Kurt Cobain and Nirvana - Updated Edition

The Complete Illustrated History

Andrew Earles, Charles R. Cross, Gillian G. Gaar, Bob Gendron, Todd Martens, Mark Yarm, Charles Cross

• Publisher: Voyageur Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780760351789, 9780760344828
• eBook ISBN: 9780760352557
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music History & Criticism

Nirvana, the immortal grunge Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, is as relevant and influential as ever.

Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl, and Krist Novoselic comprised Nirvana, the band that unintentionally tore the music world asunder with the 1991 album Nevermind. The record that includes hits such as "Smells like Teen Spirit," "Come as You Are," and "Lithium" continues to rattle speakers with grunge that truly rocks. Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, Updated Edition tells the fully illustrated story of the band that spoke for Generation X in the '90s.

Here we are, a quarter century after Nirvana irrevocably changed rock and roll, and the band continues to make headlines and influence music lovers. A documentary about the band and Cobain's solo album Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings were released last year, demanding a closer look at one of rock and roll's geniuses. Kurt Cobain and Nirvana reveals the band's history with fresh eyes, telling the story of a group that instigated a return to punk-inspired rock. This updated edition of the first-ever complete illustrated history of Nirvana features the writing of a sparkling team of grunge-rock experts and word slingers. The book also includes performance and backstage photography, as well as handbills, singles, ticket stubs, gig posters, and other memorabilia that complement the narrative. You'll also find album reviews, gear breakdowns, and mini synopses of Cobain's fifty all-time favorite albums. Nirvana's ride was a wild one - and all too brief.

1. GOTTA FIND A WAY
THE PRE-BLEACH YEARS

By Charles R. Cross

Though Kurt Cobain will forever be associated with Seattle and the rise of that city’s grunge music scene, he actually lived in Seattle for less than two years. During that time he mostly stayed in rentals or hotels, and he didn’t own a house there until January 1994, three months before his suicide. He was just twenty-seven when he died above the garage of his newly purchased mansion. When the police searched that Seattle home after his death, they found a basement full of unpacked moving boxes.

One of the famous ads run in Seattle’s The Rocket alternative newspaper during 1987 and 1988 by the duo of Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic seeking a drummer.

Greetings from Aberdeen, Washington.

Cobain’s suicide on April 5, 1994, was tragic, but his artistic accomplishments, particularly in light of his childhood and where he came from, were remarkable by any imagination. Few rock stars have ever risen from such unlikely origins to such heights of fame, and few of any background have created a body of work with such lasting impact on music.

Cobain was born in Aberdeen, Washington, and he spent the first two-thirds of his life in or near the small city of sixteen thousand. To understand Cobain—his roots, the formation of his creative drive, and the genesis of Nirvana—you must understand Aberdeen, and how that city profoundly shaped its most famous son.

Though Aberdeen is only two hours west of Seattle, it is an entirely different world in terms of economic opportunity and even landscape. Located in Grays Harbor County, near the rugged and heavily forested Washington coast, Aberdeen came into being to service men harvesting natural resources from the region. In Aberdeen’s case, that meant fishing, mining, and logging, and those workers rolled into the city to buy supplies, but also to drink, fight, and, often, whore.

In 1952, Look magazine called Aberdeen “one of the hot spots in America’s battle against sin” because of the many brothels that lined the downtown streets. A notorious madam named Nellie Curtis was one of the town’s colorful characters, said to have more political power than most elected leaders. A former Aberdeen police chief used the working title When Madams Reigned for his autobiography and to describe the early years of the city. Consequently, Aberdeen was blacklisted during World War II for servicemen: You could go there, but you’d be arrested by military police if you were seen in uniform in the city limits.

Most of the city’s brothels were closed by the time Kurt Cobain was born in 1967. Still, Aberdeen’s reputation as a town full of “sin” made it a perfect locale to birth an outsider who would rail against mainstream music norms. Cobain, in a way, was a rock outlier, much the way Nellie Cornish railed against societal sexual mores.

