Kurt Cobain
Kurt Donald Cobain (Aberdeen, Washington, February 20, 1967-Seattle, Washington, April 5, 1994) was an American singer, musician, and songwriter, best known for being the singer, Guitarist and main songwriter for the grunge band Nirvana. He is considered an icon and voice of Generation X. Cobain formed Nirvana with Krist Novoselic in his hometown in 1985 and established it as part of the Seattle music scene with their album Bleach (1989). released on the independent record label Sub Pop. After signing with DGC Records, the band achieved surprise success with "Smells Like Teen Spirit", the first single from their second album Nevermind (1991).). Following the success of Nevermind, Nirvana was labeled "the main band" of Generation X, and Cobain was hailed as "the spokesman for a generation". Cobain, however, was often uncomfortable and frustrated, believing that his message and artistic vision had been misunderstood by the public, his personal problems often receiving media attention. He challenged Nirvana's audience with his final studio album, In Utero (1993). The album did not match the sales figures of Nevermind but was still a critical and commercial success.
During the last years of his life, Cobain struggled with depression, illness, and heroin addiction. He also had difficulty coping with his fame and public image, the professional and personal pressures in his life and his wife, singer-songwriter Courtney Love. On April 8, 1994, Cobain was found dead at his home in Seattle from a shotgun wound to the head three days earlier. The circumstances of his death, at the age of 27, have become into a subject of public fascination and debate.
Early Years
Kurt Cobain was born in the state of Washington on February 20, 1967, into a Christian family (he would later reflect this stage in the song "Lithium"). He lived his first six months in Hoquiam, until his family returned to Aberdeen.
His father was named Donald Leland Cobain and his mother was Wendy Elizabeth Fradenburg. He also had a younger sister, Kimberly, born April 24, 1970.
He listened to artists like the Ramones and also sang songs like Arlo Guthrie's "Motorcycle Song," The Beatles' "Hey Jude," Terry Jacks' "Seasons in the Sun," and the theme song for the TV series The Monkees at an early age.
According to his parents, Cobain's life changed dramatically at the age of nine due to their divorce. In an interview in 1993, Cobain said:
I remember feeling sorry, sad for my parents. I was ashamed to compare myself to my school friends, because I wanted to belong to that kind of classic family, to a typical family. Mother, father... I wanted that security. I hated my parents for years for that reason.
After living with his mother for a year after the divorce, Cobain moved to Montesano to live with his father.
During adolescence, he was bullied by his classmates and on the street for being friends with a gay boy.
Nirvana
Cobain received his first guitar at the age of fourteen. His uncle got it from the Rosevear Music Center in Aberdeen, choosing the instrument over a bicycle. From that moment Cobain tried to form bands with friends, interpreting songs by AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. In high school, however, Cobain had frequent trouble finding someone to play with, as none of his friends possessed any particular musical talent. His main influences at that time were Iron Maiden and Led Zeppelin, bands that to this day remain written on the wall of his room in the house of his childhood and adolescence.
Later, Cobain found Krist Novoselic, a staunch devotee of punk rock, who lived across the Young Street Bridge. Novoselic's mother owned a beauty salon (Maria's Hair Design), so they were able to practice on the second floor of the building occasionally. A few years later Cobain tried to convince Novoselic to form a band with him, giving him a copy of a home demo (entitled "Illiteracy Will Prevail") recorded by one of Cobain's first bands in 1985, Fecal Matter. After months of thinking about it, Novoselic agreed to join Cobain, which laid the foundation for Nirvana.
In the early years as a group, Novoselic and Cobain had to rotate frequently among various drummers, such as Dale Crover and Aaron Buckhard. Eventually, Chad Channing joined the band, with whom they recorded Bleach, released on Sub Pop Records in 1989 with Jack Endino as producer and Jason Everman as financier. Although he did not play on any song on the album, he was present as the second guitarist on the back cover, although during the Bleach tour he resigned, and they went back to being the trio they used to be. Cobain, however, was dissatisfied with Channing's style, and the band replaced him with Dave Grohl in late 1990, but not before recording "Sliver" with Mudhoney drummer Dan Peters. Together with Grohl, the band found success with their major label debut, Nevermind (1991).
