KURT COBAIN: The Unbearable Pain Of Greatness

Summary

Highlights

• Kurt Cobain was born in a small town and faced significant struggles from a young age, including family issues and mental health challenges. 🎢
• Music became Cobain's sanctuary, leading to the formation of Nirvana and their eventual success. 🎤
• Nirvana's rise to fame marked a shift in the music industry, rejecting the glam of the 80s for grunge realism. 🕶️
• Cobain's relationship with the media was complicated; he craved stardom yet despised its invasiveness. 📰
• The 'Strange Love' Vanity Fair article had profound personal consequences for Cobain and his family. 📰
• Cobain's legacy is deeply intertwined with his music's raw emotion and his personal story of struggle and artistry. 💫
• While Cobain's life was fraught with pain, his music continues to resonate and offer solace to fans worldwide. 🎶

Key Takeaways

• Kurt Cobain's journey from a troubled upbringing to rock stardom reshaped the music industry forever. 🎸
• Cobain's struggles with ADHD, bipolar disorder, and drug addiction marked both his life and art. 💔
• His music, especially through Nirvana, became an anthem for the disenfranchised and misunderstood youth. 🎶
• The transition from an independent label to a major one was a pivotal point in his career and personal life. 🚀
• Cobain's relationship with Courtney Love created media frenzy and public debates. ❤️
• Despite his challenges, Cobain's work ethic and dedication to music was unparalleled. 💪
• Cobain's legacy, framed by his tragic death at 27, continues to influence and inspire countless fans. 🌟

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 10:00: Introduction and Early Life The chapter titled 'Introduction and Early Life' begins with an intriguing narrative about perseverance and the idea of not looking back. It introduces Bob, ostensibly as a stand-in or a symbol, with cryptic lines about the sun being gone but having light, and the day being done but still having fun. These lines set an introspective tone before revealing a shocking event - the morning discovery of a body at home. This death underscores the chapter's theme of success and its casualties.
• 10:00 - 20:00: Adolescence and Struggles The chapter titled 'Adolescence and Struggles' explores the influence of a metaphorical 'dark albatross' which affects those who encounter it, extending its reach even from beyond the grave. The video aims to delve into the legend of this 'albatross,' its origins, and its impact on contemporary culture, both positively and negatively. To understand the legend, it is necessary to provide a biography of someone named Kurt, whose life story is closely tied to this narrative. Kurt was born in February 20, 1967, in the town of Aubberdine, Washington, into a lower middle-class family in a physically and economically depressed environment.
• 20:00 - 30:00: Musical Beginnings and Rise to Fame The chapter "Musical Beginnings and Rise to Fame" explores the early life of Kurt, highlighting his energetic personality and his interest and talent in art and music from a young age. However, it also touches upon the challenges he faced, such as his father's teasing and struggles with weight.
• 30:00 - 40:00: The Breakthrough with Nirvana The chapter focuses on Kurt's childhood and early life, particularly emphasizing his sensitivity and perceptive nature. It highlights his enduring stomach condition that prevented weight gain and marked his lifelong struggle. Additionally, the chapter underscores a pivotal event in his life, his parents' divorce when he was 9, which significantly influenced his ideological and personal development.
• 40:00 - 50:00: Challenges and Personal Life The chapter titled 'Challenges and Personal Life' delves into the personal struggles and societal pressures faced by Kurt. The transcript reveals the profound impact of his parents' divorce on his life, highlighting his longing for a traditional family structure symbolized by a white picket fence dream. The stigma surrounding divorce at the time added to his distress, exacerbated by subsequent remarriages of both parents, which left Kurt feeling even more isolated. These events marked a significant and traumatic turning point, influencing him deeply.
• 50:00 - 60:00: In Utero and Final Years The chapter explores the duality in Kurt's personality, reflecting a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde dynamic that persisted throughout his life. This dichotomy showed Kurt as a sensitive artist one moment and a rebellious punk the next. His family observed this duality manifesting in anger and acting out towards those close to him, which in turn contributed to his sense of alienation and isolation. Choosing rebellion, Kurt decided to disregard others' expectations and advice.
• 60:00 - 70:00: Legacy and Cultural Impact This chapter titled 'Legacy and Cultural Impact' discusses the personal challenges faced by an individual named CooBain during his childhood. Diagnosed with ADHD, CooBain was prescribed Ridland, which worsened his symptoms. Later, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, suggesting why Ridland was ineffective. Unfortunately, as he grew older, these issues remained untreated professionally, impacting his life and possibly contributing to the circumstances described in the chapter.
• 70:00 - 81:00: Conclusion and Reflections The final chapter "Conclusion and Reflections" discusses the early struggle of Kurt Cobain with drug use, specifically alcohol and marijuana, beginning in his teenage years. The narrative underscores the impact of substance abuse during critical developmental years on Cobain's brain chemistry, a burden he carried into adulthood. Additionally, it examines how Cobain's academic performance suffered as a consequence of his drug habits, suggesting a link between his education challenges and substance use.

