Untitled Document

Kurt Cobain never wanted to be the spokesman for a generation, though that doesn't mean much: It is not a role you campaign for. It is thrust upon you, and you live with it. Or you don't.

Cobain was grown up in Aberdeen, a hard hit lumber town located midway up Washington's outer coast. He never liked his hometown, describing it essentially as a place of redneck biases and very low intelligence. Certainly there are some grim truths about the town that cannot be ignored. Aberdeen's average suicide rate is roughly twice as high as the national rate. Mix this news with high rates of alcohol and drug usage, as well as high incidence of unemployment and domestic violence and median household income of $23.000 and you emerge with the unsurprising conclusion that Aberdeen can be a very depressing town to call your home. It was here, no doubt, were Cobain first learned how to hate life.

In 1975, when Kurt was 8, his parents divorced, and the bitter separation and it's aftermath were devastating to the child. In the years that followed, Cobain was passed between his mother's home in Aberdeen, his father's in nearby Montesano, and sometimes the homes of other relatives in the region. "After the divorce, he changed completely." his mother told Rolling Stone magazine in 1992. "I think he was ashamed. He became really shy. It just devastated him."

In 1979, Cobain was faced with the suicide of a great-uncle. Five years later another uncle also committed. There are rumors that other relatives also committed suicide - making for the legend that Courtney Love has referred to as the Cobain curse.

Finally Kurt lived in the house of his mother, who had married again. On one occasion, after finding out that her husband had cheated on her, she pointed a gun at his head and threatened to kill him. Kurt watched as she attempted unsuccessfully to load the weapon. Finally, in frustration she marched into the night and threw all the firearms from the house into a river. The next day, after paying two kids to fish them out, Kurt sold the guns for pocket cash. He used the money to buy his first amplifier.

Meanwhile punk rock was thriving and punk rock sounded like Cobain felt: desperate, angry, raw. He dropped out of high school, was booted from his mother's house and bounced from one friend's couch to the back seat of the next friend's car. He talked with his friend Krist Novoselic about forming a band: Nirvana was born.

In the fall of 1987 Cobain moved to Olympia, Washington. While he had gone there to live with his girlfriend Tracy Marander, Cobain had also discovered - for the first time in his life - a community that welcomed and appreciated his talents. He fell under the spell of Calvin Johnson, leader of the band Beat Happening and the head of K-Records, the innocent low-fi independent label whose logo was soon tattooed on Cobain's forearm. He worked on collages and paintings and began writing and rehearsing with Nirvana in earnest.

"Nevermind" was released in September of 1991 to little fanfare and even less expectation. Within months it reached the No. 1 spot, eventually selling 10 million copies worldwide. Nirvana were changing the face of music in the '90s, and no matter how much he attempted to curl into a corner somewhere out of the spotlight, Cobain was always at the eye of the hurricane. He developed a drug problem that would plague him until his final days. In an L.A. nightclub he met Courtney Love again, who had just founded her band "Hole". A short time later he introduced Courtney live on TV as "the best fuck in the world". In February 1992 the couple married in Hawaii and on August 18, Frances Bean, their daughter was born.

In their August issue, Vanity Fair magazine reported that Courtney Love had used Heroin while pregnant with Francis Bean. As a result of subsequent media attention, the Cobains were not allowed to be alone with their newborn daughter for one month. After a long and taxing battle with children's services in L.A., where they were living, the couple regained custody of the girl.

After releasing "Incesticide", a compilation of early singles and B sides, the band started working on "In Utero", the follow up to "Nevermind". "I just don't feel the same, emotionally, about our music anymore", Cobain told a friend after completing the record. "With this record, I'm just deadpan. My emotions just don't come out during it."

On May 2, 1993, Cobain came home shaking, flushed and dazed. Love called the police. According to a police report, Cobain had taken Heroin. Love injected her husband with buprenorphine, an illegal drug that can be used to awaken someone after a Heroin overdose. She also gave Cobain a Valium, three Benadryls and four Tylenol tablets with codeine, which caused him to vomit. Love told the police this kind of thing happened before.

A month later, on June 4, the police arrived at the Cobains' home again after being summoned by Love. She told the police tat she and Cobain had been arguing over guns in the house.

Cobain was booked for domestic assault and three guns found at the house were confiscated.

