Kurt Cobain: When Tomorrow Never Came

Here’s a sanitized version of the provided YouTube transcript:

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If you know anything about today’s biographics episode, you might know that Courtney Love is a name that will pop up eventually. Her saga is one of thousands of stories that could eventually appear on my new true crime podcast, “The Casual Criminalist.” That’s right, even more content from me! I now have a long-form weekly podcast covering some of the darkest things I could find, from the UK doctor known as the world’s worst serial killer to the time an American socialite allegedly murdered her best friend with her car and totally got away with it, and much more. But it’s also more laid back, a bit more free form, with the occasional laugh because isn’t death hilarious? You can find weekly shows wherever you get your podcasts; there are links below.

Now, let’s dive into it. The 1980s were a decade of shoulder pads, leg warmers, hedonistic hair metal, and glitzy synth pop. Underneath the surface, a new generation was coming of age, eager to be heard. That voice arrived, coarse and barely intelligible, screaming over a simple riff of four power chords. That voice came from the burning pit of the stomach of the reluctant figurehead of Generation X. This is the story of the pain and the misery, but also the talent and ambition of Kurt Cobain.

Kurt Cobain was born on February 20, 1967, in Hoquiam, Washington. When he was six months old, his parents, Donald and Wendy, moved to Aberdeen. Three years later, the trio became a four-piece with the addition of daughter Kimberly. Kurt was a fun and precocious child, delighting his extended family, especially his more musical relatives, Uncle Chuck and Aunt Mary. It was Mary who later gave Kurt his first guitar lesson and introduced him to The Beatles and The Monkees. However, Kurt was also hyperactive and difficult to control. His parents were advised to give him Ritalin, which only made things worse. He was then put on sedatives until an enlightened doctor advised removing sugar from Kurt’s diet, which seemed to stabilize him.

Unfortunately, an unsettling event was around the corner. Sometime after Kurt’s eighth birthday, his parents divorced, and life would never be the same again. Around this time, Kurt crawled on his bedroom wall what may have been his first piece of poetry: “Dad hates Mom, Mom hates Dad.” It simply makes you want to be sad. The pain from his parents’ divorce was compounded by a sense of shame and guilt from his father’s disapproval. Donald was disappointed by Kurt’s lack of interest in sports and seemed to object to him even being left-handed. Kurt became withdrawn after the divorce and erupted in sudden fits of rage. He argued constantly with his mother’s new boyfriend, whom he described as a mean person. Wendy could not tolerate this behavior and eventually sent Kurt to live with Donald, now living in nearby Montesano.

Their relationship slowly mended, but just when they were settling into a new happy routine, Donald remarried in February of 1978. Kurt was not happy at all. He disrespected his mother-in-law, bullied his younger step-siblings, and eventually started skipping school. To curb Kurt’s simmering rage and aggressive streak, Donald persuaded him to join the school wrestling team. Surprisingly, he accepted, and even more surprisingly, he was very good at it—except when he lost on purpose.

At the same time, Kurt developed a fascination with hard rock and early metal bands like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and KISS. He was becoming unruly by the day, and Donald struggled to cope. From 1978 to 1980, Kurt ended up being sent to a series of relatives, moving at least twice a year. In 2008, psychotherapist Giuseppe Troisi analyzed Cobain’s childhood by applying Dr. Stephen Porges’s polyvagal theory. According to this theory, the repeated trauma of neglect and abandonment prevents the natural absorption of relationships, images, and memories into one’s psyche. As a result, these will later erupt chaotically in the form of intrusive images, sounds, movements, and sensations that are impossible to control. It’s an interesting theory that may explain Kurt’s later musical style, which was just beginning to emerge.

At the age of 13, Kurt moved in with his Uncle Chuck, a rock and roll musician. The two got along famously, and it was Chuck who gave Kurt his first electric guitar. One of Chuck’s bandmates taught him to play “Back in Black” by AC/DC, a pivotal moment in his musical career. Later on, Kurt discovered power chords, which allowed him to play just about anything. He moved back to Donald’s, and his musical taste shifted towards punk and new wave genres, more attuned to his alternating apathy, disillusionment, and outright anger.

