27: Kurt Cobain
Page 7
Back at home in Seattle, there was palpable hostility between Kurt and Courtney. Kurt locked himself away in his bedroom, surrounded by guns. On 18 March, Courtney called the police, telling them Kurt’s behaviour was suicidal. Kurt responded by saying he had locked himself in his room to keep Courtney away. The police took away Kurt’s weapons: a Colt AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, a Beretta .380 and a pair of Taurus handguns, along with twenty-five boxes of ammunition and a bottle of unidentified pills.
On 18 March, furious at Courtney for her ceaseless haranguing of him over his drug usage, Kurt walked out of the house. There was evidence of serious hypocrisy on Courtney’s part: ‘On one line Kurt rang me to get some speed,’ recalled Dylan Carlson of this period, ‘and the other line goes and it’s Courtney wanting me to get her some dope. And neither wants the other to know.’[47]
Kurt and Dylan Carlson now disappeared for several days, heading for Aurora Avenue, and the Marco Polo motel. There, Kurt OD’d on heroin, another friend saving his life by walking him round the room. They also spent nights at the nearby Crest and the Seattle Inn. Kurt hung out in such Seattle bars as the new and hip Linda’s Tavern on East Pine Street in Capitol Hill, and at friends’ apartments.
After what had happened in Rome, Kurt seemed a changed man. Dylan, and also Krist, worried that his brain might have been affected. Dylan told Charles Cross that ‘after Rome, he seemed monochromatic.’[48]
Behaving like a teenage runaway, his time away from home that March allowed Kurt a measure of relatively anonymous freedom, a chance to become who he used to be. But there was a financial problem. On the second day, Courtney managed to persuade his bank to cancel her husband’s credit cards.
Kurt called Krist Novoselic, and his old friend came over to see him. Krist wanted to take Kurt up to a cabin in the country, where he could withdraw from drugs. But first they needed something to eat. Although Krist suggested an upscale eaterie, Kurt insisted on going to a specific Jack in the Box. When Krist realized that the fast-food restaurant was located next to the apartment of Kurt’s dealer, he was furious. They had a stand-up row, and Kurt disappeared and went home.
But there a plot was afoot. An intervention had been planned for 21 March, which Kurt learned of after Krist spilt the beans. Instead, it was moved to 25 March. When it took place, Kurt was smacked up. It doesn’t appear to have been a very rational encounter, with Courtney threatening Kurt that if he didn’t stop doing drugs, she would divorce him, and his access to Frances would be limited.[49] Eventually, Courtney left the house for a flight to LA, where she herself was to undergo drug therapy, as she had promised during the intervention. She never saw Kurt again.
The next day Kurt overdosed once more while sitting in his parked car, after visiting junkie friends. On realizing the state he was in, they had made him leave, terrified he would die there. He eventually he came to, in even greater emotional pain than ever.
Kurt agreed to treatment. On 29 March Krist, trying to help his old buddy, came to take Kurt to Sea-Tac airport for a flight to Los Angeles, where he was scheduled to enter the Exodus Recovery Centre. But Kurt had had second thoughts. After trying to get out of Krist’s car on the I-5, he then hit his bass player in the face. The last a sobbing Krist, Kurt Cobain’s closest friend, saw of him was as he ran manically away through the airport.
The next day Kurt decided to submit to the programme. Before going, he persuaded Dylan Carlson to use his name to purchase a gun – in case of prowlers, he said. Together they bought a Remington M-11 twenty-gauge shotgun and shells. Kurt also did as much heroin as he could manage during the day. That night he flew to Los Angeles.
At Exodus he was not placed in the locked-down psychiatric unit. Had the facility known of the truth about the Rome overdose, he would have been.
Another patient at Exodus, one from Kurt’s world, was Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers. He and Kurt would spend time together, smoking cigarettes in the garden, joking about the guy who broke out by climbing over the rear wall – even though the front gates were never locked. On Friday 1 April, Kurt seemed truly happy, almost ecstatic. When Frances briefly visited him, brought by a friend, he was all over her, tossing her up in the air and making her laugh, holding her closely and tenderly whispering in her ear. His thinking was clear, and there was almost a glow about him.[50]
Late that afternoon he spoke to Courtney. ‘Just remember, no matter what, I love you,’ he told her, and put down the phone.
At 7.25 that evening, Kurt Cobain climbed over the rear wall, the same act of stupidity he and Gibby had joked about. Three hours later, he was taking off from LAX to Seattle. His credit cards reinstated, he had been able to buy a first-class ticket. Sitting next to him on the plane was Duff McKagan, the bassist with Guns N’ Roses. The two musicians had a secret link: Duff McKagan was also an addict, though he was making active efforts to come off drugs. For most of the two-and-a-quarter hour flight, they talked and drank. ‘And he was pretty down,’ the bass-player thought. But there was not one mention made of ‘heroine’.
At Sea-Tac, Duff met his driver and thought they should give Kurt a lift, maybe take him back to Duff’s place and try and cheer him up. When he turned round to suggest this, Kurt had vanished.
At 1.45 a.m. Kurt reached home. The oil-fired central heating in the house had run out of fuel.
