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Kurt Cobain was a happy child until his parents divorced. After that he started doing drugs and moving around from place to place because he didn’t really have a home. He dropped out of high school and eventually started Nirvana, a band that would go on to influence a generation. Kurt Cobain overcame a troubled childhood to make great music through his pain. Donald Cobain, Kurt’s father, was an auto mechanic, who, despite living in the worst, trashiest neighborhood in town, made sure the Cobain house was the nicest. But he was always off doing something else that didn’t involve his family. He would play sports, coach teams, and referee games but he would never spend any time with his family. Kurt’s mom decided to divorce Don because of this. After the divorce he got remarried to a woman who had kids of her own, whom Kurt didn’t get along with. Kurt soon realized that his father gave more attention to his step-kids than he did to him. Wendy Cobain, Kurt’s mom, was a cocktail waitress that made sure her kids looked good for school and tried to keep them from hanging out with other poor kids because she didn’t want other people to know that they were poor also. After she divorced Don she got remarried to Pat O’conner. Once she caught Kurt and his friend Myer Loften smoking weed and tried to scare them out of doing it again by eating their whole stash. She was high and sick the whole night but she didn’t achieve her goal because Kurt kept smoking anyway. When Kurt dropped out of high school she told him he could either get a job or leave. Kurt thought she was joking and never got a job. One day he came home and found all his stuff in boxes on the floor, he had to leave. Kurt Donald Cobain was born February 20, 1967, the son of Donald and Wendy Cobain, in the small town of Hoquim. When he was 2 he started to show an interest in music. Kurt’s Aunt Mary tried to teach him to play guitar but he was too hyper and couldn’t concentrate long enough to learn. His mom went out and bought him a Mickey Mouse drum set. Kurt really liked this and when he got home after school he would start pounding on it. One day the drums just couldn’t take it anymore and they broke. Sometimes when he went over to his Uncle Chuck’s house Chuck would put him in the basement with a microphone and tape Kurt singing. When he got older and less hyper, he took up guitar again. At one point in Kurt’s life when he was 7 or 8 he wanted to be like Evel Knievel. Sometimes he would take all the pillows and blankets out of the house, spread them out on the porch, and jump off the roof onto them. Once he found a piece of metal, he strapped some firecrackers to it and duct taped the thing to his body. He lit the firecrackers and after they went off, he realized he didn’t want to be a stuntman anymore. After his parent’s divorce Kurt hated them and wasn’t very happy or outgoing anymore. Kurt found himself shuttled around from his moms house to his dad’s house, and from there to other relatives’ houses. Once Don made Kurt join the wrestling team, he was good at it but during a championship match Kurt let his opponent pin him, just to his dad angry. He got up and smiled at him and Don got embarrassed and left. In high school Kurt started hanging around the stoners because he didn’t like the preps. They tried to get him to hang out with them, but it wasn’t because they liked him. It was just because the girls all thought he was cute and they thought the girls would like them if he hung out with them. He would get stoned every night after school. Kurt didn’t have many friends during high school and he often got beat up by the preps. He got even by spray-painting “QUEER” and “GOD IS GAY” on their cars and trucks. Kurt dropped out of high school 2 weeks from graduation because he realized there were too many credits he had to make up. So his mom kicked him out of the house. Kurt found himself out on the streets, staying with friends, sneaking into his mom’s attic, and at one point living under a bridge by the Wishkah River. Kurt’s mom felt bad about putting Kurt out on the streets to live, so she would give him food sometimes when he came by the house. Otherwise he ate fish. |
Once, while he was making French Fries, Kurt severely burned his hand on the grease. The doctor said Kurt would never be able to play guitar again, this devastated Kurt because ever since he was little he had dreamed of starring in his own band. His mom wouldn’t believe this so she took his to a specialist at Grey’s Harbor College. The people there took very good care of his hand and eventually you could hardly tell anything was wrong with it at all. Kurt had always wanted to be in his own band. When he was 11 he heard Britain’s Sex Pistols and was inspired by them. After their self-destruction, he and his friend Krist Novoselic continued to listen to British bands. Some people believe that Nirvana was directly influenced by another British band, Joy Division. Kurt and Krist went out and found people to put in their band, after many drummers and name changes, they came up with Nirvana. The line-up was Kurt- guitar and vocals, Krist- bass, and Chad Channing- drums. At one point Kurt hired a guy named Jason Everman to play guitar because he didn’t think he could do both vocals and guitar at the same time. When he realized that in fact he could he fired Everman. Nirvana became known through the album Bleach which they recorded in 1989 for the independent label Sub Pop. In 1991 Geffen Records bought Nirvana from Sub Pop. They released Nevermind that year and on it was Smells Like Teen Spirit, the song that would propel them to super-stardom. In Utero was released in early 1993. This album was much more open than previous ones; on songs like “Heart Shaped Box” and “All Apologies” Cobain wrote about his sometimes shaky marriage to Courtney Love. Later that year Nirvana recorded Unplugged, it aired on MTV and silenced many of the people who labeled Cobain talent less. In all Nirvana released 6 albums: Bleach, Incesticide, In Utero, Unplugged, In New York, and From The Muddy Banks of The Wishkah. On Nov. 12, 2002 a Nirvana Greatest hits album was released, titled simply NIRVANA, featuring the previously unreleased song “You Know Your Right”. Kurt’s lyrics were fueled by his anger and problems in his life. Cobain’s music was always nothing short of revolutionary. Nirvana would start the music movement called “grunge” and pave the way for Pearl Jam and others. What Kurt meant his lyrics to mean and what other people interpreted them as were often miles apart. Kurt was distressed to find that “Polly”, a song Kurt wrote to be very anti-rape, was sung by 2 men as they raped a girl. Kurt Cobain laid his feelings out there for the world to hear. He was very good at expressing how painful an experience was, and for that i would say he was one of the most heartfelt and sincere of his time. It's not a good thing to say but that is probably a true point. If his parents wouldn't have seperated he wouldn't have had all of the bad experiences to draw from. The divorce of his parents was a huge part in his depressive state for a good share of his life. Kurt Cobain went to Hawaii in February 1992 to marry Courtney Love, who was already pregnant with their daughter Frances Bean. Love was the lead singer of her own band, Hole. “ Michael Azzered, author of the 1993 book Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, credits Love with bringing about changes in Cobain. `Contrary to popular belief, Courtney is actually a very good influence, especially in terms of substance abuse and things like that’ he says. `I think getting married and having a child really did wonders for him. He’s pretty intensely in love with Courtney, and he loves his baby.’ ” Kurt Cobain was found dead in his house on April 5, 1994. An electrician who was at the house to install a security system found Cobain’s body. When no one answered the door he walked around and looked in the window. He saw what he thought was a manequin until he noticed a pool of blood on the floor by Cobain’s head. The man called the police and when they arrived they found the shot gun still pointing at his head. There are many theories as to why and how Cobain killed himself. Some people think Love killed him to get his money and gain control over his things since her own band, Hole, wasn’t doing too great. Most people, however, are pretty sure that Cobain committed suicide. After listening to his music and reading his journals most people can see that Cobain was a very tortured man. Cobain often said he would “never live to 30”, sadly he was right |