Kurt Cobain

, where Cobain was born Kurt Donald Cobain was born on February 20, 1967, at Grays Harbor Hospital in Aberdeen, Washington, the son of waitress Wendy Elizabeth (née Fradenburg; 1947–2021) and car mechanic Donald Leland Cobain (born 1946). His parents married in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, on July 31, 1965. Cobain had Dutch, English, French, German, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. The Cobain surname comes from his Irish ancestors Samuel and Letitia, who emigrated in 1875 from Carrickmore, a village near Omagh in County Tyrone, Ulster. Cobain mistakenly believed that his Irish ancestors came from County Cork. His younger sister, Kimberly, was born on April 24, 1970. Cobain developed an interest in music at a young age. According to his aunt Mari, he began singing at the age of two. At age four, he started playing the piano and singing, writing a song about a trip to a park. He listened to artists including Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), and, from a young age, would sing songs including Arlo Guthrie's "Motorcycle Song", the Beatles' "Hey Jude", Terry Jacks' "Seasons in the Sun", and the theme song to the Monkees television show. His parents found new partners after the divorce. Although his father had promised not to remarry, he married Jenny Westeby, to Cobain's dismay. However, spirituality remained an important part of Cobain's personal life and beliefs. As attested to by several of Cobain's classmates and family members, the first concert he attended was Sammy Hagar and Quarterflash, held at the Seattle Center Coliseum in 1983. As a teenager living in Montesano, Washington, Cobain eventually found escape through the thriving Pacific Northwest punk scene, going to punk rock shows in Seattle. In late 1986, Cobain moved into an apartment, paying his rent by working at the Polynesian Resort, a themed resort on the Pacific coast at Ocean Shores, Washington approximately west of Aberdeen. During this period, he traveled frequently to Olympia, Washington, to go to rock concerts. During his visits to Olympia, Cobain formed a relationship with Tracy Marander. Their relationship was close but strained by financial problems and Cobain's absence when touring. Marander supported the couple by working at the cafeteria of the Boeing plant in Auburn, Washington, often stealing food. Cobain spent most of his time sleeping into the late evening, watching television, and concentrating on art projects. Marander's insistence that he get a job caused arguments that influenced Cobain to write the song "About a Girl", which appeared on Nirvana's debut album, Bleach. Marander is credited with having taken the cover photo for the album, as well as the front and back cover photos of their Blew single. She did not become aware that Cobain wrote "About a Girl" about her until years after his death. Soon after his separation from Marander, Cobain began dating Tobi Vail, an influential punk zinester of the riot grrrl band Bikini Kill who embraced the DIY ethos. After meeting Vail, Cobain vomited, overwhelmed with anxiety caused by his infatuation with her. This event inspired the lyric "love you so much it makes me sick" in the song "Aneurysm". While Cobain regarded Vail as his female counterpart, his relationship with her waned; he desired the maternal comfort of a traditional relationship, which Vail regarded as sexist within a countercultural punk rock community. Vail's lovers were described by her friend Alice Wheeler as "fashion accessories". Cobain wrote many of his songs about Vail. == Career ==

Early musical projects On his 14th birthday, February 20, 1981, Cobain's uncle offered him the choice of either a bike or a used guitar; Cobain chose the guitar. Soon, he was trying to play Led Zeppelin's song "Stairway to Heaven". He also learned how to play "Louie Louie", Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust", and the Cars' "My Best Friend's Girl", before he began working on his own songs. Cobain played left-handed, despite being forced to write right-handed. One of "several joke bands" that arose from the circle of friends associated with the Melvins, but for most of its brief incarnation Fecal Matter was just the duo of Cobain and Crover (who later played on Nirvana's Bleach in addition to his Melvins output and other projects). They spent several months rehearsing original material and covers, including songs by the Ramones, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix. Nirvana During high school, Cobain rarely found anyone with whom he could play music. While hanging out at the Melvins' practice space, he met Krist Novoselic, a fellow devotee of punk rock. Novoselic's mother owned a hair salon, and the pair occasionally practiced in the upstairs room of the salon. A few years later, Cobain tried to convince Novoselic to form a band with him by lending him a copy of a home demo recorded by Fecal Matter. The success of Nevermind