“The story begins with the words once upon a time, and concludes with, it’s a tragic ending.”
-Krist Novoselic
Once upon a time, in the 1920’s and 1930’s, as music changed, there was a quest for volume. Old fashion acoustic guitars just weren’t cutting it in noisy nightclubs and dancehalls. So a teenager named Les Paul stuck a phonograph pickup and a telephone mouthpiece under his guitar strings, then wired it all to his parents’ radio which he used as an amplifier. A noisy living room experiment borne of youth and insanity had been converted in just a few short years to a mainstream commodity. Kurt Cobain was born on the 20th of February 1967 in Hoquaim, a small town 140 kilometers southwest 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 of his childhood a sick 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 He became increasingly difficult, anti-social, and withdrawn after his parent\'s divorce. Kurt also said that his parent\'s traumatic split fueled a lot of the anguish in Nirvana\'s music
After his parent\'s divorce, he found himself shuttled back and forth between various relatives, and at one stage homeless living under a bridge. When Cobain was eleven, he was captivated by Britain\'s Sex Pistols, and after their self-destruction, Cobain and friend Krist Novoselic continued to listen to the wave of British punk bands including Joy Division, the nihilistic post-punk band that some say Nirvana is directly descended from, in form of mood, melody, and lyrical quality. Cobain\'s artistry, and seek to overthrow traditional and popular ideas didn\'t win him 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 Kurt, bassist Krist Novoselic, and eventually drummer and multi-instrumentalist, Dave Grohl.
In 1988, Nirvana was doing shows, and had demo tapes going around. In 1989, Nirvana recorded their rough-edged first album “Bleach” for local Seattle independent label, Sub-Pop. In Britain, Nirvana received a lot of recognition and in 1991, Geffen bought out their contract, and Nirvana signed to the mega-label, which made them 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 stardom.
“Smells Like Teen Spirit”, became Nirvana\'s most highly acclaimed and instantly recognizable song. Not many people can decipher its exact lyrics but Cobain used a seductive hook line to catch the listener. “Nevermind”, went on to sell over ten million copies, and made a reported $550 million dollars leaving Nirvana, overnight millionaires. Kurt was shocked at the reception of his highly personal, and passionate music, repeatedly telling reporters that none of the band 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 and roll lifestyle. \"If there was a rock star 101 course, I\'d really like to take it,\" Cobain once said. Kurt fell into heroin in the early 90’s; he said he used it as a shield against the exact demands of touring, and to stop the pain of stomach ulcers and an irritated bowel. Through the touring and pressure, Cobain continued to write his very personal, deeply focused lyrics.
Cobain was distressed to find out that what he wrote and how it was interpreted, could quite often be miles apart. He later appealed to fans on the “Insecticide” liner notes, \"If any of you don\'t like gays, women, or blacks, please leave us alone.\", but it was to no benefit. 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, such as 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 “Insecticide” and in August, Kurt had hospital treatment for heroin abuse in Rome. 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. Such as songs like, “All Apologies” and “Heart Shaped Box”, gave detailed aspects of Cobain\'s sometimes, shaky marriage. Other songs, like “Scentless Apprentice”, detailed the agonies and struggles of Kurt’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 honor bands and people that had influenced them, such as Cobain\'s passionate and intense vocals on \"Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” silenced many of them who had labeled Cobain, talent less. Rumors circulated that the “MTV Unplugged” compilation would be Nirvana\'s last album, and the band was 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, Kurt developed throat problems, and their schedule was interrupted while he recovered. While recovering, Cobain flew to Rome to join his wife. Courtney was also preparing to tour with her own band, “Hole”. On March 4th, Cobain was rushed to hospital in a coma after he was drugged by someone who put about fifty prescription painkillers that were dissolved in his bottled champagne. The homicide bid was officially called an accident, and was made known to close friends and associates. Kurt’s best friend Dylan always knew that Kurt was not suicidal. Several days later he returned to Seattle. Kurt’s wife, friends, and managers convinced Cobain, who was still in deep distress to enter a “Detox” program in L.A. April 4th was the day that the autopsy gave as the date of death, but they gave a margin of error of \"more than 24 hours,\" so it is quite conceivable that Kurt was already dead at the time the missing persons call was placed on April 4th by Courtney Love pretending to be Wendy O\'Connor, and that the manner of his death could have already been known by the caller. According to the missing person\'s report filed by Courtney Love pretending to be Kurt’s mother, Cobain fled after only a few days of the “Detox” program.
