Everyone tried to pretend like nothing was wrong. Kurt just kind of mumbled. Kurt excused himself to go to the bathroom. He was gone a long time. I considered the possibility that he had sneaked out of the restaurant. That would have been brilliant. But, eventually, just as I was starting to think that someone should go check on him, he returned. He was high, dazed, his eyelids nearly closed. He was nodding slightly. Surely everyone else at the table could see this, too, but no one acknowledged it in any way, and the conversation continued around Kurt, as if he were a senile grandparent.
It was obvious to me that Kurt got high at that dinner deliberately, as a self-destructive protest. The ostensible purpose of the dinner, aside from dining at a fancy restaurant and putting the bill on the expense account, was to discuss some pressing business decision with Kurt. But Kurt was in no condition to make any decisions. When the check was paid, everyone scattered. I walked him back to his hotel, holding on to his arm—as if he were an elderly person—in case he stumbled.
When we arrived at his hotel room, Courtney was lying on the bed, reading a magazine. Then he flopped down on the end of the bed, sidewise, and Courtney nonchalantly put up her feet on his back like he was a sofa cushion. I got the sense that something like this had happened many times before. Kurt was sleeping, or something like it, and Courtney apparently had things under control, so I left them and headed down the hall to stop by a little party the rest of the band and crew were having.
Kurt overdosed later that evening. He had gone to the bathroom for a long time. Then Courtney heard a thud. But it, too, became terrifying. Soon after I arrived, one of the guys in the band stepped out the window and onto a broad ledge on the side of the building, several stories above the street. He started walking on the ledge toward the next window of the room—which was maybe ten feet away. I was petrified.
He was hammered, not the ideal condition for tightrope walking. I thought that I was about to witness a horrific moment in rock history, but he made it. Everybody in the room cheered. Then one of the crew tried it. And I was petrified all over again, but he made it, too. Then the guy in the band went a second time. By now, I was thoroughly freaked out. But he made it again, and, thankfully, there were no more ledge walks. I made a beeline for the drinks table.
Courtney eventually forced her way into the bathroom and saw Kurt turning blue. He claimed it would be boring, but then he said everything about his life was boring. The long, concrete-floored hallway leading to their room was lined on one side with cremation urns, which were manufactured in another area on the floor. It was late when we arrived, and the entire building was silent. The room was about six hundred square feet, with windows that looked out onto other industrial loft buildings.
A small riser for the drum set was as fancy as they got. There was a modest P. They had no soundproofing, no sound person, no special lights, no recording equipment, no well-stocked bar. A few mismatched old chairs were strewn around the room, some concert posters hung on the wall, and there was a small fridge. They fussed with the P. They played sections of songs, starting and stopping until Kurt felt that things were right.
I suppose this was what Kurt thought was the boring part, but it was illuminating to see how much he controlled things, how exacting he was with music that appeared so rough-hewn.
It was difficult to hear some of the flaws Kurt wanted to correct, but when the band fixed them it was obvious that everything had snapped into place. I was a relatively steady person, a little older, and drug-free. She figured that I would be good company for Kurt on the road, maybe help keep him on the straight and narrow—if only by example.
Sometimes a cloud gathered over the touring party. But everyone in the band felt some sort of tension: even if they tried to make light of it, Kurt, the bassist Krist Novoselic, and the drummer Dave Grohl felt the enormous pressure of being a world-famous rock group and resented the invasive journalism that comes with it.
There were tensions within the band, too. The thing was, Dave was staying in the room right next door. I was sure that Dave heard the whole thing. He told his biographer, Paul Brannigan, that on a flight from Seattle to Los Angeles he had overheard Kurt bad-mouthing his drumming two rows back. Once they landed, Dave told their trusty Scottish tour manager, Alex MacLeod, that he was quitting the band after the last scheduled show.
MacLeod talked him out of it. After we reached Dallas, Kurt called my room and asked whether I wanted to walk around downtown with him, the kindly Pat Smear an early L. We rolled out with Kurt pushing Frances in her stroller, making her laugh with a ridiculous assortment of rude noises. The emptiness of downtown Dallas on a weekday afternoon was baffling to me, a provincial New Yorker, but great for Kurt, who could stroll around without being hassled by fans.
Walking down a wide boulevard, we found ourselves at the edge of a big open space. An enormous flock of grackles circled above, forming an undulating disk so vast and dense that the sunlight filtering through looked gray. It felt apocalyptic. Except for the occasional car, there was not another human being in sight.
It dawned on me that this was Dealey Plaza, the site of the John F. 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. For all its flaws, the tear-stained Aberdeen statue does suggest what might have been, had Cobain lived. As late as November , only a few months before his suicide, Cobain would talk excitedly about his next move.
He wanted acoustic instruments and more textured arrangements for the next album, something that would plunge him deeper into the introspective shadows and subterranean beauty of a Nick Drake or a Skip Spence co-founder of Moby Grape rather than the scorched-earth fury of In Utero tracks like Milk It or Rape Me. He reduced the songs to their barest essentials: voice, guitar, a bit of bass, brushed drums. On Penny Royal Tea, it was just him and his guitar.
So my guess is he would have kept moving, flitting from project to project much like a Dylan, Lanegan, Lou Reed or Neil Young, in search of new inspiration, rather than becoming a greatest-hits jukebox. But the work would keep him relevant because he would be restless and curious enough to keep exploring.
Who might he be collaborating with today? And you just know that Kanye West would have booked some studio time with him in mind. Greg Kot is the music critic at the Chicago Tribune. His work can be found here. If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.
On the Record Rock music. If Kurt Cobain had lived. Share using Email. By Greg Kot 21st October
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