provided numerous Seattle bands, such as Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, access to wider audiences. As a result, alternative rock became a dominant genre on radio and music television in the U.S. during the first half of the 1990s. Nirvana was considered the "flagship band of Generation X", and Cobain found himself reluctantly anointed by the media as the generation's "spokesman". He resented this characterization since he believed his artistic message had been misinterpreted by the public. Cobain struggled to reconcile the massive success of Nirvana with his underground roots and vision. He also felt persecuted by the media, comparing himself to Frances Farmer whom he named a song after. He began to harbor resentment against people who claimed to be fans of the band yet refused to acknowledge, or misinterpreted, the band's social and political views. A vocal opponent of sexism, racism, sexual assault, and homophobia, he was publicly proud that Nirvana had played at a gay rights benefit concert that was held to oppose Oregon's 1992 Ballot Measure 9, which would have directed Oregon schools to teach that homosexuality was "abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse". Cobain was a vocal supporter of the pro-choice movement, and Nirvana was involved in L7's Rock for Choice campaign. He received death threats from a small number of anti-abortion activists for participating in the pro-choice campaign, with one activist threatening to shoot Cobain as soon as he stepped on a stage. Cobain was inspired to record the songs after receiving a copy of ''Lead Belly's Last Sessions'' from friend Slim Moon; after hearing it, he "felt a connection to Leadbelly's almost physical expressions of longing and desire." In 1990, Cobain and his girlfriend, Tobi Vail of the riot grrrl band Bikini Kill, collaborated on a musical project called Bathtub is Real in which they both sang and played guitar and drums. They recorded their songs on a four-track tape machine that belonged to Vail's father. In Everett True's 2009 book Nirvana: The Biography, Vail is quoted as saying that Cobain "would play the songs he was writing, I would play the songs I was writing and we'd record them on my dad's four-track. Sometimes I'd sing on the songs he was writing and play drums on them ... He was really into the fact that I was creative and into music. I don't think he'd ever played music with a girl before. He was super-inspiring and fun to play with." The musician Slim Moon described their sound as "like the minimal quiet pop songs that Olympia is known for. Both of them sang; it was really good." In 1992, Cobain contacted William S. Burroughs about a possible collaboration. Burroughs responded by sending him a recording of "The Junky's Christmas" (which he recorded in his studio in Lawrence, Kansas). Two months later at a studio in Seattle, Cobain added guitar backing based on "Silent Night" and "To Anacreon in Heaven". The two would meet shortly later in Lawrence, Kansas and produce "The 'Priest' They Called Him", a spoken word version of "The Junky's Christmas". == Musical influences ==

The Beatles were an early and lasting influence on Cobain; his aunt Mari remembers him singing "Hey Jude" at the age of two. Cobain expressed a particular fondness for John Lennon, whom he called his "idol" in his posthumously released journals, and he said that he wrote the song "About a Girl", from Nirvana's 1989 debut album Bleach, after spending three hours listening to Meet the Beatles!. He was introduced to punk rock and hardcore music by his Aberdeen classmate Buzz Osborne, lead singer and guitarist of the Melvins, who taught Cobain about punk by loaning him records and old copies of the Detroit-based magazine Creem. Punk rock proved to be a profound influence on a teenaged Cobain's attitude and artistic style. His first punk rock album was Sandinista! by the Clash, In a 1993 interview Cobain called Hendrix "a great musician and a great composer," and noted that, "I have great respect for him." Cobain was also a fan of protopunk acts like the Stooges, whose 1973 album Raw Power he listed as his favorite of all time in his journals. In a 1993 interview with Rolling Stone, he said that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was his attempt at "trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit it. When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily that I should have been in that band—or at least a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard". Cobain's appreciation of early alternative rock bands also extended to Sonic Youth and R.E.M., both of which the members of Nirvana befriended and looked up to for advice. It was under recommendation from Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon that Nirvana signed to DGC in 1990, Nirvana's Unplugged set includes renditions of "The Man Who Sold the World", by David Bowie, and the American folk song, "Where Did You Sleep Last Night", as