The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (163 page)

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Authors: Jeremy Simmonds

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Kurt Cobain:
Swore
that he didn’t have a gun

Few bands find themselves the orchestrators of a seismic change in rock music: with
Nevermind
(1991), Nirvana – albeit unknowingly – became just that. For this album, the group had signed to Geffen for more than $250K and had established the classic line-up, with cheery drummer Dave Grohl the final piece of the jigsaw. The record’s production (courtesy of pre-Garbage guitarist Butch Vig) was cleaner than anticipated, but it gave songs like ‘Come as You Are’ and ‘Lithium’ a defined edge that brought Cobain’s work crashing into the mainstream. The tune that made the most impact was ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, a massive US/UK Top Tenner that the singer defiantly admitted was based on Boston’s 1976 FM-anthem ‘More than a Feeling’. ‘Teen Spirit’ (inspired by Bikini Kill guitarist Kathleen Hanna’s graffiti on Cobain’s bedroom wall) became – to its writer’s chagrin – the era’s defining moment. Astonishingly,
Nevermind
toppled Michael Jackson’s
Dangerous
from Billboard’s pole position on its way to estimated worldwide sales of more than 25 million. But Cobain and his band’s disaffection with their sudden idolization was apparent. Nirvana’s success had opened the door for a number of other Seattle bands, most notably the far-more-corporate Pearl Jam, whom Cobain hated (prime-movers Mudhoney, his friends, were surprisingly left behind), while shows attracted legions of Guns n’ Roses-loving ‘metal kids’ – ‘fuckheads who don’t get it’, according to the singer, who now kissed his bandmates and wore dresses on stage to infuriate the jock contingent. Many felt that such moves were a deliberate attempt by the band to self-destruct while at the top.

More self-destructive, though, was Cobain’s predilection for hard drugs. While the Nirvana leader admitted to occasionally using, he promptly justified this by claiming heroin relieved an undiagnosed stomach condition from which he’d suffered since childhood. Now, his much-publicized relationship with Hole singer Courtney Love – a known user – prompted questions about addiction. The couple’s marriage in Waikiki in February 1992 changed the dynamic of Nirvana for ever: regardless of her talent, Love was generally regarded as at best manipulative, not to mention highly jealous of any female in the singer’s company (one of her main targets was Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff, who died in mysterious circumstances just two months after Cobain (
June 1994))
– and, initially at least, as riding Cobain’s coat-tails to further her own career. To say that she didn’t love the man would be unfair, though, and the couple were clearly delighted with the arrival of their daughter, Frances Bean, in August 1992. But within a week of the child’s birth the Cobains’ bliss had all but dissipated: a
Vanity Fair
article suggesting that Love – dismissively boastful of her drug proclivities – had used heroin while pregnant sent their world into cataclysm. The weight of responsibility was now on Kurt Cobain. Clearly aware of the glaring errors his wife had made in interview with Lynn Hirschberg, he found himself under fierce pressure to back her regardless. When the interview tapes were then made available to UK biographers Britt Collins and Victoria Clarke, the threats from both Cobain and (mainly) Love, towards Clarke particularly, were shocking in their violence and ferocity. In early 1993, they suffered the humiliation of having to win a court battle in order to regain custody of their daughter.

Around the time of Nirvana’s third album, it became clear to both Grohl and Novoselic that their friend and colleague was now someplace else. (Grohl in particular was vociferous in his dislike of Courtney Love’s interference, referring to her as ‘Yoko’ – as opposed to the ‘[Sid and] Nancy’ comparison, which, for some reason, the couple preferred.) It could be debated for ever whether Cobain had actually begun to show suicidal tendencies by the release of the remarkable Steve Albini-produced
In Utero
(1993, originally to be entitled, flippantly,
I Hate Myself and I Want to Die)
– but the singer’s increasingly wilful behaviour, plus frequent drug stupors and disappearances, were starting to tear Nirvana asunder. In the light of Cobain’s death, the record is painful to listen to, a damaged, disturbed rampage through everything he and Nirvana had created – though this is not to say that
In Utero
isn’t still hugely powerful and compelling, achieving what the band had intended, not to mention light-years ahead of the output of their main rivals. Even if Geffen hated it.

‘The worst crime is … for you to continue to be a rock star when you
fuckin’hated it!
’

Courtney Love’s voice addresses the issue and the crowd, 10 April 1994

In the last year of his life, Cobain attempted to kick heroin, which he claimed made his stomach problems unbearable once more. Then, by some miracle, a doctor came up with a diagnosis, scoliosis – temporarily relieving the delighted singer from one of his major burdens at least. The burden of coming off heroin was, however, one he seemed less able to accommodate. During 1993, police made many visits to his home, usually to investigate either drugs or firearms possession (Cobain claimed his guns were purely for protection). Cobain was also banged up for several hours after an alleged assault against Love. By the start of 1994 he was talking of divorce. Then in early March 1994, a distraught Courtney Love called for help from a Rome hotel room, where Cobain had apparently overdosed. Nirvana’s tour had been postponed because of the singer’s throat infection, and he, Love and Frances Bean had attempted to spend some quality time in the Italian capital – though even this seemed beyond Cobain now.

