Kurt Cobain's Biography
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// background music: Sliver \\

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 couldn't deal with their child anymore and so they made him move in at some relatives. This period of his life is also reflected in his lyrics, e.g. in Sliver and Serve The Servants.

Kurt did not like school, he felt lonely and lost. He liked to paint and sing, but most other boys were more into football and stuff like that. Most of the girls liked Kurt and he spent much time with them. The boys 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, at the age of 14, 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 they were never a great success, and he could never hold on to a job for that long.

Nirvana was started in 1986 and consisted of Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic. Kurt played the guitar and sang while Krist played the bass. After a few attempts with some different drummers they were’t satisfied until they where introduced to Dave Grohl via the vocalist of the Melvins. 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 is rather cheap. 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 suspected most of fans were not true fans and that they 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. On several occasions he even wrote suicide notes just for the heck of it.

24th of January 1992, Kurt got married to the former stripper Courtney Love, lead-singer of her band Hole, in Wakiki, Hawaii. Six months after they got married they had a child, Frances Bean. When Courtney was pregnant there were scandalous rumours in the press claiming she was using heroin during her pregnancy. Courtney didn't deny using heroin, but she did claim to have stopped as soon as she found out about her getting a baby.

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 - logically - is supposed to proove Kurt's being suicidal at that time.

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. After various attempts, the one even more desperate than the other, Kurt finally agreed to get treatment for his abuse, but didn’t last long at the rehab. 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 1993 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 and she's said to have hired private investigator John Grant to trace him at that point.

8th of April 1994 Kurt was found death in a little room above his garage in the Lake Washington house. The police immediately dismissed it as a clear suicide case. 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. Meanwhile many a story has been told concerning the unfortunate death of Kurt Cobain... but what really happened? Nobody knows but Kurt; the case remains unresolved.

Later that year unplugged in NY was released, an album that quite rightly got great response.