Cobain, Kurt
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Kurt Cobain
Kurt Donald Cobain
MTV VMA Ceremony 1992 Basic Information Full name Kurt Donald Cobain
Date of birth February 20 1967(1967-02-20)[1][2]
Place of birth Aberdeen, Washington, USA
Date of death April 5 1994(1994-04-05)[1][2] (27 years)
Place of death Seattle, Washington, USA[1]
Years of activity 1982-1994
Country USA
Professions musician
the author of songs
artist
Singing voice tenor
Instruments vocals
guitar
percussion
Genres alternative rock
grunge
Nirvana Collectives
Fecal Matter
Sub Pop Labels
DGC Records
Geffen Records
Autograph
Audio, photo, video on Wikimedia Commons
Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 (19670220 — - April 5, 1994) [3][4] was a songwriter, musician and artist, best known as the vocalist and guitarist of the American grunge rock band Nirvana.
Content
1 Biography 1.1 Childhood and youth 1.2 Nirvana 1.3 Family life 1.4 Health problems 1.5 Death 1.6 Solo career
2 Musical influence 3 Literary influence 4 Films and books 5 Equipment 6 Memory 7 See also 8 Sources 9 Notes 10 Literature 11 References
Biography[edit / edit wiki text]
Childhood and youth[edit / edit wiki text]
Kurt Donald Cobain was born on February 20, 1967 at Grays Harbor Hospital in Aberdeen, Washington[5], in the family of a housewife Wendy Elizabeth (maiden name Fradenburg)[6] and Donald Leland Cobain's auto mechanic.
Cobain's ancestry has Irish, English, Scottish and German roots[7][8][9].
Cobain's Irish ancestors emigrated in 1875 from the county of Northern Ireland Tyrone[9] to Cornwall, Ontario, Canada, and then to Washington [10].
Cobain has a younger sister, Kimberly, who was born on April 24, 1970. [6][8]
Kurt grew up in a musical family: his maternal uncle, Chuck Fradenburg, performed with a band called The Beachcombers, his aunt Mary Earl played guitar in various local ensembles, his great uncle Delbert made a career as a tenor and even starred in the 1930 film "The King of Jazz" (en:King of Jazz)[11].
He showed an interest in music quite early: according to his relatives, already at the age of two, he was happy to sing The Beatles songs[11].
At the age of four, he wrote his first song about a trip to a local park.
At the age of seven, he received a drum kit as a gift from his aunt[12].
In addition to his abilities for music, he also showed himself as a talented little artist.
In this he was encouraged by his grandmother, who was a professional artist.
When Kurt was nine years old, his parents divorced.
The divorce of his parents greatly affected the boy: Wendy Cobain recalled that he became sullen and withdrawn[13].
In 1993, Cobain talked about this:
"I was ashamed of my parents.
I couldnot communicate normally with my classmates, because I really wanted to have a typical family: mother, father.
I wanted this confidence, and because of this, I was angry with my parents for several years."
The original text (English)
I was ashamed of my parents.
I couldnot face some of my friends at school anymore, because I desperately wanted to have the classic, you know, typical family.
Mother, father.
I wanted that security, so I resented my parents for quite a few years because of that.
— Savage, Jon.
"Kurt Cobain: The Lost Interview."
Guitar World.
1997
The boy lived with his mother for some time, but he did not have a relationship with her new friend, 22 year old Mike Medak, and he moved to his father in Montesano.
Donald soon married Jenny Westby, with whom he had two children, Mindy and James.
In January 1979, Jenny gave birth to another child, Chad, Kurt's half brother.
But Kurt also did not get along with Jenny, and so he had to leave his father — the boy lived with Leland and Iris, Donald's parents, then with relatives on his mother's side.
At the age of 14, Kurt gave up playing the drums and began learning to play the guitar, given to him by his Uncle Chuck for his birthday.
Warren Mason, a musician of The Beachcombers, became his first teacher[14].
Around the same time, Kurt became interested in punk after reading an article about the Sex Pistols in the magazine "Creem" [12].
It was almost impossible to buy their records in Aberdeen, so he had a rather vague idea of how such music should sound (according to his own definition — "three chords and a lot of screaming"), but in his heart Kurt was already fired up with the idea of creating a punk band.
Soon he met the members of the Aberdeen band Melvins, who played music that combines elements of punk and hard rock (later this style was called "grunge").
Krist Novoselic also came there, as a result of which they became friends.