KURT COBAIN: The Unbearable Pain Of Greatness Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 just never give up Those magazines weeks worth Oh and don't look back by Bob The sun is gone but I have a light The day is done but I'm having fun And then this morning his body found at home Another casualty of success The spectre of Kurt Cobain haunts the modern world After departing from this life on April 5th 1994 Cobain has transformed from rock musician to messianic figure that hangs over culture
• 00:30 - 01:00 like a dark albatross influencing all that come across it from beyond the grave In this video I wanted to discuss this legend how it was created and how it molds modern culture for better and worse In order to talk about the legend it is essential to give a sort of biography of Kurt as both are intimately interwoven Born on February 20th 1967 in Aubberdine Washington to what is always described as a lower middle-class family in an economically and literally depressed town From the beginning Kurt
• 01:00 - 01:30 had a very energetic personality something that is mentioned from everyone who met him at any stage in life His mind truly went a mile a minute The result of this in these early years was a very energetic and very well-loved kid Also from the very beginning was Kurt's interest in art and music subjects that he showed both great interest and talent in from his earliest days However there was trouble in Paradise Kurt's dad would constantly kind of poke fun at his son and he constantly dealt with weight issues due
• 01:30 - 02:00 to a stomach problem which allowed him to not gain weight an issue that he would hold for the rest of his life Also something that was observed from the very beginning was that Kurt was an overly sensitive child He was able to see and notice things that others were not able to Even from a very young age he was completely aware of what was going on in the world But in what would be the central event of Kurt's ideological and personal development his parents would get divorced when he was 9
• 02:00 - 02:30 years old And by all accounts Kurt did not take this well Kurt wanted a nice white picket fence family something that he would never be able to get And with this anchor ripped out from under him he would hold this trauma with him for the rest of his life His mother mentions in the documentary montage of Hec that there was also a huge social stigma from the community as people didn't get divorced really back then And after this both of his parents remarried something that served to further alienate him from
• 02:30 - 03:00 his community and from his own family And this alienation would be something that would manifest itself in this Dr Jackekal Mr hide relationship that Kurt would have for the rest of his life where in one moment he is the sensitive artist and in the next he's the rebellious punk His family noted that this manifested itself in him acting out in anger towards his friends and family which also served to further isolate him So he just decided he wasn't going to do anything anybody said and then he
• 03:00 - 03:30 started just doing really mean things to the kids It was like nobody after a couple weeks they wanted him out He was truly a man without a home As a child CooBain was diagnosed with ADHD and he was prescribed Ridland This did not seem to solve any of his symptoms In fact made them much worse Something that may make sense by his later diagnosis of bipolar issue And as he got older both of these symptoms remained untreated Professionally that is Cobain would
• 03:30 - 04:00 self-medicate with massive amounts of drugs starting in these teenage years with alcohol and marijuana It's a very startling thing that some people just kind of like over in these teenage years But this drug use during that very formative time whenever your brain is still you know being formed definitely had an effect on Cobain's brain chemistry Something that he would harbor for the rest of his life Kurt also didn't particularly do all that well at school something that was definitely made worse by this drug use But more
• 04:00 - 04:30 importantly he also had huge issues with the kind of conservative jock types that populated the area that he was in Later on Michael Azered who did the biography Come As You Are would go and interview people who were around Kurt's age and he runs into these two young men in the bar From the response you can kind of get the indication that Aubberdine was probably the single worst place for a person like Kurt to grow up in Also during these years Kurt was a pretty good baseball player for the team However he would intentionally strike
• 04:30 - 05:00 out just to make his dad mad Anything to rebel I guess This isolation and ostracization from the community would just push Kurt further and further into the dark recesses of his mind Something that you can see if you read his journals He really just has a very dark sense of violence towards himself and others which is born out of this complete hatred for like these men in his life He really was hurt by these
• 05:00 - 05:30 people However in this truly dark moment where he feels like he has no one to connect to he finds the musical genre that will direct the rest of his career punk rock Punk was able to completely articulate and encapsulate this angst that he had been feeling for all of these years Finally it was music for people who were ostracized from their community and they had a new community
• 05:30 - 06:00 to be a part of They played faster than I ever imagined music could be played and with more energy than my Iron Maiden records could provide This was what I was looking for Ah punk rock I came to the promised land of a grocery store parking lot and I found my special purpose Kurt's MMO after this experience was to create music That was all he ever cared about after this point And it's because it was both a way for him to articulate these emotions that he had
• 06:00 - 06:30 not been able to express up to this point but also a way to prove to all those who had doubted him or shunned him that he mattered his family these jocks and the entire world would have to listen from the boy from Aubberine And after this Kirk got in touch with whatever could be described as the punk scene in Aubberine which mostly meant the Melbours and a certain 6- foot tall basist named Chris Novacelich And so with Chris and Toe Kurt set out to
• 06:30 - 07:00 create a band After a series of different names and formations they would set on the title of Nirvana for the group And from the beginning Kurt knew that this was going to be his great work The ethos of the greater movement may have been anarchy but he was going to pursue it with monastic dedication And like a CEO with a mission statement he knew exactly what he wanted out of people which resulted in him going through about 40 different drummers You can see that in this great slice of life
• 07:00 - 07:30 letter where he fires one of the drummers because they just aren't able to practice as much as Kurt and Chris want to for a band And it really just shows that like he's not just content being a barban He had the sight set on superstardom from the very beginning And this led to them eventually recruiting Chad Channing who would do for now Back in school things were not his focus He eventually ended up dropping out like 2 weeks before school ended And it's a situation where it's like he may have been able to go back and do summer school or something like that but he was