adapted by Lead Belly. Cobain introduced the latter by calling Lead Belly his favorite performer, and in a 1993 interview revealed he had been introduced to him from reading the American author William S. Burroughs, saying: "I remember [Burroughs] saying in an interview, 'These new rock'n'roll kids should just throw away their guitars and listen to something with real soul, like Leadbelly.' I'd never heard about Leadbelly before so I bought a couple of records, and now he turns out to be my absolute favorite of all time in music. I absolutely love it more than any rock'n'roll I ever heard." The album MTV Unplugged in New York was released posthumously in 1994. It has drawn comparisons to R.E.M.'s 1992 release, Automatic for the People. In 1993, Cobain had predicted that the next Nirvana album would be "pretty ethereal, acoustic, like R.E.M.'s last album". == Artistry ==

played by Cobain during the filming of the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit", shown at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle According to Grohl, Cobain believed that music comes first and lyrics second; he focused primarily on the melodies. He complained when fans and rock journalists attempted to decipher his singing and extract meaning from his lyrics, writing: "Why in the hell do journalists insist on coming up with a second-rate Freudian evaluation of my lyrics, when 90 percent of the time they've transcribed them incorrectly?" Cobain originally wanted Nevermind to be divided into two sides: a "Boy" side, for the songs written about the experiences of his early life and childhood, and a "Girl" side, for the songs written about his dysfunctional relationship with Vail. While Cobain regarded In Utero as "for the most part very impersonal", its lyrics deal with his parents' divorce, his newfound fame and the public image and perception of himself and Courtney Love on "Serve the Servants", with his enamored relationship with Love conveyed through lyrical themes of pregnancy and the female anatomy on "Heart-Shaped Box". Cobain was affected enough to write "Polly" from Nevermind after reading a newspaper story of an incident in 1987, when a 14-year-old girl was kidnapped after attending a punk rock show, then raped and tortured with a blowtorch. She escaped after gaining the trust of her captor Gerald Friend through flirting with him. Cobain immersed himself in artistic projects throughout his life, as much so as he did in songwriting. The sentiments of his artwork followed the same subjects of his lyrics, often expressed through a dark and macabre sense of humor. Noted were his fascination with physiology, his own rare medical conditions, and the human anatomy. According to Novoselic, "Kurt said that he never liked literal things. He liked cryptic things. He would cut out pictures of meat from grocery-store fliers, then paste these orchids on them ... And all this stuff on [In Utero] about the body—there was something about anatomy. He really liked that. You look at his art—there are these people, and they're all weird, like mutants. And dolls—creepy dolls." Cobain contributed backing guitar for a spoken word recording of beat poet William S. Burroughs' entitled The "Priest" They Called Him. == Equipment ==

In a Guitar World retrospective, Cobain's guitar tone was deemed "one of the most iconic" in the history of the electric guitar, while noting that rather than relying on expensive or vintage items, Cobain used "an eccentric cache of budget models, low-end imports and pawn shop prizes." Cobain stated in a 1992 interview, "Junk is always best," but denied this was a punk statement and claimed it was a necessity, as he had trouble finding high quality left-handed guitars. Cobain's first guitar was a used electric guitar from Sears that he received on his 14th birthday. He took guitar lessons long enough to learn AC/DC's "Back in Black" and began playing with local kids. Cobain found the guitar smashed after leaving it in a locker, but he was able to purchase new equipment, including a Peavey amp, by recovering and selling his stepfather's gun collection, which his mother had dumped in a river after discovering his infidelity. For Nirvana's Unplugged performance, Cobain played a righthanded 1959 Martin D-18E acoustic guitar modified for left-handed playing. The guitar became the most expensive ever sold when it fetched over at auction in 2020. Cobain's 1969 Competition Mustang, which he also played in the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" music video, sold at a 2022 auction to Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, for , with an original estimate of . == Personal life ==

