Musicians - Kurt Cobain

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	Musicians - Kurt Cobain

Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 – ca. April 5, 1994) was the lead singer, songwriter, and guitarist of the Seattle grunge band Nirvana. He served not only as the band's frontman, but as its "leader and spiritual center" . With the band's success, Cobain became a major national and international celebrity, an uncomfortable position for someone who claimed to be "ill at ease with fame and ill-equipped to handle the responsibility that accompanies success" .

Cobain and Nirvana were highly influential, popularizing what came to be known as "grunge music". In 1991, the arrival of Cobain's best known song, "Smells Like Teen Spirit", marked the beginning of a dramatic shift of popular music away from the dominant genres of the 1980s: glam metal, arena rock, and dance-pop. The music media eventually awarded "Smells Like Teen Spirit" "anthem-of-a-generation" status , and, with it, Cobain ascended as the reluctant "spokesman" for Generation X.

Among other well known Cobain songs are "Lithium", "About a Girl", "Polly", "In Bloom", "Come as You Are", "Heart-Shaped Box", "All Apologies", and the controversial "Rape Me".

Early life

Cobain was born to Don and Wendy Cobain in the Grays Harbor Community Hospital in Aberdeen, Washington, and spent his first six months living in Hoquiam, Washington before the family moved to Aberdeen. By most accounts, his early life was happy, and he lived as a part of the typical American family, which grew to include sister Kimberly in April of 1970.

He began developing an interest in music early in his life. According to his Aunt Mari, "He was singing from the time he was two. He would sing Beatles songs like 'Hey Jude.' He would do anything. You could just say, 'Hey Kurt, sing this!' and he would sing it. He had a lot of charisma from a very young age."

Around the age of seven, he idolized stuntman Evel Knievel. Hoping to someday become a stuntman himself, a young Cobain could often be seen diving from the rooftop of his house onto a bed of pillows and blankets below. During this time, he was prescribed Ritalin for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); years later, his wife Courtney Love blamed Ritalin for his addiction to heroin.

Cobain's life was turned upside down at the age of eight when his parents divorced in 1975, an event which he later cited as having a profound impact on his life. His mother noted that his personality changed dramatically, with Cobain becoming more withdrawn. In a 1993 interview, Cobain said, "I remember feeling ashamed, for some reason. I was ashamed of my parents. I couldn't face some of my friends at school anymore, because I desperately wanted to have the classic, you know, typical family. Mother, father. I wanted that security, so I resented my parents for quite a few years because of that." After a year spent living with his mother following the divorce, Cobain moved to Montesano, Washington to live with his father, but after a few years his youthful rebellion became too overwhelming, and he found himself being shuffled between friends and family.

At school, Cobain took little interest in sports or most academics, focusing only on his art courses. He was friends with a gay student at his school, sometimes suffering bullying at the hands of homophobic students. That friendship, along with his small stature, led some to believe that he himself was gay. Although he once claimed in an interview with The Advocate that he was arrested for spray-painting a pro-gay slogan on a bank, Aberdeen police records show that the phrase he was arrested for in 1986 was actually "Ain't got no how watchamacallit."

In a February 1992 interview with The Advocate, Cobain admitted that he thought he was gay while in high school and stated, "I could be bisexual. If I wouldn't have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual lifestyle." When Nirvana appeared on Saturday Night Live in January of 1992, Cobain and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic jokingly "made out" during the cast and crew farewells as the credits rolled. (Cobain and Novoselic bobbed their heads back and forth wildly as if in rapture; Novoselic and Dave Grohl subsequently repeated the gesture.) The segment was cut from the show on further airings, replaced by the closing credits from the rehearsal taping, and never aired again.

As a teenager with a chaotic home life growing up in small town Washington, Cobain eventually found escape through the thriving Pacific Northwest punk scene, going to punk rock shows in Seattle. Cobain formed a lifelong friendship with fellow Montesano musicians The Melvins, whose music later heavily influenced Nirvana's sound. Cobain had a small "K" inside a shield tattooed on his forearm, the insignia of Olympia, Washington, label K Records, largely chosen for the coincidental ellipsis of his name.

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Musicians - Kurt Cobain

Early life

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