In March of 1994, six weeks before his terrible death, Kurt Cobain was rushed to a hospital in Rome while on tour with Nirvana. It was reported in the media that Cobain had suffered from an apparent drug overdose. Nirvana’s management released a statement claiming that the overdose was accidental due to the improper mixing of champagne and tranquilizers. Cobain sank deep into a tranquilizer-induced coma but managed to survive this ordeal. Some insiders, however, claimed that this was his first attempt at suicide.
Following his return to Seattle, Courtney Love summoned police to his home. She had reported that Cobain had locked himself within a room with a loaded gun. Once again she feared that the distraught singer would try suicide. When the police arrived they found “four revolvers, twenty-five boxes of ammunition, and an assortment of pills.”24 After this traumatic episode, Courtney Love and a number of Kurt Cobain’s closest friends persuaded the singer to enter a drug rehab program in Los Angeles. Cobain agreed, but checked himself out after only forty-eight hours and returned to Seattle. Though his mother had filed a missing person’s report with the police, the singer was not discovered until a repairman, hired to install a home security system, found his body in a room above Cobain’s garage. A shotgun was found lying on his chest as well as a nearby suicide note that quoted Neil Young’s maxim, “It’s better to burn out than fade away.” In short, Kurt Cobain had become the Richard Cory of his own generation. In Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem “Richard Cory,” Richard Cory was a man that everyone wishes he could become. Cory was rich, handsome, and to all practical observers seemed to have it made: “And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,/Went home and put a bullet through his head.” A practical observer may very well notice all outward characteristics that hint at success and happiness, but the victim’s inner world may well be filled with horrors compared to which our own trivial fears would pale. This seemed to be the tragic case of Kurt Cobain.
Cobain was born in 1967. This was the same year that the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s as a fitting beginning of the “Summer of Love.” His very life would cruelly serve to be an antithesis. Like John Lennon, Kurt Cobain would prove to be a prophet for his generation. His poetic voice exclaimed a new generation’s rage, but in the end he was consumed by his own fears and inadequacies. The painful mourning of his death resulted in a few tragic copycat suicides. This was to be a final tribute given at the altar of rock and roll. One of the more introspective songs written by Cobain was the ghoulish-sounding “I Hate Myself and Want to Die.” In one interview, Cobain said that the song title was actually a parody of how some individuals pictured him. Sadly, the song proved to be a fitting epitaph. Again, this attempt to explain his introspection seems to parallel John Lennon’s “Yer Blues.” In this song Lennon included lyrics that stated, “Yes, I’m lonely, wanna die … feel so suicidal even hate my rock and roll.” Through the use of these lyrics, John Lennon obviously became a kindred spirit to Cobain. From one working-class hero to another, the secret of discontent is passed down much like a ceremonial sword for the next generation to achieve purpose and meaning. Perhaps the ultimate irony with Curt Cobain’s death concerned the relationship with the band’s name. Webster’s dictionary defines Nirvana as “1. Hinduism: a blowing out, or extinction of the flame of life through reunion with Brahma. 2. Buddhism: the state of perfect blessedness achieved by the extinction of individual existence and by the absorption of the soul into the supreme spirit, or by the extinction of all desires and passions. 3. Any place or condition of great peace or bliss.” Perhaps, in this case, the band’s name was chosen very wisely.