Relationships and family There are differing accounts of exactly when and how Cobain first met Courtney Love. In his 1993 authorized biography of Nirvana, Michael Azerrad cites a January 21, 1989, Dharma Bums gig in Portland where Nirvana played as support, while the Charles R. Cross 2001 Cobain biography has Love and Cobain meeting at the same Satyricon nightclub venue in Portland but a different Nirvana show, January 12, 1990, Love made advances soon after they met, 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." 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. Love said she was warned by the Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon that marrying Cobain would "destroy her life"; Love responded: "'Whatever! I love him, and I want to be with him!' ... It wasn't his fault. He wasn't trying to do that." A sonogram was included in the artwork for Nirvana's single "Lithium". In a 1992 Vanity Fair article, Love admitted to a drug binge with Cobain in the early weeks of her pregnancy. At the time, she claimed that Vanity Fair had misquoted her. Love later admitted to using heroin before knowing she was pregnant. The couple were asked by the press if Frances was addicted to drugs at birth. Frances was removed from her parents' care for a "short period of time" 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 lifestyle", but also that he was "more sexually attracted to women". 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", 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", According to The Telegraph, Cobain had depression. In 1993, he told Michael Azerrad that he had narcolepsy and manic depression. His cousin brought attention to the family history of suicide, mental illness and alcoholism, noting that two of her uncles had died by suicide with guns. According to Cross, Cobain suffered a mental breakdown midway through Nirvana's show in Rome on November 27, 1989. After smashing his guitar, he climbed a 30 ft speaker stack and shouted, "I'm going to kill myself!". Eventually he climbed down and took the following day off, sightseeing with Sub Pop manager, Bruce Pavitt. Cobain completed the remaining five European tour dates and returned to the USA. He first drank alcohol in 7th grade (c. 12 yrs) and he often drank to excess throughout his life. His first drug experience was with cannabis in 1980, at age 13. He regularly used the drug during adulthood. One example was when Novoselic and Cobain took cocaine after their gig in New York on July 18, 1989. Cobain first took heroin in 1986, administered to him by a dealer in Tacoma, Washington, who had previously supplied him with oxycodone and aspirin. Cobain told Novoselic in 1990 that he had used heroin and he spoke to Grohl about it in January 1991. Cobain's heroin use began to affect Nirvana's Nevermind tour. During a 1992 photoshoot with Michael Lavine, before their first Saturday Night Live performance on January 11, he fell asleep several times, having used heroin beforehand. Cobain told biographer Michael Azerrad: "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." On May 2, 1993 Cobain overdosed at his home in Seattle and Love called the paramedics. He was taken to Harborview Medical Center, but was discharged the same day. Prior to a performance at the New Music Seminar in New York City on July 23, 1993, Cobain suffered another overdose. Rather than calling for an ambulance, Love injected Cobain with naloxone to resuscitate him. Cobain proceeded to perform with Nirvana, giving the public no indication that anything had happened. ==Death==

, "It's better to burn out than to fade away", is a quote from the lyrics of Neil Young's song "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)". 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 his wife, Courtney Love, on March 3. The next morning, Love awoke to find that Cobain had overdosed on a combination of champagne and Rohypnol at the Westin Excelsior. Cobain was rushed to the hospital and was unconscious for the rest of the day. Dave Grohl mentioned in his memoir that he received a phone call at this time saying Cobain had died. However, a few minutes later he was called again and told that the singer was hospitalized but stable. Love later said that the incident was Cobain's first suicide attempt. After five days, Cobain was released and returned to Seattle. Love arranged an intervention regarding 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. Cobain reacted with anger, insulting and heaping scorn on the participants, and locked himself in the upstairs bedroom. However, by the end of the day, Cobain agreed to undergo a detox program, and he entered a residential facility in Los Angeles for a few days on March 30, 1994. The same day he left for Los Angeles, Cobain asked his friend, Dylan Carlson, to buy a shotgun for him saying it was for "self-protection". This weapon is the one Cobain used in his suicide. Arnold was the author of Shadowland, a 1978 book on the psychiatric commitment of Frances Farmer which Cobain had read in high school and was the source of his identification with the actress. Gillian Gaar maintains that one of Cobain’s last songs, "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle", is essentially a musical adaptation of Shadowland. On