Initially, the sales expectation for Nevermind did not exceed 500,000 copies. However, the album was certified triple platinum in the United States in less than six months.[citation needed] "Smells Like Teen Spirit" received heavy rotation on MTV and it peaked at number 6 on Billboard magazine's Top 100, inspiring a handful of imitators and driving the grunge and alternative sound onto the charts. The popularity of alternative rock, as well as the end of the hair metal era, are attributed to Nevermind.
On January 11, 1992, with 12 million copies sold, the album reached the top of the Billboard Albums Chart, knocking out Michael Jackson's Dangerous and also surpassing Billboard. i>Use Your Illusion by Guns N' Roses, a fact considered symbolic of the rise of alternative music over pop and hard rock. In addition, the arrival of Nevermind helped chart several grunge albums such as Pearl Jam's Ten and Badmotorfinger by Soundgarden.
Reporting fatigue (largely due to some voice problems that Cobain suffered), and after a short tour with Pearl Jam and the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the US east coast, and one through Australia and Japan, the band decided not to embark on a spring 1992 US tour to promote Nevermind (despite making promotional appearances on the popular Saturday Night Live show and on MTV), instead for doing several performances later that same year.
Later, in 1993, the album In Utero came out. With In Utero, the band also faced censorship. Big department store chains like Kmart and Walmart refused to carry the album on their shelves, claiming that song titles like "Rape Me" and the collage of plastic fetuses on the album's back cover were too "controversial" for "market-oriented" chains. family".
The band then agreed to change the album art, releasing a "clean" version, which also changed the name from "Rape Me" by "Waif Me". However, with the exception of Litt's mix of "Pennyroyal Tea", the included music was identical to the common release. When asked about the edited version, Cobain said that many small-town residents (especially in the central United States) did not have local music stores, and had to buy their albums at large chain stores like Kmart.
Although "Heart-Shaped Box" was well received by alternative and mainstream radio stations, and In Utero debuted at number 1 on the Billboard album chart, the album did not enjoy same success as Nevermind. When the band embarked on the US tour of In Utero, their first since the success of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", they regularly played to half-full halls, mainly due to the lack of touring for promotion. of Nevermind and for the new and "challenging" launch.
For the promotional tour for In Utero, the band added Pat Smear of punk rock band The Germs as second guitarist.
Cobain had a lot of trouble adjusting to Nirvana's massive success with its strong underground roots. In addition, he felt persecuted by the media to the point of comparing himself to Frances Farmer, and he resented people who claimed to be fans of the band, but did not understand the message of the band.
One incident that particularly upset Cobain involved two men who raped a woman while singing the Nirvana song "Polly." Cobain condemned the episode in the liner notes accompanying the US versions of the Incesticide compilation, referring to the assailants as "two wastes of sperm and ova".
Personal life
Courtney Love
Courtney Love first saw Cobain play in 1990. According to journalist Everett True, the pair were formally introduced at a concert by L7 and the Butthole Surfers in Los Angeles in May 1991. (Several biographies list the date as of the meeting in 1989, in Portland, Oregon, but True insists that 1991 is a more accurate date, pointing to a 1992 interview with Cobain and Love with Sassy magazine in which the couple said they had met at a L7 and Butthole Surfers concert). In the weeks that followed, after learning from Grohl that she and Cobain shared mutual feelings, Love began seeking him out frequently. After weeks of meetings and conversations, in the fall of 1991, the two were seen together more frequently.
Around the time of Nirvana's performance on Saturday Night Live (early 1992) Love discovered she was pregnant.
A few days after the end of Nirvana's Pacific tour, on Monday, February 24, 1992, Cobain married Love on Waikiki Beach in Hawaii. On August 18, the couple's only daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, was born. The reason for the unusual middle name was that Cobain thought she looked like a bean in his first ultrasound. The girl was named after Frances McKee of The Vaselines, of whom Cobain was a huge fan.
Frances Bean Cobain
On August 18, 1992, Frances Bean Cobain was born to Kurt and Courtney. In a 1992 article in Vanity Fair magazine, Love admitted to using heroin without knowing she was pregnant. Love later claimed that Vanity Fair had misquoted her, but the event created a media controversy for the couple. Cobain and Love had always been a draw for the romance press, but since then they have been hounded by the tabloid press, interested in knowing if Frances had been addicted to drugs since her birth.
