Kurt Cobain: The Paradox of a Generational Icon

right [Music] cobain was 27 years old a rock star with a history of drug problems a few weeks before his death the lead singer of the band nirvana overdosed on painkillers and alcohol but the final blow came from the barrel of a gun and it was a shot heard across a generation [Music] we all know how this story ends kurt cobain died at 27 which means he's now been dead for as many years as he was alive he was a boy from nowhere who came from nothing but wanted everything and then became completely discontent when he got to the top of the mountain kurt was a lead singer and guitar player for nirvana the biggest band of the 90s they combined raw punk energy with melodies and pop elements that appealed to the masses and they sold millions of records kurt was one of those rare artists that captured the zeitgeist by accidentally creating it and when nirvana blew up everything in culture got filtered through him everyone started wearing flannel and grunge music became the de facto soundtrack of the early 90s cobain became the exact reference point for the word cool and if we're being honest 30 years later he still is i mean pull up tick tock or go to any music festival and you're going to see countless teens wearing nirvana t-shirts even if they don't know his music robert pattinson's portrayal of batman was based on kirk cobain and there have been many movies and books created about his life when you combine his brilliant creative output with the way he passed away it's no wonder culture is so fascinated by him how could someone who had all their dreams come true still be in so much pain it's an impossible question to answer because we'll never know what it was like to be him but i'm certain everyone's interior life is always contradictory and that's what i find most fascinating about kurt cobain he was an endless paradox kurt was extremely sincere but often sarcastic he acted like nothing mattered yet put incredible pressure on himself he said popularity didn't matter yet he complained when his videos weren't played on mtv he said he wanted privacy but did interviews with every major publication he was a guy that acted like he didn't want stardom but did everything in his power to ensure it he always spoke on both sides of his mouth but at a really early age i wanted to be a rock and roll star i didn't want to be a rock star at all it was just it was freaking me out it's nice to know you can sell your music on the music alone you know i mean at the time that it took off and a lot of radio stations were planted before we had a video which is you know an uncommon thing oh it's a load of [ __ ] i think i think there are at least 10 to 15 other bands who are just as good of if not better than us you are so nice and you're so you seem so comfortable with yourself something must have really happened in the last couple of years is it is it just falling in love no what happened i've always been a nice guy what do you think about interviews did you hear my reaction when he asked me if i wanted to do one yeah i said no there's a common misconception among his fans that he was a hundred percent authentic and beared his soul to the world but that's not true kurt was extremely savvy and knew how to market himself as a rock star what people didn't realize when they watched or read his interviews was that a lot of his responses were rehearsed many times he'd have answers to potential questions written out in his journal months before he used them he was a meticulous planner but the one thing he couldn't account for was the fact that when he found his way into the mainstream there was no way out cobain always wanted it both ways he wanted to be a star but also wanted to operate free from the baggage that came with such massive fame this wasn't a possibility despite his demons kurt did create music that helped people feel better he wasn't just an icon for generation x every single generation and person for that matter has their own unique relationship with him and for that reason cobain is a cultural force that's too big and complex to unpack or understand in a single sitting but i'm still gonna try so let's go let's take a look at kurt cobain a generational icon whose life is bigger than art [Music] [Music] the other matching [Music] i shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow there should be no man who should have the right to force any woman to have a child against her will the advice or sentence rendered by the jury it is hereby imposed death penalty upon the defendant theater robert bundy new medical evidence shows marijuana smokers also face the risk of addiction [Music] lenin was shot and killed at about 11 o'clock last night outside his apartment building miracles hi brad you know how cute i always thought you were are you ready to do the workout right two and back two left stretch it out front and to the right one two back left forward now reverse it to the left stretch it out back right [Music] kurt lived in an analog world a time before the internet and social media these were the last few decades in which we controlled technology more than technology controlled us during his life the movie rental experience happened in the physical world and there wasn't an algorithm pushing him towards things he was predisposed to enjoy the most common way to pick a movie was to randomly walk around the store until you found something that looked interesting it was a similar process at the record store if you brought 20 to a music shop you could only purchase one cd so back then the albums you listened to and the movies you watched were heavily linked to your identity today since everything is on demand and essentially free for download culture and art have become more global and homogeneous we have access to endless reference points which has made us less unique less imaginative in contrast kurt's artistic influences were extremely limited he was exposed to music from three primary sources what he heard on the radio what he saw on mtv and the records he bought his record collection was shaped by the happenstance of what albums were cheap at the thrift stores or garage sales he walked by not having spotify likely helped kurt to focus on the ideas he would steal or shape into his own style he was a part of one of the last generations where real boredom existed and that's important for art when you're alone in your house with nothing to do you decide to make things and cobain's hometown of aberdeen washington was an especially boring place [Music] kurt cobain came