Kurt Cobain‘s widow Courtney Love spoke candidly about Cobain on the 30th anniversary of Nirvana‘s blockbuster album, Nervermind. During a chat with biographer Charles R. Cross for The Los Angeles Times, she surmised how Cobain’s trajectory, which led to him committing suicide in 1994 at the age of 27, could’ve been changed, explaining, “I’m not really a fan of the idea that it all ‘could have’ been that different, but. . . he might have survived had somebody else (gone first). Like Eddie Vedder, somebody who had good infrastructure.”
She went on to say, “Kurt was born a Halley’s Comet. It’s a miracle the record got made and that he found a great drummer and had a bass player he could rely on. He was so happy when this record was done. He now had agency. He had the courage to change both himself and the world, and with success he became emboldened.”
Love recalled how Cobain dealt with the sudden and global success of Nirvana’s Nevermind: “We were in Salem, Oregon when Nevermind went to Number One. He cried. I cried. We were really scared. Here was a man who liked pleasure, who enjoyed things, and yet he wasn’t supposed to. When people say, ‘You are the voice of a generation,’ what do you do with that?”
She went on to say, “Who Kurt was to me was never what you saw in the public. He could be very passive-aggressive and working two agendas in public. He could say one thing and do another. He had to be like that to be a junkie, so there was that whole thing that I share too.”
SIDE NOTES
- Starting on November 12th, the 30th anniversary of Nirvana‘s Nevermind will be celebrated with several multi-format reissues.
- A total of 94 audio and video tracks — 70 previously unreleased — will be made available across configurations ranging from Super Deluxe Editions to standard digital/CD and single disc vinyl with bonus 7-inch.
- Among the previously unreleased material exclusive to various versions of the Nevermind 30th Anniversary Editions are four complete live shows:
- Live In Amsterdam, Netherlands (recorded and filmed on November 25th, 1991 at the famed club Paradiso)
- Live In Del Mar, California (recorded on December 28th, 1991 at the Pat O’Brien Pavilion at the Del Mar Fairgrounds)
- Live In Melbourne, Australia for triple j (recorded February 1st, 1992 at The Palace in St. Kilda)
- Live In Tokyo, Japan (recorded at the Nakano Sunplaza on February 19th, 1992).
CHECK IT OUT: The alternate version of Nirvana’s 1991 video for “In Bloom”: