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 young, so his doctor gave him a drug called Ritalin, which is a
morphine based drug, to help him concentrate in school. The drug often kept him awake until
4 am 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 did not like school, he felt lonely and lost. He liked to paint and sing, but the other boy’s were more into football and stuff like that. Most of the girls liked Kurt and he spent much time with them. The boy’s wanted to hang out with Kurt to come closer to the girls, but Kurt hated the guts of those macho boys. 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.
In May 1985 a few weeks before graduation Kurt dropped out of school and started to work. He had a few jobs but it was never a success, and he never held on to a job for that long.
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 weren’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. This album cost a total of 600$ to record, which isn’t so much. They then started to tour in the U.S. and later that same year they had their first European concert in Newcastle, England.
The following year they released a new single without very much success. By now Nirvana thought they had got an unfair welcome in the industry, and they decided to change record company from Sub-Pop records to Geffen records. In 1991 they signed a contract with Geffen records and started to produce their next album which was to be named Nevermind.
September 24th the same year Nevermind was released and debuts as number 144 on the hit lists, but after an interview on MTV’s Headbangers Ball and an appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live the album climbs right to the top spot whit their hit song "Smells like teen spirit".
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. They preferred to play in small clubs where the energy gets more intense and intimate. But because of their bad habit to crush guitars, amps and so, they had to do the arena rock shows because of the money. Kurt also started to use heavy drugs more often in this period, such as heroin and morphine. At this point Kurt described himself as suicidal.
24th of January 1992, Kurt got married to the former stripper Courtney Love in Wakiki, Hawaii. She is now known for her band Hole and is also doing a god job in the film industry, The People vs Larry Flint, whatever. Six months after they got married they had a child, Frances Bean. When Courtney was pregnant there were big (?????)… in the press which claimed she was using heroin while she was pregnant with Frances. Courtney, of course, denied all of this, but she did not deny that she was using heroin. She claims she stopped using heroin that instant she got to know she was pregnant.
The other members of Nirvana hoped Kurt would calm down now that he had a wife and kid. This was also the fact, for a while. In this period they recorded a new album, Incesticide. This album was supposed to "get rid off" all the false fans which they got under the Nevermind success, with the more peculiar sound which reminded some of the Bleach days and some of the tracks were even supposed to be on Bleach. They succeeded in this.
In the beginning of 1993 they recorded what was to be their last studio recorded album, In Utero. This album was recorded in two weeks, but wasn’t released for another six months, due the work-title "I Hate Myself And I Want To Die. This title reflects the fact of Kurt being suicidal.
When Kurt was on a seminar in July 1993 he overdosed on heroin. Courtney injected him with an illegal drug to save him. Later that same day he went on stage and played a concert, no one noticed anything. From now Kurt’s drug abuse was starting to get out of hand. Courtney threatened several times to divorce him if he did not get treatment for his abuse. He agreed to get treatment for his abuse, but didn’t last long at the rehab centre. He later escaped from this centre although it was voluntary. He said this was a place for retards or something. It wasn’t a proper place for him to be.
In the beginning of 1994 Nirvana played an MTV unplugged concert, and they played what was to be their final concert in Munich 29th Mars 1994. One week later Kurt was hospitalised in a coma. The next day he awoke and asked for a milkshake. After a few days he left the hospital by his own will. Kurt disappears after this and is reported missing by his wife. She also hires a private investigator to trace him, she fears that he might show up dead.
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.
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