from a small depressed logging town the high unemployment rate in aberdeen mixed with its rainy gray climate led to abnormally high rates of alcoholism and suicide but kurt himself started out life happy he was born in a lower middle class home to don and wendy cobain an auto mechanic and secretary he was a quiet very likable kid always with a smile and a bit shy his intelligence was obvious early on his mom said it kind of scared me because he had perceptions like i've never seen a small child have kurt was focused on the world he would be drawing in a coloring book and the news would be on and he was very attuned to that and he was just three and a half he knew all about the war he knew life wasn't always fair by the age of five his talent for drawing stood out he'd doodle cartoon characters on his bedroom walls and could draw realistic images just from his memory at times like all children kurt was a terror and was hyperactive because he had so much energy and didn't know where to put it his parents took him to a doctor and he diagnosed him with adhd at seven years old he was prescribed ritalin along with sedatives to help him come down and fall asleep at night it's certainly possible that his later drug dependencies were at least partially fostered here early in life in february 1976 a week after kurt's ninth birthday wendy informed don that she wanted a divorce to kurt this divorce was one of the most painful events of his life no other event had more of an effect on shaping his personality after that day kurt was always a bit melancholic [Music] [Laughter] kurt internalized the divorce like many children do he thought it was his fault he dealt with his feelings by disassociating himself emotionally from his parents he lived with his mom in a trailer park for a year and then moved in with his father in the fifth grade kurt started taking music classes and by the seventh grade he was playing drums in the school band i was in a grade school band i played snare drum for years and it went up until high school i never learned how to read music either i always faked my way through it i would watch the kid in first chair you know i'd watch him figure out the piece and then i would copy him when he got a bit older he swapped out his drums for the guitar outside of writing music alone in his room kirk began experimenting with drugs in the eighth grade by smoking marijuana and using lsd by ninth grade kurt was a full-on pothead what started as a social activity became his chosen anesthetic he also began cutting class regularly kurt and his friends would skip school and buy weed or steal booze from a parent's liquor cabinet we invented our own amusement we um vandalized skipped school smoke pot smoke cigarettes and that's about it listen to music kurt was miserable in high school he was sensitive small for his age and uninterested in sports he couldn't find friends who he was compatible with he said everyone was eventually going to become a lager and i knew i wanted to do something different i wanted to be some kind of artist kurt was always contrarian he dyed his hair wild colors and reportedly spat at jocks who'd sometimes beat him up cobain recalled that many of his peers thought he was gay because he hung out with girls and gay people and didn't have many male friends cobain wasn't gay but said he wished he was just to piss off the homophobes at home kurt had trouble dealing with the fact that both of his parents had found new partners and started new lives this coupled with his frustrations at school turned kurt into a problem child and he'd sometimes bully his younger step siblings at home in march 1982 at 15 years old kurt left his father and stepmother's care following a series of fierce arguments over the next four years he'd live in 10 different homes with 10 different families because no one could handle him for an extended period of time nowhere ever felt like home to him so kurt spent more and more time by himself as author charles r cross wrote in his biography on kurt cobain this was a cycle that would play out in his life several times the stages went from intimacy to conflict to banishment and finally isolation the experience of being kicked out of his home would be something he'd return to repeatedly never able to completely free himself from the trauma there could never be enough money attention or love because he knew how quickly it could all go for a young and angsty cobain music was the one area of relief in his life early on he listened almost exclusively to his favorite band the beatles but as he got older he listened to bands that many american kids of his era did led zeppelin kiss queen black sabbath and sex pistols however his music tastes changed completely when kurt discovered punk rock at the end of the school year when he was 16 years old that summer he saw a band called the melvins in a parking lot behind a grocery store and it was an event that would change his life [Music] the first time that i had seen an audience just get completely loose you know to break down all that cool it was incredible like people were you know diving all over each other and falling down drunk and smiling and vomiting and having a great time you know it was just there were no inhibitions at that time so everyone said let's have fun kurt described the concert in his journal he wrote they played faster than i'd 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 i found my special purpose the next day nearly every tv depiction of early punk was negative but for kurt it was something incredible he finally found an alternative to heavy metal he loved that punk was more about energy versus technical mastery i was intimidated when i first started playing guitar by i was intimidated by really professional musicians like like heavy metal musicians who are very anal and technical and you know promoted the fact that they can play good you know and that that made me not ever think of playing rock and roll realistically or ever making a career out of it or actually you know going for it and doing it but when i first when i heard punk rock it made me realize that these people are a lot like me you know they're just as sloppy as bad musicians but they still like passion and they like energy so it helped me start a band [Music] [Applause] cobain dropped out of high school just two weeks before his graduation when he realized he didn't have enough credits to graduate he then picked up a job at that same school working as a janitor though he despised work his guitar made his life tolerable and he practiced hours