Did you really have your emo-rager teenager phase, if you hadn’t listened to at least one Nirvana track and hadn’t tried to incorporate the effortless-brooding-man personality of Kurt Cobain into yours?
Maybe together, we can weave through the life of the man that he was and look for answers to the question of the unexplained death of Kurt Cobain.
Kurt Cobain was an enigma. He was a rock star, he was also ‘a walking time bomb’ as described by Danny Goldberg to Rolling Stone magazine. To even begin slightly comprehending all that he was, and wasn’t, it would be wise of us to start at the beginning.
1. The Young Boy
Kurt Cobain was born on February 20th, 1967, in a city named Aberdeen in Washington state. He was the child of a waitress and a mechanic. But his talents exceeded those of his parents. He was a gifted child, there’s no doubt about that.
He started singing by the time he was two years old. While most of us were uttering nonsensical words, he had begun singing. By age four, he had also started playing the piano and writing songs about going to the park. I probably would’ve been crying about going to the park instead at that age. God chose his favorites, didn’t he?
Kurt’s parents decided to get a divorce when he was about nine years old. As we’ve seen time and time again, no matter how hard the parents try, a divorce will leave a lasting impact on their child, especially if they’re at such a young age. And Kurt himself admitted that the divorce had a “profound impact” on his life. His mother herself observed a significant change in his behavior, she found him to be more defiant and rebellious.
In his defense, he was a child who just wanted a normal typical family and the security that came along with that. It wasn’t too much he was asking for.
His parents went on to marry other individuals and from his abusive stepfathers to absent stepmothers, he experienced it all. And this tumultuous home life spilled onto his school life.
Kurt became a bully. Not the best person to be. He was taken to therapy and eventually, his father gained sole custody of him. But he wasn’t able to handle his own son and left him in the care of his family members.
Then came Kurt’s Christianity phase. He attended Church and suddenly religion was an important aspect of his life. Didn’t last long though, he later renounced Christianity.
2. His School Life
Sports wasn’t his cup of tea. But it was his fathers’. So he enrolled in his school’s wrestling team and the Little League Baseball Team. But he found ways to leave those teams because despite being good at wrestling, he just didn’t want to partake in it.
Something that carried on from his early childhood, was his interest in drawing. He used to draw in his classes all the time. He met Roger Osborne in one such class. This meeting was pivotal since he was the one who introduced Cobain to punk music and hardcore rock.
The first concert that Kurt attended, according to him, was that of the Melvins (his friend, Roger Osborne’s band) outside a supermarket. It might’ve been the most casual concert performed by his friend but it was an important one since Cobain mentioned it in his journals and interviews in the future.
Let us now move on from his school life because that came to an end when he dropped out in the second year of high school.
3. How the Music Began in His Life
Kurt Cobain got a guitar for his 14th birthday. He played left-handed. He began playing classic songs such as “Stairway to Heaven” and “Another One Bites the Dust” before moving on to creating and soon he wrote his songs.
Many are unaware of its existence but before Nirvana, there was Fecal Matter. It was a “joke band”. It consisted of Kurt, Dale Crove, and Greg Hokanson. They were a short-lived band.
3.1. Nirvana
Cobain didn’t meet a lot of musically inclined people at his school with whom he could play music. He met Krist Novoselic outside of school and he, like Kurt, was into punk music. They soon started rehearsing music in the room above Krist’s mother’s salon.
After a few years, Kurt offered Krist a demo of a song he had recorded while Fecal Matter existed, in the hopes of forming a band with him. It took Novoselic a few months to agree but he did and thank God he did because that was the birth of Nirvana.
As mentioned before, Kurt had a religious stint. This also happened to become the theme of the music he was creating in the beginning. Apart from Christianity, he also developed an interest in Buddhism and Jainism. This interest also led him to name the band “Nirvana” which he described as gaining freedom from the pain and suffering of this world.
They soon settled on a drummer, after going through a number of them. Chad Channing became Nirvana’s drummer in 1988 and soon in 1989, their debut album “Bleach” was released. But Channing wasn’t meant to be a part of Nirvana for long as Cobain and Novoselic eventually fired him and instead hired Dave Grohl to be their drummer. This led to the formation of the version of Nirvana which has been immortalized in our media and our minds.