• 07:30 - 08:00 not interested in the education at that point in time as his only interest was music And you get this idea that this really was just the final push for his family to just completely forsake him as he essentially just got kicked out of his house at that point And you get these really sad moments where like he's listening to his mom on the phone talking to someone and she's like "Yeah he's really good at music but he just doesn't seem to want to do anything." And it's just this heartbreaking moment
• 08:00 - 08:30 where it's this thing where like as a teenager when you hear that you're like "Yeah." you know he stuck it to the system and you know fought for his rights And as an adult you're like "Oh my god you know you have to actually have some way to pay rent my guy." And this resulted in this like quasi homeless semiynomatic period where Kurt was just kind of couch surfing at place and place He would occasionally hang out underneath a bridge which is where the famous something in the way story would come from which is in itself a bit of revisionist history that Kurt was kind
• 08:30 - 09:00 of famous for in this mythmaking that he would do where he never really lived underneath the bridge but he did hang out there but he took some artistic liberty with that fact later on But in these lost years when Kurt wasn't playing music he would just kind of drift around from menial job to menial job staying at friends houses At some point he gets into this house and he like digs a hole in the floor and puts a bathtub with these turtles in it That was just a really weird part in Come as You Are that always just fascinated me
• 09:00 - 09:30 as a teenager whenever I read it But the biggest stable force in this time was definitely his longtime girlfriend Tracy Miranda who he stayed with for about 3 years at her apartment in Olympia And the way it's kind of described in Come as You Are is basically like a punk rock monk He's not really going out when he's not playing music and he's just kind of staying at the house But in this time I think we really get to see Kurt doing his 10,000 hours on songwriting And what
• 09:30 - 10:00 would he do all day while you were at work It's kind of funny cuz sometimes you'd sit there and watch TV for four hours and you think he wasn't creating but he'd be playing guitar while he was doing that or think up stuff later and then you know you go out for a few hours and you come back and there's a painting on the wall or there's a big comic strip or whatever where he wrote a song you know recorded it During this time Kurt's main interest was creating a demo tape for the band He eventually did and sent it out to many of the different labels However one of the issues that continuously kept cropping up during
• 10:00 - 10:30 this period is that Nirvana was a band without a scene Because they were a band originally from Aubberdine they didn't quite fit into the Olympia scene which had its own petty bourgeoisi bands that were kind of king of the mountain in that town But also because Kurt was living in Olympia he didn't quite fit in with the Seattle bands which had their own camaraderie around them And that may explain some of the animosity that he later had towards these groups once he did become famous But he did have his eyes set on one cash cow for the
• 10:30 - 11:00 ultimate label Subpop Subpop was a label that had some of Kurt's favorite bands on it and it was also just a firmly cool indie label which definitely fit Kurt's ethos at the time so he thought And so when the label did sign them the band was ecstatic and they set about recording a cover of the song Love Buzz which they put out on the label And this cover did fairly well for the independent scene which cleared them for their debut album which they termed Bleach Recorded in 30 hours for
• 11:00 - 11:30 $66.17 The album would feature a very heavy grunge sound which was pushed by the label the first of many times where Kirk would claim that his music was influenced by such And while there are many classic Nirvana songs on the album there is one definitive outlier in that and that's of course About a Girl and a song that is legally required to be described as Beatlesque It's a minor key undistorted love ballad that is in fact about a girl Kurt would later say even to put about a girl on Bleach was a risk
• 11:30 - 12:00 I was heavily into pop and I really liked and I was into all kinds of old 60s stuff but there was a lot of pressure within the social scene the underground like the kind that you get in high school and to put a Jangly REMM type of pop song on a grunge record in that scene was risky However the risk paid off and for many people that song was the standout on that album I remember that Iggy Pop would later listen to it and you thought that if Kurt was able to just come up with about 10 of these and put them on an album he
• 12:00 - 12:30 would be a millionaire For an independent release in the late 80s Bleach did extremely well and thus Kurt went out on tour However being extremely successful on an independent label in the late '80s still meant that these were very lean times Usually the band had just enough money to get from one place to another with gas money and there was usually no AC turned on during that trip to save money However a practice that would later bear great fruit that you can see in these earliest days was Kurt's like dedication to just
• 12:30 - 13:00 accounting and you know these basic bookkeeping practices where he would just keep all of the expenses because he knew that this was an essential part of the band and because it was he was going to be good at it and he knew that these small details were essential to the greater picture of what was his music It was also shown during these years that Kurt loved playing music live He would later say that playing music live is the most primal form of energy release you can share with other people besides
• 13:00 - 13:30 having sex or taking drugs So if you see a good live show on drugs and then later that evening have sex you've basically covered all the bases of energy release Even in later years whenever he was extremely tired of the greater touring apparatus he never lost this lust for playing live He would say that he wished that he could just be in a coma for the rest of it and they would wheel him out you know resuscitate him and he could just play live before they put him back into the coma which brings up its own issues But he really did just have this
• 13:30 - 14:00 vigor for this live music experience that was never extinguished And while they were doing great for a new band on an independent label it was becoming more and more clear that Nirvana was just simply too big for this fledgling label Subpop both seemed to be really just like not accommodating for what was especially in hindsight their biggest asset They wouldn't release their music whenever Kurt wanted to and they wouldn't promote him or get him interviews And they also just seemed to have the thing going where they just
• 14:00 - 14:30 didn't know what they were doing Those guys were real hustlers They were great at slogans and packaging Knew you were being hustled but it's it felt important I don't think uh they should take this in a bad way because I wouldn't I mean they're very successful but they're the biggest liars in the world man Bruce and I knew exactly what we were doing from the beginning No we had no clue And nowadays it's a decision that is obviously clear that Nirvana needed to move up to a major label However at the