the evening of April 1, 1994, Cobain escaped the facility and flew to Seattle. On the flight, he sat near Duff McKagan of Guns N' Roses. Despite Cobain's animosity towards Guns N' Roses, Cobain "seemed happy" to see McKagan. McKagan later said that he knew from "all of [his] instincts that something was wrong". On April 8, Cobain's body was discovered at his Lake Washington Boulevard home by an electrician, who had arrived to install a security system. A suicide 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". Cobain's body had been there for days; the coroner's report estimated he died on April 5, 1994, at the age of 27. Aftermath A public vigil was held on April 10, at a park at Seattle Center, drawing approximately 7,000 mourners. Billboard, reporting from Seattle on April 23, stated that within a few hours of Cobain's death being confirmed on April 8, the only remaining Nirvana titles at Park Ave Records on Queen Anne Avenue were two "Heart-Shaped Box" import CD singles. A marketing director at the three-store Cellophane Square chain said that "all three stores sold about a few hundred CDs, singles, and vinyl by the morning of April 9". A buyer at Tower Records on Mercer Street said: "It's a pathetic scene, everything is going out the door. If people were really fans, they would've had this stuff already." In the United Kingdom, sales of Nirvana releases rose dramatically immediately after Cobain's death. 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 had been 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." His artistic endeavors and struggles with addiction, illness and depression, as well as the circumstances of his death, have become a frequent topic of controversy. According to a spokesperson for the Seattle Police Department, the department receives at least one weekly request to reopen the investigation, resulting in the maintenance of the basic incident report on file. 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 had left 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. In February 2026, Cobain's death revamped widespread media coverage after researchers and forensic experts suggested that he was murdered, including old rumors that his wife Courtney Love was involved. == Legacy ==

Cobain is remembered as one of the most influential rock musicians in the history of alternative music. His angst-fueled songwriting and anti-establishment persona led him to be referenced as the spokesman of Generation X. In addition, Cobain's songs widened the themes of mainstream rock music of the 1980s to discussion of personal reflection and social issues. On April 10, 2014, Nirvana was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Grohl, Novoselic and Love accepted the accolade at the ceremony, where Cobain was also remembered. Cobain is one of the best-known members of the 27 Club, a list of musicians who died when they were 27 years old. Music & Media reporting on April 23, 1994, after Cobain had died, stated that Jørgen Larsen, the president of MCA Music Entertainment International was asked where he thought Cobain stood in terms of his contribution to contemporary music, and Larsen replied that "If anybody comes out of nowhere to sell 11 or 12 million albums you have to conclude that there's something there. He wasn't just a one-hit wonder." According to music journalist Paul Lester, who worked at Melody Maker at the time, Cobain's suicide triggered an immediate reappraisal of his work. He wrote: "The general impression offered by In Utero was that Cobain was some kind of whiny, self-absorbed, grunge, misery guts who could make routinely powerful music but was hardly a suffering godhead. You could almost hear a collective sigh of relief after April 5, 1994, that Cobain could no longer further sully his reputation; that the myth-making machinery could finally be cranked into action." Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins referred to Cobain as "the Michael Jordan of our generation". Lars Ulrich of Metallica reflected on Cobain's influence stating that "with Kurt Cobain you felt you were connecting to the real person, not to 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." In 1996, the Church of Kurt Cobain was established in Portland, Oregon, but it was later claimed by some media outlets to have been a media hoax. 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." In 2003, David Fricke of Rolling Stone ranked Cobain 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". , that reads "Welcome to Aberdeen—Come As You Are" as a tribute to Cobain.|alt=In 2005, a sign was put up 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 created in May 2004 to honor Cobain. The Committee planned to create a Kurt Cobain Memorial 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 his death, fans gather in the park to celebrate his life and memory. 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. In December 2013, the small city of Hoquiam, where Cobain once lived, announced that April 10 would become the annual Nirvana Day. Similarly, in January 2014, Cobain's birthday, February 20, was declared annual "Kurt Cobain Day" in Aberdeen. A street has been named after Cobain in Saint-Jean-d'Heurs, a rural commune of France. == Media ==

