Kurt Donald Cobain was born on the 20th of February 1967 in Aberdeen, which
is located about 120 kilometres Southwest of Seattle in the state
Washington. He grew up in a mid class society and was hyperactive as a
child, as a result he was prescribed a morphine based drug to help him
concentrate in school. The drug often kept him awake until 4am in the
morning so he was given sedatives to be able to get some sleep.
Kurt had a happy childhood, until he was seven years old when his parents
got divorced. It was an ordinary divorce, but Kurt got very upset about it.
He became shy and difficult to cope with. The years after the divorce Kurt
moved back and forth from his parents. In the end his parents did not want
anything to do with him so he had to move in at some relatives. This period
of his life is also reflected in his lyrics, e.g. in Sliver.. Kurt felt more like a girl rather than a boy and has
later told: "I'm a heterosexual . . . big deal. But if I was a homosexual,
it wouldn't matter either."
Until Kurt was nine years old he only listened to The Beatles and The
Monkees, but in -79 his father joined a record-club and he started to
listen to music like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Kiss. He also started
to listen to British alternative rock like Sex Pistols and The Clash.
2nd of February 1981, on Kurt s 14th birthday, he bought his first guitar.
And in the years to follow he tried to create his own music style and
started to hang out in the Seattle underground, where he was roadie for a
band called Melvins.
Nirvana was started in 1986 of Kurt Cobain and Krist Novaselic. Kurt played
the guitar and sang while Krist played bass-guitar. After a few attempts
with some different drummers they were t satisfied until they where
introduced to Dave Grohl by the vocalist of the Melvins, which became the
new drummer of Nirvana. They made their first demo in 1988 and it didn t
take long until their first single was released. Already the next year they
released their first album,
Bleach.
Kurt had never expected to be so popular and did not even like the idea of
being a main stream rocker. He hated the commercial part of Nirvana and had several times encouraged the audience to stop buying their records and to
stop coming to their concerts. Kurt thought most of the fans were false
fans and only liked their hit single "Smells like teen spirit". In this
period Nirvana mostly played arena rock shows and this wasn t the way they
liked to play.
8th of April 1994 Kurt was found dead in his own house, of what appeared to
be a shotgun blast to his head three days earlier. Two days after there
were a memorial where Courtney read a part from his suicide note. Kurt had
said earlier that same year that he never expected to reach the age of 30.
Unfortunately he was right. He became a rock legend like Jimi Hendrix,
Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. They all became 27.
Later that year their unplugged in NY was released, and this album got
great response although it was weird to hear Nirvana without their
distorted guitars.
