Kurt Cobain

Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 – ca. April 5, 1994) was the lead singer and guitarist of the American rock band, Nirvana. He served not only as the band's frontman, but as its "leader and spiritual center" {{ref|spiritualcenter}}. With the band's success, Cobain became a major national and international celebrity, an uncomfortable position for someone who claimed to be "ill at ease with fame and ill-equipped to handle the responsibility that accompanies success" {{ref|fame}}.

Addiction and death

Throughout most of his life, Cobain battled depression, chronic bronchitis, and intense physical pain due to a chronic stomach condition. Cobain spent years seeking the cause for his stomach pain. However, none of the doctors he consulted were able to pinpoint the specific cause, guessing that it was either a result of Cobain's childhood scoliosis or related to the stresses of performing. Feeling that he had been let down by medical science, Cobain opted to self-medicate with heroin.

Related Topics:
Bronchitis - Scoliosis - Heroin

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Cobain's first taste of heroin came sometime late in 1990. For months, Cobain used the drug casually, but it did not take long for his use to become a full-fledged addiction. Toward the end of 1991, his use began affecting the band's support of Nevermind, with Cobain passing out during photo shoots as a result of the drug. On the band's 1992 performance on Saturday Night Live, Cobain's eyes appeared to be sunken into his head, a possible sign that he had shot up earlier in the evening.

Related Topics:
Passing out - Saturday Night Live

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Cobain's heroin addiction increased further as the years progressed. Cobain's first attempt at rehab came in early 1992, not long after he and Courtney discovered they were going to become parents. Immediately after leaving rehab, Nirvana embarked on their Australian tour, with Cobain appearing pale and gaunt while suffering through withdrawals. Not long after returning home, Cobain's addiction resurfaced.

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Prior to a performance at the New Music Seminar in New York City in July of 1993, Cobain suffered a heroin overdose. Rather than calling for an ambulance, wife Courtney Love injected Cobain with an illegal drug to bring him out of his unconscious state. Cobain proceeded to perform with Nirvana on what later was recognized as one of their more memorable performances. The public was given no hint that anything out of the ordinary had taken place.

Related Topics:
New York City - July - 1993

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On March 6, 1994, in Rome, Kurt overdosed on a combination of champagne and Rohypnol, which Love later insisted publicly was Cobain's first suicide attempt. Cobain returned home, and soon faced his friends and family at an intervention over his continuing heroin addiction. Given everything that had happened, Cobain agreed to check into rehab.

Related Topics:
March 6 - 1994 - Rome - Overdosed - Intervention

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A few days after arriving at rehab in California, Cobain told the nurses that he was going out for a smoke. After finishing it, he jumped over the facility's six-foot wall (although the patients in the rehab could leave freely at any time), caught the next flight back to Seattle, and dropped off the radar. In the ensuing days, he hung out occasionally with longtime friend Dylan Carlson, and once bumped into friend and famed Seattle photographer Charles Peterson. However, most of his friends and family were unaware of his whereabouts, eventually pushing his wife to fill a missing persons report, under the name of Wendy Cobain, without the permission of Kurt's mother. She added in the file that Kurt Cobain was suicidal and was in possession of a shotgun. The next day, she hired a private investigator, Tom Grant, to find him.

Related Topics:
California - Seattle - Dylan Carlson - Charles Peterson

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On April 8, 1994, Cobain's body was discovered in the spare room above the garage (referred to as "the greenhouse") at his Lake Washington home by Veca Electric employee Gary Smith. Smith arrived at the house that morning to install security lighting and saw the body lying inside. Apart from a minor amount of blood coming out of Cobain's ear, Smith reported seeing no visible signs of trauma, and initially believed that Cobain was asleep. Smith found what he thought might be a suicide note with a pen stuck through it beneath an overturned flowerpot. A shotgun, purchased for Cobain by Dylan Carlson, was found at Cobain's side. An autopsy report later concluded Cobain's death as a result of a "self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head." The report estimates Cobain to have died on April 5, 1994.

Related Topics:
April 8 - 1994 - Lake Washington - April 5

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In the alleged suicide note, ostensibly written to Cobain's imaginary childhood friend "Boddah", Cobain quoted a lyric from Neil Young's song "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)": "It's better to burn out than to fade away." Cobain's use of the lyric had a profound impact on Young, who recorded portions of his 1994 album Sleeps With Angels in Cobain's memory.

Related Topics:
Neil Young - Sleeps With Angels

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Cobain was cremated, with one third of his ashes scattered in a Buddhist temple in New York, another third in the Wishkah River, and the rest left in Love's possession.

Related Topics:
Cremated - Buddhist - New York - Wishkah River

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