Kurt Cobain (American Musician)
Kurt Cobain, in full Kurt Donald Cobain, (born
February 20, 1967, Aberdeen, Washington, U.S.—died April 5, 1994, Seattle,
Washington), American rock musician who rose to fame as the lead singer,
guitarist, and primary songwriter for the seminal grunge band Nirvana.
Cobain had a generally happy childhood until his
parents divorced when he was nine years old. After that event, he was
frequently troubled and angry, and his emotional pain became a subject of, and
catalyst for, much of his later music. As a teenager, he moved between various
relatives’ houses, stayed with friends’ parents, and occasionally slept under
bridges while he began to use drugs and take part in petty vandalism as forms
of teenage rebellion. Cobain was musically inclined from an early age, and in
the mid-1980s he began to play with members of the local “sludge rock” band the
Melvins (who would themselves go on to earn a measure of national fame in the
1990s). In 1985 he created a homemade tape of some songs with the drummer of
the Melvins that later caught the attention of local bassist Krist Novoselic.
Cobain and Novoselic formed Nirvana in 1987 and thereafter recruited a series
of drummers to record demo tapes with them and play small shows throughout the
Northwest.
One of the group’s demo tapes found its way to
Jonathan Poneman of the Seattle independent record label Sub Pop, which signed
the band to produce its first single, “Love Buzz,” in 1988 and its first album,
Bleach, in 1989. The album had a unique (and soon-to-be signature) sound that
mixed the rawness of punk rock with pop hooks, and the group soon became a
target of major record labels. With new drummer Dave Grohl (who joined the band
in 1990) Nirvana released its major-label debut, Nevermind (1991), which featured
the hit single “Smells like Teen Spirit”; it became the first alternative-rock
album to achieve widespread popularity with a mainstream audience. Nevermind
catapulted Nirvana to worldwide fame, and Cobain came to be hailed as the voice
of his generation, a title that he was never comfortable with.
Nirvana (left to right) : Kurt Cobain, Krist
Novoselic, and Dave Grohl.
© Ed Sirrs/Retna Ltd.
© Ed Sirrs/Retna Ltd.
In 1992 Cobain married Courtney Love, then the
leader of the band Hole, and the couple had a daughter that same year. The
following year Nirvana released its final studio album, In Utero, in which
Cobain railed against his fame. Cobain had long suffered from depression and
chronic stomach pain. He treated his issues with drugs: Cobain was a frequent
user of heroin in the years after Nirvana’s breakthrough, and he took a variety
of painkillers in an attempt to numb his constant stomach agony. In March 1994
he was hospitalized in Rome after overdosing and slipping into a coma in what
was later characterized as a failed suicide attempt. One month later he snuck
out of a Los Angeles-area drug treatment centre and returned to his Seattle
home, where he shot and killed himself.
Cobain’s death marked, in many ways, the end of the
brief grunge movement and was a signature event for many music fans of
Generation X. He remained an icon of the era after his death and was the
subject of a number of posthumous works, including the book Heavier than
Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain (2001) by Charles R. Cross and the
documentaries Kurt & Courtney (1998) and Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
(2015).