• 14:30 - 15:00 time this was a deeply controversial and deeply fought over decision because there was a huge amount of selling out that was thought to be done by any band that did move up to a major label It was in this punk scene that this rejection of the mainstream was so strong that any signing to a major label could be seen as a complete betrayal of these ideals And once again we get a situation where
• 15:00 - 15:30 it's like this adoptive family of Punk is also rejecting Kurt because he just can't fit in here either And it's this brutal situation where he had to defend this decision in a lot of ways for the rest of his life You can see that with the subpop label being put on the back of Nevermind And he would really do a lot to defend this decision from these detractors in all interviews And I think that this is really the germ of why this whole I don't want to be a rockstar
• 15:30 - 16:00 thing would be formed This was essential self-p protection for Kurt because of the scene he came out of and it was done just out of necessity because unironically Kurt wanted to be from the beginning the biggest rock star in the world I always remember this one time when we were going around to to uh record companies who wanted to sign the band And we were sitting in this high-rise office in New York City with
• 16:00 - 16:30 this record executive and he said "Well what do you guys want?" And Kurt said "We want to be the biggest band in the world." And I thought he was joking And he also really wanted to be really famous Like he was like a windmill and he would just say one thing and then he would like change his mind on it And so in this period of around 1990 Kurt would just go through this complete shedding experience where all the aspects of his past life would be left behind He would fire Chad Channing he would break up
• 16:30 - 17:00 with Tracy and he would search around for a major label eventually settling on Geffin And now with the backing of a major label and the introduction of a drummer by the name of Dave Gro and a producer by the name of Butch Fig Nirvana would enter the studio in May 1991 and set about recording what would end up being one of the most influential and best-selling albums in musical history Nevermind And so just like Kurt Nevermind itself would be an encapsulation of both of these worlds of
• 17:00 - 17:30 both the pop sensibilities of the Beatles with the raw energy of punk combined with Kurt's voice which was somehow both simultaneously just as coarse of sandpaper but also had complete musicality and adaptation to it I think it's also very notable that Kurt would always claim that this tone came from his stomach the same stomach that would cause him so much literal physical pain in his life And I can't help but
• 17:30 - 18:00 say that you can hear it come through Smells like teen spirit is the greatest example of this I know that that's a very basic answer but it is also a very true answer With this soft loud dynamic which Kurt did not invent but he did perfect on this song It just completely changed the blueprint of what a rock song should be and was copied about 40,000 times after that So you can see that just the architecture of what this song is just works and you have these
• 18:00 - 18:30 essentially football anthems and Smells Like Teen Spirit and In Bloom counteracted by the penultimate song on the album Something in the Way which is one of the most haunting songs ever put to record Part of the reason why this works so well is just the beauty of Kurt's lyrics He would write "My lyrics are a big pile of contradiction split between sincerity and sarcasm." And while people have famously poured hours of analyzation into lyrics any true Nirvana fan also knows that Kurt would
• 18:30 - 19:00 either just write some of these lyrics literally right before he sang them or sometimes they would just be genuinely drawn out of a hat and placed in random So it creates this situation where it strangely works better because it's this juxtaposition of opposites You know take your time hurry up It creates a situation where each person is able to come up with their own meaning for each song which is also further emphasized by
• 19:00 - 19:30 the fact that many people really can't make out a lot of what Kurt is saying Part of the fun of Smells Like Teen Spirit is the first time that you listen to it you have no idea what he's actually talking about I just told him "Hey it's Weird Yanovic and I I would love to do a parody of Smells Like Teen Spirit." And and his initial reaction was "Oh is it going to be a song about food?" Cuz a lot of my heads at that time were and I explained "Well no it's a song about how nobody can understand
• 19:30 - 20:00 your lyrics." And I think there's probably half a beat on the phone And he's like "Yeah yeah it sounds like a funny idea." And while Kurt would later like all of his albums have some issues with the recording saying that it was too polished by all accounts at the time everyone thought that it was a great album And they were right However while the recording of this album and the introduction of a new member of the band were definitely big news for Kurt there was the introduction of one other person who may have had an even larger influence Courtney Love
• 20:00 - 20:30 Loves and CooBain's starting date for their relationship is a little bit murky but firmly by the end of 1991 Kurt was simply head over heels I was determined to be a bachelor for a few months but I knew I like Courtney so much right away that it was a really hard struggle to stay away from her for so many months Both came from messed up childhoods and both had very similar interests notably music and drugs They were in so many
• 20:30 - 21:00 ways made for each other But it was also something that was apparent from the very beginning was the fact that this was a relationship that was going to rub other people the wrong way I think that Courtney herself can say it best Marrying him created a mythology around me that I didn't expect for myself because I had a very controlled 5-year plan about how I was going to be successful in the rock industry Mary and Kurt it all kind of went sideways in a way that I could not control and then became seen in a certain light a vilified light that made Yokoono looked
• 21:00 - 21:30 like Polyiana And I could not stop it Something that comes up with all celebrity relationships and it's definitely amplified in the Courtney and Kurt one is that people have a mental idea of what they think a celebrity is in person And whenever they choose a partner that does not align with how we think that this celebrity is in real life it creates issues I'll just say that much And you do not have to like Courtney Love There are a whole lot of very legitimate issues that you can have
• 21:30 - 22:00 with Courtney and her relationship to the Greater Nirvana story However one thing that is not debatable is that Courtney and Kurt were deeply in love and this hurricane of a relationship would be a constant for the rest of Kurt's life Back on the music front Geffen had very modest expectations for Nevermind expecting to only sell about 250,000 copies But after one of the most iconic music videos ever made was dropped by the band the records started selling and they continued selling and
• 22:00 - 22:30 continued selling until eventually the group was moving 400,000 copies a week by late 1991 At one point they literally have a supply chain issue where the record label just cannot print the albums quick enough and there are just actual shortages of the album in certain areas It was an overnight success that was years in the making And it's easy to understand why it happened You have a situation where you can imagine the value prop for like your average
