10 years gone: In life and death, Kurt Cobain is forever linked to Seattle

By Charles R. Cross
Special to The Seattle Times

	ALICE WHEELER / GREG KUCERA GALLERY Local photographer Alice Wheeler shot this picture of Kurt Cobain in 1993 at MTV's "Live and Loud" show on the downtown Seattle waterfront. The shot, Wheeler says, shows the result of Cobain's transformation from a naive artist to reluctant rock icon. "He learned how to be a rock star. ... Before that he was always kind of vulnerable."
	E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Related stories 1991 interview offered look into mind of a rising rock star Part 1: Kurt Cobain: a life 10 years gone

Second of two parts.

In February 1993, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love moved into their first house in Seattle, a rental. Though Cobain was identified with Seattle, this marked the first time he had been a legitimate resident of the city he would forever be linked with. He was 26 years old. He would only live to be 27.

The Cobains had rented a 5,000-square-foot three-story house in the Cedar Park neighborhood of North Seattle. Compared with the apartments and hotel rooms they had previously lived in, it was huge. They made plans to settle in and begin their first real stint at family life with their 7-month-old daughter, Frances. But Kurt didn't remain still for long: The next month it was time to record the follow-up to "Nevermind." Management decided to send the band to a studio in Minnesota, thinking the isolation would be good for Cobain. The plan worked. "In Utero" was finished quickly, and the result, many critics argued, was Nirvana's finest album.

It was only a week after the studio sessions ended in March that Kurt and Courtney were given unrestricted access to their daughter — it was the first time in eight months they could be with her without a chaperone. "In Utero" seemed an appropriate title for a new father, but Kurt had wanted to call the album "I Hate Myself and I Want to Die."

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On Jan. 19, 1994, Cobain and Love bought a $1.13 million mansion in the Denny-Blaine neighborhood, just south of Madison Park. It was one of the oldest houses in the neighborhood, and one of the largest. Howard Schultz was their next-door neighbor, and Peter Buck of R.E.M. lived up the street, so they were near the rich and famous. But the house was directly next to Viretta Park, and some wondered about the wisdom of a celebrity living adjacent to a public space. Kurt barely had time to move in before Nirvana began a tour of Europe, which would prove to be the band's swan song.

After only 16 shows, Cobain complained of sickness and canceled the tour. On March 4, he attempted to take his own life in Rome by swallowing 60 tablets of the sedative Rohypnol. He miraculously recovered. Yet before he arrived back at his Seattle home, he had persuaded drug dealers to stash heroin in the foliage of his yard.

When Love told him he could no longer do drugs in their house, he moved into cheap $18-a-night hotels on Aurora Avenue. He made one last attempt at rehab, but escaped after 48 hours. He spent the first few days of April on the run in Seattle, trying to avoid police, private detectives and friends who were searching for him. On April 5, in a greenhouse of his Lake Washington Boulevard house, he took his own life with a shotgun. In his one-page suicide note, he cited the pressures of fame, his lifelong stomach pain and the culpability he felt at not enjoying music anymore.

	RON WURZER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Part of the crowd at the April 11, 1994, wake at Seattle Center for Kurt Cobain stormed the International Fountain after the conclusion of the official program. An estimated 7,000 people took part in the service.

Hallowed ground

His body wasn't discovered until April 8, three days after his death, leaving mourners confused over when, and how, to honor him. "April 5 has to be one of the most important days in Seattle history, and, of course, one of the saddest," says KNDD program director Phil Manning. The station plans to play only Nirvana on the 10th anniversary of Kurt's death, and perhaps some Alice in Chains. In a bizarre twist, coroners believe April 5 was also the date Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley died in 2002. Staley's body went undiscovered for weeks, making the time of death difficult to establish.

Many far-flung Nirvana fans have announced their intention to visit Seattle for the anniversary. "I'm going to the house on the 5th, like I did last year, and remember him and his music," a fan posted on Nirvanaclub.com. Kurt has no grave, which is part of the reason Viretta Park is the de facto hallowed ground for fans. Love sold the Denny-Blaine house in 2000 and moved to Los Angeles. The new owners are former Microsoft employees who have put up privacy fencing and landscaping. The greenhouse Cobain died in was torn down in 1998. The park benches, where Cobain would occasionally sit, are one of the few remaining artifacts from his time.

Several of Kurt's friends would prefer that his birthday, Feb. 20, be memorialized. The Presley estate holds both birthday and death-day events, but it is Elvis' death anniversary, called "E-Day," that draws the biggest crowds. Having been touched by a music that transformed them, fans can't help but mourn the day that voice was lost to them, and the world. "I always try to concentrate on the music," says 24-year-old Rasmus Holmen, who runs a fan Web site in Denmark. "But come April, Kurt's death comes into sudden focus, and I can't help but realize how sad I feel."

Holmen never got a chance to see Nirvana live, but his Web site, nirvanaclub.com, gets a half-million hits a day. He has never visited Seattle but hopes to one day, a sentiment echoed by many of the visitors to his site.

There are no "official" plans for any type of memorial in Seattle today, but Nirvana fans through the Internet have talked about staging an impromptu celebration/wake at Seattle Center, and many have also stated that they will visit Viretta Park. A wake at Seattle Center in April 1994 — organized by three local radio stations — drew 7,000 fans. A 2001 New Line movie, "Highway," restaged that memorial a few years back and made it a central part of the film. The wake, like Cobain's death, has become a permanent part of Seattle history, a generational milestone for those it touched.

Most Nirvana fans know that Cobain was cremated and his ashes scattered in a number of spots, including Olympia. But few know that there is a sliver of Cobain left in Denny-Blaine — some of his remains were also sprinkled around the magnolias, willow trees and rhododendrons in the neighborhood. For an artist who mixed ashes into his paintings, this living landscape seems appropriate.

The legacy

Ten years after his death, Cobain's songs remain tremendously influential. He is on the cover of no fewer than 10 magazines this month, and Nirvana's music has experienced a resurgence of radio play. "Rock of the '90s" has become a hit radio format, including on Seattle's KNDD, primarily centered on what's now called "classic" Nirvana.

Cobain's future place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame could not be more assured.

Love controls the Cobain estate, and, with Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, also oversees Nirvana. Grohl moved away from Seattle in 1998 but continues to front the highly successful Foo Fighters. Novoselic now lives in Southwest Washington and has been very active in state politics — he recently considered a run for statewide office but decided against it.

The former members of Nirvana have been watchful of over-commercializing Kurt. Since Kurt's death, there have been only three posthumous album collections, making the continued interest all the more significant.

And though Hollywood has yet to take Cobain's saga to the big screen, that prospect seems inevitable.

The private artist Cobain, the painter, has never been put on display to the public. There are finally some plans to exhibit his work, which might give him in death something he never got in life: serious attention as a visual artist.

The Aberdeen Museum of History announced last week that a new exhibit this summer on Grays Harbor County musicians will include Nirvana and Cobain and will display some of the singer's artwork.

And an exhibit that is being considered for this year's Bumbershoot Festival may include one of Cobain's early paintings.

"He was truly very talented," Novoselic said of Cobain back in 1998.

"If you look at his drawings, and the stuff that he did even as far back as high school, it was really good. He was an artist, really, in every sense of the word. In every village there's a carpenter and a blacksmith. Well, Kurt, he was the village artist."

Charles R. Cross is the author of "Heavier Than Heaven: The Biography of Kurt Cobain," (Hyperion, 2001). He is writing a biography of Jimi Hendrix.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company