The Story of Nirvana

In 1990, Nirvana's Nevermind climbed the charts to the #1 spot, beating already well-known musicians such as Michael Jackson and Garth Brooks. This came out during a point in time where alternative rock was pretty much dead. There were metal bands going on that no one could relate to and then there were pop sensations like Michael Jackson. Punk by the time had faded out and Nirvana happened to bring back what was dying in the mainstream world which was rock. Everyone in the band all came from broken homes and were high school drops out, they were average small town people who everyone in their generation could relate to. They were the music for the new generation; the children of the baby boomers.

Kurt Donald Cobain was born February 20, 1967 to Wendy and Donald Cobain in a small lumbering town in Washington called Aberdeen. He had a really happy childhood and took an interested toward music at an early age. His family were already into music and he had gotten all of his first records from his Aunt Mary who introduced him to bands like The Beatles.

His parents divorce was ultimately what brought an end to his happy world. "It just destroyed his life," says Kurt Cobain's mother, Wendy in the book Come As you: A Story of Nirvana by Michael Azzerad about Kurt's reaction to the divorce. "He changed completely. I think he was ashamed. And he really became inward--he just held everything. He became real shy. I think he's still suffering."

After the divorce, Kurt conflicted with Wendy's abusive boyfriend and ended up moving in with his father in his trailer. Times were good here, he got anything he wanted and their relationship was fine up until Donald remarried to a woman who had two kids. The five of them moved into a house, but that didn't last long for Kurt. He didn't like the new family and they didn't like him, either. He eventually moved in with his uncle Chuck who bought him his first guitar. He didn't stay with him for long and eventually moved to various family members until he moved back in with his mom.

He started high school around this time and didn't like most of the people. He had one friend who was gay and Kurt took pride in the fact that people thought he was gay too because he found humor in it. He befriended the stoners only because they liked the same music as him.

Around this time, Kurt first noticed Chris Novoselic (future bass player Nirvana)

at Aberdeen High "I remember thinking he was definitely somebody I wanted to

meet," says Kurt. "But we never connected."The two didn't have any classes together-Kurt
occasionally saw Chris at pep assemblies, where he would sometimes participate in little skits, only to sabotage them by doing things like spontaneously singing "The Star-Spangled Banner."

"He was a hilarious person who obviously has a different sense of humor," says Kurt.

"Everyone was just laughing at him but I was laughing with him, because he was basically making fools out of everybody else. He was just a really clever, funny, loud-mouth person. He was taller than anybody in school. He was huge. It was too bad I never got to hang out with him, because I really needed a friend during high school" (Azzerad 31).

Kurt began getting heavy into weed at this point and completely disinterested in school. Teachers were impressed by his artwork which he won two art scholarships for, but he eventually dropped out of high school. Not long after this, Kurt's mom walked in on him about to have sex with his then girlfriend, Jackie and decided that that was the last straw and kicked him out. Donald tried to get Kurt to join the Navy to get him to do something productive with his life. He scored impressively on the tests he took for them, but when the recruiter came to his house, he purposely got stoned and told him he wasn't interested in joining. Around this time he lived with his friend Jesse Reed and his Christian family. They eventually kicked him out and he moved in to an apartment with Jesse after getting a job as a high school janitor.

Kurt had already been long time friends with The Melvins and one day hanging out at their practice space, he finally struck a friendship with Chris Novoselic. Jesse moved out of the apartment to join the Navy and Kurt eventually got evicted. He spent most of his days at the library and he'd couch surf at night. Dave Grover and Buzz Osborne of The Melvins and Kurt recorded their first demo tape of their little band called Fecal Matter.

He moved in with another family for eight months, but eventually moved out and into his mom's shed with one of the guys from The Melvins. He was beginning to hang out with Chris a lot and finally he got him to listen to the Fecal Matter demo tape.

Chris Novoselic was born May 16, 1965 in Compton, California. He moved up to Aberdeen when he was fourteen with his parents who were originally from Croatia. He ended up getting really depressed there because he, like Kurt, didn't have anyone to fit in with. His parents began to worry about him and sent him to live in Croatia with some relatives. It was there that he learned about Punk Rock and began listening to The Sex Pistols, Black Flag, and Bad Brains.

When he got back to the states, he worked at Taco Bell and met a coworker who was friends with Bill Osbourne of The Melvins. One time Bill was at Taco Bell and he and Chris began to talk. Osbourne exposed him more to music and he began delving more into the lifestyle. He ended up graduating high school and his parents divorced which brought him more into music. He met Shelli by over hearing her talking about the Sex Pistols one day, only to find that she was a mutual friend of Kurt Cobain who was friends with his little brother, Robert.