KURT’S TOP 50 ALBUMS

In the published version of Kurt Cobain’s Journals, much is written about his favorite bands and albums. Cobain’s “Top 50 Albums” list is the most famous example and best represents where Cobain’s eclectic and earnest tastes found their center. It is noticeably lacking in Seattle and regional contemporaries because a separate list addressed acts like his mentors, the Melvins, as well as his appreciation for TAD, Screaming Trees, early Soundgarden, and Green River. Included throughout this book are hopefully useful descriptions by Andrew Earles of each of Cobain’s Top 50 Albums. Here’s hoping for the discovery of a few life-changing albums, as well as the revisiting of old flames.

Most jobs in Aberdeen involved the timber industry, and during Cobain’s youth his father Don worked on and off in lumberyards. Don was working as a mechanic, though, at the Chevron service station in nearby Hoquiam when Cobain was born in 1967. Don was twenty-one at the time, and his wife Wendy was only nineteen. They lived in a 300-square-foot shack that was so tiny it was behind another home and had a “half” address.

Don earned $6,000 a year as a mechanic. Logging jobs paid better, but they were also dangerous. A 1920 report from the Safety Board of Washington State called the forest products industry “more deadly than war,” due to the frequent injuries caused by giant falling trees and the saws used to cut them down. Accidental amputations and death were common, as were alcoholism, domestic violence, and suicide. Unemployment was twice as high in Grays Harbor County as the rest of the state, and over-logging during the previous decades diminished even timber jobs.

Yet, for all the darkness of that backdrop, Cobain’s first few years of life were not that remarkable, and his childhood was typical of a small-town upbringing. He was a popular kid in elementary and middle schools, participating in sports and afterschool activities. In his junior high yearbook photograph, he is wearing an Izod polo shirt. That year, Cobain played drums in the marching band, and his music instructor recalled him as “a regular, run-of-the-mill” student. “He was not extraordinary,” the teacher remembered, “but he also wasn’t awful.”

KURT’S TOP 50 ALBUMS

IGGY & THE STOOGES
Raw Power (Columbia, 1973)

David Bowie rescued a label-less, post-Elektra Iggy from a lightning-fast ride down the toilet of drugs and debauchery and got him signed to Columbia and for the recording and release of the third Stooges album. Bowie was called in for an emergency, one-day mixing session on an ancient board after Iggy loaded all of the guitar on one track, vocals on a second, and the rest of the instruments on a third. The lead guitar jumps out of the classic title track like an exposed nerve and the first of two “label-required ballads” (“Gimme Danger”) and remains as haunting as ever. Warts aside, Raw Power is still a vital inclusion in any discerning rock fan’s collection. Andrew Earles

Cobain was profiled in his junior high school newspaper, selected as the “Meatball of the Month.” The brief article noted that his favorite song was “Don’t Bring Me Down” by Electric Light Orchestra, and his favorite band was Meatloaf. Cobain would later suggest that these choices were in jest, but they were most certainly sincere at the time and reflected the same mainstream taste as his classmates. Though he later claimed his first concert was the punk rock band Black Flag, in truth the first show he attended was Sammy Hagar and Quarterflash.

He was most interested in music from decidedly middle-of-the-road rock bands (he owned all of REO Speedwagon’s albums, and Beatles albums had been passed down from his aunts and uncles), but music was not yet his dominant artistic interest—drawing and painting were. It wasn’t until his first used guitar at age fourteen that his interest in the guitar blossomed, but even then it involved what Cobain called “butt rock”— AC/DC, Black Sabba...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• 1. Gotta find a way the pre-bleach years
• 2. In bloom the bleach years
• 3. Radio friendly unit shifter the nevermind years
• 4. I got a new complaint the in utero years
• 5. What else could i write? the aftermath
• 6. Sigh eternally
• Contributors
• Index
• Copyright