They went on to record the album “Nevermind” with the lead single “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and the rest is, as they say, history.
4. Fame
Fame is what everyone wants until they get it and suddenly all the bright lights become blinding. Nirvana became huge after their debut. They became the voice of an entire generation of rock and grunge music fans. That’s too much responsibility on anyone, let alone a person like Cobain.
He felt misunderstood. He felt as though the message he was trying to get across through his music wasn’t reaching correctly to the right people. His music was political. He disliked the idea of his “fans” not understanding or acknowledging the band’s political viewpoints.
Throughout his life, Kurt had been against homophobia, sexism, racism, and the like. As any normal, sane person with basic thinking abilities should be.
Nirvana also performed at various gay rights events and pro-choice campaigns because that was what they stood for. And this was their way of staying true to their message even if it meant getting death threats.
Now let’s start talking about the dreaded part, yet the main aim of this article is Kurt Cobain’s death.
5. His Sufferings
Kurt Cobain had his share of misfortunes and tough luck.
Health-wise, he had suffered from chronic bronchitis, a disease affecting breathing and which causes frequent coughing. He also had intense pain due to an undiagnosed stomach condition. He had played with the fire of alcoholism and drugs, as is almost customary in the industry of artists. He also suffered from depression, bipolar disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
To add to the trauma, Kurt had two uncles who had killed themselves using their guns.
According to Cobain, his stomach pain was so unbearable during Nirvana’s 1991 European Tour, that he had become suicidal and was taking heroin as a way out because his options were either getting addicted to heroin or shooting himself.
He hadn’t been himself, he was an island, not connecting with anyone. When Krist Novoselic wanted them to get some dinner, it ended up being a drug run. At that point it seemed like all Cobain wanted was to get high, and find his escape. And he really can’t be blamed for that. Who would ever want to continue suffering the way he was?
On the third day of March 1994, Kurt Cobain was hospitalized in Rome because he had overdosed on pills. While his management team tried to convince everyone what had happened was due to fatigue. No one keeps on popping pills due to exhaustion, anyway. Cobain’s wife, Courtney Love, another character we haven’t been introduced to yet, stated that it was a suicide attempt.
According to an account in Rolling Stone, Courtney had called the Seattle Police as Cobain had locked himself in a room with his revolver and said he was going to kill himself.
6. The Final Attempt- Kurt Cobain’s Death
Kurt Cobain had tried to save himself. He had checked into a drug rehab center (Exodus Recovery Center) on March 30, 1994, but the next day Cobain told the staff working in the drug rehab center that he was going out for a smoke and escaped.
On the second of April, he went to a Seattle gun shop and bought shotgun shells.
On 8th April 1994, Kurt Cobain’s body was found in the garage above his Lake Washington Boulevard East house. The lead singer of Nirvana, the hesitant voice of a generation, was no more. And just like that he had become a member of the infamous and tragic “27 Club“.
His body was discovered by a VECA Electric employee who had come to install security lighting. He eventually called the Seattle police. The suicide note he had written was found stuck in a flower pot.
According to the coroner, he had died three days before his body had been discovered, i.e, on April 5th.
Initially, there was no doubt that it was a suicide and thus the official cause of death was ruled as suicide by the Seattle police.
6.1. The Weapon
The gun Cobain had used was a Remington Model 11 20-gauge shotgun that had been purchased by a friend of his, Dylan Carson. He had not wanted to buy the gun in his name since the police had taken away his guns (for his safety) twice, in the last ten months. This shotgun was found on his chest.
6.2. The Wounds and How Kurt Cobain Died
There were puncture wounds on both his right and left elbows. The cause of death was a shotgun blast to his head.
7. The Drugs
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (an online newspaper based in Seattle, Washington) reported that Kurt Cobain was high on heroin when he killed himself. According to Randall Baselt, author of a common toxicology textbook Disposition of Toxic Drugs and Chemicals in Man, stated the heroin levels in Cobain’s bloodstream were undoubtedly high but the effect of that dose would depend on how accustomed he had grown to taking heroin.