In 1984, Wendy Cobain married Pat O'Connor, a docker who suffered from alcoholism, who once broke Wendy's arm.
Kurt returned to his mother's house, but his relations with his relatives were not developing well.
After graduating from high school, he decided not to go to art college; his mother gave him a choice — either he goes to work or leaves home.
He had to leave.
Almost all the rest of the time Kurt lived with his friends, moving from house to house every day.
Often he had to sleep in the courtyards of friends ' houses, the rest of the time he spent in the library, "waiting for the end of the day"[12].
According to Kurt, for some time he lived under the bridge of the Wishka River, which inspired him to write the song "Something in the Way" [15].
Later, he still had to get a job.
On May 18, 1986, Kurt was arrested for trespassing, as well as alcohol consumption and was jailed for 8 days[12].
Nirvana[edit / edit wiki text]
Main article: Nirvana
In 1985, Kurt formed a band called Fecal Matter; it consisted of bass guitarist Dale Crover, drummer Greg Hokanson and Cobain himself vocalist and guitarist.
About a year later, Fecal Matter broke up, without releasing a single disc; after that, Kurt began distributing a demo record of Fecal Matter among his friends — he wanted to create a new band.
One of the tapes went to Krist Novoselic, a friend of Kurt.
For a while, he seemed to have forgotten about it, but a few months later, he suddenly started a conversation with Cobain about how they should organize a rock band (he listened to the recording, and he liked the material).
The newly formed team (which soon had a third member — drummer Chad Channing) changed several names: "Skid Row", "Ted Ed Fred", "Bliss", "Pen Cap Chew" — but in the end "Nirvana" was chosen.
"I was looking for a name that would be beautiful or pleasant," Cobain explained.
In 1988, the band's first single, "Love Buzz/Big Cheese", was released, and the following year, Nirvana's debut album, Bleach, appeared on sale.
In 1991, Nirvana's second album, Nevermind, was released, which became an unexpected breakthrough into the mainstream for the band.
The single "Smells Like Teen Spirit", to everyone's surprise, became a hit on MTV (although it was initially assumed that the lead single from the record would be "Lithium").
Nirvana's sudden success on the international stage attracted public attention to the Seattle grunge scene and generated a wave of imitators.
The media called Nirvana "the flagship of Generation X", and Cobain himself - "the voice of the generation".
Cobain himself felt discomfort from the unexpected popularity that had fallen on his head: he himself saw himself primarily as a representative of the independent rock scene, and he was annoyed that he had become an idol of the masses.
He deliberately made the band's next album, In Utero, much heavier and darker in order to scare off a wide audience and proclaim the return of Nirvana to its "independent" roots (the album was produced by Steve Albini, the leader of the noise rock band Big Black).
Nevertheless, the album, although it did not become as successful as Nevermind, was still popular with listeners and reached high places in the charts.
Despite the fact that Nirvana was an "apolitical" band and did not pay much attention to social issues, as many punk ensembles did, Cobain, nevertheless, used his fame to convey his ideas to the public.
He was an active defender of the rights of women and sex minorities and supported pro choice (despite the fact that he personally admired motherhood and women by mothers), as a result of which he repeatedly received threats against himself from militant pro lifers[16].
The booklet for the collection Incesticide included the words: "If any of you hate homosexuals, people of another race or women because of something, please do us a favor - go fuck yourself and leave us alone!
Donot come to our concerts and donot buy our albums."
Family life[edit / edit wiki text]
Kurt Cobain and his future wife Courtney Love met in 1990 at a concert at a Portland club, where both performed with their bands.
Courtney, who, according to her, saw Nirvana at a concert in 1989 and already then drew attention to Cobain, immediately showed interest in him, but Kurt behaved evasively.
Later he explained: "I wanted to be a bachelor for another year, but I realized that I was really crazy about Courtney, and it was difficult to stay away from her for so many months"[17].
In 1991, after learning from Dave Grohl that Cobain had a keen interest in her, Courtney again began to "pursue" him.
They had an affair.
In 1992, Love discovered that she was expecting a child from Cobain, and on February 24, 1992, their wedding ceremony was held on a Hawaiian beach in Waikiki.
Courtney was wearing a dress that once belonged to the actress Frances Farmer, who was admired by both newlyweds, and Kurt was dressed in pajamas - "because he was too lazy to wear a suit."
The daughter of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, Frances Bean Cobain, was born on August 18, 1992.
