Success Wasn't Nirvana For Kurt Cobain
The Daily World - Aberdeen, Washington May 3, 1994
By Claude Iosso/Daily World Writer
His picture was on the cover of People. Inside, they promised, "His anguished last days - and why those who loved him could not stop his tragic death." Time, Newsweek and The New Yorker devoted whole sections to his suicide at 27. Rollong Stone sent a reporter and a photographer to Aberdeen to dig at his roots. The Guardian, Britain's national newspaper, was here too.
Nearly a month has passed since the poet laureate of "grunge" rock mixed drugs and his own angst and put a shotgun to his head, but grieving fans from New Jersey to San Diego keep sending letters to The Daily World. One was simply addressed to "The Paper in Kurt Cobain's home town."
"Aberdeen - Portrait of a 'Prozac Town'" was the headline in a San Francisco Chronicle story by the same writer who produced the Sunday Oregonian's infamous "Aberdeen is Not Nirvana" piece - the one that made most Harborites over 30 wish they'd never heard of Kurt Cobain, let alone his music.
He did drugs, dropped out of school, vanalized cars and defaced buildings. Rush Limbaugh and Andy Rooney had a field day: some hero! It remained for Cobain's buddy and bandmate, Krist Novoselic, to puncture one stereotype: Cobain didn't hate Aberdeen, Novoselic said here last week. "We've been all around the world, and there's a little bit of Aberdeen everywhere."
Kurt Cobain was born Feb. 20, 1967, to Don and Wendy (Fradenburg) Cobain in Aberdeen. In "Come As You Are," the 1993 book about Nirvana written by Rolling Stone writer Michael Azerrad, Kurt described himself as an "extremely happy child... constantly screaming and singing."
"He was a sweet little boy," recalls Barbara Mallow, a teacher's aide at St. Mary's School in Aberdeen. When Kurt was in Kindergarten at Robert Gray School with her daughter, Annette, she helped out in the classroom. "He seemed to be fairly quiet, but he got along with the other kids," Mallow said. "He was so talented artistically, and it was amazing what he could draw at such a young age. He drew all the time."
Cobain's uncle, Jim Cobain of Aberdeen, confirmed accounts that say the divorce of Don and Wendy Cobain when Kurt was 8 affected Kurt for the rest of his life. Jim Cobain, a carpenter, says Kurt "was a happy-go-lucky kid, and then he changed from the divorce. He became kind of introverted and into himself."
Kurt's mother, Wendy O' Conner, isn't ready to talk yet. It still hurts too much. All the headlines about heroin and the reams of amateur psychology won't bring back the brilliant, confused, misunderstood son she loved.
Sheryl Nelson, a third-grade teacher at Montesano's Beacon Elementary School, remembers Cobain transferring from Aberdeen into a third- or fourth-grade class she was teaching. She believes it was a short time after the divorce, when Kurt had moved to Montesano to live with his dad.
His grade school photos show a handsome kid with blond bangs. He had a sweet smile. Inside, however, he was a confused little boy. "He did not want to be in my class," Nelson recalls. "He did not want to be in Montesano. I think he wanted things back the way the were."
"He was very angry," she recalled. "He had put up a wall. He didn't get nasty or loud. He sort of turned off. He was sort of alone and set apart." Still, "His artwork was really wonderful," Nelson says. "He had such detailed drawings, and he seemed to lose himself in it."
Cobain was in Montesano schools most of the time between fourth grade and his sophomore year in high school. He was on the wrestling and track teams at Montesano Junior/Senior High School and played snare drum for the band. In seventh grade, Kurt drew the cover art - a trick-or-treat bulldog - for the mimeoed junior high newspaper, Puppy Press. In a student profile for that issue, he said his favorite class was band and his favorite song was "Don't Bring Me Down" by the Electric Light Orchestra. Meatloaf was his favorite rock group at the time.
John Herzog, now an apprentice electrician for Weyerhaeuser living in Elma, remembers that Cobain was quieter and more artistic than many of his peers. But he was "just a normal kid" who played in the neighborhood ball games.
Mike Lunceford, a Hoquiam firefighter who played Little League baseball with Cobain, says, "it seems like he had a normal amount of friends. He seemed kind of reserved... but you end up knowing everybody at Montesano."
Scott Cokeley, now a driver for Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. in Hoquiam, was friendly with Cobain at junior high in Montesano. Still youthful in appearance, Cokeley said he was picked on in seventh and eighth grades because he was small. He gravitated toward the similarly slight Cobain. "He was kind of quiet, but he had a sense of humor, too," Cokeley said. Kurt could be moody and sarcastic at times, "but you couldn't help but like the guy."
Cobain seemed to be aware that he was different from a lot of other students at Montesano, and Cokeley empathized with that. "A lot of people feel that at that age," Cokeley said. "I felt that, too. You're not a jock, and you're not a scholar."
Most of the Harborites who were around Cobain when he was growing up will tell you he shared in his songs torments he had kept from his peers. He became a quiet loner at Aberdeen High School, barely known by many of his classmates. Still, the shy kid who made Nirvana an international sensation displayed a rare magnetism when he mingled with other Harbor teens.
The secret that made Nirvana's music compelling to millions is evident in conversations with those few who got close to Cobain. They can't describe him well, but unconsciously lapse into talk about their own problems - problems they perceived Cobain to be battling too. He was a kind of mirror - a looking glass you could see into but not through.