Donald forced Kurt to join the school’s baseball team, which he accepted only to hang out with an older kid, Matt Lukin, a member of a local band called The Melvins. The band would later be hailed as one of the trailblazers of grunge, a subgenre of alternative rock that developed out of the Washington state scene. The distinctive sound originated around the mid-1980s with bands like The Melvins, Green River, and Mother Love Bone. Their style could be traced back to non-Seattle acts like The Pixies, Sonic Youth, Husker Du, and The Meat Puppets, or even further away in time and space to the gloomiest, noisiest edges of British post-punk.

Nirvana later popularized grunge to the wider world alongside Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Mudhoney, among others. But back in Montesano in the early 1980s, the word “grunge” only meant grime, and Nirvana was just a state of beatitude transcending suffering. Kurt found a mentor in The Melvins’ frontman, Buzz Osborne, who expanded Kurt’s musical horizons to California hardcore punk acts, especially Black Flag.

In the summer of 1984, Kurt began to take his guitar playing more seriously but needed a new amplifier. The right occasion came after he moved back to Wendy’s in Aberdeen, who had just remarried one Pat O’Connor. It was another unhappy marriage due to his drinking and womanizing. One day, Wendy could not take it any longer; she took a gun from Pat’s collection and threatened to shoot him, but she didn’t know how to load the gun. Instead, she collected Pat’s entire arsenal and dumped it into the Wishkah River. Kurt later recovered the weapons, took them downtown, and sold them for a nice sum. With the cash from the sale, he bought the amp he needed.

At the age of 17, Kurt’s use of alcohol and drugs was relatively tame. He had to be careful with what he put into his body due to several chronic ailments, including scoliosis, which caused him back pain, as well as recurring bronchitis. But worst of all, a constant burning pain prodded him from the pit of his stomach, causing digestive problems and frequent vomiting. This was a gastric condition that was never fully identified and would later become an integral part of Kurt’s identity as an artist.

On the bright side, Kurt’s new amp was a powerful beast; windows and walls trembled when he plugged in his guitar to crank out his power chords. When The Melvins moved to Aberdeen, Kurt was ready to audition for the band—or so he thought. He proudly prepared one of his own compositions for Buzz and friends, but on the day of the audition, he just froze. Kurt may have missed the chance to join one of his favorite bands, but he was determined to become someone in music.

The next obstacle in this course to greatness were his parents. After a row with Wendy, Kurt was sent packing again to stay at Donald’s. Donald accepted on the condition that Kurt gave up music. Surprisingly, Kurt accepted. Not only that, he pawned off his guitar and even took and passed an entry test for the U.S. Navy when a Navy recruiter showed up to talk. Kurt returned to form, retreating to the basement and rolling the fattest joint he’d ever seen. The next day, Kurt left Donald’s house, never to return.

After being cut off by his parents, Kurt led a vagabond’s life for several months. The young rocker spent his days at the Aberdeen Public Library reading and writing. At night, sometimes he slept under the North Aberdeen Bridge. When he was lucky, he could use the van of a new friend he had met at The Melvins’ rehearsals, a seven-foot Californian of Croatian origin named Chris Novoselic. In between, he would rehearse his songs with his newly formed power trio with Dale Crover from The Melvins on bass and Greg Horkinson on drums under the name Fecal Matter. The trio recorded a demo tape at Aunt Mary’s house, which Kurt proudly gave to Chris. He wanted to convince the Croatian giant to play with him, but for the time being, the only activity they shared was vandalism. At night, Kurt, Chris, and Buzz Osborne covered the walls of Aberdeen with huge graffiti. On one occasion, Kurt was arrested, and the police found in his pockets a tape of a band called Millions of Dead Cops.