She got her name from Frances McKee, the vocalist of Cobain's favorite Scottish TV pop band The Vaselines.
Shortly before the birth of the girl, Courtney's infamous interview with Lynn Hirshberg from Vanity Fair took place: in it, Courtney mentioned that she had been using heroin for some time during pregnancy, not yet knowing that she was going to have a child.
Hirshberg, however, presented everything as if Love continued to use drugs after she found out that she was pregnant, and expressed her "concern" about what was happening.
Courtney said that the journalist had distorted her words, but she insisted that she had records.
The Cobains did not immediately realize that a huge stain was falling on their reputation because of this article.
Soon after the birth of Frances, they had to face law enforcement agencies — the Los Angeles Department of Children's Affairs filed a case against them for the deprivation of parental rights of spouses, based on this publication.
The court proceedings lasted for several months, as a result, the Cobains were still allowed to raise their daughter independently, but they were required to undergo regular drug tests.
Kurt was deeply offended by what was happening, believing that a real war was going on against him and his wife, and compared himself to Frances Farmer, whom many considered a victim of a conspiracy (in 1942, the actress, who had visited the USSR a few years earlier and was suspected of communist sympathies, was forcibly hospitalized with manic depressive psychosis and underwent a lobotomy).
On the album In Utero, released the following year, there are a number of sarcastic references to the scandal with the Hirshberg article and the "witch hunt" launched by the press against Courtney Love.
Health problems[edit / edit wiki text]
Certain health problems plagued the musician from an early age.
He suffered all his life from chronic bronchitis and stomach pains of unknown origin (sometimes he claimed that he started using heroin to dull the pain[18]).
As a child, he was diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), and he was forced to take ritalin; later, he was diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder (manic depressive psychosis)[19].
Kurt's cousin, Beverly, is a doctor by profession, and discussing with journalists the biography of the musician and his tragic end, I particularly drew attention to the fact that alcoholism and mental illness were widespread in the Cobain family; in particular, two of his paternal uncles committed suicide (and one of them chose the same method of suicide as his nephew — by shooting himself in the head).
Kurt started using drugs at the age of 13, when he first tried marijuana; later he began experimenting with LSD and other hallucinogens, as well as substances consumed by inhalation.
He first tried heroin around 1986, having obtained it from the same dealer who had previously supplied him with "percodan" (an opioid analgesic, prescription and taken orally).
He continued to use heroin for the next few years, and by early 1991 he had developed a full fledged, severe addiction.
During and after the tour in support of Nevermind, the problems associated with Cobain's drug addiction became more and more apparent: for example, at a photo shoot on the day of Nirvana's performance on Saturday Night Live, he "blacked out" several times right in front of the camera.
In 1992, after it became clear that his wife Courtney Love was expecting a child, both spouses went to rehabilitation.
During the subsequent Nirvana tour of Australia, Cobain looked thin, pale and ill, clearly suffering from withdrawal syndrome.
After returning from a trip home, he returned to drugs again.
In July 1993, Cobain suffered a severe heroin overdose.
Courtney Love found him lying unconscious, and, instead of calling an ambulance, she personally injected him with naloxone (a drug that blocks opioid receptors and is used for poisoning with opioid containing substances).
That evening, he was scheduled to perform at the New Music Seminar in New York; despite the incident that happened to him, Cobain expressed a desire to attend the show and played a concert with the band, without giving a public appearance.
On March 1 of the following year, during the European tour, Cobain was diagnosed with bronchitis and severe laryngitis.
On the second of March, he flew to Rome for treatment; the next day Courtney Love came to see him.
On the morning of the fourth, she woke up and found him lying unconscious and showing no signs of life.
It turned out that he had an overdose of rohypnol in combination with champagne, which he washed down with pills.
He spent the next few days in the hospital, and then returned to Seattle.
Many consider the "Rome incident" as his first suicide attempt, although Cobain himself said that it was just a "mistake".
On March 18, Love called the police, claiming that her husband had locked himself in a room with a gun and was threatening to commit suicide.
The police arrived and confiscated several guns from Cobain (the musician was fond of shooting) and a jar of pills of unknown origin.
Kurt said that he did not intend to commit suicide and just wanted to hide from his wife, with whom they had a quarrel.
In response to a question from a police officer, Love agreed with her husband's words, saying that in fact he did not intend to kill himself, although she had previously claimed the opposite.
On March 25, Love called 10 people from among Kurt's friends and employees of his record company to convince him to go to treatment for heroin addiction.