each day his friends and family noticed he was becoming skilled at playing and it became a major source of self-esteem although he'd never admitted to others he wrote in his journal punk rock is art punk rock to me means freedom punk rock ethic is that absolute denial of anything sacred i find a few things sacred such as the superiority of women and the negros contributions to art i guess what i'm saying is that art is sacred punk rock is freedom expression and right to express is vital anyone can be artistic with the ultimate goal of becoming a famous rock star kurt started a band with his goofy six foot seven friend chris novoselich they first met through a common friend at a punk concert in seattle the pair then found a drummer in chad channing and went through band names like ed ted and fred skid row and fecal matter before finally settling on nirvana what's your definition of nirvana well the most common word that comes up in every definition that i've read has been freedom so we kind of like to think of our music as musical freedom in a way not being tied to a specific genre or a specific sound [Music] early on kurt wasn't making money from his music so he continued working as a janitor cleaning motels and a dentist's office the funny part is that kurt never really did his job he'd take naps in the motel rooms and raid the guest refrigerators once they left when he wasn't pretending to work kurt was attending local punk shows and it was outside one of these clubs that he met his first long-time girlfriend tracy mirander who was a key figure in his trajectory after they got together he moved into her studio apartment in olympia tracy financially supported them both by working an overnight shift in the cafeteria of the boeing airplane plant in seattle kurt eventually stopped working so tracy became his sole benefactor which allowed his artistic life to blossom in ways it never had before being unemployed kurt started a routine that he'd follow for the rest of his life he'd wake up at noon and eat kraft mac and cheese after eating he'd spend the rest of the day doing one of three things watching tv practicing his guitar or creating an art project he rarely identified himself as an artist but if you walked into his apartment any afternoon you were as likely to find him with a paintbrush in his hand as a guitar cobain couldn't afford actual canvas or even quality paper so many of his works were created on the back of old board games he found in thrift stores instead of paint which was expensive he used pencil pen magic marker spray paint and even blood his themes were always consistent everything he made was a little [ __ ] up and dark [Music] [Music] [Music] kurt obsessively wrote in his journal he filled dozens of notebooks with lyrics drawings and writings about his plans for the band the state of music and society at large these journals give us a great look at how cobain saw himself and the world in one particularly self-aware entry he wrote i'm threatened by ridicule i'm overly conscious of the sincerity in my voice i like to have sex with people i love my parents yet i disagree with nearly everything they stand for i understand and appreciate the value of religion for others my emotions are affected by music punk rock means freedom i use bits and pieces of other's personalities to form my own at 21 kurt's focus was on the band above anything else and together they developed a powerful sound nirvana played countless parties in small venues across the northwest and started gaining some buzz as reserved as kurt was offstage when he went on it was almost like he became possessed we play a very powerful high-energy type of rock and roll we move around on stage a lot and just scream with an abandon i guess one of nirvana's demo tapes fell into the lap of a seattle independent record label called subpop which boasted two of kurt's favorite bands mud honey and soundgarden the label was impressed enough to sign the band in october 1988 for a 600 advance nirvana's first single was a cover song called love buzz which is playing right now and their debut album bleach hit shelves the following year it was done like like four days or i don't even forget how many days under a week three four five days something like that 600 bucks when we were mixing it we were really sick and kurt went down to the health department and he got these uh codeine cost syrups we were just popping those and we were just like in la la land and then we were like hands-on producers just cooking on this coding joy juice i think it had a big effect on how that record turned out that's adonis truth [Music] [Applause] [Music] when bleach came out in 1989 it received praise from critics and sold 40 000 copies which was impressive for an indie release these numbers met the expectations of subpop co-founder jonathan poneman but kurt wasn't content he thought nirvana should be way more popular i thought that they were going to be really successful but our metric for success was much more modest kurt would tell me regularly we should be selling a million of these and i'd be going you don't understand you know and uh boy did i not know what i was talking about with the goal of selling more records kurt wanted out of his contract with subpop and started shopping for another record deal with a major label around this time kurt fired chad channing and brought in dave girl to replace him the instant curtain chris practiced with girl they knew they had their final drummer they loved dave because he hit harder than anyone they'd ever played with [Music] dave added so much more diversity not only did he have perfect metronome timing he hit really hard he was able to go in between all the dynamics that we wanted to experiment with and it was just perfect and plus he you know saying backup vocals with dave in the band we officially had the three-man lineup that was the final and ultimate version of nirvana [Music] kerr briefly dated a woman named toby vale in may 1990 she was a member of a female punk band in olympia called bikini kale kurt adored her and wanted to make their relationship exclusive but she didn't want anything serious and broke up with him in november 1990. instead of understanding that she was young busy and independent cobain thought she left him because he didn't deserve her in the wake of their breakup he channeled his pain into writing and filled an entire notebook with stream of consciousness rants [Music] he wrote words suck i mean everything has been said i can't remember the last real interesting conversation i've had in a