The Los Angeles County Department of Children's Services took the Cobains to court, claiming that the couple's drug use made them unfit. The judge ordered Frances separated from her parents and placed in the custody of Courtney's sister, Jamie, when the girl was two weeks old. After litigating for several weeks, the couple regained custody of her daughter after agreeing to undergo urine tests and regular visits from a social worker. After months of legal wrangling, the couple finally won full custody of their daughter.
Addictions
During his life, Kurt battled depression, chronic bronchitis, and intense physical pain from an undiagnosed chronic stomach condition, which he searched for years for the cause and which affected him emotionally.
None of the doctors he consulted were able to find the specific cause, though they assured him it could be the result of Cobain's childhood scoliosis, or related to the stress of touring and events over the years. which the band attended. Cobain self-medicated with heroin, even though his medical condition was not the primary reason for his use of the drug.
Cobain had his first contact with drugs in the early 1980s, beginning to use marijuana at the age of thirteen. It has been said that he sought to combat his hyperactivity. He had been treated with strong painkillers since he was little. His initiation into heroin use takes place in 1986. For a few months Cobain used the drug casually, but it didn't take long for it to become an addiction.
In late 1991 its use began to affect the band's tour in support of Nevermind, and Cobain was seen collapsing during photo shoots. For example, on the day of the band's performance on Saturday Night Live, when Nirvana had a session with photographer Michael Levine, Cobain (who had used heroin a few hours earlier) was reeling several times during the performance. session.
Her life is a sad and hopeless story, which has been reflected in that photo that Ian Tilton took of her for the now-defunct British music magazine Sounds. In it he is seen sitting on the ground, with his hand on his forehead in a gesture of pain. This image has been selected by Q magazine as one of the hundred best photos in the history of rock. In it Tilton tells how he did it during a tour in Seattle, before they became famous: ′ He was sitting and crying; he knew he was there, but he didn't care that I took a picture of him; the group also accepted crying from him, so it probably wasn't the first time he'd done it.
About this, Cobain told biographer Michael Azerrad: «I say: What can they do? They weren't able to tell me to stop. So I didn't care. They obviously thought it was something akin to practicing witchcraft. They didn't know my problem well, and they even thought at some point that I was going to die."
Kurt's heroin addiction increased over time. In early 1992, shortly after he and Courtney found out they were going to be parents, he decided to check into rehab. After leaving her, Nirvana embarked on a tour of Japan and Australia, where he turned pale on Cobain as he suffered from withdrawal symptoms. Shortly after returning to the United States, Kurt's addiction recurred.
Before performing at the New Music Seminar in New York City in July 1993, Cobain overdosed on heroin. Instead of calling an ambulance, Love injected him with naloxone - obtained illegally - to bring him out of unconsciousness. A few hours later, Cobain played one of the most memorable concerts of the year with Nirvana. The public did not notice that something strange had happened.
Sexuality
In October 1992, when asked, "Well, are you gay?" Per Monk Magazine, Cobain responded, "If I wasn't attracted to Courtney, I'd be bisexual." In another interview, he described his identification with the gay community in The Advocate, stating: "I'm definitely gay in spirit and could probably be bisexual" and "if I hadn't found Courtney, I probably would have continued a bisexual lifestyle with her", but also that he was "more sexually attracted to women". himself as "girly" in childhood and often wore dresses and other stereotypically feminine clothing. Some of his song lyrics, as well as phrases he used to vandalize vehicles and a bank, included "God is gay," "Jesus is gay," "GAY SEX RULES," and "Everybody's gay.". One of his personal diaries says: "I'm not gay, although I would like to be, just to piss off homophobes."
Final weeks and death
On February 23, 1994, Kurt Cobain made his last television appearance on an Italian television show, Tunnel, by Serena Dandini.
On March 1, 1994, after the group played their last concert at Terminal Einz in Munich, Cobain was diagnosed with severe bronchitis and laryngitis. The next day he went to Rome for medical treatment. His wife would be there on March 3.
