I remember watching Kurt come through and thinking, God, this music is nuclear. This is really splitting the atom. They raised the temperature for everybody. Manufactured pop never looked so cold as when that heat was around. Nirvana made everything else look silly. Bono
Cobain was very shy, very polite, and obviously enjoyed the fact that I wasn’t awestruck at meeting him. There was something about him, fragile and engagingly lost. William S Burroughs, cited Carrie Borzillo, Nirvana: The Day-By-Day Chronicle
He’s the most talented person I ever worked with because he was talented in so many different ways. He’s a guitar player and a lead singer and he wrote all the songs. He did everything for Nirvana that it took Jimmy Page and Robert Plant to do for Led Zeppelin. Kurt also designed the album covers and wrote treatments for the videos. He even designed the T-shirts. He was really a comprehensive genius when it came to the art of rock and roll. Danny Goldberg
Rage and aggression were elements for Kurt to play with as an artist, but he was profoundly gentle and intelligent. Thurston Moore, cited The New York Times
I couldn’t wait to get pregnant: that was the goal. Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, Kurt’s mum, HBO 2015
He was so kind and so worried about people. ibid.
It was something like Ritalin so I gave it to him that night. Oh my God, he just went off the rails. ibid.
He was rejected basically. ibid. Kurt’s stepmom
Nothing ever mattered. ibid. Kurt
There was so much Reagan propaganda going on. ibid.
He got a job as a janitor. ibid. Tracy, Kurt’s bird
I am threatened by ridicule. ibid. Kurt’s notebook
If we get popular or not it doesn’t matter. The music is more important. ibid. Kurt
I love to play music but something’s not right. So I decided to medicate myself. ibid.
We were fighting more, and he was staying away from the house more. ibid. Tracy
Everybody wants to be hip; everybody wants to be accepted. ibid. Kurt
The biggest band in the world right now - please welcome Nirvana. ibid. UK TV
Nirvana: Heaven Knows They’re Miserable Now. ibid. magazine cover
This is a puzzling case. A very disturbing case. Soaked in Bleach, opening case commentaries, 2015
I found the Rohypnol between your mattresses. ibid. Tom Grant to Courtney
She keeps talking about how suicidal he is. ibid. Tom
I think Curt wants a divorce. ibid. Courtney to Tom
The tapes: the facts were there. ibid. Max, investigating journalist
Something was going on that was out of the ordinary. ibid. Tom
As soon as Kurt died, the first interviews that Courtney gave she started talking about previous suicide attempts. ibid. Max
By their negligent death investigation, the Seattle police: allowed Kurt Cobain to be cremated six days after being discovered; waited thirty days to process the shotgun for fingerprints; gave Courtney Love the shotgun to have it melted down; allowed the greenhouse crime scene to be torn down and destroyed. ibid. caption
The illogical trajectory of the shot-gun shell. ibid. Tom
Munich Germany 1st March 1994: he requested that Courtney be removed from his will moments before going on stage for the last time. Two days later, as a result of near fatal levels of Rohypnol dissolved in champagne, Kurt was rushed to a hospital in Rome. ibid. caption
108,163. That suicide note is a pastiche of things that he had written before and of someone copying his handwriting. ibid. Rosemary Carroll
‘We have a death. We need to confirm identification and we need to perform an autopsy.’ Autopsy: Kurt Cobain, rozzer in situ, Channel 5 2017
The world was stunned when Kurt Cobain, the twenty-seven- year-old musician and self-styled prince of grunge was found dead. But with success came pressures Kurt found hard to handle. ibid.
8th April 1994: Kurt Cobain is found at his house in Seattle with a gunshot wound to his head. ibid.
Kurt was a frequent heroin user and said he took it to treat his abdominal pain. ibid.
ADHD and prescribed the drug Ritalin … For a decade his ADHD went untreated and his addiction to heroin reached dangerous levels. ibid.
Many have refused to accept it was suicide. ibid.
Kurt Cobain did indeed kill himself. ibid.
Rome 4th March 1994: One of the world’s greatest rock-stars has tried to kill himself: Kurt Cobain. His wife, Courtney Love, gives the paparazzi the finger as she rushes to the hospital. News agencies prematurely announce his death. Too Young to Die s1e2: Curt Cobain, Sky 2012
The hero of a whole generation: the instigator of Grunge. ibid.
MTV Unplugged, recorded in 1993, was an artistic high point for Nirvana. ibid.
Aberdeen in the mid-80s: the town was in decline. Kurt Cobain was 17, had dropped out of various schools, and was picked up from time to time by the police for graffiti spraying. He was living from hand to mouth and was surviving on casual jobs. ibid.
‘Another myth is that people think Nirvana were an overnight success.’ ibid. biographer
The music press in Britain called Nirvana ‘the leading band of a movement that had been given the name Grunge.’ ibid.
Smells Like Teen Spirit became the anthem of a whole generation. ibid.