long time words aren't as important as the energy derived from music especially live yeah all isms feed off one another but at the top of the food chain is still the white corporate macho strong ox male not redeemable as far as i'm concerned i still think that in order to expand on all other isms sexism has to be blown wide open it's almost impossible to deprogram that ancestrally established male oppressor especially the ones who've been weaned on it through their families generations like die hard nra freaks and inherited corporate power mongrels the ones who were born into no choice but to keep the torch and only let sparks fall for the rest of us to gather at their feet john lennon has been my idol all my life but he's dead wrong about revolution sit on your ass and be beaten [ __ ] arm yourself find a representative of gluttony of oppression and blow the motherfucker's head off by the end of 1990 there was a new character showing up in his journal heroine in november of that year cobain overcame his fear of needles had first injected heroin with a friend in olympia the drug's euphoric effects helped him temporarily escape his heartache and stomach pain and early on he only used it occasionally beyond painting and journaling kurt spent most of his time channeling his grief into songwriting and by the time he returned to the studio he had songs that were a huge level above anything he'd written before [Music] nirvana recorded six demo tracks with producer butch figg and used this to shop for a new record label it wasn't hard to find a deal because nirvana had already built an audience the old fashioned way through their endless touring and also had some proven success with their previous album bleach a bidding war broke out among a handful of labels and in april 1991 nirvana signed to dgc a smaller imprint of geffen records the band received 287 thousand dollars for the deal which was one of the largest advances for northwest band at the time when kurt received his first big check he paid his rent and then drove to the mall and spent almost a thousand dollars at toys r us [Music] the previous winter while the band was waiting to sign their deal kurt and dave lived together in a small apartment in olympia while chris lived 30 minutes away in tacoma for three months they drove up to tacoma each night to practice kurt handled all the songwriting and lyrics and they worked out many of the singles that ended up on their album including their most popular song ever smells like teen spirit which was kurt's attempt at making the ultimate pop song in may 1991 nirvana traveled to los angeles for six weeks to record their major label debut with butch figg this time around since they had a big budget producer and mixer on the project nirvana's brilliant songs didn't get lost in cheap production like their previous work the original album title was going to be sheep but as recording ended kurt changed the name to never mind which was a metaphor for his attitude towards life why did you entitle the the album never mind i don't i don't know so i could brush off the question forget it it doesn't matter it doesn't matter kurt spent two years planning liner notes and various concepts for the album cover but he threw those ideas away when he watched a television show about underwater childbirth he had the label try to acquire footage from the program without success so instead kurt drew out a slightly different idea on a sheet of notebook paper it was a baby boy swimming underwater chasing a dollar bill their photographer went out to a local pool to shoot the cover after recruiting his friend's three-month-old baby to take part for just 200 dgc was fine with the anti-capitalism message but had concerns about the baby genitalia and wanted to use a different image cobain agreed to change it only under one condition they had to add a strategically placed sticker that would read if you're offended by this you must be a closet pedophile the original album art went out untouched on september 24 1991 when nevermind was released to the world dgc had mild expectations for the album's success and only pressed 46 000 copies because of the band's loyal fan base nevermind sold out quickly and was unavailable for several days and opened at a modest 144th place on the billboard charts over the next few months geffin pressed more copies and sales increased significantly as the single smells like teen spirit became super popular thanks in large part to its airtime on mtv as the band set out for their european tour at the start of november nevermind entered the billboard top 40 for the first time at number 35. on tour the band noticed all their shows were now dangerously oversold and television crews and journalists followed them everywhere a week after christmas and three and a half months after its release nevermind jumped to number one on the billboard charts when it knocked off michael jackson's dangerous as the best-selling album in the country it shot to the top slot after a massive number of kids returned cds they got for christmas in exchange for never mind this story is one of a handful of times in history when the underground made its way to the top of the mainstream nirvana was now the biggest band in the world and cobain was being called the voice of his generation and now for all your lawn care needs it's nirvana probably the biggest band in the world right now yes sir indeed please welcome nirvana ladies and gentlemen nirvana oh [Music] wine [Music] [Applause] marijuana has done more for my memory than i can remember the energy comes out of us and it goes into the audience and they bounce it back we just play catch with some awesome vibes [Applause] [Music] so now i'll say the winner nirvana i'd like to thank my family and our record label and our true fans that's right you played yourself boy i'm a player i'm a high roller [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] when nirvana blew up everyone wanted to be like kurt what he wore on magazine covers or on tour became the hottest trends in teen fashion and he was fearless when it came to dressing he'd go on stage in floral gowns or leopard jackets simply because he wanted to his oversized sweaters distressed jeans silk pajama shirts layered flannels painted nails and signature sunglasses became trademarks of grunge fashion kurt relished having big audiences and hit songs and would watch mtv and complain if he didn't see a nirvana video within a certain period of time this spoke to the fact that cobain liked his new position as a famous singer but acted