Kurt Cobain's Legacy
Every teenager who has had at least a little bit of good taste in music knows who the band Nirvana is. Their music seems to end up in the hands of every teenager or even adult.
Kurt Cobain was the lead singer of an iconic band that goes by the name Nirvana. Kurt was born in Aberdeen, Washington, on February 20, 1967.
In 'Cobain: Montage of Heck', a documentary about Kurt Cobain and his success as a musician, his mother talks about his childhood. As a young kid, Kurt had loved music and even starting playing the guitar at a very young age. Kurt was a rebel teenager and during his teenage years, his mom forced him to move into his dad's and eventually got kicked out of his dad's house as well. After that, he hopped from family to family for a place to live as a young teen. This made his childhood rough, which was a big influence on the unique person he later grew up to be. In Aberdeen, Washington, it was hard to get ahold of punk rock music because no record shops sold that genre. Kurt absolutely loved this genre of music and still always managed to get his hands on this type of music. The music he listened to expressed the way he felt about every aspect of life, and his favorite part was the anger. Nirvana doesn’t have an exact birth date but was established by Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and their first drummer, Aaron Burckhard. After going through two more drummers, the band found Chad Channing and recorded their first album, Bleach. The album was released on June 15, 1989. Although the album was fantastic and filled with grunge which is what every rebellious teen seemed to be listening to, it didn’t sell much. The album was later re-released after their album ‘Nevermind’ and hit number 89 on the billboards.
Nirvana’s biggest album ever was called Nevermind and was released on September 24, 1991. This is the first album that Nirvana recorded with their new and approved drummer, Dave Grohl, who later became the frontman of Foo Fighters. Nevermind was a huge surprise success. By January 1992, the album had passed Michael Jackson's album 'Dangerous' as number one on the United States Billboard 200.
On January 24, 1992, Kurt Married the singer of bands such as Hole and Pagan Babies, Courtney Love while she was pregnant. Right after Kurt and Courtney got married, Nirvana was on top of the world. Kurt decided to take 6 months off and “stay in his apartment and do heroin and paint and play his guitar” (sic), according to Courtney. On August 18, 1992, Frances Bean Cobain was born and it changed the life of both Kurt and Courtney. Nirvana's last actual album came out on September 21, 1993. It was called In Utero. This album covered a lot of Kurt’s personal life. Most of the songs on this album were recorded way before they released it. Kurt originally wanted to name the album “ I Want to die” according to his journals in 1992. On April 8, 1994, Kurt was found dead at his home located at 171 Lake Washington Boulevard, in Seattle due to suicide. According to forensic analysis, he had committed suicide three days before on April 5th.
According to the Seattle Police Department, he laid with a shotgun across his body and a visible shotgun wound to the head. Days prior to his death, Kurt had checked out of a drug rehabilitation and was very suicidal according to Courtney Love. There are many theories to Cobain's death but the biggest one by far is explained in a documentary called 'Soaked in Bleach'. This documentary talked about the possibility of Courtney being the one who killed Kurt.
Kurt didn’t like fame and didn’t care whether Nirvana made it or not, and he just wanted to play music. Kurt's mother, Wendy Cobain, in an interview in a documentary about Kurt, stated, “Kurt always said that his goal was to be worth 3 million dollars then just be a junkie.”