He and Shelli began going out and even moved in together. Chris jammed with The Melvins and sometimes Kurt too until he and Shelli moved to Arizona in attempts to find jobs. He came back not long after that and he and Kurt formed a band together with a drummer named Aaron Kuckard. Kuckard lived down the street from Kurt and only played with them since there wasn't exactly anyone else in the small town who played drums too. Early on, there was friction between him and the other two (Kurt and Chris) because he was into more of the mainstream metal, where they were punk rockers. Chris went through a hippie faze and as a sarcastic joke, Kurt covered the song "Love Buzz" by Shocking Blue which later became one of their first hits.

They were performing all around Olympia and Seattle in underground shows under names like: Skid Row, Ted Ed Fred, Throat Oyster, Pen Cap Chew and Windowpane. Chris and Shelli moved to Tacoma and would stay with Kurt and his current girlfriend Tracey Marander in Olympia a lot of the time because they had jobs in Olympia where they lived.

While all this was going on, Kurt got the first sign of his chronic stomach illness which he describes as, "It's burning, nauseous, like the worst stomach flue you can imagine. You can feel it throbbing like a heart in your stomach and it just hurts real bad. I can just feel it being all raw and red. It mostly just hurts when I eat. About halfway through a meal and once it gets up to a certain area, right where it's inflamed and red, once it starts hitting there it starts hurting because the foot sits on it and it burns. It's probably one of the worst pains I've ever felt."

This chronic pain ended up dominating Kurt's life and many specialists were never able to figure out what it was, thus never allowing him to get it fully treated.

Their original drummer, Aaron, stayed in Aberdeen so they had Dave Crover to replace him. It was then that they chose Nirvana to be the name of their band. "I wanted a name that was kind of beautiful or nice and pretty instead of a mean raunchy punk rock name like Angry Samoans. I wanted to have something different," Kurt says about choosing the name. Nirvana did a demo tap and sent it to many record labels in hopes of getting signed on to one.

After going through a few drummers in Olympia, they ended up with Aaron again who didn't last long either because he wasn't devoted to the band like Chris and Kurt were. By this time, their cover of Love Buzz hit the radio in 1988 when Sub Pop decided to sign them. They began to record Bleach that same year which costed six hundred dollars to produce. Not having the money, a man name Jason who actually knew Kurt in high school lent them the money. Chad Channing was their drummer for that album. Nirvana went on tour the same year Bleach came out in 1989but ended seven dates early.

After a European tour, Chris and Shelli ended up getting married that summer and the band began recording their Blew EP. Chad ended up leaving the band because they didn't have the right chemistry, musical tastes or the same idea of where the band was going. It was then that Dave Grohl became the permanent drummer of the band.

Dave Grohl was born on January 14, 1969 in Warren, Ohio, but moved to Virginia when he was three. His parents later divorced when he was six and he ended up being raised by his mother. It was his cousin Tracey who introduced him to the punk music.She brought over magazines and albums for him to read and listen to and he began to be interested in the drums. He would practice his drumming on a chair, a book and his bed in his room for hours. He was a member of a punk band called Scream which later toured with The Melvins.

While down in L.A. Scream ended up breaking up, leaving Dave Grohl stranded without a band so he called up The Melvin's Buzz Osbourne telling him what had happened. Buzz gave Chris' number to Dave telling him that his band was in need of a drummer.

Dave took apart his drums, fit all the pieces into on big cardboard box, and flew up to Seattle with only a bag of clothes. Kurt and Chris picked him up at Sea-Tac Airport and began to drive to Tacoma. To break the ice, Dave Offered Kurt and apple. "No thanks," Kurt replied. "It'll makes my teeth bleed.

Dave was a real powerful drummer. He was exactly what the band needed and wanted for them as best described here:

"Just by playing so hard, he'd break drum thrones," he (drum tech) says. "There were just piles of sawdust on the drum riser from his drumsticks. He was just an animal." Dave's drum set lasted about halfway though the (Nevermind) tour, until an October 12 gig at the Cabaret Metro in Chicafo when the band destroyed it after a particularly good set. "There was nothing left any bigger than a six-inch circle of wood from the kick drum" (Azerrad 198).