• 22:30 - 23:00 teenager who's listening to heavy metal and he likes the hard grooves but you know he doesn't like these absurd personalities and it's like "Hey someone comes along and offers you an album of the absolute greatest versions of that music with the looks of someone who could be at your school." And it's because of this we have one of the few truly watershed moments in music history where it's almost in the rock world where it's before Nirvana and after
• 23:00 - 23:30 Nirvana because everything that happened before this came out was immediately pushed into the not cool category Billboard proclaimed Nirvana is the rare band that has everything critical acclaim industry respect pop radio appeal and a rock solid college alternative base The group started in 1992 is the most interesting and most talked about group in the world And going through these dates has shown me just how much of a miracle year it was and also just how insane of a tempo it
• 23:30 - 24:00 was happening at Just to start the year out with a bang on January 11th 1992 Nevermind bumps Michael Jackson off the top of the charts at number one and they perform on SNL as the true crowning moment of Grunge is King and Hair Metal is Dead And then starting on February 22nd we have a set of intense tour dates set in Oceanana and Asia February 24th Kurt and Courtney get married and then proceed to hide away and not do anything besides drugs for months March 19th Kurt
• 24:00 - 24:30 is admitted to a hospital and then discharged the same day Also at some point during this drugfueled haze in March Kurt meets with the other members of the group and creates a contract where essentially he gets the majority of the songwriting credits from the original arrangement where it was equal given to each person And this also applies for all previous material written And this almost just breaks the group up right then and there But all members eventually do agree to it and the craziness continues June 10th 1992 Kurt just buys a house with cash June
• 24:30 - 25:00 21st the group starts touring again June 23rd the second day into the tour Kurt is admitted to another hospital Next day flies to Paris to do another concert August 4th Kurt is admitted to another hospital to withdraw from heroin And as he's doing this Courtney is in the same hospital giving birth to Francis She eventually picks up her IV and goes into Curt's room to deliver the baby so they can both be there together In August 18th 1992 Francis Bean Cobain is born
• 25:00 - 25:30 August 30th so just a few days after this there's these legitimate rumors that are circling around about the Reading Festival which they are you know scheduled to headline People are saying that the band is broken up or that Kurt isn't going to show Kurt then proceeds to show up in the hospital gown that he was wearing at this hospital that he was at And then proceeds to play one of their most iconic shows Truly legendary moment However things aren't too good for too long because on September 1st Vanity Fair publishes an article called Strange Love We'll get back to this This
• 25:30 - 26:00 causes huge problems for Kurt and Courtney September 9th Nirvana performs at the MTV Awards where we get this great footage
• 26:00 - 26:30 Hi Axel Hi Axel Where's Axel Hi Axel Hi Axel October 22nd Curt starts leaving these very threatening voice messages for Victoria Clark who was a journalist who had been writing a biography of the band because she had used the same journalist who had wrote the Strange Love article because he wants her to stop writing the book and is trying to get it cancelled December 15th Nirvana releases the B-side collection album Insecticide December 23rd they begin the process of interviews that will result in Come as You Are And once again this
• 26:30 - 27:00 is one calendar year and I left out a whole lot And it's immediately followed in January by them playing their largest show at the Hollywood Rock Festival in Brazil in front of 100,000 people So it's pretty easy to understand that this year was a bit of a shock to the system for Old Nirvana Just a year and a half ago these guys were playing in punk rock bars and saving their pennies to buy gas to get from one gig to the other As it currently stands
• 27:00 - 27:30 Billy Isish has had a longer career than all of Nirvana's And so what is the results of this Well this is usually where we get the VH1 section where we talk about how fame is not too good However how real is this dynamic in the Nirvana story In these interviews you can see kind of a microcosm of who Kurt Cobain was as a person and as a performer There's this very funny situation specifically with interviews
• 27:30 - 28:00 in that when they were at Subpop they were constantly just begging for any kind of publicity any type of interview and they just never can do it So whenever they sign on the major label they're like "Hey can you get us some interviews?" And they're like "Oh oh you want to do interviews?" And then you see them once they do get famous They're doing like 50 interviews a day And in these interviews the publications would spin the tail that Nirvana did not want to be stars Kurt was very reluctant on
• 28:00 - 28:30 the entire celebrity thing Something that Kurt wanted them to think All throughout the journals and throughout his entire life you can see that Kurt was very much aware of what he was doing He wanted you to think that he didn't know what he was doing They wanted to believe that Kirk Cobain would roll out of bed take some drugs and write a classic And he let people believe that he was the guy was like "Oh yeah." You know uh you know how many how many
• 28:30 - 29:00 nights do you think there long before Nirvana that he sat in a basement trying to figure out why does this chord go with this chord and listen to Nirvana's early demos listen to Nirvana's first album listen to the second album His voice is changing It's not just changing physically He's finding the character of Kurt Cobain And there's a lot of way in which we can see Kurt's manipulation of the metag game that happened around his music You've probably at some point seen this list of Kurt Cobain's favorite albums in the journals He writes that
• 29:00 - 29:30 list like I'm not joking at least like six or seven times in this in that order And I bring that up to say that he was constantly thinking about I'm going to give this out to the public one day So I have to have this right I had heard that he had would like write out answers and think in his mind of like how he was going to respond to questions months ahead of time before he would actually give them I actually have found the smoking gun on just that So this
• 29:30 - 30:00 interview is talking about something else Then this comes up Pause Curt's building up for another rant You know what I hate about rock He asked me cartoons and horns I hate Phil Collins All of that white male soul I hate tie-dye t-shirts You know that there are bootleg tie-dye t-shirts of Nirvana I hate that I wouldn't wear a tie-dye t-shirt unless it was dyed with the urine of Phil Collins and the blood of Jerry Garcia Courtney overhears this last comment from her bedroom Oh god
• 30:00 - 30:30 Kurt how long have you been thinking about that one She castigates him annoyed Well no one ever prints it And whenever I saw that in this interview I just died laughing because he writes that exact phrase verbatim in the journals like two or three times you know years before he's given this interview And he's just mad that no one will use this zinger of a line that he's got cooked up you know on the front of the magazine But on the flip side there were some very real things that Kurt was