When I first heard of Kurt Cobain’s death I was flooded with the all too familiar feelings that brought back memories of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison. I was struck by a comment that Cobain’s mother, Wendy O’Connor, had made to the media shortly following her son’s apparent suicide. She was quoted in Newsweek magazine (April 18, 1994): “Now he’s gone and joined that stupid club. I told him not to join that stupid club.” Obviously, Cobain was very aware of the “Twenty-Seven Club.” Did this awareness suggest that he had carefully planned his own exit? Some fans may think so, but there are some who hint at murder. It is just too simple to bury a star. As in the case of Morrison, Hendrix, and Brian Jones, the subtle hint of a hidden conspiracy expands what could very well be a terrible tragic death into infinite rock and roll folklore. Some of the most puzzling questions haunting Internet websites include: Why would anyone committing suicide place three shells in a shotgun? It is reported that Cobain had injected himself with three times the amount of heroin needed to provide a lethal dose. Why would he shoot himself after this lethal injection? And, after giving himself the dosage, would he still be able to pull the trigger? There were reports of someone trying to use one of Cobain’s credit cards two days after his established death (the medical examiner placed the time of death on April 6, 1994). When his body was discovered all attempts at using the card stopped. Is it true that the police did not find fingerprints on the shotgun? Curiously, these questions may never be answered and exist only in the uncertain and unjustified realm of innuendo. This is true of all pertinent folklore and in this case, yet once again, the name will not die with the man.
On June 16, 1994, in Seattle, Washington, the body of Kristen Pfaff, the bassist for Hole, was found in her bathtub. Pfaff was from Minneapolis and had moved to Seattle to become a member of Hole and part of the new music scene that was developing there. After the making of Hole’s Live Through This, she had gone back home to Minneapolis and had rejoined her old band Janitor Joe for a European tour. It was after the tour, and following Kurt Cobain’s death, that Kristen became very despondent. Pfaff decided to return to Seattle and pack up her belongings in a U-Haul truck and head back home to Minneapolis. She was well aware of the drug environment in Seattle. She had entered a drug treatment program earlier but now she was clean. Strangely enough it was Kurt Cobain who had first introduced her to heroin. She had no idea that she would join him in death a few short months after his suicide.
She was excited about returning home and leaving an environment in Seattle that reeked of death and self-destruction. She was now ready to make a complete break. Paul Erickson was a fellow musician in Seattle and offered to help her pack the U-Haul. He volunteered to sleep next to the loaded truck all night to watch over her prized possessions. The night of June 15, 1994, Kristen decided to take a long hot bath. This was something she enjoyed and it wasn’t unusual for her to take a nap or eat dinner while she bathed. When Erickson returned later that night he heard her snoring in the bath. Thinking nothing of this he went to sleep. The next morning he became concerned that there was no answer from Kristen as he knocked loudly on the bathroom door. It was then that he kicked the door open and found Kristen curled up in the tub. On the floor in her purse was the all too common drug paraphernalia of the user. The syringes gave proof that this was another drug-related death in grim Seattle.
Kristen’s body was taken back to Minneapolis, and when Geffen Records asked permission for the members of Hole to attend Kristen’s funeral, the Pfaff family refused to allow them to attend. That was one side of her life that needed no celebration, according to her parents. A number of people were puzzled that Kristen Pfaff would ever use heroin again. This was the reason she was leaving Seattle. Why would she become a junkie again after rehab? There are some who say the event is likely a murder and not just another simple drug overdose by another musician. Perhaps Kristen Pfaff’s mother was right when she stated, “I don’t know what’s going on in that Seattle scene, but there is something wrong, terribly wrong.” Kristen Pfaff was twenty-seven when she died and is now a member of the club in good standing.
Jason Thirsk was the bassist for the punk-rock band Penny-wise. He contributed to four of the band’s albums, but in 1995 realized that he had a drinking problem and entered rehab. It wasn’t the first time he had tried rehab and he was unable to come to grips with his excesses. On July
29, 1996, Thirsk entered the club at the age of twenty-seven. He was firing a gun into his house and into his refrigerator. Suddenly, he turned the gun on himself and fired a bullet into his own chest. He later bled to death. The police in Hermosa Beach, California, ruled his death a suicide.
Richard Cavendish believes that “The strange patterns of Fate seem to suggest that death at the age of twenty-seven holds some mysterious reason. In life as well as science there are rhythms that are determined by twenty-eight day cycles (e.g., female menstrual, lunar cycles, etc).” Followers of numerology would be quick to point out that the sum of twenty-seven is nine. The numeral nine suggests completeness, since it takes nine months for a baby to fully develop. Nine is also given as “the number of initiation, the end of one stage of spiritual development and the beginning of a new one.”2525 Nine also suggests the number with the highest power. After nine the numbers repeat themselves. Also, any single digit multiplied by nine, and added together, will equal nine (for example, 9×2=18, 1+8=9; 9×9=81, 1+8=9; 9×4=36, 3+6=9). Of all nine numerals, this is the only case in which this factor occurs.
