Personal Life
Relationships and Family
Courtney Love and Cobain met on January 12, 1990, in Portland’s Satyricon nightclub, when they both still led ardent underground rock bands. Love made advances, but Cobain was evasive. Early in their interactions, Cobain broke off dates and ignored Love’s advances because he was unsure if he wanted a relationship. Cobain noted, “I was determined to be a bachelor for a few months […] But I knew that I liked Courtney so much right away that it was a really hard struggle to stay away from her for so many months.” Love first saw Cobain perform in 1989 at a show in Portland, Oregon. They talked briefly after the show and Love developed a crush on him.
Cobain was already aware of Love through her role in the 1987 film Straight to Hell. According to True, the pair were formally introduced at an L7 and Butthole Surfers concert in Los Angeles in May 1991. In the weeks that followed, after learning from Grohl that Cobain shared mutual interests with her, Love began pursuing Cobain. In late 1991, the two were often together and bonded through drug use.
On February 24, 1992, a few days after the conclusion of Nirvana’s “Pacific Rim” tour, Cobain and Love were married on Waikiki Beach in Hawaii. Love wore a satin and lace dress once owned by Frances Farmer, and Cobain donned a Guatemalan purse and wore green pajamas, because he had been “too lazy to put on tux.” Eight people were in attendance at the ceremony, including Grohl.
In an interview with The Guardian, Love revealed the opposition to their marriage from various people:
“Kim Gordon [of Sonic Youth] sits me down and says, ‘If you marry him your life is not going not going to happen, it will destroy your life.’ But I said, ‘Whatever! I love him, and I want to be with him!’ … It wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t trying to do that.”
Love was already pregnant, and the couple’s daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, was born August 2, 1992. A sonogram of the couple’s as-yet-unborn baby was included in the artwork for Nirvana’s single, “Lithium”.
In a 1992 article in Vanity Fair, Love admitted to using heroin, not knowing that she was pregnant; however, Love claimed that Vanity Fair had misquoted her, but the event created a media controversy for the couple. While Cobain and Love’s romance had always been a media attraction, they found themselves hounded by tabloid reporters after the article was published, many wanting to know if Frances was addicted to drugs at birth. The Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services took the Cobains to court, stating that the couple’s drug usage made them unfit parents.
Love later claim to have ceased heroin use upon learning of her pregnancy.
Sexuality
In October 1992, when asked, “Well, are you gay?” by Monk Magazine, Cobain replied, “If I wasn’t attracted to Courtney, I’d be a bisexual.” In another interview, he described identifying with the gay community in The Advocate, stating, “I’m definitely gay in spirit and I probably could be bisexual” and “if I wouldn’t have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual life-style”. He also said that he “[was] definitely gay in spirit”, “thought [he] was gay”, and “wanted to […] find a chicken hawk and sell [his] ass”. He described himself as being “feminine” in childhood, and often wore dresses and other stereotypically feminine clothing. Some of his song lyrics, as well as phrases he would use to vandalize vehicles and a bank, included “God is gay”, “Jesus is gay”, “HOMOSEXUAL SEX RULES” and “Everyone is gay”. Cobain openly advocated for LGBTQ+ rights, including traveling to Oregon to perform at a benefit opposing the 1992 Oregon Ballot Measure 9, and supported local bands with LGBTQ+ members. He reported having felt “different” from the age of seven, and was a frequent target of homophobic bullying in his school due to him having a “gay friend”. Cobain was interviewed by two gay magazines, OUT and The Advocate, the 1993 interview with The Advocate being described as “the only [interview] the band’s lead singer says he plans to do for Incesticide”, an album whose liner notes included a statement decrying homophobia, racism and misogyny:
“If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this for one favor for us—leave us the fuck alone! Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.”
Health
Throughout most of his life, Cobain suffered from chronic bronchitis and intense physical pain due to an undiagnosed chronic stomach condition. His first drug experience was with marijuana in 1980, at age 13. He regularly used the drug during adulthood. Cobain also had a period of consuming “notable” amounts of LSD, as observed by Marander, and was “really into getting fucked up; drugs, acid, any kind of drug”, observed Krist Novoselic; Cobain was also prone to alcoholism and solvent abuse. According to The Telegraph, Cobain had depression. His cousin brought attention to the family history of suicide, mental illness and alcoholism, noting two of her uncles who had committed suicide with guns.