• 30:30 - 31:00 very annoyed with with this new audience that he had garnered things that are very respectable because you in fact cannot choose who your fans are Insecticide has the famous liner notes that read "At this point I have a request for our fans If any of you in any way hate homosexuals people of a different color or women please do this one favor for us Leave us alone Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records." It truly was a situation where these conservative jock types that he
• 31:00 - 31:30 hated so much in high school and would have bullied him for listening to punk rock are now the ones that are coming to his show One of the big funnies of Nirvana is that Axel Rose like really liked Nirvana He was always trying to like reach out And one of the ways that he thought would be great to do this was in the pre-show before a concert they would have this camera that would go around and encourage women to flash the camera And what would they be playing while all this was happening My course
• 31:30 - 32:00 smells like Teen Spirit They're just they're just supporting the band man What do you mean you don't want to come over Hi Axel Hi Axel Where's Axel Hi Axel And Kurt was also fully aware that all this posturing in the media could just serve to drive fans away But even as a master of media manipulation Kurt was not able to avoid all mistakes And it's this point I want to go back to that Strange Love article by Vanity Fair I am not being hyperbolic whenever I say that this Vanity Fair article may be the
• 32:00 - 32:30 single most consequential moment in all of Nirvana's history in terms of turning the wheel towards what ended up happening Strange Love the story of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love firmly confirmed Courtney as the Yoko figure in this relationship The story stated that Courtney had done heroin while pregnant and had many comments which pushed the narrative that Courtney was simply a fim fatal who was taking advantage of Kurt
• 32:30 - 33:00 for her own gain This humiliated Cobain But even more importantly it resulted in real life consequences notably Francis being taken away for several weeks by child protective services While the investigation was immediately dismissed and Francis was eventually returned back to the family this event really just served to shatter any semblance of normality that Kurt had been able to scrape together It seemed that even with all of the fame and all of the money that he had been able to accumulate he
• 33:00 - 33:30 still was not able to create this happy family that he had been searching for for all of these years And so with all of this stirring around in the pot in 1993 Nirvana went to record a new album For this new project Kurt had searched out for the underground music producer Steve Albini who was known for his authentic low-fi but mostly just unadorned sound He thought that this would give a different dimension to the project that was missing off Never Mind And he was also dedicated to staying off
• 33:30 - 34:00 drugs for the recording of the project And so for 2 weeks the group worked in the isolated recording studio to produce what would become in Udro which would go on to be recognized as one of the great rock albums and one of the most scathing This is also Curt's at least most openly autobiographical work He is truly just putting his pains and sorrows on blast for everyone to hear On Serve the Servants he sings "Teenage Danks has paid off well Now I'm bored and old I
• 34:00 - 34:30 tried to have a father but instead I had a dad I just want you to know that I don't hate you anymore There's nothing I could say that I haven't thought before Pitchfork would write in Nirvana's everexpanding audience in Udo promised a more aggressively hands-on process of weeding out the mukes a concerted effort to realign Nirvana with the audience that they actually listened to and away from those they were credited with spawning And there were people who were waited out by this process A lot of the
• 34:30 - 35:00 lyrics I thought were just thrown in I mean they could have deeper meaning and I tried to really analyze some of them but some of these lyrics just seemed like I think if I was stoned when I when I listen to it I might have liked it better right But I don't do that anymore And it is an absolutely brutal album to listen to One of the most brutal that has ever gotten such a widespread distribution But also what I think a lot of these people missed on this first listen around is
• 35:00 - 35:30 just how soft and delicate it can be Because while yes there is serve the servants and very ape there is also dumb and all apologies on the same album And in this way you can see that Cobain may have been more comfortable letting both sides of his personality coexist with each other on the same project It would also be remiss for me not to mention that Yinudo has been massively reappraised after Curt's death as many of the songs on the album have a
• 35:30 - 36:00 completely different meaning in this new context Something that was not going as well was his efforts to continue to stay off drugs Kurt's relationship with drugs was a complicated one like many addicts but particularly the way that he philosophically thought about his addiction I think should require some further study Specifically in the way that he told many people and wrote in
• 36:00 - 36:30 his journals that he wanted to become a heroin addict This is something that is not new in music Countless jazz musicians intentionally went out and got addicted to heroin because of Charlie Parker There is some kind of idea that this addiction would give you the ability to create better music I don't think that this is a true thing but I feel that Kurt is buying into the same
• 36:30 - 37:00 kind of process So however he was also deeply ashamed of his addiction And all of these interviews that he gives when he mentions his drug use it is always in the past It's always I've just you know got over it or like you know whenever I was doing it even whenever he is literally about to go and buy more drugs This juxtaposition of denial and just you know unashamed addiction goes down to like the internal dialogue of the
• 37:00 - 37:30 journals like he's mentioning on one page how he is just totally addicted to heroin and on the other how he totally is completely clean It's a lie that can go so deep that the addict themselves starts to believe it which I I think just speaks volumes on the nature of addiction At some point Kurt gives an extremely just harrowing timeline of how the heroin addiction works in that you
• 37:30 - 38:00 don't start out the very first time that you do heroin addicted No you can do it for months with no effects until one day you wake up and you need it And at that point the true horror begins May 2nd 1993 Kurt overdosed and went to a hospital in Seattle He was discharged the same day June 4th 1993 police were called for a disturbance at Cooane's household He was detained at the jail and released the same day which resulted
• 38:00 - 38:30 in his guns being taken away July 23rd Kurt overdoses in a hotel nearly dies and then the next day gives this interview where he says "I'm just in a haze right now." The article then goes on about the legal issues that the man is facing with the books the issues with the tour and also him denying any current drug use And once again this is him literally a few hours away from nearly dying in that same hotel And that's because he has a tour to promote
