'What you're doing is culturally important and you'll just get swallowed up by going out with Kurt.'"
Courtney continues: "We get attention for our relationship, but if we didn't have bands, no one would care. I mean, the reason we're doing this interview is girls have been trained to look up to rock star boys as these... objects. They grow up their whole lives with horses or rock stars on their walls. For me, I didn't want to marry a rock star, I wanted to be one. I had a feminist hippie mom, and she told me I could do whatever I wanted to do. But a lot of girls think that to go out with somebody who's cool or successful, they have to be pretty and submissive and quiet. They can't be loud and obnoxious like me, and they can't have their own thing."
Courtney clearly wants to be a huge rock star in her own right. She doesn't want to be perceived as glomming on Kurt's success. And she seems a little paranoid- probably with good reason- that people will think that she is.
Like, when I ask if they plan to tour together, Kurt is totally normal about it. "I know that when we were on tour, we wished we were playing all our shows together," he says. "I spend so much money on phone calls. The next time we go on tour, we're going to go together." But Courtney quickly interjects: "That has to do with my band being on a level where we should go on tour with his band. Otherwise, I wouldn't do it. I would rather die than go on tour with someone just because I go out with them.
"It's cool to go out with someone that you know you would go out with if you were a waitress and they worked at a gas station- you can get really paranoid in music because you never know why people like you." Courtney's boyfriends are usually in bands. Kurt doesn't always have muscian girlfriends, although he did go out with Tobi Vail, the drummer in Bikini Kill. He even tells me that they want to record some songs they co-wrote when they were together. He and Courtney want to collaborate too.
Courtney has interesting things to say about girls in rock. "I kind of don't think it's enough at this point for girls to start a band, and be punk," she says. "There aren't many girls right now who write really good songs. I wanna write as good as Charles from the Pixies, or Kurt, or Neil Young. It seems like girls always concentrate on lyrics. I read in Sassy about how girls get discouraged from math, and I think that affects songwriting, because math is a big part of arranging songs in your head."
I ask Kurt how being in love will affect his songwriting. "My songs have always been frustrating themes, relationships that I've had," he says. "And now that I'm in love, I expect it to be really happy, or at least there won't be half as much anger as there was. I'm just so overwhelmed by the fact that I'm in love on this scale, I don't know how my music's going to change. But I'm looking forward to it. I love change. All the bands I respect the most have changed with every album. I can't stand to hear the same format, where after three or four albums you know exactly what to expect. That's boring, and that's why those bands lose their audience."
Courtney adds: "It's a lot harder to write about sunshine and make it interesting. I'll always have certain amounts of anger about social things, about my life. I think a lot of the reason people like both our bands is because of the anger involved. His band always had prettier songs too, but I was scared of pretty songs. Because my first band was all 12-string Rickenbacher, three girls, no drummer, I got accused of being wimpy, and I got a really big chip on my shoulder about it."
Courtney shifts conversational gears a lot and now she brings up the house they're going to buy in Seattle. "It's really beautiful," she says. "It's Victorian. And my favorite thing to think about while we're doing major label meetings and stuff is basically what color we're going to piant the walls. I want to have a baby really bad, but I want to able to afford it myself. I want my own money. I couldn't imagine marrying someone with money and then living off them." Kurt on the baby possibility: "I just want to be situated and secure. I want to make sure we have a house, and make sure we have money saved up in the bank."
With Nirvana's material success, I doubt that will be a problem. Speaking of which, alternative rock fans have a way of slagging their favorite bands once they become famous. Are people just jealous? "I'd be really egotistical to admit that, but I can't help but feel that way once in a while," Kurt says. "The other day I was driving around in L.A. listening to a college station. They were playing a lot of my favorite bands, like Flipper and The Melvins. I was saying to myself, This is great. And then the DJ came on and went on this half-hour rant about how Nirvana is so obviously business oriented and just because we have colored hair doesn't mean we're alternative. And I felt really terrible. Because there is nothing in the world I like more than pure underground music. And to be shunned by this claim that just because you are playing the corporate game you are not honest! You use [the corporate ogre] to your advantage. You fight them by joining them."
It is now time for Kurt to go to MTV, where Nirvana will tape five videos to be played in regular rotation. And Courtney has an appointment at Charisma Records. But first we go outside for some photos. They sit on the sidewalk and Courtney kisses Kurt, smearing lipstick on his face. It's looking very Sid and Nancy (Courtney, by the way, had a small part in the 1986 movie). Kurt asks Janet, Hole's publicist, to give him a copy of their album. "This is the man I'm going to marry," says Courtney, "and he still hasn't heard my entire album." Then a yuppie couple walk by and ask to photograph with Kurt. "Who were those people?" I ask. "Christina," says Courtney, "everyone has the Nirvana album. Everyone." I guess so, because the guy with the camera was wearing a bolo tie.