When Love awoke the next morning to discover that Cobain had overdosed on a combination of champagne and flunitrazepam (Love obtained a prescription for this drug after arriving in Rome). Cobain was immediately rushed to the hospital, and spent the rest of the day unconscious.
After five days in treatment, Cobain was released from the hospital and returned to Seattle. Love later publicly insisted that the incident was Cobain's suicide attempt.
On March 18, Love called the police to report that Cobain had committed suicide and had locked himself in a room with a gun. Police went to the residence and seized several weapons and a bottle of pills from Cobain, who insisted that he did not want to kill himself and that he had gone into hiding from his wife.
When questioned about it by police, she admitted that Cobain had never mentioned wanting to kill himself and that she had not seen him with a gun.
On March 25, Love called a meeting about Cobain's drug use. Among the ten people who were there that day were musicians close to Cobain, executives from the band's record label, and two of Cobain's closest friends: Earth's Dylan Carlson and R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe.
Former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg described Cobain as "extremely skeptical" and that he "denied that he was doing anything truly self-destructive." However, by the end of the day, Cobain agreed to enter a detox program.
On March 30, Cobain arrived at the Exodus Recovery Center in Los Angeles. On the afternoon of April 1, Frances Bean's (Cobain's daughter) nanny took her to the site for an hour-long visit with her father. That night Cobain left the building with a cigarette, then scaled a 6-foot-high fence and left the center. He then boarded a taxi to the airport and returned to Seattle.
The next morning he stopped at her home, where he spoke with Michael Cali DeWitt, who lived nearby. During the following days, Cobain was touring Seattle, but several of his family and friends were not aware of what he was doing.
On April 3, Love hired private investigator Tom Grant to find Cobain (Tom Grant has since disagreed with the official account of Kurt Cobain's death).
The next day, Love filed a missing person report with the name of Cobain's mother without her permission. In addition, he added that he wanted to commit suicide and that he was in possession of a firearm.
On April 8, 1994, Cobain's lifeless body was discovered in a room above his garage by Veca Electric employee Gary Smith. Smith arrived at the house that morning to install an electrical security system and saw the body thinking it was a mannequin.
With the exception of a small amount of blood leaking from Cobain's ear, Smith reported that he had not noticed any visible signs of trauma, and at first believed he was asleep. Smith found what appeared to be a suicide note, in a small vase of flowers, saying among other things: "Please, Courtney, move on. By French. For the life of her, she's going to be much happier without me. I love them, I love them!" Although bandleader David Woodard had built a Dreamachine for Cobain, reports that Cobain had been using the psychoactive device excessively in the days before his suicide were contradicted by later findings. shotgun, which Cobain allegedly procured with the help of Dylan Carlson. An autopsy concluded that Cobain's death was the result of "an inflicted gunshot wound to the head." The report estimates that Cobain died on April 5 at around 11:30 a.m.
On the other hand, there are some theories that his death was not a suicide but a homicide by his then wife Courtney Love; the reasons were financial, they were getting divorced and Courtney would no longer enjoy the great fortune of her husband. What leads one to believe this was that after Kurt's death a witness appeared saying that Courtney would have offered him money ($50,000) to kill the singer (the witness was found dead weeks later).
However, Kurt himself said in interviews before his death that he had finally managed to alleviate severe abdominal pain that he had been suffering for quite some time. Relatives and close friends of the singer also said the Nirvana frontman was changing and had cut back on drugs so he could better focus on raising his young daughter. They also said that Kurt did not present behaviors that would lead them to think that he wanted to commit suicide or something similar.
There is evidence and indications that could cast doubt on the death of the singer, however they have not gone beyond theories and nothing has been confirmed.
He is a "member" of the 27 club (a group of musicians who died at that age, such as Robert Johnson, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin).
Musical Influences
Cobain was a devoted follower of early alternative rock artists. He referenced his favorite bands in interviews, giving even more importance to the bands that influenced him than to his own music. In the interviews, Cobain spoke of relatively obscure performers for the general public, such as Blue Cheer, The Vaselines, The Melvins, Daniel Johnston, Meat Puppets, Young Marble Giants, King Crimson, Wipers or The Raincoats. Furthermore, Cobain was able to convince record labels to re-release records by The Raincoats (Geffen) and The Vaselines (Sub Pop). Cobain also spoke of the influence of the Pixies, commenting on the similarities of that band's music and Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Cobain told the music magazine Melody Maker in 1992 that after hearing "Surfer Rosa" for the first time it convinced him to put aside his "Black Flag-like" compositions, to concentrate more on "Iggy Pop/Aerosmith-like" compositions, which appeared on Nevermind.