• 38:30 - 39:00 September 21st Nirvana would release in Udero which would go on to debut at number one And that weekend Nirvana would kick off the tour with a performance on Saturday Night Live So this Saturday Night Live performance is notable for two things Number one it features a very haunting handshake between Chris Farley and Kurt Cobain And two it shows his debut of Nirvana's newest band member that they had brought along to help on the tour Charles Barkley Hi I'm Charles Barkley host of the season premiere of Saturday Night Live with Nirvana Look Mom your favorite Nirvana
• 39:00 - 39:30 I had heard that there were problems with the Inutro tour that it was a very difficult tour for everyone involved But now understanding like the greater context in which it happened and just how many pressures were coming from inside and outside the band I do not know why it happened at all It was the first time that most American fans would have a chance to actually see Nirvana And by all accounts it was going to be a
• 39:30 - 40:00 grueling set of dates day after day in a different city to accommodate this need But even in this stressful and chaotic moment you can see just how much musical talent Kurt had Because on November 18th 1993 Nirvana would record a special for MTV Unplugged which would go on to possibly become their single most iconic moment But as 1993 turns in 1994 and the tor goes from America to Europe you really get this feeling that everything
• 40:00 - 40:30 just keeps getting worse and nothing gets better Every day that you wake up in 1994 you're really just counting down towards the inevitable end There's a great article that goes over Kurt Cobain's last days in Paris and you really get the feeling that things are just falling off the rails It's told from the perspective of funny enough Kurt Cobain's drug dealer that he had at that point in Paris And there's just these absolutely insane stories where he's like hiding out at the drug
• 40:30 - 41:00 dealer's apartment and the band's management is trying to call and you know figure out where he's at And eventually he just has to drive him to the venue in a scooter and they rip him off And by the time that the dealer is able to like get into the venue Nirvana is already on their second song which is just a true rockstar moment but also speaks to just how bad things are There's also these horrifying stories from Michael Azered who was around during those days where Kurt would just be constantly cursing people out and saying that he was going to fire Dave Gro because whatever reason and you can
• 41:00 - 41:30 really tell that the internal group dynamics of the band are just failing because there's just some inreconcilable differences that are just forming between its members So Chris Dave and Pat seem to be real kind of clammy whenever they're talking about this period And it's a situation where like I fully understand because you don't really want to drag dirt over your friend's name but you can tell from what has been said that things were not good
• 41:30 - 42:00 Was it all good with Kurt I mean were you were you on drugs It got weird towards the end and there was like the people who did the drugs and then there people that didn't do the drugs and I didn't do the drugs and so I was just out of that world you know and if you're in it you're in it If you're not you're out So in the last couple of months you hadn't even been in touch with Kurt No no we had right And uh but but were you close to breaking up the band anyway Do you think you guys would have broken up because Kurt was going his own way I think at that point it was important
• 42:00 - 42:30 that we take a break I think everybody felt that way It was like time to take a break After this point a lot of things just kind of become murky as Kurt just truly falls into the abyss The next month would feature him getting arrested again with his guns confiscated a failed drug intervention Chris trying to drive him
• 42:30 - 43:00 to the airport and getting in a fist fight before he escaped buying a gun for a friend as he thought that he couldn't get one in his own name due to the prior incidents finally going to Exodus Recovery Center which was a celebrity rehab On April 1st 2 days after entering into Exodus Kurt scaled the walls of the facility and disappeared The last days of Kurt Cobain are described by all of his associates as being just a series of missed phone calls or showing up to a place where he was just a minute too
• 43:00 - 43:30 late or just passing them as they were going to meet him Everyone ends up regretting all of their decisions as something may have been different but it may have also not Suicide is an event that is inherently devoid of narrative It is in spite of that or perhaps directly because of it
• 43:30 - 44:00 people like to create narratives Michael Azerad stated in this article that people often ask me why Kurt killed himself Actually what frequently happens is they wind up telling me why he killed himself They have their opinions despite having never met him and dismiss my firsthand observations of Kurt as incompatible with what they already believe Very few of them acknowledged a simple unsational fact Kurt had several clinically established risk factors for suicide including inhumane levels of professional pressure chronic and severe
• 44:00 - 44:30 physical pain and a heroin addiction they just couldn't seem to shake or didn't want to He also had a long family history Two of his uncles died by suicide One of Kurt's cousins who would actually go on to become a nurse specializing in mental health stated that in her opinion Kurt likely would have ended his life regardless of what profession he actually chose to do due to simply the strong genetic predisposition that he had from his family history and the circumstances that he was born into The thing that I have never quite understood about the conspiracy theories around his death of
• 44:30 - 45:00 which there are Legion is just how much people seem to ignore just how bad of a mental state Kurt was in not only for his entire life but also specifically in the period directly leading up to his death It was only a matter of time before he just simply ODed and just didn't wake up That was the way that it was going already So how how many more times would it have been And so with all that being said what are we left with
• 45:00 - 45:30 today Kurt Cobain stands as unquestionably one of our modern society's largest stars And I mean that currently if you go to any high school you can see dozens of kids wearing Nirvana shirts to this day and they would be able to tell you how Curt's music impacted their lives in a meaningful way And their parents can probably do the same And the reason why is because Kurt's hard work paid off He gave us some of the best songs that have ever been written And more importantly
• 45:30 - 46:00 he gave us the narrative around which to understand that song Whenever I say narrative I can almost say gospel The thing that I keep coming back to is just how closely Kurt's story as it's presented in the public eye is parallel to the Christ narrative You have this guy from the middle of nowhere who is you know a champion for the underclass and through all of his actions is able to serve as a sacrificial lamb for this greater movement And I'm not just