completely different in public kurt was extremely conscious of his punk roots and didn't want to be seen as a sellout so he constantly downplayed everything the 90s were not an age for the ambitious back then the worst thing you could be was a sellout and not because it involved money selling out meant you wanted to be popular and any explicit need for approval was proof that you were terrible the key to coolness in this decade was disinterest in conventional success so that's the way kurt spoke in an interview with the la times he said we had grown up admiring punk bands and thinking all those groups on the pop charts were embarrassing and suddenly we were one of those bands famous is the last thing i want to be kurt constantly diminished his music as pop and his lyrics as meaningless as chuck closerman pointed out in his book the 90s there was a sense that he was almost inventing intellectual apathy we're white boy guitar oriented rock nothing new i mean we have something in common with anything or any band that has that has um electric guitars in their hands you know play drums you know every once in a while i look at the billboard charts and i just go crap crap crap just like i always have yeah there's nothing to be said it's all in the music man it's all in the music it's all in the meat even though his demeanor was nonchalant there was now a ton of pressure on kurt and he wasn't equipped to handle it nirvana played nearly a hundred shows on four continents in five months and the constant cycle of traveling performing and interviews took a massive toll on his mental and physical health he'd long been suffering from a painful stomach condition which was aggravated by stress and his screaming singing style the band never stayed in one place long enough to have a doctor tend to his stomach problem so to find some relief he used heroin i was in pain i mean i was in pain for so long that i didn't care if i was in a band i didn't care if i was alive you know i mean he'd been going on and building up for so many years that i was you know suicidal i mean i just didn't want to live i just thought if i'm going to die if i'm going to kill myself i should take some drugs you know may as well become a junkie because i felt like a junkie every day you know waking up starving forcing myself to eat you know barfing it back up it's like i'm in pain all the time and being on tour was a lot worse too you know it made it even worse because cobain was rich his drug binges were much more frequent when he got home from tour he'd do the drug all weekend and pass out alone in his apartment he wrote in his journal less practiced guitar less and escape from the world more kurt was in desperate need of some inspiration and he got that when he met and fell in love with the one and only courtney love [Music] [Music] [Music] um [Music] falling in love is paradoxical because it's both the best and the worst thing that can happen to you there's no better feeling than finding the person you love but once you have it there's always the chance you'll lose it courtney love started liking kurt after she saw him perform and pursued him for months she got his number called him and told interviewers that she had a crush on him when kurt finally met her it was full throttle from the start she was very sensual and confident and won him over on november 8 1991 kurt pledged his love to courtney on live television in the uk when he uttered these words before his performance that courtney love the lead singer of the sensational pop group hole is the best [ __ ] in the world courtney was all the things kurt wanted to be she was loud proud and unabashedly herself and for someone as calculated and people pleasing as kurt she gave him the confidence to care less even more kurt felt understood by courtney because she endured a lot of the same early traumas he did he wanted to build a home because his home and his family fell apart so when courtney came into his life she was interesting she was artistic intellectual and you know she did drugs too many people accused courtney of hooking up with the star for her own professional gain but she was already a successful musician as the lead singer of whole and got a million dollar record deal with no involvement from kurt just a few months after they started dating the couple married in february 1992 at a secluded beach in waikiki hawaii it was a small sunset ceremony with only eight people and no family in attendance over the next six months kurt took a break from touring and lived in an apartment with courtney all he wanted to do was stay in paint play guitar and do heroin and now he finally had a partner that would do the drug with him [Music] in april 1992 cobain denied drug rumors by telling rolling stone my body wouldn't allow me to take drugs if i wanted to because i'm so weak all the time all drugs are a waste of time they destroy your memory and your self-respect and everything that goes along with your self-esteem his sentiment might have been true but his denial was of course a lie when the article came out cobain was a full-fledged heroin addict courtney herself had gotten clean before they got together but if you bring a recovering addict around a current addict the results are inevitable when she chose cobain she chose drugs and then she got pregnant when courtney found out she stopped using heroin and did rounds of tests that showed the fetus hadn't been harmed and decided to keep the baby the prospect of a baby gave kurt a small beacon of hope in what had become an increasingly bleak existence when he looked at the sonograms he kept saying look at that little bean so they named her francis bean cobain she arrived on august 18 1992 and to the relief of everyone close to the couple the baby was completely healthy however that didn't matter to the public once a vanity fair article titled strange love came out in september which accused courtney of using heroin throughout her pregnancy this article moved kurt and courtney out of the rock magazines and into the public consciousness newspapers across the u.s ran harsh stories about the couple and one magazine the globe went as far as running a headline story titled rockstar's baby is born a junkie complete with a picture of a deformed newborn which they falsely implied was francis when she was just a few weeks old child welfare officers removed francis from her parents home based almost entirely on the vanity fair story a court hearing followed and around her seven month birthday francis was finally returned to her parents care after this experience