Cobain also made efforts to include his favorite performers in his musical journeys. In 1993, when he decided he wanted a second guitarist to assist him on stage, Cobain, along with Nirvana, teamed up with Pat Smear of the legendary California band Germs. The same year, when there were problems during rehearsals for three Meat Puppets songs for the band's MTV Unplugged performance, Cobain called the band's frontmen, brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood, to come onstage to perform the songs. songs.
While Sonic Youth helped Nirvana achieve greater success, Nirvana attempted to help other indie artists achieve it. The band contributed the song "Oh, the Guilt" to a single released in conjunction with Chicago's The Jesus Lizard, which helped Nirvana's indie credibility and helped grow The's following. Jesus Lizard.
The Beatles were a major musical influence on Cobain. He expressed particular admiration for John Lennon, whom he considered his idol, according to his diaries, and even admitted that the song "About a Girl" was essentially his attempt to write a Beatles song. He also had many punk rock influences and credited bands like Bad Brains, MDC, Black Flag, The Clash, Ramones and the Sex Pistols for his attitude and artistic style.
Despite Cobain's indie influences, the sound of Nirvana's early years was influenced by 1970s hard rock bands, including Led Zeppelin, Queen, Black Sabbath and Kiss. At the time, the band was in the regular habit of playing covers of songs by these bands, including Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song," "Dazed and Confused," and "Heartbreaker," and a studio recording of "Do You Love Me." ?» by Kiss, which they released for the Kiss tribute album Hard to Believe. Additionally, Cobain discussed the influence of bands like The Knack, Boston, and Bay City Rollers on his music.
In addition, Cobain was influenced by artists from earlier eras: Nirvana's concert on MTV Unplugged ended with a cover of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night," a song made popular by blues artist Leadbelly, one of the performers Cobain favourites. In that same Unplugged he also performed "The Man Who Sold The World", a cover of the David Bowie song.
Legacy
Cobain's best-known song is the grunge anthem, "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Behind that song there is a story: Kathleen Hanna, a friend of Cobain's, wrote on the wall of her room "Kurt smells like Teen Spirit", alluding to the Teen Spirit deodorant used by Kurt's girlfriend at the time, Tobi Vail. Kurt didn't get the joke and interpreted the phrase with a revolutionary meaning.
In 1994, MTV broadcasts the acoustic concert and the album MTV Unplugged In New York is released, which wins a Grammy Award. Two years later an album with live songs called From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah came out. In 2002, after legal disputes between Love and the two remaining ex-band members, the greatest hits album Nirvana came out, featuring the single song "You Know You're Right", Nirvana's last studio song, Recorded in January 1994.
In 2004 the box set With The Lights Out was released, containing previously unreleased material from the band, B-sides and live performances; this box set is considered by Rolling Stone as "the best-selling box set in history"; and the following year, a compilation with the best of the box set and three covers of previously unreleased songs, "Sliver: The Best Of The Box".
One of those songs is "Spank Thru", which, according to Kurt and Krist, is the first Nirvana song, and also the version presented comes from the demo "Fecal Matter", with which Kurt would convince Krist to forming a band, and considered the Holy Grail for many fans of the band. A foundation to help addicts was then created under Cobain's name.
In Kurt Cobain's hometown, he made a point of naming the Alexander Young Bridge after him. However, the members of the city council voted ten to one against the resolution and refused to change the current name. Apparently, the reason was that he was a publicly suicidal drug addict.
