KURT COBAIN

   So many people like to say "Kurt, he wasn't about the money or fame, he was a heroin addict, he couldn't handle it, that's why he killed himself." If that's what you think, then you are looking at it exactly as the media has fed it to you and you are a lemming in regard to this subject. It was well known that Kurt despised the media and in return the media massacred him and painted a portrait of a whiny little pissed off junkie bent on offing himself. They've completely obliterated his humanity and complexity, and it's a cruel joke for him to be left with that legacy.  I don't think he rejected fame and money. I think he rejected it coming BEFORE his art. He was first and foremost an artist. He achieved what he set out to do. So in true tradition of a real artist he started looking for "what's next"? Money, to Kurt was not the deciding factor for his artistic choices. I think Courtney, along with the lawyers and corporate record executives felt the opposite. They had a meal ticket in Kurt and they expected him to play his part in continuing it. That is, by the way, the complete opposite way of thinking in a punk rock mind set. In punk rock, if you are a "sellout", or all about the money, then you are less than nothing. And you are most definitely NOT a true artist. The truth is, Kurt already did the big success thing with Nevermind. Why would he want to continue along in the same vein of something that he had already done? Kurt was a true original. He achieved the fame, he achieved the money, for Kurt, he was looking at "now what"?? The people who were accustomed to him being their meal ticket wanted him to keep playing the same thing that made the money. What true artist is ever going to want to do that??

I remember watching a documentary on Jimi Hendrix. Jimi didn't achieve super star status until he went to England, but before then he played the US for YEARS with very little recognition. Then in England he played a now famous show in front of Clapton and all the great guitar heavies. Suddenly, his name is on everyone's lips. He comes back to the states and over and over again all they want to hear is "Hey Joe". I remember the terribly bored and disappointed look on his face, and his tired, sad voice as he said something to the effect of "What people don't understand is, I've already been playing those songs for over two years. I would like to play something new. I'm bored of it, but that's all they want to hear." Hendrix was actually banned from playing the BBC due to stopping abruptly at the start of "Hey Joe", saying "We would like to stop playing this rubbish" and launching into Sunshine of Your Love by Cream instead. (http://dangerousminds.net/comments/how_jimi_hendrix_got_himself_banned_from_the_bbc) If he didn't play the songs they wanted to hear, they actually booed him! Can you believe that?? No TRUE ARTIST wants to do the same thing over and over again. Kurt was NOT intending to commit suicide, he wanted to change. He wanted to go in a different direction from what the execs and even the fans wanted him to go. He was leaving Nirvana, and he was waking up and thinking "what about me"? And it was coming in the wake of influence of people like Steve Albini and seeing other bands like REM doing the things they wanted to do without the influence of outside voices and pressure. He was thinking "I've already been doing this same shit over and over again and it's not making me very happy. In fact, I'm miserable so I need to change my situation". Which is, by all accounts what he was doing.

 

     Here's the thing. Any change in his career, means a change in her career also. Why is this obvious motive ignored?? No one really mentions the direct incestuous link and deal between Nirvana and Hole, having all the same representation and whatnot. Her whole bandwagon was hitched to the tailpipe of Kurt and Nirvana's rocketing career. Was there anyone, in that small town who was not wooed and entranced by the enormous pull of the fame and money that was Nirvana/Hole during that time? I think not. Grunge music put Seattle, shit, it put Punk music back on the map. Not surprisingly, with popularity comes a massive shift in the fan base. It continually stuck in Kurt's craw the way he was being represented in the media, but more importantly, the way he was being looked at by his original punk rock community fan base. He was increasingly infuriated by his new "frat boy" "meathead" fan base, which really was everything he felt he stood against. To give you an idea here is a snippet of an interview from Vanity Fair from that time:

 

It’s later the same evening and Kurt is sitting in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven, waiting for Courtney to buy dinner, which consists of cookies, fruit juice, and cigarettes. As he stares out the window, a large van pulls up and a guy in full heavy-metal gear gets out. He is wearing a Nirvana T-shirt.

"That guy has on a Nirvana T-shirt," Kurt says rather sadly. The heavy-metal audience was not what he had in mind when he wrote "Smells Like Teen Spirit. "I’m used to it now. I guess," he says softly. "I’ve seen it a lot."

 "Courtney," Kurt says when she returns, "that heavy-metal guy was wearing a Nirvana T-shirt." "I know," she says, munching on a cookie. "I saw him." There is a long pause while they ponder this reality.

"I’m neurotic about credibility." Courtney says finally. "And Kurt is neurotic about it, too. He’s dealing with people who like his band who he despises. For instance, a girl was raped in Reno. When they were raping her, they were singing ‘Polly,’ a Nirvana song." Courtney pauses. "These are the people who listen to him."

