Nirvana
Kurt Donald Cobain was born on the 20th of February, 1967 in Hoquaim, a small town 140 km from Seatlle. Soon, his father Donald and his mother Wendy moved with hin to Aberdeen. His father worked at the local lumber mill while his mother stayed at home to look after the children.
When Kurt was 2 years old, he was first interested in music. He couldn´t attend the guitar lessons because he couldn´t stay still for a while. [He was given a drug called Ritalin which sometimes kept him awake till 4 am].
So Kurt´s parents bought him a drumset. Every day he played it after school till one day it broke.
Kurt´s mum always looked after him and his sister Kim. Cobains's home was in the slums, but it was the nicest house of all. At the age of 7 he wanted to be a stuntman like Evel Knievel. He often jumped out of the window into a pile of pillows and blankets [Once he hurt himself with firecrackers.
From that time he didn´t want to be a stuntman anymore]. When Kurt was 8, his parents got devorced, it touched him so hard that he hated his parents afterwards.
"I tried hard to have a father, but instead I had a dad."
He bacame a shy and depressive guy. Both of his parents got married again. During his youth he always had to move from one relative´s house to another.
He got into a lot of trouble at that time [vandalism, spray-painting "God is gay" at the side of a truck]. During his high-school career he bacame a stoner. Two weeks before the final exam he dropped out of school, bacause he missed too many lessons. Because he didn´t get a job he had to leave. He sometimes stayed over an unoccupied apartment over Krist Novoselic´s mum´s hair studio [but he also had to stay under a bridge that looked over the Wishkah].
In 1983, he worked briefly as a lifeguard at the local YMCA.
That year, Kurt met the 18-year old Krist Novoselic born in Compton, CAL, on the 16th of May. His parents, Krist and Maria, moved from Croatia to California in 1963. He and his little brother Robert always did vandalism in their preteen years, like throwing stones on cars. When he was 14 years old they moved to Aberdeen. Krist stayed a year in Croatia when he was 15. He started drinking ans smoking pot heavily.
He said about it:
"It's a different reality and a different world of consciousness."
In his last year in high-school he took guitar lessons with the same teacher as Kurt had had. He always listened to punk rock albums from the Sex Pistols. After graduation in 1983 his parents got divorced. That´s about the time when Kurt and Krist started playing in their own band.
They moved to Olympia and played in several bands, including the Stiff Woods, the Sellouts (CCR cover band) and Skid Row.
1986 Krist and his girlfriend Shelly moved to Kurt´s birthtown, Hoquaim. In the next year´s summer they took an apartment together with Kurt and his girlfriend Tracy. Later Kurt and Krist formed Nirvana and decided to keep the band together, and by the beginning of the next year, they had a ten-song demo fully in place with Dale Crover on drums. They always practiced in the front-room of Krist´s house. Kurt and NIRVANA (Kurt[lead guitar-vocals], Krist Novoselic[bassist], Chad Channing[drums]) became known through their album Bleach, released in June 89. One of the songs was "About a girl", which was written for Kurt´s girlfriend Tracy.
"Punk rock should mean freedom, liking and accepting everything that you like and playing whatever you
want, as sloppy as you want, as long as it's good and has passion."
On the 30th of December 1989 Krist marries Shelly. For the first US tour they hired another guitar player, Jason Everett. Shelly sold the band´s T-Shirts. After that tour, they found the perfect drummer: Dave Grohl, born on the 14th of January in Ohio, joined the legendary band. He grew up in a Washington DC suburb called Springfield.
He learned playing the drums on chairs in his room. He played in many bands during high-school, including Mission Impossible, Freak Baby and Dain Bramage. Later he played with Scream and dropped out of school to go on tour with the band. When they broke up in 1990 he moved to Seattle. Kurt and Dave made friends immediately. They found out that they had a very similar childhood.
Thus, Nirvana became a very close team and this was representes in their music. They all had passion in playing. Dave fitted Nirvana perfectly. He just needed a usual drum kit and he beat it up every single gig. His drumming was very important for all the songs of Nirvana, some even say it became part of the melody. After signing with the David Geffen Company, they made the album that would revolutionize the music industry: "Nevermind".
It was released in September 1991 and less than a month later it was sold 500,000 times. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" would later become known as the anthem for all teenagers. It was at least as important for music history as Joe Cocker´s Beatles cover "With a little help from my friends". This song was the anthem for all the people all over the world who believed in love and peace. SLTS was the anthem for all the depressive, agressive, sensible, unsatisfied, but also for the fun loving, freaking and happy ones. This hit went around the world and it is still moving.
"Just because we make money doesn't mean we're sellouts."
It was thought as an attack on the apathy of our generation, but it became so much more [Balloon covered this hit (Monstersound), but I think he destroys the meaning of the song this way. This song is not for disco, it is Grunge]. SLTS hit #1 for 14 weeks. But there were other very important songs on this album: "Come As You Are" [a song about how we act and how society thinks we should act] and "Lithium" [an ode to disconnection]. But the following albums would be even more successful.
Kurt and Courtney Love got married in Waikiki, Hawaii on February 24, 1992 [Kurt wearing pajamas and Courtney wearing an old dress once owned by the actor Frances Farmer]. Krist and his wife refused the wedding invitation. On August 18, 1992, Frances Bean Cobain is born. She is named after a member of the Vaseline's.
"Music is what I do, my family is what I am."
In September 1992, Nirvana won 2 MTV Music Awards.
After coming back from a massive tour, the B-Sides album "Incesticide" [the killing of incestous people] with the songs "Sliver" [a semi-biographical song about being deserted by your parents] and "Been A Son" [song about a girl whose parents wanted a boy] was released in December 92. The next album "In Utero", published in September 93 has many meaningful songs on it. It was recorded in two weeks, that´s why it didn´t sound as well as the radiofriendly "Nevermind". "Heart-Shaped Box" was published as single. On the B-side of that single Dave Grohl published one of his own songs. it was called "Marigold".
"Dumb" [ignorance is bliss] and "Pennyroyal Tea" are songs with drug-related topics. In the same month Nirvana won the Best Alternative Video award at MTV Video Awards.
In January 1994 MTV Unplugged was first shown on MTV. Nirvana played many covers, including songs of the Vaselines ("Jesus don´t want me for a sunbeam"), the Meat Puppets ("Lake of Fire") and Ledbelly ("Where did you sleep last night?"). The Meat Puppets played the support to "Lake of Fire".
In April 1994, Kurt was admitted into Exodus Rehabilitation Center for his heroin addiction.
He couldn´t stay there so he jumped the fence and went to his cottage at Lake Washington. On April 8, 1994, an electrician found Kurt Cobain lying dead on the floor with a shotgun next to him. That was the tragic ending to music history, but we can keep NIRVANA alive by listening to their music and hearing what Kurt has to say in his lyrics. There will never be any band that even comes close to NIRVANA. In 1996 "From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah" was released. All the songs of this album are live versions of their most popular songs, including "Heart-shaped box" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
So what happened to the rest of the band? Krist Novoselic founded Sweet 75, doing their first show in March 1995. Dave founded the "Foo Fighters" which became a well-known rock band in America and even the concerts in Europe are always sold out. They hit the road with songs like Breakout [soundtrack of "Me, Myself and Irene"] and "Next Year". But although they´re making good music they will never be able to continue the legend of Nirvana. No band ever will. And so I would like to finish my presentation with the last written words of Kurt Cobain:
"It's better to burn out than fade away.
"
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