Cobain’s first experience with heroin occurred sometime in 1986, administered to him by a local drug dealer in Tacoma, Washington, who had previously supplied him with oxycodone and aspirin. He used heroin sporadically for several years, but, by the end of 1990, his use developed into a full-fledged addiction. Cobain claimed that he was “determined to get a habit” as a way to self-medicate his stomach condition. “It started with three days in a row of doing heroin and I don’t have a stomach pain. That was such a relief,” he related. However, longtime friend Buzz Osborne disputes this, saying that his stomach pain was more likely caused by his heroin use, saying “He made it up for sympathy and so he could use it as an excuse to stay loaded. Of course he was vomiting—that’s what people on heroin do, they vomit. It’s called “vomiting with a smile on your face.”
His heroin use began to affect the band’s Nevermind supporting tour. One such example came the day of the band’s 1992 performance on Saturday Night Live, where Nirvana had a photographic session with Michael Levine. Having used heroin beforehand, Cobain fell asleep several times during the shoot. Cobain divulged to biographer Michael Azerrad, “I mean, what are they supposed to do? They’re not going to be able to tell me to stop. so I really didn’t care. Obviously to them it was like practicing witchcraft or something. They didn’t know anything about it so they thought that any second, I was going to die”.
Prior to a performance at the New Music Seminar in New York City in July 1993, Cobain suffered a heroin overdose. Rather than calling for an ambulance, Love injected Cobain with naloxone to bring him out of his unconscious state. Cobain proceeded to perform with Nirvana, giving the public every indication that everything was business as usual.
Politics
Cobain’s political leanings were as a Democrat. His close friend and former bandmate, Krist Novoselic, stated on twitter Cobain like Jimmy Carter and Jerry Brown. Cobain gave Jerry Brown a max contribution of 100 USD in the 1992 election.
Death
Following a tour stop at Terminal Eins in Munich, Germany, On March 1, 1994, Cobain was diagnosed with bronchitis and severe laryngitis. He flew to Rome the next day for medical treatment, and was joined there by is wife, Courtney Love, on March 3, 1994. The next morning, Love awoke to find that Cobain had overdosed on a combination of champagne and Rohypnol. Cobain was immediately rushed to the hospital and was unconscious for the rest of the day. After five days in the hospital, Cobain was released and returned to Seattle. Love later stated that the incident was Cobain’s first suicide attempt.
On March 18, 1994, Love phoned Seattle police informing them that Cobain was suicidal and had locked himself in a room with a gun. Police arrived and confiscated several guns and a bottle of pills from Cobain, who insisted that he was not suicidal and had locked himself in the room to hide from Love.
Love arranged an intervention regrading Cobain’s drug use on March 25, 1994. The ten people involved included musician friends, record company executives, and one of Cobain’s closest friends, Dylan Carlson. The intervention was initially unsuccessful, with an angry Cobain insulting and heaping scorn on its participants and eventually locking himself in the upstairs bedroom. However, by the end of the day, Cobain had agreed to undergo a detox program. Cobain arrived at the Exodus Recovery Center in Los Angeles on March 30, 1994. The staff at the facility were unaware of Cobain’s history of depression and prior attempts at suicide. When visited by friends, there was no indication to them that Cobain was in any negative or suicide state of mind. He spent the day talking to counselors about his drug abuse and personal problems, happily paying with his daughter Frances. These interactions were the last time Cobain saw his daughter.
The following night, Cobain walked outside to have a cigarette and climbed over a six-foot-high fence to leave the facility (which he had joked earlier I the day would be a stupid feat to attempt). He took a taxi to Los Angeles Airport and flew back to Seattle. On the flight, he sat next to Duff McKagan of Guns ‘N” Roses. Despite Cobain’s own personal animosity towards Guns ‘N’ Roses, and specifically Axl Rose, Cobain “seemed happy” to se McKagan. McKagan later stated he knew from “all of my instincts that something was wrong”. Most of his close friends and family were unaware of his whereabouts. On April 2 and 3, Cobain was spotted in numerous locations around Seattle. On April 3, Love contacted private investigator Tom Grant, and hired him to find Cobain. Cobain as not seen the next day. On April 7, amid rumors of Nirvana breaking up, the band pulled out of the 1994 Lollapalooza Music Festival.