 

Obviously, she is all on his side at the height of his career when it benefits her. However, commercial success in the alternative world, which really did used to be "alternative" and not at all mainstream, is a death sentence in the punk rock community, and it was really a source of concern for Kurt at that time. Kat Bjelland from Babes in Toyland, said it best "the general consensus is that Nirvana should quit," says Bjelland. "They’ve reached... nirvana. What are you going to do after that?" Being a "sellout" which basically means sacrificing artistic merit for the money, is an ultimate insult to a true artist. And in response to his huge and completely unexpected commercial success: he didn't want to tour, he wasn't working on the same material, he refused to play Lollapolooza, he refused a spot in Metallica/Guns N' Roses tour AND he wanted to dissolve the band. It's also been said that his contract was up and he was considering his options. You heard that correctly. By all accounts he was tired of the corporate game and was looking into other acts and working with different creative people. He wanted to start a new band with a fresh sound. And, like Hendrix with Hey Joe, he was tired of playing Teen Spirit. He called it  a "goof-off" song that he really didn't expect to take off. He had a number of female artists that he was interested in working with, but CL was having none of that. In fact, you could say, the band, CL, Geffen, the whole lot of them were less than thrilled. He was also putting his foot down in other areas where he was being manipulated, namely CL use of Francis and whether or not he could see her. What would happen if CL loses control over Kurt and he divorces her? She knew about the divorce (listen to the taped phone calls). She knew Kurt wanted to leave, and that a collaboration with anyone else would be disastrous to her. Her career was directly linked with his. Not to mention working with another female artist, it's a known fact she went ballistic whenever another female was around Kurt. After all, she had his management and label and hopefully his fans, and no other women were going to ever get in the way of what's hers.

CL has an extremely crafted image. How well-crafted it is depends upon you. I believe her mindset is pathological which was brought about due to an upbringing of abandonment, neglect and delinquency. If you look at all into her early years you can see a process that she has repeated over again as she tries on many different personas and roles in the quest for the ultimate role of fame and money. She was out to get the most attention, and it did not have to be positive, it just had to be on her. Early letters and notes to herself provided by her father and former husbands show a girl with determination, a big dream of stardom and fame, notes on how to achieve this, and actions behind those words. She didn't just talk. She was a self-proclaimed groupie. She set her sites on people and stalked them until she got what she wanted, and this did not just play out once, but again and again. Here is a link to an article with Rozz Rezabek from Theater of Sheep, complaining about her stalking him and breaking into his room. It's disgusting: 

http://radioforest.blogspot.com/2010/05/rozz-rezabek-part-two.html 

 

She was a groupie by the age of 16. She felt she could not quite truly get what she wanted on her own, but rather by using a man as a stepping stone in creating her own bigger and grander personae. There is a repeated and established history with her of hard drug use, violence, vendettas, revenge, arson, threats, intimidation, manipulation and lies. A succubus with a need for power and control. Someone with her background yearns for control because they are highly motivated by failure and rejection. She is clearly more about money and ambition than legitimacy, and she also has a long track record of manipulation using the police and using other people as leverage. She used violence in her first marriage to Falling James Moorland, hiring someone to beat him up for $200 as well as setting fire to his bed while he was sleeping in it. She is a consummate liar. If you do any research at all you can catch her in lies. There are so many she has to spin more when she can't remember to keep her story straight. If you watch "Kurt and Courtney", you can see her lie when he mentions her rotating band members and she responds very sincerely "Oh no, I've had the same band members for YEARS." Then watch the documentary on Patty Schemel "Hit So Hard" and directly see the rotating band members. She kicks Patty to the curb in recording session which sends her to the streets into a deep depression and drug addiction. In response, CL laughs about it and makes fun of her calling her a "crackhead". Watching CL in those interviews in that documentary is a  horrifying experience. She looks and sounds like one of the most disgusting human beings on the planet. Watching her eat about made me want to vomit. Another common lie is the "I was squeaky clean before I met Kurt". "we bonded over pharmaceuticals" quote. According to many friends, he wasn't into hard drugs until he met Courtney, NOT the other way around. Using drugs as a means to manipulate and control people was a part of her MO for many years before she met Kurt and is a known fact by many of the people in her life that have been unfortunate enough to come across her. She has a long history of hard drug abuse as documented by her father, she was shooting up at age 16. She even says in VF article that SHE even introduced HIM to the drugs. Something that is completely changed in all of her accounts later: 

"Courtney has a long history with drugs. She loves Percodans ("They make me vacuum"), and has dabbled with heroin off and on since she was eighteen, once even snorting it in Room 101 of the Chelsea Hotel, where Nancy Spungen died. Reportedly, Kurt didn’t do much more than drink until he met Courtney. "He tried to be an alcoholic for a long time," she says. "But it didn’t sit right with him."  (VF)

 

I also find it very interesting in Hank Harrison's book the idea that she knew about and stalked him quite some time before meeting. "I don't think he was the only one. I think her whole schtick at the time was meet and marry a great rock musician and she was pressing many. I also don't think it was much of a stretch to say she set her sites on Kurt due to his success. It just as easily could have been Billy Corgan or anyone that was making it and willing to fall for her."  Corgan also says as much  during an appearance on The Chris Isaak Hour TV show to share his opinion that Cobain "wasn't necessarily the nicest person," in addition to being sloppy seconds: "The night I threw Courtney Love out of my apartment is the night she famously walked down the street and ended up in his bed." It makes me wonder, did she ever love him, or was he a means to an end from the moment she met him?