He had 1.52 milligrams of heroin per liter of his blood. That’s enough to kill a normal nonaddicted person, three times over, according to medical experts.
He also had morphine and valium in his blood.
8. The Suicide Note
When I was a little young and way more naive, this suicide note was one of the most evocative and tragic things I had ever read. A suicide note is one of the last marks that a person leaves behind before leaving forever, and to get a chance to read Kurt Cobain’s letter was overwhelming but at the same time, it felt a little pervasive. Like it wasn’t meant to be read by strangers who didn’t really know Kurt. But he was a rockstar, he had been commodified as much as possible. It is sad to think even in death his fame followed him around.
This letter had been addressed to an imaginary friend from his childhood days, Boddah. The last few lines are written hastily, as if written in a hurry, maybe just seconds before the act.
He had talked of how he had become numb to the roaring of crowds and the glory of it all. He even mentions he thought the worst crime he could think of was to try faking it and rip people off by pretending he was still enjoying all of this when in reality he was tired of it.
He professed his love for his wife, Courtney Love and his adoration for his daughter, Frances who he hoped wouldn’t turn out like her father- “a miserable, self-destructive, death rocker”.
He ended the letter with a Neil Young lyric- “It’s better to burn out than to fade away” and urged Courtney to keep going on for their daughter and somewhat heartbreakingly, that Frances’ life would be so much happier without him in it.
9. Conspiracy Theory
While I think it was a suicide, there were many (and still are) who are hell-bent to prove that Kurt Cobain had not taken his own life and was instead murdered. There was talk of a missing credit card of his that had been used twice after his death, which is interesting. But now, let’s dive into those minds.
9.1. Richard Lee
Richard Lee was a journalist. After a week of Cobain’s death, he hosted an episode of the series ‘Kurt Cobain Was Murdered’ (very subtle). According to him, there were many inconsistencies in the police work.
He had also gotten hold of a video filmed on April 8, that showed the scene around Cobain’s body and there was an apparent lack of blood that should’ve been there considering it was point-blank aim to the head. He never actually proved anything substantial. He still exists somewhere.
9.2. Tom Grant
He was the main character in this whole conspiracy saga. Grant had been previously hired by Courtney Love, when he had left the rehab center, to help find Cobain. How the tides turned on her though.
Grant believes that Kurt Cobain did not kill himself and that Courtney, along with her lawyers and other industry people had constructed this web of lies for their gains and reasons and had been hiding the truth from the world.
First, he raised questions regarding the fact that Cobain had injected himself with that large a dose of heroin and also had been conscious enough to pull the trigger.
Second, he believed that Cobain’s suicide note was faked and the suicide note was just a retirement letter.
And the third component was the lack of any fingerprints of Cobain or anyone else at the crime scene. According to Grant, Courtney did have financial motives to kill Kurt. There were rumors that Kurt planned to get a divorce.
He also said that the Rome incident was claimed to be a suicide attempt after Cobain’s death. If this had been the case, his friends and relatives would’ve been around to keep a watch on him before the shooting. But this was all hearsay.
Tom Grant never really gave any concrete proof of the claims he made. He was just saying all these controversial things because I don’t even know, he didn’t have anything better to do.
9.3. Nick Broomfield
He was a filmmaker who was making a documentary on Kurt and Courtney. He spoke to Eldon “El Duce” Hoke, a bandleader who claimed that Love had offered him a ton of money to kill Cobain. He didn’t do it but said he knew who had.
Of course, he didn’t give any evidence to back his claims, as has been the case in every claim made so far.
But after he had finished his documentary, Broomfield admitted he hadn’t uncovered enough evidence to prove Cobain had not killed himself. He just thought that the people who were supposed to care about him, had stopped doing so, and that resulted in what eventually happened.
9.4. Ian Halperin and Max Wallace
These two journalists had a similar thinking pattern as Grant regarding Kurt Cobain’s death. They believed that Cobain wanted to get a divorce and Love was looking for a particularly ruthless lawyer to destroy the prenuptial agreement she had signed in which it was mentioned that in event of a divorce, both parties would be entitled to their separate fortunes.