Seven weeks later, on the morning of July 23, Love heard a thud in the bathroom of the New York hotel where the couple was staying. She opened the door and found Cobain uncontious. He had overdosed again.

Nevertheless, Nirvana, performed that night at the Roseland Ballroom.

On Sept. 14, "In Utero" was released. The album debuted at the No. 1 position and the band hit the road for a long stetch of U.S. dates, including a brilliant performance on MTV Unplugged . According to sources, Cobain detoxed from heroin before the tour.

After completing their U.S. tour, the group relaxed a few weeks before leaving Europe in February. They began their tour in Lisbon, Portugal on February 5.

About 10 to 12 days into the tour, Cobain began to lose his voice. For a while, a throat spray purchased in Paris and administered before the shows helped ease his discomfort.

On Mar. 1 Nirvana performed at Terminal Eins in Munich, Germany. It would be their final show. Cobain lost his voice halfway through the performance and went to see an ear, nose and throat specialist the next day. Cobain was told to make two to four weeks rest. He was given spray and medicine for his lungs because he was diagnosted as having a severe laryngitis and bronchitis.

The Band postponed the rest of their shows and took a rest. Cobain decided to stay in Europe. The plane trip and jet lag were too much to take in his condition. On March 3, he checked into Rome's five-star Excelsior Hotel where he met Courtney Love and Frances Bean the next afternoon. That evening, Cobain sent a bellboy out to fill a prescription for Rohypnol, a tranquilizer. He also ordered champagne from room service.

At 6:30 the following morning, Love found Cobain uncountious. "I reached for him, and he had blood coming out of his nose", she told in a later interview, adding, "I have seen him get really fucked up before, but I have never seen him almost eat it." At the time, the incident was portraited as an accident. It has since been revealed that some 50 pills were found in Cobain's stomach. A suicide note was found at the scene. Cobain was rushed to the Rome's Umberto I Polyclinic Hospital for five hours of emergency treatment and then tranferred to the american hospital just outside the city. He awoke from his coma 20 hours later and immediately scribbled his first request on a notepad: "Get these fucking tubes out of my nose."

Three days later, he was allowed to leave the hospital and returned to Seattle.

On March 18, a domestic dispute escalated into a near disaster. After police officers arrived at the scene, summoned by Love, she told them that her husband had locked himself in a room with a .38-caliber revolver and said he was going to kill himself. The officers confiscated that gun and three others, along with a bottle of various unidentified pills.

On March 25, roughly 10 friends - including his bandmates, love and a intervention councelor - gathered at Cobain's house. As part of the intervention Love threatened to leave Cobain and his bandmates said they would break up the band if Cobain didn't check into rehab.

Love flew to L.A. on March 26 and checked into the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, where she began an outpatient program to detox from tranquilizers.

Back in Seattle on March 30, Cobain purchased a six-pound Remington 20-gauge shotgun and a box of ammunition. He dropped the gun at his home and took a plane to Los Angeles to check into rehab. He checked into the Exodus Recovery Center in Marina del Rey, California, where he spent only 2 days.

On April 1, he called Love, who was still at the Peninsula. "He said, 'Courtney, no matter what happens, I want you to know that you made a good record'", she later told a newspaper. "I said, 'Well, what do you mean?' And he said 'Just remember, no matter what, I love you.'" (Hole were due to release their second album, "Live Through This", 11 days later) That was the last time Love spoke to her husband. At 7:25 pm, Cobain told the clinic staff he was stepping out onto the patio for a smoke and jumped over the fence.

The next day, Love canceled Cobain's credit cards and hired private investigators to track him down. But he had already flown back to Seattle.

On April 4, Cobain's mother filed a missing-person's report. She told the police that Cobain might be suicidal and suggested that they look for him at a particular three-story brick building, described as a location for narcotics in Seattle's Capitol Hill district.

Neighbours say they spotted Cobain in a park near his house during this period, looking ill and wearing an incongruously jacket.

Sometime on the afternoon of april 5, Cobain barricaded himself in the greenhouse above his garage by propping a stool against its french doors. He penned a one page note in red ink and tossed his wallet on the floor, open to his driver's license, which friends belive was to help the police identify him. He drew a chair up to a window, sat down, took some more drugs (most likely heroin), pressed the barrel of the 20-gauge shotgun to his head and pulled the trigger. He left a wife, a nearly 2 year old daughter, who would never knew who her daddy was and millions of fans who won't forget him.