On 8 April, Gary Smith was fitting security lighting when he made the discovery that so many in Cobain’s world had dreaded. Despite a major search for the AWOL singer, the maintenance man was the only one who had thought to enter a room called ‘the greenhouse’ above the garage at the musician’s Seattle home. Cobain’s body was found slumped with a 20-gauge Remington shotgun resting on his chest – he had been dead for three days, killed by a single bullet wound to the mouth. By his side was an open wallet and driver’s licence, presumably for identification; as well as Cobain’s well-publicized suicide note, there was also drug paraphernalia near by. Within the hour the shocking news flashed across the world. A verdict of suicide was passed with little ado, and the media circus epilogue for a rock great began in earnest. Tributes came and went as expected, with Courtney Love leading a wake on 10 April that was undermined by a number of Cobain’s friends choosing to retire to Krist Novoselic’s house afterwards. In Seattle’s Space Needle Park, 5,000 Cobain followers held their own vigil, singing Nirvana songs and burning their flannel shirts in what
Spin
magazine described as ‘an awesome moment of pagan catharsis’. Inevitably, sales of Nirvana records thereafter went through the roof – and at least sixty-eight copycat suicides were reported. (As for the other musicians, Courtney Love and Hole enjoyed brief fame (before the singer attempted various reinventions of herself, most notably as a Versace-clad movie starlet), Grohl still enjoys rock superstardom with Foo Fighters, while Novoselic saw two projects, Sweet 75 and Eyes Adrift, bite the dust before becoming politically active.)

Although the external signs point to an open-and-shut suicide, twelve years on there are an increasing number of dissenting voices. Leading a crusade that has spawned countless books and websites (and an intriguing documentary by British film-maker Nick Broomfield) is private investigator Tom Grant, hired by Love to investigate Cobain’s earlier disappearance. Grant has since turned against his former employer, who, in his view, stood to lose everything had the couple divorced. Grant has run an ongoing campaign for the case to be reopened. (Among his claims are that, at his death, Cobain was loaded up with so much heroin that it would have been impossible for him to fire a gun and that there were indeterminate fingerprints on the weapon.) Furthermore, both Cobain’s best friend, Dylan Carlson, and Frances Bean’s nanny, Jackie Ferry (who had resigned a week before Cobain’s passing), have stated that most of the couple’s rows towards the end seemed to involve money – and, most crucially, Cobain’s will. Remarkably, another dissenting voice is that of Love’s father, Hank Harrison, a former manager of The Grateful Dead. Less convincing, though nonetheless intriguing, was the claim of Washington schlock-rocker Eldon ‘El Duce’ Hoke that Love had offered him money to kill her husband – before he died in mysterious circumstances himself (
April 1997
). But the authorities apparently remain satisfied by the suicide verdict, while what little evidence coming to the fore tends to be snuffed by Love’s lawyers.

DEAD INTERESTING!

CLUB STUPID?

Wendy Cobain - Kurt’s long-suffering mother - memorably talked of her son “going and joining that stupid club” on learning of his suicide. Well, ‘stupid’ perhaps, but ‘exclusive’, undeniably. Having died at the age of twenty-seven, the Nirvana front man takes his place among some serious figureheads in the posthumous society now known simply as ‘The 27 Club’…

Robert Johnson
(8/5/1911 - 16/8/1938)

Brian Jones
(28/2/1942 - 3/7/1969)

Jimi Hendrix
(27/11/1942 - 18/9/1970)

Janis Joplin
(19/1/1943 - 4/10/1970)

Jim Morrison
(8/12/1943 - 3/7/1971)

Kurt Cobain
(20/2/1967 - 5/4/1994)

Among the many other musicians with a requisite pass for the club’s Green Room are: Jesse Belvin (d 1960); Rudy Lewis (The Drifters, d 1964); Al ‘Blind Owl’ Wilson (Canned Heat, d 1970); Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan (The Grateful Dead, d 1973); Dave Alexander (The Stooges, d 1975); Pete Ham (Badfinger, d 1975); Chris Bell (Big Star, d 1978); Jacob Miller (Inner Circle, d 1980); D Boon (The Minutemen, d 1985); Pete de Freitas (Echo & The Bunnymen, d 1989); Kristen Pfaff (Hole, d 1994); Richey Edwards (The Manic Street Preachers, presumed d 1995); Freaky Tah (The Lost Boyz, d 1999) and now, of course, Amy Winehouse (d 2011).