On April 8, Cobain’s body was discovered at his Lake Washington Boulevard home by electrician Gary Smith, who had arrived to install a security system. Apart from a minor amount of blood coming out of Cobain’s ear, the electrician reported seeing no visible signs of trauma and initially believed that Cobain was asleep until he saw the shotgun pointing at his chin. A note was found, addressed to Cobain’s childhood imaginary friend Boddah, which stated that Cobain had not “felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music, along with really writing … for too many years now”. A high concentration of heroin and traces of diazepam were also found in his body. Cobain’s body had been lying there for days; the coroner’s report estimated Cobain to have died on April t, 1994 at the age of 27.
A public vigil was held for Cobain on April 10, 1994, at a park at Seattle Center drawing approximately seven thousand mourners. Pre-recorded messages by Novoselic and Love were played at the memorial. Love read portions of the suicide note to the crowd, crying and chastising Cobain. Near the end of the vigil, Love distributed some of Cobain’s clothing to those who still remained. Grohl said that the news of Cobain’s death was:
“… probably the worst thing that has happened to me in my life. I remember the day after that I woke up and I was heartbroken that he was gone. I just felt like, ‘Okay, so I get to wake up tody and have another day and he doesn’t’.”
Grohl believed that he knew Cobain would die at an early age, saying that “sometimes you just can’t save someone from themselves”, and “in some ways, you kind of prepare yourself emotionally for that to be a reality”. Dave Reed, who for a short time was Cobain’s foster father, said that “he had the desperation, not the courage, to be himself. once you do that, you can’t go wrong, because you can’t make any mistakes when people love you for being yourself. But for Kurt, it didn’t matter that other people loved him; he simply didn’t love himself enough”.
A final ceremony was arranged for Cobain, by his mother, on May 31, 1999, and was attended by both Love and Tracy Marander. As a Buddhist monk chanted, daughter Frances Bean scattered Cobain’s ashes into McLane Creek in Olympia, the city where he “had found his true artistic muse”.
Cobain is a well-known member of the 27 Club. His death has since been a topic of public fascination and debate. Cobain’s artistic endeavors and struggles with heroin addiction, illness and depression, as well as the circumstances of his death have become a frequent topic of fascination, debate, and controversy throughout the world. According to a spokesperson for the Seattle Police Department, the department receives at least one weekly request, mostly through Twitter, to reopen the investigation, resulting in the maintenance of the basic incident report on file.
In March 2014, the Seattle police developed four rolls of film that had been left in an evidence vault—a reason was not provided for why the rolls were not developed earlier. According to the Seattle police, the 35mm film photographs show the scene of Cobain’s dead body more clearly than previous Polaroid images taken by police. Detective Mike Ciesynski, a cold case investigator, was instructed to look at the film because “it is 20 years later and it’s a high media case”. Ciesynski stated that Cobain’s death remains a suicide and that the images would not have been released publicly. The photos in question were later released, one by one, weeks before the 20th anniversary of Cobain’s death. One photo shows Cobain’s arm, still wearing the hospital bracelet from the drug rehab facility he checked out of just a few days prior to returning to Seattle. Another photo shows Cobain’s foot resting next to a bag of shotgun shells, one of which was used in his death.
Legacy and Influence
Cobain has been remembered as one of the most iconic rock musicians in the history of alternative music. In 2003, David Fricke of Rolling Stone ranked him the 12th greatest guitarist of all time. He was later ranked the 73rd greatest guitarist and 45th greatest singer of all time by the same magazine, and by MTV as seventh in the “22 Greatest Voices in Music”. In 2006, he was placed at number twenty by Hit Parader on their list of the “100 Greatest Metal Singers of All Time”. Cobain is one of the significant members of the 27 Club, a list of musicians who died when they were 27 years old.
Reflecting on Cobain’s death over 10 years later, MSNBC’s Eric Olsen wrote:
“In the intervening decade, Cobain, a small, frail but handsome man in life, has become an abstract Generation X icon, viewed by many as the “last real rock star” […] a messiah and martyr whose every utterance has been plundered and parsed.”