Cobain was seen in the Seattle area by a taxi cab driver with a shotgun. Kurt had been robbed at his Lake Washington Boulevard house Days earlier on April 1st, and he needed it for protection. Some people believe that 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. None of these beliefs are correct, here is the real truth.
Kurt’s “suicide” investigation only lasted three hours, and has never been reopened. The shotgun that Kurt supposedly used to commit suicide had the fingerprints wiped off of it. Which means Kurt could have never shot himself, then being dead, wipe the fingerprints off of the gun. Courtney probably found Kurt in the greenhouse on April 4th, or possibly 5th, then seeing the state that Kurt was in, she decided to end his life, and end their misery. She then finished the “suicide note” in her own handwriting, and wiped the prints off the gun, and set the shotgun on Kurt’s chest. Three days later Kurt was found.
The events that led up to this conclusion started on April 6th. On this day, Courtney phoned the electrical contractors who were working at the Lake Washington Blvd property, and instructed them to start work on the lights and motion detector on the greenhouse. Cobain\'s body was found when the electrician, Gary Smith, was visiting the house, went around to the back of the house. When no one answered the front door, he peered through the windows of the greenhouse. He thought he saw a mannequin sprawled on the floor until he noticed a splotch of blood by Kurt\'s ear. The door closest to Kurt was locked, so the electrician called the police. When the 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”. The first part was obviously written by Kurt in red ink, but noticed at the bottom of the note was a completely different set of handwriting, which “coincidentally” matched exactly with Courtney Love’s handwriting. Courtney made the note look like a suicide note, but Kurt’s real intention of the note was to tell his fans he was quitting the music business. The last four lines of the so called “suicide note”, read;
Please keep going Courtney
For Frances
For her life will be so much happier
Without me. I Love You. I LOVE YOU.
These words matched up exactly with Courtney’s handwriting on Hole’s last album’s lyrics that she had hand written.
After the autopsy, doctors told investigator Tom Grant, that Kurt had been injected with three times the lethal amount of Heroin almost 2 hours before his death, which would not kill Kurt because of his high tolerance of drugs. Though it would leave him unable to stand, much less lift a gun, point it at his head, and pull the trigger. Most likely, Kurt was lying on the floor alive, overdosed from the very elevated level of Heroin in his body. Courtney, having wanted out of the relationship along with Cobain, she would most likely want to kill him. Kurt never mentioned Courtney in his will, and Courtney didn’t approve of this, and for some strange reason, she continuously urged Kurt to finish his will, in hope of being added to it. If this addition to Kurt’s will had happened, Courtney would have been left with almost 550 million dollars earned by Kurt and Nirvana. This must have been the reason she pushed Kurt so much to finish his will, and one of the many reasons that she killed Kurt.
After speaking with Courtney on the phone later in the afternoon of the day of the killing, detective Tom Grant got the impression that she wasn\'t upset that they hadn\'t found Kurt, and that she acted as if she thought Kurt had died the night before. If so, Grant and Carlson could have had a chance to save him. Tom Grant was surprised she wasn\'t angry with them. Courtney wanted Grant to immediately talk to the press, but he told her that he didn\'t want to say anything until he found out more about what happened. Grant left Seattle, and flew back to Los Angeles. He was starting to believe something was seriously wrong, and nothing was done about it. It was all a big joke to everyone, or a dream of some sort. It was acted upon as “no big deal”, and nobody cared, except for the people most deeply affected by Nirvana.
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 its lack of respect and understanding of youth culture.
That was the bad news, the good news was that the unexpected influx of real rock – with meaning, with anger, with confusion, with intelligence, with care, with passion – suddenly pumping out of Impalas and BMW’s alike, would impact the lives of millions in a way that no rock music has since the band. We all know the name of that band; they were the blueprint of the last gasp of rock and roll in the 20th century. The “should-have-been” classic songs from achingly beautiful moments, to ear-splitting thrash that never made it onto any studio album, any boom box, any basement or stage, will never exist again. Perhaps even the endpoint of rock and roll, as a cultural crowbar of change.
“It’s a beautiful tale, but it’s a tragic ending.”
- Dave Grohl
Bio written by: _ModiV_ |
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