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Kurt Donald Cobain is born to Wendy and Donald Cobain on February 20, 1967, in a small town 140 kilometers south west of Seattle called Hoquaim. His mother a cocktail waitress and his father an auto mechanic. They soon moved to another small, but nicer town known as Aberdeen. A very depressed and dying logging town. (This is where Kurts future band would be started). His father soon got a job at the local lumber mill counting logs. While his mother stayed home to take care of her children.
At the early age of 2, Kurt started to show an interest in music. His mother not surprised, because her side of the family were musically talented. Kurts aunt Mary tried to teach him to play guitar, but he cant stay still for a long time, because he was to hyper. The doctors prescribed a drug called Ritalin for Kurt. It would keep him awake till 4 in the morning sometimes. Wendy decided to get Kurt a drumset. So she and Donald went and got a mickey mouse drumset for him. Every day after school, Kurt would come home and beat the hell out it. Till one day it just broke. Kurt would sometimes go over to his uncle Chucks place and Chuck would put him in the basement, give him a microphone, and he would tape Kurt singing.
Kurts mom made sure he and his sister, Kim, looked good for school. Shed make sure their hair was combed and their teeth was always clean. Shed dress them in the nicest clothes she could afford. Kurt says him mom always told him not to hang around the poor kids, because she didnt people to think they were poor also. Kurt used to pick on this one kid who smelled like pee. He eventually stopped, because he figured the smelly kid was probably cooler than anybody else. Kurts house was in the middle of the trashiest neighborhood, but it was the nicest. His father made sure of that. He installed wall-to-wall carpeting, fake-brick fireplace and made sure the outside looked good. Kurt described his house as white-trash posing as middle-class.
When Kurt was around 7 or 8 his idol was Evel Knievel. He too wanted to be a stuntman when he grew up. While going through this phase Kurt would often go inside and take all the blankets and pillows he could find, take them outside and spread it out on the deck. He would climb onto the roof and jump off onto the padded platform he had made. Once he found a piece of metal, attached firecrackers to it, duct-taped it to his chest, and then lit the firecrackers off. He soon realized he didnt want to be a stuntman anymore.
When Kurt was 8, his mother decided to divorce Don. She says she did it, because he was never around to spend time with his family. He would always be off playing sports, coaching teams, or refereeing some kind of activity. Kurt took the divorce very severely. It hurt so bad that he hated his parents afterwards. Mostly his father though. He was ashamed that his parents split up. This made Kurt shy and not as outgoing as he had once been.
His mom got remarried to a guy named Pat Oconner, and his father also got remarried. (I dont know the name of her though). She had kids of her own. While Kurt was staying with his father, he didnt get along with the others. Especially his new mom. He soon realized that his father was paying more attention to his step kids than he was to his own son. Don had made Kurt join the junior high wrestling team. Kurt liked it a little and he was good at it too. During a championship match, to get back at his dad, to piss him off, he would let his oppenent pin him. Then hed look at his dad and give him a smile. His dad left imediately. Kurt had embarassed him. His little plan worked. Kurts teenage years consisted mostly of moving back and fourth from his mothers house to his fathers house constantly. He even had lived with some of his uncles and aunts houses and he even lived with his grandparents for a short time. This meant he had to keep switching schools. Kurt would get into trouble for vandalism, into trouble with his mom for drugs, into trouble with the police for spray-painting God is gay on the side of a truck. He was fined $180. While living with his mom, Kurt found a friend. His name was Myer Loftin. Loftin would often spend the night at Kurts house on the weekends and party. One time Kurts mom came home from a party of her own and she caught the two smoking pot. Trying to scare them out of smoking pot in the future, she ate their stash. She was high and sick the rest of the night. (It didnt scare them, cause they kept smoking it). Loftin eventually told Kurt that he was gay. It didnt bother Kurt though. Until he started to get beat up in the locker room after phys. ed. He took the crap for a little while, but he soon afterwards found Loftin and told him he couldnt be his friend anymore. Loftin understood completely.