In2005, a sign was put in Aberdeen, Washington, that read “Welcome to Aberdeen – Come As You Are” as a tribute to Cobain. The sign was paid for and created by the Kurt Cobain Memorial Committee, a non-profit organization crated in May 2004 to honor Cobain. The Committee planned to create a Kurt Cobain Memoria Park and a youth center in Aberdeen. Because Cobain was cremated and his remains scattered into the Wishkah River in Washington, many Nirvana fans visit Viretta Park, near Cobain’s former Lake Washington home.
To pay tribute, on the anniversary of Cobain’s death, fans gather in the park to celebrate his life and memory.
In 2006, Cobain took the place of Elvis Presley as the top-earning deceased celebrity, after the sale of the Nirvana song catalogue. Presley reclaimed the spot the following year.
Controversy erupted in July 2009 when a monument to Cobain in Aberdeen along the Wishkah River included the quote “… Drugs are bad for you. They will fuck you up.” The city ultimately decided to sandblast the monument to replace the expletive with “f---“, but fans immediately drew the letters back in.
Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins referred to Cobain as “the Michael Jordan of our generation”. He also stated that Cobain opened the door for everyone in the 1990s alternative rock scene.
Lars Ulrich of Metallica reflected on Cobain’s influence stating that “with Kurt Cobain you felt you were connecting to the real person, not a perception of who he was – you were not connecting to an image or a manufactured cut-out. You felt that between you and him there was nothing – it was heart-to-heart. There are very few people who have that ability”.
Books and Film on Cobain
Prior to Cobain’s death, Azerrad published “Come as Your Are: The Story of Nirvana”, a book chronicling Nirvana’s career from its beginning, as well as the personal histories of the band members. The book explored Cobain’s drug addiction, as well as countless controversies surrounding the band. After Cobain’s death, Azerrad republished the book to include a final chapter discussing the last year of Cobain’s life. The book is notable, as it involved the band member’s themselves, who provided interviews and personal information to Azerrad’s taped conversations with Cobain were transformed into a documentary about Cobain, titled “Kurt Cobain: About a Son”. Though this film does not feature any music by Nirvana, it has songs by the artists that inspired Cobain.
In the 1998 documentary “Kurt & Courtney”, filmmaker Nick Broomfield investigated Tom Grant’s claim that Cobain was actually murdered. He took a film crew to visit a number of people associated with Cobain and Love; Love’s father, Cobain’s aunt, and one of the couple’s former nannies. Broomfield also spoke to Mentors bandleader Eldon “El Duce” Hoke, who claimed Love offered him $50,000 to kill Cobain. Although Hoke claimed he knew who killed Cobain, he failed to mention a name, and offered no evidence to support his assertion. Broomfield inadvertently captured Hoke’s last interview, as he died days later, reportedly hit by a train. However, Broomfield felt he had not uncovered enough evidence to conclude the existence of a conspiracy. In a 1998 interview, Broomfield summed it up b saying:
“I think that he committed suicide. I don’t think there’s a smoking gun. And I think there’s only one way you can explain a lot of things around his death. Not that he was murdered, but that there was just a lack of caring for him. I just think that Courtney had moved on, and he was expendable.”
Broomfield’s documentary was noted by The New York Times to be a rambling, largely speculative and circumstantial work, relying on flimsy evidence as was his later documentary “Biggie & Tupac”.
Journalists Ian Halperin and Max Wallace took a similar path and attempted to investigate any possible conspiracy for themselves. Their initial work, the 1999 book, “Who Killed Kurt Cobain?”, argued that, while there was not enough evidence to prove a conspiracy, there was more than enough to demand that the case be reopened. A notable element of the book included their discussions with Grant, who had taped nearly every conversation that he had undertaken while he was in Love’s employ. Over the next several years, Halperin and Wallace collaborated with Grant to write a second book, 2004s “Love and Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain”.
In 2001, writer Charles R. Cross published a biography of Cobain, titled “Heavier Than Heaven”. For the book, Cross conducted over 400 interviews, and was given access by Courtney Love to Cobain’s journals, lyrics, and diaries. Cross’ biography was met with criticism, including allegations of Cross accepting secondhand (and incorrect) information as fact. Friend Everett True, who derided the book as being inaccurate, omissive, and highly biased; h said “Heavier Than Heaven” was “the Courtney-sanctioned version of history” or, alternatively, Cross’s “Oh, I think I need to find the new Bruce Springsteen now” Kurt Cobain book. However, beyond the criticism, the book contained details about Cobain and Nirvana’s career that would have otherwise been unnoted. In 2008, Cross published “Cobain Unseen: Mosaic of an Artist”, a compilation of annotated photographs and creations and writings by Cobain throughout his life and career.