They found a rehearsal space in Tacoma where they're rehearse for hours on end, daily. Grohl lived with Chris and Shelli for a month and later moved in with Kurt Cobain. Their place was knee-deep in corn dog sticks. "It was the most filthy pigsty I'd ever lived in"says Kurt (and that's saying a lot).They passed the time by shooting a BB gun, occasionally scoring a direct hit on the window of the State Lottery Building across the street.

Dave describes the apartment as "Small, cluttered, dirty, smelly." Six-foot-tall Dave slept on a five-foot couch.He slept in the same room as Kurt's tank and clicking of the turtles' shells against the glass as they tried to escape would keep him up all night.

"There wasn't a lot to do," Dave continues, "There was a lot of time just spent sitting in the room totally silent reading or just totally silent doing nothing, staring at walls or going downtown and seeing a ninety-nine-cent movie or shooting BB guns in the backyard."

Kurt and Dave began going to sleep at six in the morning as the sun was coming up and waking as the sun was going down, never seeing sunlight.

The two barely spoke. The conversation got past "Are you hungry?" "Yes."

Still, Kurt became more social after Dave moved in . "Kurt sort of came out of his shell," says Slim Moon,"He was around more, seemed happier with his life."(Azerrad 156)

In 1991, not much long after Dave joined the band, they signed with Geffen who had also signed Sonic Youth. They gave the band a lower advance, but a higher royalty rate which made the band millions of dollars that they wouldn't have made later. The only problem about signing with Geffen was that they were still legally bound to Sub Pop which they eventually paid 76 thousand dollars as a buyout and two percent royalties of the two next Nirvana albums. This is actually was what bailed out a then bankrupt Sub Pop.

It was during this time that Kurt tried heroin for the first time simply because he was bored and wanted to try it. He didn't make it a habit then yet, though. While recording Nevermind in LA with Butch Vigs, Courtney Love became coming around. She was friends with Dave and would talk to him on the phone and began to crush on Kurt who liked her too.

After the recording of Nevermind, Nirvana went on a European Tour with Sonic Youth and shot the Smells Like Teen Spirit video when they got home. Nevermind released September 13, 1991, it costed $550,000 to make and it sold 50 million copies. The night that Nevermind debuted on the Billboard album charts at #144, Kurt and Courtney were officially together.

Nirvana and Courtney's band, Hole, were both on different tours throughout Europe. The success of Nevermind was beginning to happen and it came as a huge surprise to them. Nirvana ended up ending the European tour because it was really miserable for all of them. It was freezing weather, they were always hungry and tired and Kurt's chronic stomach pains had flared up again. He and Courtney did heroin together while in Europe and Kurt continued to do it a few more times when he return home.

When Courtney returned from her Hole tour, Kurt suggested that they should move in together. They ended up moving in with one of Hole guitarists Eric Erlandson and a mutual friend who eventually kicked the two out because of their drug abuse. Kurt and Courtney hopped from hotel to hotel until Nirvana's short tour with Pearl Jam and Red Hot Chili Peppers where it finally became obvious to everyone that Kurt was heavily into heroin.

"He looked like shit," Chris says. "He looked like a ghoul." Chris knew he couldn't do anything about it. "I just figured it's his fucking trip, it's his life, he can do whatever he wants," he says. "You can't change anybody or preach some kind of morals or anything. What am I going to do? Nothing. So I just do my own thing."

People tried to blame Courtney for this, but Courtney hadn't done it in three years and Kurt was already doing it off and on by then.

On January 11, 1992, Nevermind hit #1 on the billboards and was also the night of their SNL performance which Kurt was high for and was nodding out for the entire photo shoot afterward. Courtney and Kurt were addicted to heroin by then and went to New York to do more. They brought a friend who Kurt later realized was stealing from them so he began getting the heroin himself. Courtney found out that she was pregnant and Kurt was ready to get an abortion because he, like everyone else, knew that the heroin could have made the baby retarded or deformed. Courtney went to a specialist and learned that heroin during the first trimester doesn't effect the baby other than potential learning disabilities. Kurt and Courtney decided to keep the baby and detox.

They shot the Come As You Are video, where Kurt was still on detox pills and wasn't feeling so good. It was amazing that he was able to swing on the chandelier in the middle of the video because the whole day he felt so sick and tired.

During the Australian tour, Kurt's stomach pains came up again. One day, Kurt says he was sitting on the steps of as hotel, wincing with pain, and Shelli walked up to him and said, "Kurt, I just hate to see you doing this to yourself. I can't stand to see you hurting your body like this."