The musician behaved harshly with them, insulting them, but at the end of the day he still agreed to undergo a rehabilitation course.
On the thirtieth, he arrived at the Exodus Rehabilitation Clinic in Los Angeles.
The clinic staff did not know about his depressive state and previous suicide attempts; he also seemed calm, freely communicated with the medical staff and even played fun with Frances Bean when her nanny brought a one and a half year old girl to meet her father[20].
This was the last time he saw his daughter: that evening he went out into the courtyard, allegedly for a smoke, and climbed over a two meter wall (in the morning of the same day, he joked that it would be "an extremely stupid way to escape").
He took a taxi and went to the Los Angeles airport, and from there flew to Seattle.
Sitting next to him on the plane was Duff McKagan from Guns N 'Roses; despite his sharp dislike of Guns N' Roses and Axl Rose personally, Kurt seemed happy to see him.
Over the next few days, he was seen several times in different places in Seattle; his wife and bandmates at the same time remained unaware of his whereabouts and unsuccessfully tried to track him down.
Courtney Love hired a private investigator to help her track down Cobain.
Death[edit / edit wiki text]
Main article: The Death of Kurt Cobain
On April 8, 1994, an electrician named Gary Smith arrived at the Cobain house, located at 171 Lake Washington Blvd East in Seattle, at 8: 30 a.m. to install a security system[21].
Smith rang the bell several times, but no one answered the door.
Then he noticed a Volvo car parked in the garage next to the house, and decided that the owners of the house were probably in the garage or greenhouse, which was located directly above the garage.
Smith checked the garage, then went up the stairs to the greenhouse.
Through the glass door of the greenhouse, Smith noticed the body and assumed that someone was sleeping, but when he looked closer, he saw blood near the left ear and a gun lying across the body.
So the body of Kurt Cobain was discovered.
At 8: 45 a.m., Gary Smith called the police and the local radio station.
Kurt left a suicide note written in red pen.
The protocol of the inspection of the scene of the accident was drawn up formally, without an in depth analysis of the details.
According to one version of the investigation, Cobain injected himself with a dose of heroin incompatible with life, and shot himself in the head with a gun.
Also, criminologists came to the conclusion that Kurt died on April 5 and his dead body lay in the house for three days.
There is also an assumption about the deliberate murder of Kurt.
Courtney Love was unofficially included in the list of suspects.
After the cremation, some of Cobain's ashes were scattered over the River Wishka in his native Aberdeen[22], and part was left to Courtney.
An unofficial place of worship in memory of the singer is a memorial bench in Viretta Park, located near Cobain's last home in Seattle.
The greenhouse over the garage where Kurt's body was found was demolished in 1997, and the house itself was sold.
Solo career[edit / edit wiki text]
In the spring of 2012, the former guitarist of the band Hole, as well as one of Cobain's close friends during his lifetime, Eric Erlandson (English)Russian, claimed in an interview that shortly before his death in 1994, Cobain was working on a solo album[23].
It is currently unknown whether there are any recordings, but Nevermind producer Butch Vig strongly disagrees with Eric's opinion about the existence of material recordings[24].
Musical influence[edit / edit wiki text]
Cobain has loved music since childhood.
One of his earliest and most beloved bands was The Beatles: his aunt Mary said that she remembers him singing "Hey Jude" at the age of about two years.
In his diaries, he calls John Lennon his idol.
The influence of The Beatles is felt in such Nirvana songs as "Polly", "All Apologies" and "About a Girl" (which he, by his own admission, wrote after listening to the album Meet the Beatles for three hours in a row!).
As he got older, he discovered hard rock and heavy metal and started listening to Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, KISS, Aerosmith and AC/DC, and in his teens he became interested in punk after reading an article about this movement in a magazine.
The first punk album he could get was Sandinista!
The Clash, which initially disappointed him, but he really liked Sex Pistols.
In his diaries, he called Raw Power of the cult proto punk band The Stooges his favorite album of all time; another important punk band for him were the Americans Wipers, whose "dirty" guitar sound and depressive mood strongly influenced Nirvana.
A huge influence on the early Nirvana was exerted by his countrymen, the founders of grunge and sludge Melvins.
Another major source of inspiration for him was the American independent scene, in particular, such groups as Sonic Youth and Pixies.
The latter had a decisive influence on the formation of his style: thanks to them, he turned to writing more melodic and memorable songs based on their signature "loud/quiet"dynamics.