In 2002, a sampling of Cobain’s writings was published as “Journals”. The book fills 280 pages with a simple black cover; the pages are arranged somewhat chronologically (although Cobain generally did not date them). The journal pages are reproduced in color, and there is a section added at the back with explanations and transcripts of some of the less legible pages. The writings begin in the late 1980s and were continued until his death. a paperback version of the book, released in 2003, included a handful of writings that were not offered in the initial release. In the journals, Cobain talked about the ups and downs of life on the road, made lists of what music he was enjoying, and often scribbled down lyric ideas for future reference. Upon its release, reviewers and fans were conflicted about the collections. Many were elated to be able to learn more about Cobain and read his inner thoughts in his own words, but were disturbed by what was viewed as an “invasion of his privacy”.
Gus Van Sant loosely based his 2005 movie “Last Days” on the events in the final days of Cobain’s life, starring Michael Pitt as Cobain. In January 2007, Love began to shop the biography Heavier Than Heaven to various movie studios in Hollywood to turn the book into an A-list feature film about Cobain and Nirvana.
The inclusion of Cobain as a playable character in the 2009 video game, “Guitar Hero 5”, upset Novoselic and Grohl, who expressed their dismay at the ability of players to use Cobain with any song, including those sung by female vocalists.
Also in 2009. ECW Press released a book titled “Grunge is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music”. Written by Greg Prato, the book explored the history of grunge in detail, touching upon Nirvana and Cobain’s life and death via interviews with former bandmates, friends, and various grunge-ear contemporaries. A picture of Cobain from the Bleach era is used for the book’s front cover, and its title comes from a shirt that Cobain once photographed wearing.
In December 2012, during an Art Based exhibition in Miami, artist Adarsha Benjamin presented her experimental short film, “Kurt”. On April 10, 2014, Nirvana was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Grohl and Love accepted the accolade at the ceremony.
A Brett Morgen film, entitled “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck”, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2015, followed by small-screen and cinema releases. Morgen said that documentary “will be this generation’s ‘The Wall’”.
“Soaked in Bleach” is a 2015 American docudrama directed by Benjamin Statler. The film details the events leading up to the death of Kurt Cobain, as seen through the perspective of Tom Grant, the private detective who was hired by Courtney Love to find Cobain, her husband, shortly before his death in 1994. It also explores the premise that Cobain’s death was not a suicide. The film stars Tyler Bryan as Cobain and Daniel Roebuck as Grant, with Sarah Scott portraying Courtney Love and August Emerson as Dylan Carlson.
Regarding the depiction of Nirvana, and in particular Kurt Cobain, the indie rock author Andrew Earle wrote:
“Never has a rock band’s past been so retroactively distorted into an irreversible fiction by incessant mythologizing, conjecture, wild speculation, and romanticizing rhetoric. The Cobain biographical narrative – specifically in regard to the culturally irresponsible mishandling of subjects such as drug abuse, depression, and suicide – is now impenetrable with inaccurate and overcooked connectivity between that which is completely unrelated, too chronologically disparate, or just plain untrue.”
Discography
Collaborations
Scratch It Out/Bikini Twilight (Single, July 1989) (With The Go Team)
The Winding Sheet (album, 1990) (Cobain does background vocals on “Down in the Dark” and guitar on “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”) (With Mark Lanegan)
Earth’s demo (October 1990), lead vocals for song “Divine Bright Extraction” and backing vocals for “A Bureaucratic Desire For Revenge”. Cobain also sang lead vocals for a cover song “Private Affair” (original by The Saints), but that was never released
“The ‘Priest’ They Called Him” (EP, 1993) (Cobain does background guitar noise) (With William S. Burroughs)
“Houdini” (album,1993) (Cobain plays guitar on “Sky Pup” and percussion on the song “Spread Eagle Beagle”) (With the Melvins)
Posthumous Releases
Albums
“Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings” (solo album) (2015)
Singles
“And I Love Her”/”Sappy” (7-inch vinyl) (2015)
Videos
“Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck” (DVD and Blu-ray) (2015)
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