Thirty years ago, Kurt Cobain committed suicide at his home at the age of 27, abruptly stopping his meteoric rise as a pillar of grunge within his group, Nirvana.
On April 5, 1994, Kurt Cobain committed suicide with a point-blank bullet to the head in his home near Seattle. His body was discovered three days later by an electrician. Nearby, a rifle and a farewell message which concludes that “it is better to burn at once than to wither”. The singer lived 27 years, leaving behind a daughter, Frances Bean, a group, Nirvana, which became a global phenomenon, and a movement, grunge, in which a generation recognized itself.
In just three years, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana both crystallized the despair of a generation and shook up the recording industry by putting punk and alternative rock at the top of the world charts. When the album Nevermind was released in the fall of 1991, no one expected the tidal wave that would follow. Already present in Bleach (1989), the group’s previous album (recorded for $606 and sold 30,000 copies), the themes of Nevermind will touch teenagers around the world, those that the writer Douglas Coupland calls “Generation »: unhappiness, revolt, self-destruction and lack of perspective, sung in a hoarse and torn voice by Cobain.
Nevermind will sell more than 30 million copies worldwide. Musically, this record, produced by Butch Vig (who founded Garbage in 1995), is also a shock. Nirvana combines the noisy energy of rock with beautiful pop melodies. Because if he is a fan of punk music, Cobain also worships the Beatles and especially John Lennon.
Ahead of its time
Born on February 20, 1967, Cobain grew up in Aberdeen, an industrial city in the northwest of the United States, near Seattle. As a teenager, he rejects his environment and loathes the “macho” environment of deep America. He founded Nirvana in 1987 with bassist Krist Novoselic, the son of Yugoslav immigrants. The group was signed to Sub Pop the following year, and would be joined by drummer Dave Grohl in 1990, before Nevermind. The global success of this second album made the trio the representative of the “grunge” (“dirty”) movement, in both ideas and look: long, dirty hair, loose checked shirts and torn jeans. A success that Cobain has great difficulty managing and which accentuates his inner unease.
His marriage to the sultry singer of the group Hole, Courtney Love, in February 1992, hit the headlines, against a backdrop of rumors of heroin abuse. Nirvana’s third and final album, In Utero (1993) – originally titled I Hate Myself and I Want to Die – was a reaction to the success of Nevermind. The sound is raw (the production is by Steve Albini, specialist in hardcore rock) and the title Rape Me (“Rape me”) causes a scandal. This frightens the record company DGC, headed by David Geffen, who accuses the group of having deliberately made an uncommercial record.
“His image in the media was a little distorted and focused disproportionately on his death, rather than on his life and his work,” said Danny Goldberg, his former manager, who met Cobain in 1990, after the Bleach explosion and before the global success of Nevermind. In the book Serving the Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain, published in 2019, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the singer’s death, he evokes a musician ahead of his time, a melancholy character with a lively spirit and great humanity. . “His voice had an incredible soul and exuded vulnerability and intimacy like rarely (…). He is one of the few artists whose work is timeless.”
«Rock star» alternative
By showing fragility, Kurt Cobain also broke with a certain vision of rock, underlines the ex-manager, and contributed to “redefining masculinity” in the world of music. He says that during a concert in Argentina, Cobain refused to sing Smells Like Teen Spirit after the audience booed the all-female band Calamity Jane, who were opening for Nirvana. “He was attached to a feminist ideal and respect for all, an anti-macho credo,” summarizes Danny Goldberg, who recalls that the singer also publicly defended the rights of the LGBT community. “He offered a really alternative version of what it meant to be a ‘rock star’.”
In February 1994, during a world tour, Nirvana improvised a stop in the Parisian studio of photographer Youri Lenquette, a friend of Cobain. This will be the last photo shoot for the band… and for its singer. “When the group arrives, Kurt has this gun in his hand,” he remembers. “It was he who initiated all the poses, on the temple, in the mouth, pointing towards the lens…” The photographer refutes “the thesis of a message that he would have wanted to convey. Posing with a gun remains a great classic of rock photography after all,” he judges, recalling that “a few months earlier, in Seattle, Kurt had already posed with a plastic gun in his mouth.”
“Huge impact”
But when the group was in Europe, Kurt Cobain was psychologically at his worst. He made an attempt on his life for the first time on March 4, 1994, in Rome, by mixing tranquilizers with champagne. His entourage sent him to rehab in Los Angeles, from where he escaped to return to Seattle. He took refuge in his house where he shot himself in the head on April 5, 1994. His body was discovered three days later. The 1994 tour was never continued and the group broke up immediately, but the end of the year saw the release of the album MTV Unplugged in New York, a poignant acoustic live recorded at the end of 1993, which immediately became iconic. .
Kurt Cobain “remains the most important musical artist” of the late 20th century, says Charles R. Cross, author of three books devoted to the artist. According to the American journalist, “Cobain’s way of writing songs has become a model. He showed that you can express your painful emotions, shout your anger, talk about your depression or even horrible things like rape. The impact is still enormous among many artists. “It’s the love of music that gives me the strength to continue,” Cobain told Les Inrockuptibles magazine eight months before his death. But I could leave overnight. I have enough money to disappear without a trace. Bye-bye, story over.”
Insights into a cult look
Like so many other things, the look, or rather the “antilook” of Kurt Cobain, was copied, co-opted, and escaped him. In the music video for Smells Like Teen Spirit, which hit TV screens in 1991, Cobain wears two t-shirts, one on top of the other, bought second hand. These clothes remain in the collective imagination. Like others worn later, between fly glasses or a tired cardigan from the famous MTV Unplugged at the end of 1993, which will be sold at auction for $334,000 in 2019. For the filming of Smells Like Teen Spirit, the group recruits extras through of a flyer insisting: “No clothing with brands or logos please”.
But success conquers all. Grunge becomes a brand and Cobain its silhouette, against his will. “Unfortunately, you can’t control it when you become a phenomenon, an icon,” underlines Charlotte Blum, grunge specialist. “Cobain wanted to become a star, but he was overwhelmed when he hoped to do things gradually, the way he wanted. There, it’s not just an album that works, it defines a genre,” continues Marc Dufaud, author of a book on Cobain. At the time, designer Marc Jacobs designed a collection inspired by this movement.
Cobain, however, attempted subversion through clothing: on the front page of Rolling Stone magazine, his t-shirt mentioning “Corporate magazines still suck”, by displaying himself with humor in lamé signed Jean -Paul Gaultier for the video clip for Heart-Shaped Box, in 1993, or on the set of the show Nulle Part Elsewhere, in February 1994, where Nirvana played live, its members dressed in a white shirt, a jacket and a black tie. The singer and guitarist also chooses his T-shirts to promote fringe artists that he cherishes, like the tormented Daniel Johnston.
Another famous outfit of Cobain, the blue flowered dress, with which he appeared on the front page of The Face magazine, in order to denounce the ambient virilism of guitar groups: “If some of you hate homosexuals, people of color or women (…), don’t come to our concerts,” he said.
