Kurt Cobain (Part I)

Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 – c. April 5, 1994) was the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist of the Seattle-based rock band Nirvana. He served not only as the band's frontman and principal songwriter, but also as its "leader and spiritual center."[1] With the band's success, Cobain became a major national and international celebrity, an uncomfortable position for a man who once said, "Famous is the last thing I wanted to be."[2]

Cobain and Nirvana helped reshape popular music in the 1990s. In 1991, the arrival of Nirvana's hit single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" marked the beginning of a dramatic shift of popular rock music away from the dominant genres of the 1980s (glam metal, arena rock, and dance-pop) and toward the ascendance of grunge and alternative rock. The music media eventually awarded the song "anthem-of-a-generation" status,[3] and, with it, Cobain ascended as the reluctant "spokesman" for Generation X. Other hit songs written by Cobain include "Come as You Are", "Lithium", "In Bloom", "Heart-Shaped Box", "All Apologies", and "About a Girl".

During the last years of his life, Cobain battled drug addiction and the media pressures surrounding him and his wife Courtney Love. On April 8, 1994, Cobain's body was found in his home. His death was officially ruled a suicide by self-inflicted gunshot wound. Since then, the circumstances surrounding his death have fueled much analysis and debate.
Contents
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* 1 Biography
o 1.1 Early life
o 1.2 Nirvana
o 1.3 Marriage
o 1.4 Drug addiction
o 1.5 Cobain's final weeks
* 2 Suicide dispute
* 3 Books on Cobain
* 4 Musical influences
* 5 Legacy
* 6 See also
* 7 Notes
* 8 References
* 9 External links
Biography
Early life

Cobain was born to Donald and Wendy Cobain on February 20, 1967 in the Grays Harbor Community Hospital in Aberdeen, Washington and spent his first six months living in Hoquiam, Washington before the family moved to Aberdeen.[4] His mother was a waitress and homemaker and his father worked as a mechanic at Derrell Thompson's Chevron Station. Cobain enrolled at Robert Gray Elementary School in 1972. By most accounts, his early life was happy and he lived as a part of the typical American family, which grew to include sister Kimberly in April of 1970.

He began developing an interest in music early in his life. According to his Aunt Mari, "He was singing from the time he was two. He would sing Beatles songs like 'Hey Jude.' He had a lot of charisma from a very young age."[5]

At the age of seven, Cobain was prescribed Ritalin for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Cobain's widow Courtney Love blamed Ritalin for Cobain's addiction to heroin: "When you're a kid and you get this drug that makes you feel that [euphoric] feeling, where else are you going to turn when you're an adult?"[6]
Young Kurt Cobain, seen here in a yearbook picture. This picture was handed out at his memorial service.
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Young Kurt Cobain, seen here in a yearbook picture. This picture was handed out at his memorial service.

Cobain's life changed dramatically at the age of seven when his parents divorced in 1975, an event which he later cited as having a profound impact on his life. His mother noted that his personality changed dramatically, with Cobain becoming more withdrawn.[7] In a 1993 interview, Cobain said, "I remember feeling ashamed, for some reason. I was ashamed of my parents. I couldn't face some of my friends at school anymore, because I desperately wanted to have the classic, you know, typical family. Mother, father. I wanted that security, so I resented my parents for quite a few years because of that."[8] After a year spent living with his mother following the divorce, Cobain moved to Montesano, Washington to live with his father and transferred to Beacon Elementary School, but after a few years his youthful rebellion became too overwhelming and he found himself being shuffled between friends and family.[9]

As a child, Cobain idolized stuntman Evel Knievel. In third grade, Cobain dived from the deck of the family's house onto a bed of pillows and blankets below. Cobain told journalist Michael Azerrad that he also once attached a set of firecrackers to a piece of metal, placed it on his chest, and lit them.

At school, Cobain took little interest in sports. At his father's insistence, Cobain joined the junior high wrestling team. While he was good at it, he despised it. To make his father (Donald Cobain) angry, he intentionally forfeited a championship wrestling match while staring into his father's eyes. Later, his father signed him up for a local baseball league, where Cobain would intentionally strike out to avoid having to play.[10] Instead, Cobain focused on his art courses. He often drew during classes, including objects associated with fetuses and the human anatomy.

