This Day In History. History Vault. Great Britain. Women's Rights. Native American History. World War II. Sign Up. Art, Literature, and Film History. Cold War. Civil War. American Revolution. World War I. Kennedy assassination. Eventually, Frances needed baby supplies, so Kurt rolled off with her to a drugstore.
That was the last time I saw Kurt Cobain. On or about April 5, , Kurt went up to an attic over his garage, took a lot of heroin, and then killed himself with a shotgun. He left a note. The quality of empathy was very important to Kurt; he spoke of it often. Which might come as a surprise, given all the wanton vandalism and assorted other mischief he committed as a teen and indeed throughout his all-too-brief adult life, not to mention his avowed disdain for so many of the people around him.
How much empathy did he have when he hit a man on the head with his guitar during a show in Dallas, in ? But maybe, as Kurt claimed, opiates really did still his misanthropic impulses and help him experience empathy, or something resembling it. Maybe his outspokenness about empathy was actually a passive-aggressive plea for people to have empathy for him.
At any rate, Kurt avowedly cherished the ability to imagine what other people are feeling, right down to the last moments of his life.
His name was in the smallest lettering on the whole page. Mason describes what happens almost every time someone finds out that he used to work with the group, whose singer, Ian Curtis, hanged himself, in He was a nice guy, got into a strange situation, and the only way he could think about [it] at that time was to kill himself.
Sorry, no secrets. People often ask me why Kurt killed himself. Actually, what frequently happens is, they wind up telling me why he killed himself. They have their opinions, despite never having met him, and dismiss my firsthand observations of Kurt as incompatible with what they already believe.
He also had a long family history of suicide. Somehow she survived and lived to be ninety-four. He survived but died later, after purposely reopening the wounds in a psychiatric hospital.
John apparently reached in his pocket for a cigarette and accidentally knocked his pistol out of its holster. The gun dropped to the floor and discharged, killing him. In , when Kurt was twelve, Burle killed himself with a gun. Five years later, Kenneth did. All I knew was that I had the distinct feeling that Kurt would not live a long life. But what, if anything, could I do about it? Was it even my place to get involved?
A couple of times, I did get involved. One evening, in , I got a panic-stricken call from Courtney, who told me that Kurt had locked himself in a room in their house.
He was distraught, she said, and had a gun and was threatening to use it on himself. She was terrified. So was I. I asked if I could speak with Kurt, but there was no way to get the phone to him. I could hear him yelling in the background. I told her to call the police and to keep me posted. I relayed what was happening and said that such a volatile person, who did drugs and had a small child, absolutely should not have guns.
When Kurt started spiralling down, I remembered a visit to his hotel room while he was on tour in New Orleans. I asked Townshend whether he might have a word with Kurt about beating heroin and dealing with the slings and arrows of fame.
I had chosen this year to give booze another gentle try after 11 years. Twenty-seven years later, I still ask myself that question. I tried, but perhaps I could have—and should have—tried harder. And there were other people much closer to Kurt. Kurt asked him what the book was about, and Krist said it was about prisoners suffering in a brutal Soviet Gulag in Siberia.
Krist could have been a crucial port in the storm, but, sadly, Kurt had begun to push his friend away in , when Krist told Kurt that he disapproved of his heroin use. They were never as close again.
Twenty-eight years can give you some objectivity. One of those recurring themes was how Kurt understood that every good legend has a protagonist and an antagonist. For every setback, there is something or someone else to blame, and when one antagonist left the stage he found a new one, usually embellishing or even manufacturing their sins in order to enhance his own victimhood.
There was always, as one of his songs put it, something in the way. This coping mechanism may have started when Kurt was very little and had imaginary friends. In legends, the protagonist is supposed to vanquish the antagonist. Or perhaps it did. Then, suddenly, it happened. I could outwardly function, but inside I felt catatonic and remained grief-stricken for several years.
And they last all your life. Dealing with the death of someone you know is always difficult and strange, but that difficulty and strangeness is vastly compounded when the person was a public figure. You can tell friends and co-workers one at a time—or not at all. He was complicated. The final two years of his life were notoriously turbulent.
He was not depressed all the time, he was creative, he was funny, he was warm, he was all of these things — it depended on which day or which hour of the day or which period of time which Kurt you were gonna get. Indeed, at the same time that the band were humorously baiting one-time fan turned arch nemesis Axl Rose into an abusive tantrum at the VMA Awards, they were also taking a serious and uncompromising approach to third album In Utero.
Inspired by his work with Pixies and The Breeders, Cobain chose celebrated punk maverick Steve Albini to produce the record in just 14 days, creating a bleak, scabrous slab of hardcore noise rock that many consider their real masterpiece. Albini had a technique of recording that created more of an intimate feeling, as if the band was in the room with you as the listener.
Kurt had per cent creative control legally and also morally. No one was gonna argue after Nevermind with any decision he made. He was the boss, he was the visionary… he made the record he wanted to make. Yet Goldberg took a step back at this second peak, taking a role as a record company exec en route to becoming president of several US major labels.
I saw him the week beforehand, he was depressed. Why do people speculate about it? The tragedy of the loss is so great people look for other explanations. Shortly before his death, Goldberg confesses, Cobain had asked him if he might be able to launch a career outside of Nirvana. Later, Love would claim that what was reported as an overdose was actually a suicide attempt, and she had burned the note.
This aroused suspicion due to the suicide note Cobain left seeming to be more about retiring from music than permanently from life. The end of the note seemed to include an addition made at a later point—possibly written by a second person.
The point we wonder about is whether Love seeking an iron-clad alibi for herself in Los Angeles was what exposed that Cobain was murdered back in Seattle. She has not commented publicly on these matters.
Love was cleared, but it seems strange that she would leave a memo seemingly foretelling of the arrest regarding this key moment in time. Accounts have her calling in her own overdose from the telephone in her hotel room. Another possible scenario for Love practicing handwriting was to possibly forge prescriptions, and later her doctor covered for her saying he merely forgot his pad in the hotel room.
The circus-like lifestyle of these musical heroin abusers causes such tumult, that clarity is hard to find in the events at hand. Had Grant not audio taped so many conversations, the atmosphere would be so muddied, it would be nearly impossible to detect much fact from fiction in this sordid tale.
Hoke says he was told to make the murder look like a suicide. One would dismiss this as fantasy, except nothing in this case seems to wind up clear cut, or easily dismissed. Hoke passed a lie detector test administered by renowned expert Dr. Edward Gelb , who says there is no doubt that Hoke was telling the truth.
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