 

You will also find out in Hank Harrison's book, that though her image is of one who came from no money or was underprivileged, that is fake. She may have been abandoned and was in Juvenile Detention but she was not poor. She never mentions that she was a Bausch and Lomb heiress with an established trust fund. She was very "money and things" oriented according to her father. It is also startlingly clear the lengths she will go to establish herself and control her surroundings. Hank Harrison is interesting. He really gets a lot of flack. It seems that he has been maligned by many different people, and shown in a light where he is a bit of a loon. The way he puts it, he had a relationship, though strained, with his daughter up until Kurt died. After he died, she went into hate mode and began attacking and putting the permanent distance between them. Initially, he did not think she had anything to do with Kurt's death, but with her increasingly strange behavior afterward was what really alerted him that something was horribly wrong. Methinks the lady doth protest too much? That's why reading his book is worth it, because I like to form my own opinion. He sounds a lot more credible, and he has the photos and writing samples to back what he is saying. His insight into his daughter's mind is quite disturbing and seemingly honest. It is a book full of mourning and loss. He also puts perspective on real time events because he was there. We witness, through his eyes, the manipulative personality. He describes one incident where he went to visit CL at Slim's in Portland in 1993, followed with a visit for coffee to Cafe Trieste. 

 

"We spent the aforementioned afternoon at the Cafe Trieste, drank some of the best coffee in the city, drove around town in the rain and discussed her undying lust for Evan Dando. It was as if Kurt didn’t even exist, except as Mr. Poupon in a far away hotel. She worried about her upcoming recording session in Atlanta. Everything seemed natural, but back at the club around 8:30 PM, I saw the darker face. She was simply trotting me around to make sure her security staff got a good look at me." He was never allowed backstage, nor to meet Kurt or his granddaughter, though later he found out that she was right there on the tour bus.

 

After the Rome incident, the big propaganda machine went into overtime painting CL in a positive light and Kurt as this pissed off junkie bent on self-destruction. There was a huge conflict of interest going on and I think Kurt wanted out of his contract and out from under the control of everyone stomping on him at that point. The problem was, for other people, millions of dollars were at stake and it turns out that Kurt's decision to go in a different direction was making him a bit of a loose cannon. The Rome incident and public coma, made him out to be much more of a junkie (and don't forget "suicidal"!) than he really was and CL was getting ready to take on the mantle of Yoko Ono and be blamed for the breakup of Nirvana. Not only that, if Kurt went through with the divorce and notarizes his will, she is left out of the vast Nirvana proceeds. As a joke, that cannot be as funny to her now that Kurt wants a divorce, CL had HIM sign a pre-nup before their wedding. Presumably because she thought her band was going to be much bigger than his someday (HAHA!!!). Which really means, she was NOT EVEN ENTITLED TO HALF HIS FORTUNE IF THEY DIVORCED, BUT IF HE IS DEAD< WHO GETS EVERYTHING??

Kurt was moving on. It was known he wanted to collaborate, and he could have his pick of musicians. It was known that he admired other female artists like Kristen Pfaff and Mary Lou Lord. Steve Albini was ready to produce anything Kurt wanted. A partnership between Kurt and any other woman musician would undermine her completely. It would create a rivalry and cost her image. She would lose her trophy husband and ultimately if Kurt cleans up his act and shows a stable relationship with someone else, she could potentially also lose her trophy baby. He had to be stopped before that could happen. 

In the timeline of events, when Kurt jumped the fence of rehab in Marina del Rey (and after Rome), he was a dead man walking. What struck me in particular is that when Tom Grant initially took the case with CL to find her "missing" husband, he asks to see Kurt's credit card records. CL sees the records as well. Kurt had booked a plane ticket about a half hour after he left the Marina del Rey rehab on April 1st. This ticket he used to fly from LA to Seattle that night. But that wasn't his only purchase. At 5:30pm earlier that SAME DAY, while still at Exodus, Kurt purchased TWO MORE plane tickets on Delta Airlines. The credit card company cannot ascertain the flight date or destination, but CL tells Tom Grant that Kurt "may be going east to stay with friends". But later she says "He has two tickets. I'm curious if he bought a plane ticket for someone else." Grant says she sounded panicked about the second plane ticket and soon found out why. "I think Kurt wants a divorce." She tells him. Why isn't a bigger deal made of these two plane tickets?? Why would a man intent on killing himself be buying two more plane tickets? A man going to his death is not going to be making future plans. Where was he going? Who was the other ticket for?? I find these tickets to be a highly suspicious detail which bears more mention and investigation than it gets.  She saw the credit card plane ticket purchase, she knew he left rehab. The only thing she didn't know was: What was he up to? One thing is for certain: He had to be stopped, or he was going to get away.