In addition, he made negative comments about the town while he was alive. The bridge in question is located on Young Street in the city of Aberdeen, in the State of Washington, and Kurt Cobain referred to it in the song Something In The Way, from the album Nevermind . However, the City Council agreed to name a small strip of the Wishkah River near the bridge as Cobain Landing, since the Nirvana singer said he had slept on more than one occasion in that place, which is now place of pilgrimage
Musical team
Numerous guitars passed through Kurt Cobain's hands, with photographic evidence of at least 60 different ones. This is because he (and also the rest of his band) had a habit of destroying equipment after concerts, so he needed to stock up on new guitars frequently. Choosing anything more or less to his liking but not too expensive to destroy. A fairly common feature in almost all of Cobain's guitars is that he installed humbuckers, at least on the bridge, since they are better suited to handle all the distortion that the grunge sound needs.
He had his first guitar at the age of 14, an unknown brand, a model similar to a Stratocaster that was broken by some classmates from his high school.
His main guitar was a Fender Jaguar set up to accommodate two hambuckers and never vandalized. According to Cobain, Fender Mustangs were his favorite guitars, including a Mustang Competition seen in the Smells like teen spirit video as well as four Mustangs gifted from Fender Japan, three of them blue and one red, all with red pickguards, he substituted. the red mustang's pickguard for a white one and was modified to accommodate a hambucker in the bridge, after this he put hambuckers on two of his other blue mustangs, the third was never modified or used live.
Grunge music brought these surfer guitar models from the 60s back into fashion, and the Fender brand offered to manufacture a guitar designed by Cobain himself, a hybrid between the Jaguar and the Mustang, the Fender Jag- Stang, with a humbucker in the bridge. Kurt was not satisfied with the prototypes and died before seeing the final ones. But a mustang was also created for him by the Ferrintong company, it had three pickups, one was a humbucker, it had a Stratocaster-type input and a fixed bridge like the one on the Les Paul, it was only used in studies for fear to destroy it in some concert.
Kurt spent more time playing the Fender Stratocaster than any other guitar model. There are known photos of at least fifteen different ones, possibly because they were easier to find and repair than his favorite models. He used to install humbuckers in the bridge and would sometimes change the neck if the original broke.
Cobain was fond of Mosrites. In a way, he makes sense of it since Mosrites were surfer guitars, just like Jaguars and Mustangs, sharing some common characteristics. In the design of the Mosrite, in the mid-60s, The Ventures were involved. They were guitars with unusual shapes, quite asymmetrical, and over time they came to appreciate. Cobain had two original Mosrites, one of which was one of his favorite guitars that he never stamped. For practice, he used cheap copies of these guitars called univoxes, like the white one used in the Heart-Shaped Box video.
He has been seen on a few occasions with a Fender Telecaster. One of them, a gift from the Fender brand, was completely remodeled according to Kurt's tastes. Cobain commented that it was his new favorite guitar but he died just two weeks after he released it.
The acoustic guitar on the Unplugged is a 1959 Martin D18E, he also had an Epiphone Texan with the Nixon Now stiker, according to Earney it was Kurt's best acoustic, he used a Stella 12 string for the Nevermind sessions. The Martin D18E was purchased by Australian businessman Peter Freedman at auction in June 2020 for $6 million, making it the most expensive guitar ever.
His studio amp of choice was a tube Fender Twin Reverb, for gigs he used a Mesa Boogie head plugged into Marshall 4x12 cabinets.
Between tours he used to change his pedalboard. On the Bleach tour he only used a BOSS DS-1 Distortion, he referred to it as Roland.
For recording and touring from 1991 to 1992 he switched his distortion to a BOSS DS-2 Turbo Distortion and also used an Electro-Harmonix Small Clone chorus on songs like Smell Like Teen Spirit, Come As You Are and In Bloom (from In the same way he came to use a BOSS CE-5 and an Electro-Harmonix Clone Theory but neither came to like him as much as his Small Clone).
For the In Utero recordings he bought an Electro-Harmonix EchoFlanger and an Electro-Harmonix PolyChorus (they were exactly the same) he used them on Scentless Apprentice, Radio Friendly Unit Shifter and the Heart-Shaped Box solo, he used to vary between these for their live performances. He used a Tech 21 Sans Amp Classic amp-simulator box as his main distortion while still using his BOSS DS-2.
Discography
Fecal Matter
- 1985: Illiteracy Will Prevail
Nirvana
- 1989: Bleach
- 1991: Nevermind
- 1992: Incesticide
- 1993: In Utero
- 1994: MTV Unplugged in New York
- 1994: Live! Tonight!
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