At around 7.30 in the morning, Kurt called a cab. He told the driver he needed to buy bullets. Nowhere was yet open downtown. Kurt got the driver to drop him off on seedy Aurora Avenue, where it is thought he checked into either the Crest or Quest Motel. Nearby was a drug connection, and at one point Kurt was seen at a Jack in the Box restaurant.
On Sunday, 3 April, Kurt went for supper at the Cactus restaurant in Seattle. He was with a woman, who may have been his heroin dealer, and a man. Kurt began his meal with banana pudding sautéed in brown sugar and rum, junkie food. His credit card was declined. Again, Courtney had stopped his flow of his own money. Writing out a cheque clearly caused him some difficulty: he wrote the amount where the name of the payee should be. Again he was seen at Linda’s Tavern, an etiolated, spectral figure drifting through.
Kurt Cobain was not seen alive again.
*
Kurt’s suicide note, found in the conservatory in which he shot himself, at the rear of the house on 5 April 1994, was written ‘To Boddah’, his imaginary childhood friend.
He had worked hard on his final statement. ‘There’s good in all of us,’ part of it reads, ‘and I think I simply love people too much, so much that it makes me feel too fucking sad. The sad little sensitive, unappreciative, Pisces, Jesus man. Why don’t you just enjoy it? I don’t know! I have a goddess of a wife who sweats ambition and empathy and a daughter who reminds me too much of what I used to be, full of love and joy, kissing every person she meets because everyone is good and will do her no harm. And that terrifies me to the point where I can barely function. I can’t stand the thought of Frances becoming the miserable, self-destructive, death rocker that I’ve become. I have it good, very good, and I’m grateful, but since the age of seven, I’ve become hateful towards all humans in general. Only because it seems so easy for people to get along and have empathy. Only because I love and feel sorry for people too much, I guess. Thank you all from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach for your letters and concern during the past years. I’m too much of an erratic, moody, baby! I don’t have the passion anymore, and so remember, it’s better to burn out then to fade away.
Peace, Love, Empathy. Kurt Cobain.’
[ends]
Bibliography
Azerrad, Michael. Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana (New York: Doubleday) 1993.
Cobain, Kurt. Journals (London: Penguin) 2003.
Cross, Charles R. Heavier than Heaven: a biography of Kurt Cobain (New York: Hyperion) 2001.
True, Everett. Nirvana: The True Story (London: Omnibus) 2006.
Fil
mography
The Last 48 Hours of Kurt Cobain. Dir. John Dower. World of Wonder, 2007. Television Documentary.
27: Kurt Cobain is the second in a new series of ebooks from Chris Salewicz.
The '27s' will examine the fate of, and myth surrounding, seven iconic music legends: Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, Robert Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones and Jim Morrison.
All were young stars with an abundance of artistic talent, an ability to capture the popular imagination, and an appetite for self-destruction.
All were dead at 27. Must the ferociously good die young?
***
27: Amy Winehouse - Out December 2011 - ISBN 9781780875378
27: Brian Jones - Out May 2012 - ISBN 9781780875422
27: Jimi Hendrix - Out June 2012 - ISBN 9781780875408
27: Janis Joplin - Out September 2012 - ISBN 9781780875415
27: Jim Morrison - Out November 2012 - ISBN 9781780875439
27: Robert Johnson - Out December 2012 - ISBN 9781780875392
[1] Savage interview tapes, courtesy Jon Savage
[2] Savage interview tapes, courtesy Jon Savage
[3] Azerrad, page 17
[4] Azerrad, page 21
[5] Azerrad, ibid.
[6] Savage interview tapes, courtesy Jon Savage
[7] Azerrad, page 23
[8] Cross, page 51
[9] Azerrad, page 26
[10] True, page 20
[11] Azerrad, page 31
[12] Savage interview tapes, courtesy Jon Savage
[13] Savage interview tapes, courtesy Jon Savage
[14] Savage interview tapes, courtesy Jon Savage
[15] True, page 29
[16] Azerrad, page 41
[17] Savage interview tapes, courtesy Jon Savage
[18] True, page 31
[19] Savage interview tapes, courtesy Jon Savage
[20] True, page 71
[21] True, page 71
[22] True, page 103
[23] Azerrad, page 59
[24] True, page 72
[25] True, ibid
[26] True, page 77
[27] Cross, page 285
[28] Savage interview tapes, courtesy Jon Savage
[29] True, page 100
[30] True, page 123
[31] Cross, page 142
[32] Cross, page 157
[33] Azerrad, page 170
[34] Azerrad, page 179
[35] Azerrad, page 193
[36] Cross, page 202
[37] Journals, page 207
[38] Savage interview tapes, courtesy Jon Savage
[39] www.featureshoot.com/2009/01/michael-lavine-new-york/
[40] Cross, page 225
[41] Cross, page 229
[42] Cross, page 249
[43] Cross, page 268
[44] Cross, page 276
[45] Cross, ibid
[46] Cross, page 303
[47]Last Days of Kurt Cobain TV show
[48] True, page 552
[49] True, page 557
[50] Cross, page 329