At AHS, Cobain continued to excel in art, as Bob Hunter attests. Hunter, who still teaches art at Weatherwax, says Cobain was one of his best students and could have been a professional artist had he applied himself. In Come As You Are, Cobain told of smoking marijuana daily and spray painting cars and buildings instead.
Lee Hansmann, now a county planner, didn't remember him at AHS, but recalled him "in the corner" in band during the short time in eight grade when he attended Miller Junior High.
Outside the small circle of aspiring punk rockers he hung out with, Kurt was just a blond shadow in the halls at AHS. He skipped class often and finally dropped out in 1985.
Shelly Walczak, now a customer service representative with the Grays Harbor PUD, says she knew most of her classmates, but "I can't even picture him."
While Cobain told numerous interviewers that he developed his fatalistic "never mind" perspective on the world when his folks split up, maybe he didn't hone his cynicism until he was the new kid at the big high school in Aberdeen. Or maybe he had just sold his soul to rock 'n' roll by then.
"He would just take my amp and play and play and play. He was focused like a laser beam," says Dave Reed, a 50's rocker who let Cobain stay at his house for a few months after his mother - dispairing over his misbehavior - had kicked him out. Reed recalls that Cobain grabbed the guitar each afternoon as he got off the Aberdeen school bus. "It was five, six, seven hours straight. He never let up." The kid clearly had goals.
Hillary Richrod, a reference clerk with the Timberland Library in Aberdeen, remembers a young Cobain calling to order books on how to handle the business end of being a rock star.
Jesse Reed, Dave Reed's son and a close friend of Cobain's from high school on, connected with Cobain through his own interests in art and music. When he saw Cobain's artwork displayed in Bob Hunter's class at ASH, "I was totally awed by his imagination and creativity," said Reed, who now lives in Vancouver, Wash. He got out of the Navy earlier this year.
When Reed approached Cobain in an advanced art class, he asked Cobain about a recurring logo in his work. "He said I was the first one who ever noticed that," Reed said. Reed notes that he was born just four days before Cobain, and the two hung out together all the time, even though Reed had no aptitude for the tortured music his friend was obsessed with.
Reed says he was rebounding from a break-up when he met Cobain. "We just hit it right off. He became like my brother. The guy was so fresh, spontaneous and creative, so fresh - he picked me up through a rough time," Reed says.
Despite keeping in touch only by phone or letter after high school, Reed paralleled his friend in some unfortunate ways. He is currently waiting to enter a drug rehabilitation program for addiction to methamphetamines.
Even Dave Reed, who is old enough to be Cobain's father, interpreted Cobain's suicide in terms that fit his own life - especially the tendency to abandon others. "I know what the barrel of a gun tastes like," says Reed, who at 51 has lost none of the intensity that fired his career as a sax player and vocalist with the Beachcombers, the classic "Louie Louie" band that had a big following in the Northwest during the '60s. The band has reunited, and Reed's sax is still torrid.
Cobain's life took the turn that would make him famous when his uncle, Chuck Fradenburg, brought him to a practice for Fradenburg's blues band, Fat Chance. Fradenburg is a drummer, and he urged his nephew to pick up the sticks too, but Cobain was entranced by the guitar.
"You could see his eyes get excited when he watched the band," says Warren Mason of Grayland, who played guitar in Fat Chance. When he was 14, Cobain took lessons with Mason for about three months and was "pretty good." Kurt's short-range was to learn how to play Led Zeppelin's heavy-metal classic, "Stairway To Heaven." "He was pretty quiet, real excited about taking lessons," Mason remembers. "He seemed like a happy little kid - happy to be taking guitar lessons at least."
Afetr paying their dues in places that were sub-grunge, Cobain and Novoselic - two kids from Aberdeen - became an ovenight sensation as Nirvana signed with Geffen Records in 1991. The rest, as they say, is history. "Nevermind" sold 10 million copies.
Darrell Westmoreland, a photographer from Montesano who specializes in publicity and promotion work, especially rock performers, remembers a session with Cobain and Novoselic backstage at the Paramount Theater in Seattle just as they were about to make it big. "I told Krist that they were unprepared for what was about to happen," he recalls. "Basically, I said they'd better get it together because they were going to be on a rocket ride that wasn't going to stop."
"Krist was pretty receptive, but Kurt was just kind of in and out," Westmoreland says. "He'd joke around, then go into himself... sort of in a shell-like daze. Friends would come in, and he'd perk up, then he'd be distant again - alone with himself. A year later at a Christmas party for one of the radio stations I saw Krist again. He looked great, and told me that after they'd been to Europe he woke up one morning, looked in the mirror and said to himself, 'Man, I need help. I need to turn my life around.' He told me, 'Look, man, I put weight on!'"
"Part of the whole business is that when you become famous, everyone wants to be around you," Westmoreland says. "Everybody wants to party non-stop and everybody is waiting for your next hit. 'Be careful,' I told them. Well, it killed Kurt."
Cobain's anguished eloquence was the soul of Nirvana, but success was more than he could bear. On the world stage, he was like a comet, flashing brilliantly before self destructing. Like Novoselic said, there's a little bit of Aberdeen everywhere. And there's probably a little bit of Kurt Cobain in almost everyone.
| 