• 46:00 - 46:30 grasping at straws here There's a lot of like true archetypal narrative functions that Kurt's story kind of provides for the type of folk hero myths that we as a society enjoy And this was something that was noted even at the time by the contemporary sources after the unplugged performance He was asking around of like why weren't they clapping or you know reacting in the way that I thought that they would and the producers were like yeah it's because like they think that they're in the presence of Jesus Christ
• 46:30 - 47:00 I love that even the Vanity Fair article speaks in these religious tones and notes that Kurt Cobain is regarded as a holy man Courtney meanwhile is viewed as many as a charismatic opportunist So I suppose that Courtney has moved from Yoko to the Judas figure in this analogy Certainly part of this narrative is the fact that Kurt died at the age of 27 at the peak of his powers and popularity But something that you may not be aware of is that Kurt didn't just become part of the 27 Club he created it While yes
• 47:00 - 47:30 the stars from the 60s had died at the age of 27 that are part of this cannon he is the reason why people started referring to it as the 27 Club such as the power of this mythological narrative that he had built Another aspect that is able to truly kind of encase Kurt and Amber is the fact that he is the last true analog star that we had Um you can see that in the last videotaped interview that he ever did with Nardoir
• 47:30 - 48:00 of all people My god he's been around forever Have you ever thought of partying with Bill Gates at all Finally winding up here Kurt Yes Bill Gates from Microsoft running with Bill Gate cuz you know who are the two newest members of the Seattle Seur Here's a trick question for you Bill Gates Microsoft and Nintendo This is the last exact moment in 1994 where you could like not know who Bill Gates or like you know what the greater apparatus of what the internet was or what would it would be However while he didn't really know about the
• 48:00 - 48:30 internet the internet certainly knew about Kurt as it went on And you can see the beginnings of this the day that it was announced that he died on this prehistoric pseudo internet of Usenet where they had these chat boards If you have ever thought that like the modern internet is just a unique you know truly novel representation of the lows of humanity I can assure you just take a look at this and you will see no we have always been terrible The internet is just a great way for trolls to just you
• 48:30 - 49:00 know push their worst impulses up to the surface Scrolling through these archive chat boards and seeing like these knuckle draggers in the face of the tragic death of one of the greatest musicians of all time someone I would consider to be literally a true genius and then being like overrated really just makes me feel much better about the current state of humanity because it's like oh okay Okay So so like we've always been like this We just didn't have the internet to archive you know the moronic sentiments of you know like
• 49:00 - 49:30 the the hoy paloy In the beginning I mentioned that Kurt Cobain's legend stands as an albatross And I meant that in the truest metaphorical sense In the original albatross story an albatross follows a boat out the sea which serves as a good luck sign However one of the sailors kills the albatross which puts bad luck upon the ship I think that Kurt Cobain's story stands in much of the same way Kurt Cobain is one of the greatest not only just musicians but people in history He was able to come
• 49:30 - 50:00 from nowhere and with no connections in any kind of entertainment business push himself up to the absolute peak of the mountain and through sheer force of will create some of the greatest songs that will last until the end of time But it is also a career that is in noninssignificant way fruit of the poison tree The age of 27 for me growing up was very ominous because in some way we had idolized Kurt in this you know short career so much that it's almost if
• 50:00 - 50:30 you didn't accomplish it in this short amount of time you are a failure Polyonic put out a very similar video on that kind of subject pretty recently And now that I am 27 I have to say it is absolutely insane that this is supposed to be the entire encapsulation of your life It makes me feel so much sadder for Kurt He had so much to live for And I mean like not even just in terms of what music to create but I mean just in terms
• 50:30 - 51:00 of life Like he he hadn't even really started yet And to have so much of this cult of personality built around someone who was deeply physically and mentally in pain all the time Is this a glorification of this You know just for us the audience's pleasure in the journals where Cobain is just bearing his soul You can see just how deeply in misery he is and just how much violence
• 51:00 - 51:30 towards himself but also towards others that he feels and just how tragic of a situation this was and how how much worse I guess it could have went And the sad thing is is I also know that if Kurt had just you know went and lived on and would be alive today his career would not mean the same What would have happened Another Lala Palooa tour He would have put out a couple more albums And while I'm sure that those albums
• 51:30 - 52:00 would be great eventually he would have done something that would have just made us the audience you know forget about him or you know get mad it's only because he went out at the top with so much more potential left that he is such a golden boy Part of the Beatles charm is that they left at the peak of their powers because it's something that he also mentions in the journals is that like you know he was constantly joking about how in a couple years he would just be bald and fat playing the people who no longer care And if I'm being
• 52:00 - 52:30 completely honest just knowing how the music business works yeah he he was right for a large amount of people Both of these elements just kind of juxtapose together just like most elements in Kurt's life and it creates a situation where you have a very complex person which we as the public do not want out of our celebrities We we don't we either want them to be heroes or villains And with that being said and I cannot speak for you or anyone else I think that it may be best to look
• 52:30 - 53:00 at this class as being half full Wal Kurt was flawed We as the public do need heroes And I can think of many worse than one Kurt Donald Cobain And I think that if we're able to honestly and openly discuss these very toxic and misaligned parts of his being with the parts that are so admirable I think that we're able to have a much more honest and realistic conversation about why we
• 53:00 - 53:30 like our heroes And hopefully Kurt can serve as a great inspiration for his admirable traits as opposed to a stumbling block for people to judge themselves by And while today at 27 years old I can see that Kurt is not the classical hero that I may have thought that he was whenever I was a teenager I can say that in the world of flawed heroes he's one that I would rather have around What advice would you give to someone who's just starting out or wants
• 53:30 - 54:00 to have a musical career Just keep practicing and don't give up Just never give up Play as often as you can and be really dedicated and try to write good music and don't worry about um the material ethics that go with music It doesn't matter what you look like or or anything It doesn't matter what your product looks like It's what what it sounds like