While performing his vandalistic antics, Kurt picked up addiction after addiction, from acid to cocaine and finally heroin. In the meantime, Kurt and Chris had finally joined forces musically. The two friends settled on a name for their band: Nirvana. With that name, they set out to record a demo tape with local producer Jack Endino. Kurt financed the session by selling laughing gas he had pilfered from a dental clinic where he worked as a janitor. Kurt on guitars and vocals, Chris on bass, and a returning Dale Crover on drums recorded seven songs—six originals and “Love Buzz,” a pop rock song by the Dutch band Shocking Blue.

In January of 1988, Crover left the band to concentrate on The Melvins, handing the drumsticks to Chad Channing. Throughout the rest of the year, the power trio got noticed, both thanks to their energetic shows and because of their demo tape. Unbeknownst to the band, Endino had sent the tape to one Bruce Pavitt, the head of Sub Pop, a Seattle label that had already published Soundgarden’s first EP. Pavitt loved their sound and asked Nirvana if they wanted to release “Love Buzz” as a single with Sub Pop. The next step was to release a full album. Pavitt was happy to press and distribute it, but he would not pay for the recording. Luckily, Kurt had just recruited a second guitarist, Jason Everman. The new guy did not play a single note on the album, but he did something more important: he paid the $600 needed for the recording sessions.

“Bleach” never became a bestseller, but Sub Pop booked a European tour for Nirvana, which kicked off in October of 1989 in the UK. Nirvana was the opening act for Tad, another early grunge act from Seattle. It was an important experience for Kurt and friends, but also a borderline traumatic one. The bands played 36 shows in 42 days, traveling across the UK and the continent in a cramped Fiat van, experiencing equipment problems and poor acoustics at every venue. Every morning, Kurt and Tad’s frontman, Tad Doyle, shared a peculiar ritual. Doyle, plagued by gastrointestinal problems, had to throw up before getting on the van, and Cobain demanded the privilege to hold the sick bowl.

Kurt’s own chronic stomach pains worsened on tour. His journals, published in 2002, offer a vivid account of his daily struggles: “Every time I swallowed a piece of food, I would experience an excruciating burning nauseous pain in the upper part of my stomach lining. The pain left me immobile, doubled up on the bathroom floor, vomiting water and blood.” Cobain’s relationship with his illness may have informed his obsession with everything visceral; vomiting, feces, and bodily functions in general are recurring images in both his lyrics and journal entries, and it clearly had an influence on his singing style. Kurt later confirmed to his biographer, Michael Azerrad, that both his screaming vocals and his constant pain emanated from the same spot just below the breastbone. In a New York Times interview, Cobain confirmed, “I’m always in pain, and that adds to the anger in our music. I’m grateful to it in a way.”

The tour continued from bad to worse until Nirvana and Tad joined Mudhoney for London’s Lame Fest in December. This was anything but lame. Audiences were treated to a rare sight: Cobain, enraged by his malfunctioning guitar, flung it in the air. Another seller stepped forward, holding his bass like a baseball bat, and struck the guitar mid-air, smashing it into pieces. This was not mere posturing, aping The Who and Jimi Hendrix’s famous tosses of instruments; this was pure motivated punk rage. This was noticed by the right people. Upon Nirvana’s return to the U.S., when they played New York in early 1990, they attracted the attention of Iggy Pop as well as the noise rock kings and queens of New York, Sonic Youth. Sonic Youth showed up with their new buddy, Gary Gersh. Gersh was an executive at Geffen Records, a major music label that was on the hunt for noise rockers, and Cobain was looking for exactly that: a major label deal that could offer nationwide distribution.

Kurt and Chris decided to start talks with Geffen while looking for a new drummer. Chad Channing had been forced out as his compositions were being rejected for being too “prog rock” or “elfin music,” as Kurt once put it. Kurt and Chris hit gold with the young drummer of a punk band from Washington, D.C., called Scream. Kurt described him as “the drummer of our dreams,” and we tend to agree, as the new guy was one Dave Grohl. Grohl stepped in just at the right moment when Nirvana was about to make it big. Besides Geffen, other major labels were interested. Sure, big companies loved their music, but they were also trying to ride the crest of the wave. A new era was dawning, one of raw guitars, distorted bass lines, energetic drum rolls, and introspective lyrics. “Alternative” was the key word, and every record executive was on the prowl for the next alternative sensation.