kurt was suspicious of the people around him and became extremely selective of the interviews he did i mean the women in vanity fair came into our house with an agenda she knew exactly what kind of uh what kind of a article she was going to write before she even met us before she knew that she hated courtney because of the rumors she heard and she believed them and decided to write a crucifixion piece it's as simple as that two days after the court hearing kurt flew to england a new baby drug problems tabloids and court aside he was needed on stage nirvana was headlining the 1992 reading festival [Music] when success comes in the music industry it happens fast [Music] and for kurt music was no longer fun there was constant pressure from management to tour and make more music and every aspect of his life was publicly scrutinized the only thing that mattered now was his little family kurt adored francis and would do anything to make her smile or laugh yet somehow even the joy of holding his newborn couldn't pull him out of his drug addiction and now his struggles were public domain it's a rumor in europe that occurred from nirvana is dead yep again dead pregnant on on heroin i'm a hermaphonite as well i did lie forever i i tried to keep it away from everybody because no matter how badly i don't want to be a role model or influence anyone i still do i hardly ever went out in public when i was on drugs and i never made a spectacle out of it i never promoted it and now i'm going to be associated with heroin for the rest of my life kurt's self-talk became much darker and can be summed up by a line that appeared repeatedly in his writings i hate myself and i want to die this he decided would be the title of nirvana's next album [Music] millions of fans adored the album never mind but cobain was now embarrassed by it he thought it was too commercial and pop sounding so on their next record he wanted to bring the band back to their punk roots in february 1993 the band traveled to frigid minnesota to record their third album with esteemed engineer steve albini when nirvana made music there usually wasn't a lot of conversation kurt would play a riff and chris would tune into what he was doing and dave would play along with the two of them recording sessions started on february 14 and the entire album was recorded in 14 days albini said kurt was focused and sober throughout the sessions and recorded all his vocal tracks in just six hours it was only after chris convinced kurt that nirvana might face lawsuits with the title i hate myself and i want to die that he agreed to change the name at one point you're going to call it i hate myself and i want to die just like rape me you know the title itself confuses people people would take it too literally they think we were being serious because no one sees the funny side of us hardly you know every picture you know if we take a photo shoot you know we may smile or make goofy faces 90 of the time and if we frown for three seconds they'll use those three second shots cobain switched titles to in utero which came from one of courtney's poems as is common with many artist relationships the two began to think alike share ideas and edit each other's work courtney made him a more careful writer and this album is likely the best songwriting of his career on september 13 1993 nirvana's final studio album was released [Music] in utero opened at number one on the billboard charts and had hit singles with songs like heart-shaped box rate me and all apologies but also showcase the band's more wicked and experimental side with tracks like scentless apprentice milkit and tourette's the main theme throughout the record is kurt's apathy he's disillusioned with the music industry machine he feels nothing he hates the world and he's obsessed with death sonically this is one of the rawest albums i've ever heard there are no bells and whistles or fancy production instead it's a stripped back live sounding record one of the reasons why an album like in utero still sounds fresh today is because it's the sound of three people like it really is it's there's imperfection and inconsistency you know we didn't scrub it up and polish it and clean it up and hand it to you we recorded it sometimes only once you know when i hear a song from an uterus on the radio in between maybe other modern popular recordings it's really stands out you know because it sounds like us and the only people that sounded like us were us cobain had always been obsessed with anatomy so the album art on in utero is sort of the culmination of his aesthetic the cover is an image of an anatomical angel with wings and the back cover is a collage that includes fetuses and body parts lying in a bed of orchids and lilies kurt made the collage on his living room floor before getting it photographed in utero is a testament to the artistic vision of kurt cobain and how it's it's kind of a weird record but it's strangely beautiful at the same time and if you look at kurt's like paintings and his drawings and he had his own it's like what dave was saying about having your own sound and you know kurt was a great songwriter he knew he had a good ear for a hook great singer great guitar player in utero is a good representation of of what what he liked what he liked in art and how he expressed himself kurt had enormous pressure to follow up the success of never mind and he did it all while making something new that was true to his sensibilities with another smash record out everyone wanted a piece of nirvana they had offers to go on tour with u2 and guns and roses and every major festival wanted them to headline but kurt was simply not interested he turned down a possible 6 million paycheck from lollapalooza music and the band took a backseat because by the end of the year addiction controlled his life in palm sunday an autobiographical book by kurt vonnegut he writes a friend of mine once spoke to me about what he called the existential hum the uneasiness which keeps us moving which never allows us to feel entirely at ease he had tried heroin once he said he understood at once the seductiveness of that narcotic for the first time in his life he was not annoyed by the existential hum by the summer of 93 kurt was using heroin almost every day his interest was an escape and the quicker and more incapacitating the better as a result overdosing became routine and he had a dozen documented near-death situations in that year alone cobain tried treatment he attended individual therapy group therapy and even 12-step meetings and would journal