He was a fan of tvi pop and lo fi music and named among his favorite artists such groups as The Vaselines, Beat Happening, Marine Girls, Young Marble Giants, Shonen Knife and others[25].
Also among his favorites were such artists as Ledbelly, Devo, David Bowie, MDC, Daniel Johnston and others.
Nirvana's acoustic concert, posthumously released in 1994 under the title MTV Unplugged in New York, may have provided a hint of Cobain's future musical direction.
The recording was compared to R. E. M.'s 1992 album Automatic for the People[26], and in 1993 Cobain admitted that the next Nirvana album would be "quite spiritual, acoustic, like the last R. E. M. album"[27].
Cobain's friend and lead singer R. E. M. Michael Stipe, in a 1994 interview with Newsweek magazine, said: "Yes, he talked a lot about what direction he would move in.
I mean, I know what the next Nirvana album would sound like.
It would be very quiet and acoustic, with a lot of stringed instruments.
It would be an amazing album, and I was a little angry at him for t oh, that he killed himself.
He and I were supposed to record a demo of the album.
Everything was planned.
He had a plane ticket, a car that was supposed to pick him up.
And at the last minute, he called and said: "I canot fly" "[28].
Literary influence[edit / edit wiki text]
Cobain considered Leo Tolstoy, Laura Wilder, Jerome D. Salinger and Laurence van der Post to be his favorite authors[29][30].
The book by Patrick Suskind "The Perfumer.
The story of a murderer "inspired Kurt to create the song" Scentless Apprentice " [31].
Movies and books[edit / edit wiki text]
In 1997, the film "Kurt and Courtney" ("Kurt & Courtney") was shot.
This is a documentary film, the authors of which tried to find out whether the death of Kurt Cobain was a suicide or he was killed.
And if they did, then who did.
However, the film did not turn out to be full fledged due to huge claims from Courtney Love.
In 2003, comics about the life of Kurt Cobain were published in Britain.
The plot consists of both real facts from his life and fictional ones[32].
In 2004, Russian director Vasily Yatskin made a feature documentary "Blessing or Curse", in which he tried to comprehend the spiritual side of Kurt's life and death.
The film includes interviews with Kurt's relatives and friends, his mother, sister, wife Hollywood star Courtney Love.
The film draws parallels with the life story of another gifted person — the unique pianist Polina Osetinskaya.
In 2006, director Gus Van Sant shot the film "Last Days" (English Last Days).
The film tells the story of the last days of the life of a rock musician named Blake.
The plot of" The Last Days " resembles the biography of Kurt Cobain, and in the characters you can recognize real people from his environment.
Nevertheless, the filmmakers characterize all the events of the picture as fictional, although they were conceived under the impression of the last days of Cobain's life.
The role of Kurt in the film starred Michael Pitt.
In the film, he performs a song of his own composition From Death to Birth, accompanying himself on an ordinary guitar, not converted to his left hand.
Otherwise, the similarity of Pitt's character with the prototype is extremely great.
In 2006, the film "The Last 48 Hours of Kurt Cobain"was shown on Discovery.
In 2007, the documentary "Kurt Cobain About a Son"was released in the United States.
It includes previously unreleased fragments of audio recordings of Cobain's interviews made by journalist Mike Azerrad, and views of the cities with which Cobain's life was connected — Aberdeen, Seattle and Olympia.
Among the books in Russian, it is worth noting the book by V. Solovyov Spassky "Horsemen without a Head, or a Rock and Roll Band" with a provocative chapter "The Immortal Legacy of Kurt Cobain"[33].
Several biographical books about Kurt have also been written.
One of the latter is Heavier Than Heaven by Charles Cross[34].
In 2015, a documentary film about the biography of Kurt Cobain, "Cobain: Damn Editing" (English Cobain: Montage of Heck), was released.
It tells about the life and career of Kurt Cobain.
Also in 2015, another film about Kurt Cobain, Soaked in Bleach, was released by American director Benjamin Statler, who wrote and produced it together with Richard Middleton and Donnie Eichar.
The film details the events leading up to Kurt Cobain's death, as seen through the lens of Tom Grant, a private investigator who was hired by Courtney Love to find Cobain, her husband, shortly before his death in 1994.
The theory that Cobain's death was not a suicide is also being investigated.
Actors: Tyler Bryan (Tyler Bryan) — Kurt Cobain, Daniel Roebuck