"I just wanted to fucking punch her in the face because, just like everyone else, she just assumed that I was doing drugs," he says, "I was thinking, 'You fucking people have no clue how much pain I'm in all the time. It's from a natural thing that's in my body.' I couldn't believe it. I'll never forget those words because it just defined everyone's attitude toward me. Every time that I wasn't even doing drugs, they suspected that I was. They still do" (Azerrad 248).

Kurt finally went to a doctor who gave him Phseptone for his stomach which Kurt assumed was just a stomach ache pill, but was actually a Methadone pill, an opiate. Courtney joined the tour in Japan where they went to Hawaii after. Kurt learned that he was addicted to opiates yet again because of the pills that he was given for his stomach pains. Kurt and Courtney married on February 24, 1992 which Chris and Shelli didn't attend because they were completely against the whole thing.

Chris and Shelli were convinced that Courtney was doing heroin while pregnant and that Kurt was very much still on it and instead of ever talking about anything, they all just set out tense vibes and back-stabbed one another. It set a strain on their friendship for that time, but Kurt and Dave were still very close. Kurt describes Dave to be an open-minded guy who didn't judge him and that was the main reason why he openly talked to Dave about everything as opposed to Chris.

After the tour, Kurt began to pick up heroin again while Courtney lived with Eric to not be tempted to do it too. She often would visit hospitals and visit newborn babies for motivation not to touch any drugs while pregnant. He began to drift from the band and took time to support Courtney during her pregnancy. It was around this time where he wrote all of the lyrics to the upcoming In Utero album.

The band broke out in a royalty dispute where Kurt originally agreed on dividing all of the Nirvana royalties equally, but suddenly wanted to make it so that he got more since he was going through more than the other two. He wrote all of the songs and was suffering all of the pressures of fame through the tabloids, where as Chris and Dave just sad behind in peace and Kurt felt that this earned him right to more money. The band almost broke up, but their manager told Chris and Dave that the band could potentially make more money if they had just stayed together so they let Kurt win, allowing him to have 75% of the royalties from Nirvana, Nevermind album.

Kurt tried to detox again, but failed. During the European tour, he forgot to take his methadone pills and collapsed from the withdrawal. This brought out yet another heroin rumor even though Kurt wasn't taking heroin, just the pills for his stomach and that his episode wasn't an over-dose like the tabloids said it to be, but a withdrawal.

When Kurt got home from the European tour, a plumbing problem had flooded his bathtub, ruining a number of his notebooks and recorded tapes that he put in there to hide from any potential burglars that might have broken in while he was on tour. He tried to detox again even though he was only on heroin when he was off tours and it was "only a hundred dollar a day" addiction as opposed to the Sid Vicious four hundred dollars a day addiction. During the tours he would take his methadone pills instead, simply because opiates were the only thing that would stop his stomach from hurting.

Since Hole guitarist, Eric Erlandson was the only one who helped Kurt and Courtney through their detox hardships, so they put him in their will in gratitude.

The infamous Vanity Fair article came out during this time, saying that Courtney was doing heroin while pregnant. It left a big impact on Kurt and Courtney and put a wear on their shoulders because it butchered their reputation. Courtney was really tempted to do drugs during this time as release for the stress that the article put on her, but checked herself into a hospital immediately. She had called Kurt and told him about the article, but he was so out of it that reality didn't hit him until he medication began to wear off. He was infuriated and wanted nothing more than the beat the writer of the article to death.

On the morning of August 18, 1992, Courtney began to go into labor. She stunned her doctors by picking up her IV and slamming out of the room. She marched over to Kurt's room, clear across the hospital and screamed, "You get out of this bed and you come down now! You are not leaving me to do this by myself, fuck you"

At seven forty-eight in the morning, Frances Bean Cobain was born. She weighed seven points, one ounce, and according to the Cobains she was perfectly healthy.Kurt didn't witness his own daughter's birth. He had passed out. "I'm having the baby, it's coming out, he's puking, he's passing out, and I'm holding his hand and rubbing his stomach while the baby's coming out of me," says Courtney. "It was pretty weird," she says darkly (Azerrad 269).

Nirvana played at the Reading Festival shortly after her birth which Kurt showed up in a hospital gown as a sarcastic response to the tabloids gossiping about how sick he was. They also played at the MTV Music awards shortly after that too.

As the tabloids worsened, the band became united again. Chris and Shelli began to realize how much Kurt was going through and how he was clean, but still being accused of being on heroin still.