Books Prior to Cobain's death, Michael Azerrad published Come as You 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 the 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 involved the band members themselves, who provided interviews and personal information to Azerrad specifically for the book. In 2006, 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. Journalists Ian Halperin and Max Wallace published their investigation of any possible conspiracy surrounding Cobain's death in their 1998 book Who Killed Kurt Cobain?. Halperin and Wallace argued that, while there was not enough evidence to prove a conspiracy, there was more than enough to demand that the case be reopened. The book included the journalists' discussions with Tom 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, 2004's 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 second-hand (and incorrect) information as fact. Friend Everett True—who derided the book as being inaccurate, omissive, and highly biased—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 unknown. In 2008, Cross published Cobain Unseen, 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 collection. 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. In 2019, on the 25th anniversary of Cobain's death, former Nirvana manager, Danny Goldberg, published Serving the Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain. In promotion of the book, Goldberg stated: Film and television 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 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 by saying: 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. The documentary Teen Spirit: The Tribute to Kurt Cobain was released as a home video in 1996, and on DVD in 2001. The Vigil is a 1998 comedy film about a group of young people who travel from Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada to Seattle in the United States to attend the memorial vigil for Cobain in 1994. It stars Donny Lucas and Trevor White. 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 the main character Blake who was based on Cobain. In 2006, the Jon Brewer directed documentary, All Apologies: Kurt Cobain 10 Years On, and the BBC documentary, The Last 48 Hours of Kurt Cobain, were released. 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. 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. Love's legal team issued a cease-and-desist letter against theatres showing the documentary. Regarding the depiction of Nirvana, and in particular Kurt Cobain, the indie rock author Andrew Earles wrote: Matt Reeves' film The Batman depicts a version of Bruce Wayne, performed by Robert Pattinson, that was loosely inspired by Cobain. Reeves stated, "when I write, I listen to music, and as I was writing the first act, I put on Nirvana's 'Something in the Way,' that's when it came to me that, rather than make Bruce Wayne the playboy version we've seen before, there's another version who had gone through a great tragedy and become a recluse. So I started making this connection to Gus Van Sant's Last Days, and the idea of this fictionalised version of Kurt Cobain being in this kind of decaying manor." "Something in the Way" was used in trailers to promote The Batman prior to its release and is featured twice in the film. To mark the 30th anniversary of Cobain's death a new documentary titled Kurt Cobain: Moments That Shook Music aired on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer on April 13, 2024. Theatre In September 2009, the Roy Smiles play Kurt and Sid debuted at the Trafalgar Studios in London's West End. The play, set in Cobain's greenhouse on the day of his suicide, revolves around the ghost of Sid Vicious visiting Cobain to try to convince him not to kill himself. Cobain was played by Shaun Evans. Video games Cobain was included as a playable character in the 2009 video game Guitar Hero 5; he can be used to play songs by Nirvana and other acts. Novoselic and Grohl released a statement condemning the inclusion and urging the developer, Activision, to alter it, saying they had no control over the use of Cobain's likeness. Love denied that she had given permission, saying it was "the result of a cabal of a few assholes' greed", and threatened to sue. The vice-president of Activision said that Love had contributed photos and videos to the development and had been "great to work with". == Discography ==

Nirvana For a complete list of all Nirvana releases, see Nirvana discography. • Bleach (1989) • Nevermind (1991) • In Utero (1993) Posthumous albums Singles Posthumous videos • Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (DVD and Blu-ray) (2015) Collaborations == See also ==