about his inability to get off the drug he wrote i remember someone saying if you try heroin once you'll become hooked of course i laughed and stopped at the idea but now i believe this to be very true at least once a year some sort of crisis happens to everyone the loss of a friend or mate or relative this is when the drug tells you to say [ __ ] it every drug addict has said [ __ ] it more times than they can count after each of his sixteenths in rehab cobain always went back to using by the end of the year kurt was deteriorating quickly and his family friends and bandmates were left feeling hopeless in interviews when cobain was asked the inevitable question about heroin he'd lie he talked about his use in the past tense saying he did it for about a year on and off as i expected before i started doing heroin i uh i realized that i knew it at the beginning that it would be just become just as boring as marijuana does you know like all drugs after a few months it's just as boring as you know breathing air he also lied about the state of the band at this point there was clear tension within nirvana kurt started threatening to fire his bandmates refused to practice and turned on festival shows that the other guys wanted to play but of course in interviews he acted like things were better than ever i i don't know i just think our morale is at its best right now yeah i don't know since i haven't had a stomach problem and i've had a child and i'm married now you know i mean i'm sure i'm a lot easier to deal with you know i'm not as grumpy as i used to be i couldn't be happier right now kurt's roller coaster of moods affected everyone around him and fluctuated depending on whether he'd been fighting with courtney he began surrounding himself almost exclusively with a different set of friends now many of whom were also drug addicts so christ and dave stopped feeling welcome you know i don't i don't do drugs right i haven't done drugs since i was a kid right 20 years old i think when i stopped and so you know there were drugs around and there was like the people who did the drugs and the 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 on february 2 1994 nirvana traveled to europe and what would be their final tour together kurt was depressed and in no condition to play but the record company wanted the band on the road to cash in on their latest record in utero the first couple shows went surprisingly well the band didn't hang out much anymore but their chemistry on stage was still undeniable on february 20 while the band traveled from switzerland to italy kurt turned 27 and spent it alone because his wife was in london for business it's speculated that courtney was really hanging out with billy corgan the lead singer of the smashing pumpkins who had four shows in a row in london the week of kurt's birthday this was extra shady because she dated billy prior to her relationship with kurt cobain found out and was convinced she cheated on him and viewed it as full-on betrayal after this event kurt ended the tour nirvana's last ever show took place on march 1 in munich germany the band had only made it through 15 shows with another 23 to go two days later on march 3rd cobain checked into a five-star hotel in rome where courtney met him that afternoon this was the first time they'd seen each other in 60 days so kurt went all out and wanted to win her over again he got her roses and a piece of the coliseum because she loved roman history that night he ordered room service and they shared a rare bottle of champagne later on courtney took a valium and passed out without making love to him the next morning when courtney awoke around 5 30 am she found cobain on the floor completely unresponsive with blood coming out of his nose in his pocket he had written a note that said you don't love me anymore i'd rather die than go through a divorce love frantically called down to the front desk in an ambulance rush cobain to nearby hospital where his stomach was pumped and emptied at the time the media portrayed the incident as an accident but it's since been revealed that more than 50 pills of rehypnol were found in his stomach and he overdosed his intentions were clear since rehypnol is sold in tinfoil packets so each pill must be unwrapped individually 20 hours after arriving in the hospital he awoke from his coma and immediately scribbled his first request on a notepad get these [ __ ] tubes out of my nose in his mind nothing had changed he was back in his own small piece of hell [Music] after rome kurt was never the same and declined rapidly he shut everyone out even the presence of his daughter couldn't raise a smile out of desperation courtney staged an intervention at their home on march 25th 1994 with 10 of his closest friends including chris novoselich where kurt ultimately agreed to do another treatment program the next day courtney flew to la to check herself into her own rehab program to detox from tranquilizers a few days later on march 30th chris drove kurt to the airport and a label employee picked him up in la and checked him into the exodus recovery center cobain spent two days at the clinic he talked to several psychologists there and none of them considered himself destructive on his final night cobain told the staff he was stepping out onto the patio for a smoke outside he escaped and caught a flight home that same evening [Music] a curious thing about life is that we can never know what it's like to be another person we can express emotions and share ideas through language but ultimately life is subjective and experienced alone consciousness is sort of like a running film playing in your mind and your inner voice is the never-ending conversation on how that film is going by the end of his life kurt's inner voice was completely warped and dark fueled by his drug use he built up ideas not based in reality he was convinced no one liked him and that everyone was against him the intrusive thoughts became relentless what are you doing who are you trying to fool kurt you're [ __ ] up you're you're too weak for that courtney doesn't love you anymore she left you how could you love a piece of [ __ ] like you anyways is better when courtney found out kurt escaped from rehab she cancelled his credit card and hired a private investigator to track him down at the same time kurt's mom filed a missing person's report with the seattle police one of francis's nannies briefly saw kurt at home on april 2nd but never saw him again in his final days it's believed he wandered around town with no clear agenda neighbors say