In the field of astrology the belief is that each individual goes through a series of twenty-seven-year cycles. Each cycle presents an opportunity for growth and enlightenment. The number 27 can also be explained by looking at each of the specific numbers. The number “2” is associated with individuals who seek love and acceptance, whereas the number “7” is associated with individuals who tend to be escapists. Of course, a number of musicians’ deaths were brought about by lethal overdoses of drugs and alcohol to escape from their personal issues.
If each of the members of the club accepted Alexander the Great’s challenge and chose an early death filled with fame and glory as opposed to simple fading away, then each would probably agree with this far-reaching adage: “Death is the ultimate trip. That’s why they save it for last.” Alexander’s age at the time of his death? Thirty-three, 3x3=9.
Notes
Introduction
1Timothy White, Rock Lives: Profiles and Interviews (New York: Henry Holt & Company 1990), 32.
2Nick Tosches, Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story (New York: Delacorte Press, 1982), 27.
3Jeff Pike, The Death of Rock ’n’ Roll (Boston and London: Faber and Faber, 1993), 54.
4Pike, The Death of Rock ’n’ Roll, 89.
1: Waiting at the Crossroads
1Francis Davis, The History of the Blues: The Roots, the Music, the People—From Charley Patton to Robert Cray (New York: Hyperion, 1995), 105.
2Davis, The History of the Blues, 105.
2: The Buddy Holly Curse?
1Martin Huxley and Quinton Skinner, Behind the Music: The Day the Music Died (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 35.
2Ellis Amburn, Buddy Holly: A Biography (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996) 271.
3Huxley and Skinner, Behind the Music, 29.
4Amburn, Buddy Holly, 252-53.
5Phillip Norman, Sympathy for the Devil: The Rolling Stones Story (New York: Dell, 1984), 256.
6Norman, Sympathy for the Devil, 257.
7John Repsch, The Legendary Joe Meek: The Telstar Man (London: Cherry Red Books, 2000), 57.
8Norman, Sympathy for the Devil, 303.
9Dave Thompson, Better to Burn Out: The Cult of Death in Rock ’n’ Roll (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1999), 9.
10Alan Mann, The A–Z of Buddy Holly (London: Aurum Press, 1996), 26.
11Jim Driver, ed., The Mammoth Book of Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll (New York: Carroll and Graff, 2001), 577.
3: “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”
1Scott Freeman, Midnight Riders: The Story of the Allman Brothers Band (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1995), 29.
2Ibid., 111.
3Ibid., 142.
4Ibid.
5Ibid.
6Marley Brant, Freebirds: The Lynyrd Skynyrd Story (New York: Billboard Books, 2002), 151.
7Ibid., 162.
8Ibid., 173.
9Ibid., 229.
4: “Mr. Crowley”
1Michael Newton, Raising Hell: An Encyclopedia of Devil Worship and Satanic Crime (New York: Avon Books, 1993), 116.
2John Parker, At the Heart of Darkness: Witchcraft, Black Magic, and Satanism Today (New York: Citadel Press, 1993), 175.
3Parker, At the Heart of Darkness, 179.
4Richard Cavendish, The Black Arts (New York: Perigee Books, 1983), 31.
5Newton, Raising Hell, 225.
6Cavendish, The Black Arts, 38.
7Davis, The History of the Blues, 106.
8Martin Gardner, On the Wild Side (New York: Prometheus Books, 1992), 198.
9Cavendish, The Black Arts, 248-49.
10Newton, Raising Hell, 121.
11Cavendish, The Black Arts, 40.
12Parker, At the Heart of Darkness, 184.
13Ibid., 190.
14Ibid., 193.
15Timothy White, Rock Lives: Profiles and Interviews (New York: Henry Holt, 1990), 584.