Guitar World, SMELLS LIKE TEEN IDOL, By Jeff Gilbert

We're just musically and rhythmically retarded" asserts Kurt Cobain, guitarist, vocalist and chief songwriter for Nirvana. "We play so hard that we can't tune our guitars fast enough. People can relate to that."
Seems reasonable enough, considering that Nevermind, the Seattle trio's major label debut, has become one of the hottest out-of-the-box albums in the country. Fueled by the contagious hit single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the spirited album turned gold a mere five weeks after its release, and leaped past both volumes of Guns N' Roses Illusions just one month later. But their sudden, platiunum-bound popularity probably has more to do with the bands infectious, dirty riffs and wry lyrical hooks than with their roughly played, out-of-tune guitars, of which Cobain is so proud.
"We sound like the Bay City Rollers after an assault by Black Sabbath." continues the guitarist in his nasty smoker's hack. "And," he expectorates, "we vomit onstage better than anyone!"
Nirvana began their career with 1989's Bleach (Sub Pop), an intensely physical melange of untuned metal, drunk punk, and Seventies pop, written from the perspective of a college drop-out. The album's other notable distinction was that it was recorded in three days for $600. Nevermind, costing considerably more than six bills, is Nirvana's major-label, power-punk/pop masterpiece, awash in slashing, ragged guitar riffs, garbled lyrics and more teen spirit than you can shake a Kiss record at.
Guitar World: MTV thinks Nirvana is a metal band.
Kurt: That's fine; let them be fooled! I don't have anything against Headbanger's Ball, but it's strange to see our faces on MTV.
GW: Kirk Hammett is a huge Nirvana fan.
Kurt: That's real flattering. We met him recently and he's a real nice guy. We talked about the Sub Pop scene, heavy metal and guitars.
GW: Speaking of guitars, you seem to favor low-end models.
Kurt: I don't favor them-I can afford them. [laughs] I'm left-handed, and it's not very easy to find reasonably priced, high-quality left-handed guitars. But out of all the guitars in the whole world, the Fender Mustang is my favorite. I've only owned two of them.
GW: What is it about them that works for you?
Kurt: They're cheap and totally inefficient, and they sound like crap and are very small. They also don't stay in tune, and when you want to raise the string action on the fretboard, you have to loosen all the strings and completely remove the bridge. You have to turn these little screws with your fingers and hope that you've estimated it right. If you screw up, you have to repeat the whole process over and over until you get it right. Whoever invented that guitar was a dork.
GW: It was Leo Fender.
Kurt: I guess I'm calling Leo Fender, the dead guy, a dork. Now I'll never get an endorsement. [laughs] We've been offered a Gibson endorsement, b ut I can't find a Gibson I like.
GW: Is the Mustang your only guitar?
Kurt: No, I own a '66 Jaguar. That's the guitar I polish and baby-I refuse to let anyone touch it when I jump into the crowd. [laughs] Lately, I've been using a Strat Live, because I don't want to ruin my Mustang yet. I like to use Japanese Strats because they're a bit cheaper, and the frets are smaller than the American version's.
GW: The acoustic guitar you play on "Polly" sounds flat.
Kurt: That's a 20-dollar junk shop Stella-I didn't bother changing the strings. [laughs] It barely stays in tune. In fact, I have to use duct tape to hold the tuning keys in place.
GW: Considering how violently you play the guitar. I have to assume you use pretty heavy-duty strings.
Kurt: Yeah. And I keep blowing up amplifiers, so I use whatever I can find at junk shops-junk is always best.
GW: What was the last amp you blew up?
Kurt: A Crown power amp that was intended for use as a PA, but which I used for a guitar's head because I can never find an amp that's powerful enough-and because I don't want to have to deal with hauling 10 Marshall heads. I'm lazy-I like to have it all in one package. For a preamp I have a Mesa/Boogie, and I turn all the mid-range up. And I use Radio Shack speakers.
GW: How reliable is this setup? It doesn't seem like it would be that durable, especially in view of all the touring you do.
Kurt: It works out okay. The sound changes with every club we play in, but I'm never satisfied. I think the sound I get is mainly a result of the Roland EF-1 distortion box I use. I go through about five a tour.
GW: Ever get the urge to use a twang bar?
Kurt: No. Anybody that plays guitar knows that only Jimi Hendrix was able to use the standard tremolo and still keep it in tune. Those things are totally worthless. I do have one on a Japanses Strat, but I don't use it.
GW: Your first album, Bleach, was recorded for $600; how much did Nevermind run you?
Kurt: [laughs] I don't remember, I've got Alzheimer's. Please don't ask us how much our video cost; that's a hell of an embarrassment. We definitely could have used some film student, who would've done just as good of a job.