Also apparently, the coroner, Nikolas Hartshorne was a friend of Courtney’s. So there’s that. But then again, lots of claims, but not a whole lot of proof.
They wrote and published two books- “Who Killed Kurt Cobain?” and later with veteran conspiracist, Tom Grant- “Love and Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain”.
Sean T. O’Donnell of the Seattle Police responded to rumors of discrepancies in police reports by saying that their police work regarding his death was as good as it could be and it was conducted thoroughly, and they knew a suicide case when they saw one.
Kim Gordon (of Sonic Youth fame) first said that she initially didn’t even know that Cobain had died. And when asked if someone had killed him, her reply was a ‘yes’. However in 2015, in a newspaper piece, she wrote she wasn’t surprised to hear of his suicide. Maybe she needs to make up her mind a little.
While the above-mentioned people had their own opinions and claims to make, the ones closest to Kurt Cobain believed he had committed suicide.
Danny Goldberg, Nirvana’s manager, and Cobain’s friend was sure of it. Kurt had been erratic and depressed in the days before his death. There was nothing to speculate about the tragedy.
Krist, in a Reddit AMA also said that he was convinced that Kurt had killed himself. He hadn’t bought a gun to hunt squirrels, he had a particular aim in his mind and that was shooting himself.
On the 10th anniversary of Cobain’s death, his family issued a statement in People magazine, sort of asking people to let this whole controversy surrounding his death, go.
10. Conclusion to the Unexplained Death of Kurt Cobain
Kurt Cobain had taken his own life and died in his Seattle home all alone. All that was left unexplained was why he did it.
He had been catapulted to the highest skies of fame and he had soon realized he liked the ground better and the industry was not a place for him. He had turned to heroin to numb or maybe for an opposite effect, to just feel something again, we’ll never know for sure.
Do we know what compels someone to commit suicide, to take the one final call to end all of it? They must’ve been feeling the absolute worse to take this last step. And must’ve felt like no one could save them now from their sorrow.
To me, Cobain’s death seemed like an open-and-shut case. No foul play was involved. The murder theory seemed sensational and all but it seemed to be based on no evidence. But internet sleuths interested in unsolved mysteries will keep this conspiracy alive. If they do come upon any fact, good, but it just seems very unlikely now.
As we’ve seen time and time again in history, the world has liked to blame the woman in a man’s life to be the reason anything goes wrong. Maybe Courtney was an easy target with her own slightly unorthodox persona. It is easy to frame the woman, always.
People do not care about the truth anymore, they more about what they want to be true. A story that fills all the blanks in their mind, regardless if it’s actually what happened in reality.
There will always be fan offerings and gatherings in front of Kurt Cobain’s Seattle home as if he were still here. Maybe it would bring him some comfort to know the good impact he had, at a lethal price nonetheless. Or maybe he still would not care about all of that. Some things will remain unexplained, the manner of his death, not being one of them.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q1. What Was Kurt Cobain Listening to Before He Died?
What I think the person asking this question meant to ask was- What was the last song he recorded before his death? The answer to this is, “You Know You’re Right”. It was released posthumously, on the Greatest Hits of Nirvana album in October 2002.
Q2. What Did Kurt Cobain Do?
I mean apart from creating rocking music and being a sensitive and passionate artist? He was a legend, in his own right. He was more than the apparent mystery surrounding his death. He was a musician and he was a father who loved his daughter unconditionally.
Q3. Did Kurt Cobain Have a Funeral?
A public memorial service was held at Seattle Centre, on April 10th where a recording of Courtney reading out his suicide note was played and she also distributed some of his clothes to his grieving fans. Kurt Cobain was cremated. His ashes were blessed by Buddhist monks, as he probably would’ve liked. Some of his remains were saved in urns and teddy bears and mixed with clay to make memorial sculptures. Finally, his daughter Frances scattered his ashes into McLane Creek in Washington.
Q4. Does Kurt Cobain Have a Grave?
Given the fact that he was cremated, no, he does not have a grave.
In case you want to digress a little now and deep dive into the 90s grunge fashion that existed during that time, check out this article.