Cobain was friends with a gay student at his school, sometimes suffering bullying at the hands of homophobic students. That friendship, along with his small stature, led some to believe that he himself was gay. In a February 1992 interview with The Advocate, Cobain claimed that he used to spraypaint "God is Gay" on pickup trucks around Aberdeen. In the accompanying article, writer Kevin Allman noted that Cobain was arrested in 1985 for spray-painting "HOMO SEX RULES" on a bank.[11] However, Aberdeen police records show that the phrase for which he was arrested was actually "Ain't got no how watchamacallit."[12]

In the Advocate interview, Cobain said that he thought he was gay while in high school. He later stated, "I'm definitely gay in spirit and I probably could be bisexual. But I'm married and I'm more attracted to Courtney than I ever have been toward a person, so there's no point in trying to sow my oats at this point. If I wouldn't have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual lifestyle". Many media sources took Kurt's interview with Advocate out of context and claimed he was "A practicing bisexual and his wife was 'fine' with it." When Nirvana appeared on Saturday Night Live in January of 1992, Cobain and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic jokingly "made out" during the cast and crew farewells as the credits rolled. (Cobain and Novoselic bobbed their heads back and forth wildly as if in rapture; Novoselic and Dave Grohl subsequently repeated the gesture.) The segment was cut from the show on further airings, replaced by the closing credits from the rehearsal taping (which lacked Cobain) and never aired again.

As a teenager with a chaotic home life growing up in small town Washington, Cobain eventually found escape through the thriving Pacific Northwest punk scene, going to punk rock shows in Seattle. Cobain formed a lifelong friendship with fellow Montesano musicians The Melvins, whose music later heavily influenced Nirvana's sound. In order for Cobain to remember his punk ethos, he had a small "K" inside a simple shield tattooed on his forearm, the insignia of Olympia, Washington: label K Records.

Cobain also experimented with drugs while in high school. He was a habitual marijuana smoker. By the mid-1980s, he claimed to have tried nearly every drug available, with the noted exception of PCP, which he avoided after hearing stories about people freaking out on the drug. In 1986, Cobain became addicted to Percodan, an opioid painkiller, which he claimed he did not realize was addictive. His drug use foreshadowed the addictions of his later life.

In his youth, Cobain spent much time reading in the local library, discovering such literary figures as S.E. Hinton and William S. Burroughs, whose cut-up technique Cobain occasionally utilized to write lyrics for some of Nirvana's songs. Cobain eventually had the opportunity to record with Burroughs a spoken word with guitar improvisation piece: the "Priest" they called him, whose words were originally one of Burroughs' short stories from The Exterminator. Other literary works which impacted Cobain's philosophy included the SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas, The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, and Perfume by Patrick Süskind, as well as works by Samuel Beckett, Charles Bukowski, Jon Savage and Camille Paglia.

In the middle of his sophomore year he moved back to live with his mother in Aberdeen. He was enrolled at Weatherwax High School. Two weeks before his graduation, Cobain dropped out of high school after realizing that he did not have enough credits to graduate. His mother gave him an ultimatum: either get a job or leave. After a week or so, Cobain found his clothes and other belongings packed away in boxes.[13] Forced out of his mother's home, Cobain often stayed at friends' houses and sneaked into his mother's basement every now and then.[14] Cobain later claimed that when he could not find anywhere else to stay, he lived under a bridge over the Wishkah River (at Young Street), an experience that inspired the Nevermind track "Something In The Way". (In the June 2005 issue of Guitar World, Novoselic claimed that Cobain never really lived there, saying, "He hung out there, but you couldn't live on those muddy banks, with the tides coming up and down. That was his own revisionism.") Occasionally he slept in the waiting room at Grays Harbor Community Hospital. Cobain worked various odd jobs in the Aberdeen community and earned enough to rent an apartment in June 1985. However he became homeless again after he was caught writing "Ain'T goT no how waTchamacalliT" on a wall on a local bank and was arrested for vandalism. A list of items impounded were a guitar pick and a punk rock tape whos had an 'anti-cop' message. He ended up moving into Lamont Schillinger's home. On May 18, 1986, he was arrested for trespassing after he wandered onto the roof of an abandoned building. On September 1, 1986, Cobain moved into his first house that he lived in alone and paid his rent by working part-time as a school janitor. Cobain never thought he would be back at Aberdeen High after he dropped out. In 1987 he and Novoselic moved to Olympia and formed Nirvana.

While in Olympia, Cobain found a live-in girlfriend in Tracy Marander, who would be the inspiration for "About a Girl" from Bleach. After breaking up in 1990, he entered a relationship with Bikini Kill drummer Tobi Vail, whom he had been seeing on the side. Despite Cobain's wishes, the relationship did not progress beyond casual sex and ended with their mutual break up.