they spotted him in a park near his house looking ill and wearing a hunting hat thick jacket and sunglasses to try and not get recognized on april 5th 1994 cobain went up to the greenhouse in the seattle home and left a note he had made his mind up he was done with the world hmm [Music] one [Music] [Applause] [Music] um [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] what a tragic ending to a truly impactful life kurt cobain's status as an icon distorts how quickly it all happened there were only 924 days that separated the release of never mind and his death and he was just 27 years old in the end he was convinced the world was a horrible place but truth is never black and white reality is a paradox in the world there is good and evil joy and pain life and death and you don't have one without the other it's a shame that cobain never got to an age where he could recognize the good again you really don't know everything when you're in your early 20s believe it or not human nature is paradoxical and kirkobain's life reflects that he drove a volvo 240 because he thought it was the safest car in the market yet was completely reckless when it came to drug use he acted like he was disinterested in the press but was extremely aware and sensitive to criticism he pretended that nirvana's worldwide success was an accident but it only happened because of his careful orchestration there are people that think kurt was a slacker who did drugs and wrote classics with little effort but that's not true cobain was a student of art and put in his 10 000 hours his voice changed over the course of his career because he was constantly experimenting and refining his sound he may have acted like nothing mattered but he cared deeply and left a massive mark on culture because he fully devoted himself to his craft 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 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 [Music] [Music] obviously i didn't know kurt i wasn't even alive when he died yet he's someone that i feel like i knew and that must be how all his fans feel his struggles and his duality are extremely relatable and that's why every generation identifies with him if you're watching this video you've managed to find a reason to live or are sticking around to find one hang in there some of your best days haven't happened yet you have not seen it all you have not felt it all there are more people for you to meet places to see and experiences to have when you're going through it it's hard to remember what it feels like to be okay but how you feel right now is not how you will always feel seek help if you need it don't be afraid to share your struggles we're all alone in this together i wish cobain would have understood this but without a doubt his legacy is his art which will stay with us forever the message of nirvana's music is often uplifting it allows you to acknowledge your pain but still takes you to a higher level and makes you feel better kurt's music has outlived his own life and his darkest demons and the positivity from his work will trickle down for generations to come [Music] [Music] what's going on guys jake here i want to let you know that the solar website is now live at solar.com and we have a couple t-shirts hats and stickers available for sale i got the two t-shirts designed by two different artists the heart was done by a japanese artist and then the mermaid dolphin was done by an italian artist and we got these t-shirts screen printed down the street in puerto rico and this isn't one of those pre-order situations right now so i actually do have a limited quantity of t-shirts in my apartment so if you want one of those make sure you order it quickly if you are interested in just supporting the channel beyond purchasing some merch you could do so with a one-time donation via paypal or also via venmo and then if you yourself are a creative person and you know you're inspired by this video you're inspired by the work being done on this channel you can support me via patreon on there i have specific breakdowns i think right now three or four editing breakdowns on specific documentaries i produce i walk through sort of my mentality to approaching topics and give you advice on the actual editing in premiere pro but i also include like pretty intimate journal entries and i honestly go on there and ramble like it's i start recording and i just share my thoughts about the state of the world and the state of content so if you're interested in like completely unfiltered uh you can get that on patreon starting at just two dollars obviously the work in the documentary being done on this channel take a lot of time but if you just want some daily vibes follow our solar instagram page at solar.com and yeah i'm really it's been cool to see that page start to take off a little bit you can also follow solar on tick tock whenever i edit a reel for instagram i also upload it to tik tok so in this video i played snippets of nirvana music and i did my best with my music curation to create the the feeling of of kurt and nirvana's music but there's nothing like the real thing so if you want to go jam some nirvana music check out my nirvana pack spotify playlist it's all of my all-time favorite nirvana music and while you're there check out my other playlists my signature playlist is called songs i'm playing right now and i update that every day like i seriously take a lot of pride in that playlist if a song makes it into that playlist it means i had a moment with that song so check that out and also check out my other playlists i have chill packs i have like house music playlists i have some pregame bangers vintage hip-hop there's literally everything on there and i'm adding new playlists so i think those are all the things i wanted to plug so now is the credits first and foremost i want to thank audrey badillo who has been my creative muse throughout this project and she translated this video into spanish so thank you so much audrey i want to thank justice ster my good friend dress sister who just he made five beautiful beautiful nirvana guitar covers that really contributed to the experience of this video and not only that but justice was someone that contributed a lot of ideas and that that worked its way into the writing of this video so thank you justice and lastly i want to thank jack who goes by art by smack jack on instagram who created just this really beautiful punk animated sequence all right guys until next time peace [Music] you

2022-09-10 03:39

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