In the end, it came down to two labels: Geffen versus Capitol. Capitol offered one million; Geffen a mere $287,000. But Geffen’s offer included an additional detail that Nirvana could not refuse: complete creative control. The three bandmates signed the Geffen deal, which made Kurt ecstatic. “We have one of the best contracts any band has ever had. We have complete control over what we do. If we handed in a 60-minute tape of us defecating, Geffen would have to release and promote it.” Luckily, Nirvana’s next effort was not of that kind.

The trio held up in Van Nuys, California, with producer Butch Vig and went on to record their second album, “Nevermind.” They had made “Bleach” with $600; now their budget was $650,000. The new songs had the same raucous, desperate energy of “Bleach,” enriched by Cobain’s knack for nailing catchy tunes on top of his distorted power chords—or in his own words, “the Bay City Rollers being molested by Black Flag.” Kurt, Chris, Dave, and Butch were satisfied with the record when it came out on August 27, 1991. There was one song in particular that started with a clean guitar and then exploded into a roaring chord progression followed by an obstinate bass line. Novoselic commented that the song was okay, he guessed, and later admitted that, yeah, it kind of rocked. The song became a single on heavy rotation both on the radio and on MTV. Pulled by that single, “Nevermind” went gold at the end of September. That song was “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the anthem that Generation X had been waiting for. Nirvana had arrived, and Kurt had made it big. But would he be able to handle the success?

By December of 1991, “Nevermind” had sold 3 million copies, displacing Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous” from the top of the charts. The sudden fame did not sit well with Kurt. From the outside, he looked as if he enjoyed playing the role of the rock star, but close friends could tell that he hated the sense of importance and the scrutiny that came with stardom. Most of all, he could not deal with the mantle received by the so-called Generation X—the role of spokesperson or messiah for a whole demographic that appeared directionless and devoid of ideals and ambition. Superficially, Cobain and Nirvana seemed to fit the bill. Some of Kurt’s lyrics and journal entries expressed almost proudly a resistance to taking action, a passive approach to life, and a lack of anything resembling a spine. Superficially, Kurt did not lack the ambition and intelligence to get where and what he wanted, and we’ll later see how Nirvana was more involved in activism than many people might have realized at the time.

What the press and public seemed to focus on were two aspects of Cobain’s private life: his romance with Courtney Love and his drug problems. By March 1992, magazines like “BAM” and “Rolling Stone” insinuated that Kurt had been regularly using heroin. Kurt denied it all, claiming that his stomach problems would not allow him to shoot drugs, but this was not true. According to biographer Michael Azerrad, Kurt had been using heroin since November of 1990. In part, it relieved Kurt’s stomach and back pain. Most of all, it helped him cope with stressful situations, and the habit had escalated since then, to Chris and Dave’s disapproval. Azerrad’s claim also dispels the myth that Kurt was introduced to heroin by his later wife, Courtney Love. It was Cobain who actually got Courtney to try heroin in 1991.

But let’s proceed in chronological order. Courtney Love was also a child of divorced parents, psychologist Linda Carroll and writer Hank Harrison. Just like Kurt, she had experienced a vagabond childhood, moving from Oregon to New Zealand to England. Courtney had considered an acting career and even paid the bills by working in strip clubs until she became a professional musician. In March 1990, Courtney formed the band Hole. In September of 1991, their album “Pretty on the Inside” was released to great acclaim, rivaling “Nevermind” in the alternative rock charts. In between those two dates, Courtney and Kurt had been introduced by a friend of Dave Grohl’s. The initial flirtation resulted in Courtney presenting Kurt with a red heart-shaped box, which would later appear in Nirvana’s album “In Utero.” But during that period, Courtney was dating another rock giant, Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins.

On October