16Ibid., 584-94.
5: “Sympathy for the Devil”
1White, Rock Lives: Profiles and Interviews (New York: Henry Holt, 1990), 177.
2Ibid.
3Ibid., 189.
4Christopher Sandford, Mick Jagger: Primitive Cool (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 120.
5Marianne Faithfull, with David Dalton, Faithfull: An Autobiography (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1994), 207-08.
6Faithfull, Faithfull: An Autobiography, 208.
7A. E. Hotchner, Blown Away: The Rolling Stones and the Death of the Sixties (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 184.
8White, Rock Lives: Profiles and Interviews, 191.
9Hotchner, Blown Away, 182-83.
10Ibid., 183-84.
11Tony Sanchez, Up and Down with the Rolling Stones (London: Blake, 1994), 145.
12Sanchez, Up and Down, 177.
13Ibid., 149.
14Ibid., 151.
15Ibid., 111.
16Hotchner, Blown Away, 317.
17Ibid., 318.
18Sanchez, Up and Down, 178.
19Ibid., 263.
20Hotchner, Blown Away, 27.
21Sanchez, Up and Down, 189.
6: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
1Ritchie Yorke, Led Zeppelin: The Definitive Biography (Novato, CA: Underwood-Miller, 1993), 25.
2Yorke, Led Zeppelin: The Definitive Biography, 33.
3Ibid., 84.
4Ibid., 70.
5Ibid., 81.
6Richard Cole, Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 11.
7Lewis Spence, An Encyclopedia of Occultism (New York: Citadeal Books, 1996), 107.
8Cole, Stairway to Heaven, 256.
9Davis, The History of the Blues, 95.
10Yorke, Led Zeppelin: The Definitive Biography, 150.
11Cavendish, The Black Arts, 255-56.
12Yorke, Led Zeppelin: The Definitive Biography, 117-18.
13Ibid., 117.
14Cole, Stairway to Heaven, 182.
15Yorke, Led Zeppelin: The Definitive Biography, 132.
16Ibid.
17Ibid.
18Ibid., 129.
19Davis, The History of the Blues, 142.
20Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice (Seacaucus, NJ: Castle Books, 1991), 417.
21Yorke, Led Zeppelin: The Definitive Biography, 192.
22Ibid., 193.
23Davis, The History of the Blues, 211.
24Ibid.
25Cole, Stairway to Heaven, 324.
26Ibid., 390.
27Yorke, Led Zeppelin: The Definitive Biography, 200.
28Ibid., 198.
29Ibid., 199.
30Ibid., 199-200.
31Ibid., 211.
32Davis, The History of the Blues, 286.
33Cole, Stairway to Heaven, 10.
34Yorke, Led Zeppelin: The Definitive Biography, 214.
35Cole, Stairway to Heaven, 402.
36Ibid.
37Davis, The History of the Blues, 303.
7: “Welcome to the Hotel California”
1Parker, At the Heart of Darkness, 256.
2Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible (New York: Avon Books, 1976), 25.
3Parker, At the Heart of Darkness, 258-59.
4Ibid., 261.
5Newton, Raising Hell, 180.
6Huxley and Skinner, Behind the Music, 144.
7Ibid., 156.
8Ibid., 171-72.
9Ibid., 156.
10Ibid., 108-09.
11Ibid., 156-57.
12RIP magazine, February 1995.
8: The Backward Mask and Other Hidden Messages
1David Sheff, The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono (New York: Playboy Press, 1981), 175-76.
2Jeff Godwin, Dancing with Demons: The Music’s Real Master (Chino, CA: Chick Publications, 1988), 343-344.
3Thomas Wedge, with Robert L. Powers, The Satan Hunter (Carrollton, TX: Calibre Press, Inc., 1993), 95.
4William Poundstone, Biggest Secrets (New York: Quill, 1993), 225.
5Wedge, The Satan Hunter, 95.
9: “If 6 Was 9”
1Stewart, 377-78.
Take a Walk on the Dark Side Page 26