They recorded In Utero with Steve Albini who gave the album Nirvana's rawer sound. The band was unhappy about how commercial and polished Nevermind was and were happy to be able to do In Utero. They knew that the record producers wouldn't be happy with it, but they didn't care because it was what they wanted their sound to be. Grefen didn't produce the album for they didn't like it at all. They wanted them to rerecord it and add the mainstream gloss of Nevermind, but the band refused to do so. They eventually rerecorded Heart-Shaped Box and All Apologies so that the album could be released.

In March 1994, Kurt popped fifty-four pills, a failed suicide attempt which he later attempted again and was successful.He had been in detox yet again for doing heroin for his chronic stomach pains, and while he was there he couldn't take it anymore. He broke out of the hospital and went into the garden house of his Seattle home and shot himself in the head on April 5, 1995.

He left the following suicide note behind:

To Boddah

Speaking from the tongue of an experienced simpleton who obviously would

rather be an emasculated, infantile complain-ee. This note should be pretty easy to understand. All the warnings from the punk rock 101 courses over the years, since my first introduction to the, shall we say, ethics involved with independence and the embracement of your community has proven to be very true. I haven't felt the

excitement of listening to as well as creating music along with reading and writing for too many years now. I feel guity beyond words about these things.

For example when we're back stage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins., it doesn't affect me the way in which it did for Freddie Mercury, who seemed to love relish in the the love and adoration from the crowd which is something I totally admire and envy.

The fact is, I can't fool you, any one of you. It simply isn't fair to you or me.
The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I'm having 100% fun.

Sometimes I feel as if I should have a punch-in time clock before I walk out on stage. I've tried everything within my power to appreciate it (and I do,God, believe me I do, but it's not enough). I appreciate the fact that I and we have affected and entertained a lot of people. It must be one of those narcissists who only appreciate things when they're gone. I'm too sensitive. I need to be slightly numb in order to regain the enthusiasms I once had as a child.

On our last 3 tours, I've had a much better appreciation for all the people I've known personally, and as fans of our music, but I still can't get over the frustration, the guilt and empathy I have for everyone. There's good in all of us and I think I simply love people too much, so much that it makes me feel too
fucking sad. The sad little, sensitive, unappreciative, Pisces, Jesus man. Why don't you just enjoy it? I don't know!

I have a goddess of a wife who sweats ambition and empathy and a daughter who reminds me too much of what i used to be, full of love and joy, kissing every person she meets because everyone is good and will do her no harm. And that terrifies me to the point to where I can barely function. I can't stand the thought of Frances becoming the miserable, self-destructive, death rocker that I've become.

I have it good, very good, and I'm grateful, but since the age of seven, I've become hateful towards all humans in general. Only because it seems so easy for people to get along that have empathy. Only because I love and feel sorry for people too much I guess.

Thank you all from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach for your letters and concern during the past years. I'm too much of an erratic, moody baby!

I don't have the passion anymore, and so remember, it's better to burn out than to ade away.

Peace, love, empathy.

Kurt Cobain

Frances and Courtney, I'll be at your alter.

Please keep going Courtney, for Frances.

For her life, which will be so much happier without me.

I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU!

This was a very tragic death for all of the people who loved Kurt Cobain whether they knew him personally or not. To those that knew him didn't know him to be the depressed person that he was portrayed to be. He was a really happy person when his stomach wasn't giving him so much pain and he simply didn't want to deal with it anymore. The doctors didn't know what to do and he didn't want to be some junkie father around his daughter so there was nothing else he could think of to do.

It's a really sad thing when people like Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon and now Kurt Cobain die because you can't help but to wonder what else they could have brought into the now dying music industry. Regardless, Nirvana definitely left a staple in the music realm for they inspired bands like Green Day to write pop melodies with heavy guitars and drums and if it weren't from them, there wouldn't have been that spurt of 90's rock bands that emerged shortly after Nirvana did.

Only one can hope that a musical revolution such as this can happen again soon to save us from the leading billboard artists like Jonas Brothers, Fall Out Boy and Miley Cyrus who are far from the Rock n Roll legacy that Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Sid Vicious, and now Kurt Cobain left behind.

Sources

Azerrad, Michael. Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana New York, New York: Main Street Books, Double Day 2003

Cross, Charles. Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain New York, New York: Hyperion, 2001

Unknown "Nirvana" January 17, 1998. Geocities. April 25, 2009