During Kurts freshman year he became a stoner. Every day after school he would get stoned every night. This continued all through his high school career. One reason why he became a stoner was, because he was always around them. He didnt like the jock type. So hed hang around the stoners. Even though he didnt like them all that much. The jocks were always trying to get Kurt to join their little group, but Kurt wouldnt. The only reason they wanted to hang around him was, because all the girls thought he was cute and the jocks figured if theyd hang around him the girls would want them. But Kurt wouldnt give them the satisfaction. With 2 weeks left till Kurts high school graduation he realized he had to many credits to make up, so he dropped out of school. When his mother learned of this she told him he had better get a job or he had to leave. Kurt didnt believe her. About a week later, returning home from a friends house, Kurt found his stuff in boxes on the dining room floor. He had to leave. He stayed with friends, he even snuck into his moms attic a couple of times to sleep, snuck onto the deck, stayed in an unocupied apartment above Krists moms hair design shop and he even slept underneath a bridge that looked over the Wishkah river. He lived off fish and sometimes when he visited his mom she made him lunch, because he felt bad about putting him on the streets to live. While living on his own, Kurt severely burned his hand on french frie grease while making french fries. He rushed over to his moms house and she took him to the hospital. The doctor there said he would never be able to play guitar again. Wendy didnt believe it. So she took him to a specialist at the Grays Harbour College nursing progam. She would change his bandages twice a day. His hand finally recovered untill you could hardly tell there was a scare there.
All through high school Kurt dreamed of starting his own band. He found some people and many drummers and name changes later they came up with the one every one would soon fall in love with.
Kurt and NIRVANA (Kurt[lead guitar-vocals], Krist Novoselic[bassist], Chad Channing[drums]) became known through their album Bleach. It did good for record sales, but the best part was they started to get noticed by people. They started playing at gigs, and they did a US tour. They hired another guitarist by the name of Jason Everman, because Kurt didnt think he could handle singing and playing guitar at the same time. He realized he could and after the tour they fired Everman. NIRVANA quit with their record label Subpop and they resigned with David Geffen Company. Then they made the album that would revolutionize the music industry...Nevermind. It went platinum a while after its release. Smells Like Teen Spirit would later become known as the anthem for all teenagers. SLTS hit #1 on the Billboard music chart in 14 weeks. NIRVANA would later release 4 more successful albums. Incesticide, In Utero, Unplugged In New York and From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah. Upon receiving In Utero, Geffen said is that it! Or something like that. They hated it. They told NIRVANA that they would be committing career suicide if they were to release it the way it was. So off they went back to the recording studio to remix some of the songs. After its release people fell in love with it.
Kurt and Courtney (Love) get married in Waikiki, Hawaii on February 24, 1992. Kurt wearing pajamas and Courtney wearing an old dress once owned by the actor Frances Farmer. On August 18, 1992, Frances Bean Cobain is born. She is named after a member of the Vaselines.....not Frances Farmer, but Kurt afterwards says he wishes he would have named her after Farmer. Bean came from the shape she appeared in a sonogram.
On March 4, 1994, Kurt is hospitalized comatose. He had overdosed on champagne and tranquilizers backstage before a show. Some say it was an accident, others say it was a suicide attempt. (I think it was an accident. He was just having fun and he went a little overboard). When he awakened from the coma he asks for a milkshake. Almost a month later Kurt was admitted into Exodus Rehabilitation Center for his heroin addiction. He stayed there for a couple of days, then he just decided couldnt stay there any more. So he jumped the fence and went to his cottage over looking Lake Washington. On April 8, 1994, Gary Smith, an electrician, went to the cottage for repairs and he finds Kurts body on the floor with a shotgun next to it. He calls the police and the police report states that Kurt died of a self inflicted gunshot wound. That was the tragic ending to music history, but we can keep NIRVANA alive by listening to them and hearing what Kurt has to say in his lyrics. There will never be any band that even comes close to NIRVANA.
Some believe it was suicide. Some people think it was murder. Personally I believe suicide. You could tell it was coming through his lyrics and music, but most people ignored it. Just remember, Its better to burn out than to fade away. NIRVANA was, NIRVANA does, NIRVANA will always be will until the end.
--bio courtesy of
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