Kurt Cobain Bio, Age, Education, Career, Relationship, Death

Kurt Cobain's Net Worth as of December 2024 is $450 Million

Quick Facts of Kurt Cobain

Kurt Donald Cobain was a singer, songwriter, artist, and musician from the United States. He was the guitarist, front vocalist, and principal composer for the rock band Nirvana. Cobain’s works expanded the conceptual patterns of popular rock music through his angst-fueled lyrics and anti-establishment image. He was widely regarded as a spokesman for Generation X and is acclaimed as one of the most prominent musicians in alternative rock history.

Kurt Cobain’s Bio, Age, Early Life, Education

Cobain was born on February 20, 1967, at Grays Harbor Hospital in Aberdeen, Washington, the son of waitress Wendy Elizabeth (née Fradenburg; born 1948) and automotive technician Donald Leland Cobain (born 1946). On July 31, 1965, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, his parents married. His ancestors came from the Netherlands, England, France, Germany, Ireland, and Scotland. In 1875, his Irish family emigrated from Carrickmore, County Tyrone, Ireland. Researchers discovered that they were shoemakers with the surname “Cobane” from Inishatieve, a townland within Carrickmore. They originally lived in Canada, in Cornwall, Ontario, before relocating to Washington. Cobain himself mistook his Irish ancestry for being from County Cork. Kimberly, his younger sister, was born on April 24, 1970.

Cobain was born into a musical household. His maternal uncle, Chuck Fradenburg, was a member of the Beachcombers; his aunt, Mari Earle, was a guitarist who performed in bands across Grays Harbor County; and his great-uncle, Delbert, was an Irish tenor who appeared in the 1930 film King of Jazz. Kurt was regarded as a cheerful and exuberant child who was also sensitive and caring. His talent as an artist was evident from a young age when he would draw in his bedroom his favourite characters from films and cartoons, such as the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Donald Duck. His grandmother, Iris Cobain, a professional artist, inspired him.

Cobain became interested in music at a young age. His aunt Mari claims he began singing at the age of two. He began playing the piano and singing at the age of four, creating a song about a trip to a nearby park. He listened to musicians such as the Ramones and Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) and began singing songs such as Arlo Guthrie’s “Motorcycle Song,” the Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun,” and the Monkees television show theme song at an early age.

Cobain’s parents split when he was nine years old. He subsequently stated that the divorce had a significant impact on his life, and his mother remarked that his behaviour changed considerably; Cobain became belligerent and distant. He stated in a 1993 interview:

For some reason, I recall feeling humiliated. I was embarrassed by my parents. I couldn’t stand up to some of my classmates any longer since I truly wanted to have the normal, you know, family. Mother and father. I want such security, and I loathed my parents for many years as a result.

Following the divorce, Cobain’s parents sought new spouses. Despite his father’s promise not to remarry, he married Jenny Westeby, much to Kurt’s chagrin. Cobain, his father, Westeby, and Mindy and James, her two children, moved into a new home. Cobain first liked Westeby because she offered him the mother care he craved. Westeby gave birth to a son, Chad Cobain, in January 1979. This new family, who Cobain believed was not his true family, was in stark contrast to the care Cobain had grown accustomed to as an only child, and he immediately began to harbour anger toward his stepmother. Cobain’s mother began dating an abusive man. Cobain witnessed domestic violence against her, with one instance resulting in her hospitalization with a fractured arm. Wendy refused to press charges because she was still devoted to the relationship.

During this time, Cobain was arrogant toward adults and began bullying another boy at school. His father and Westeby took him to a therapist, who determined that he would benefit from being raised by a single parent. Both sides of the family attempted but failed, to reunite his parents. Cobain’s mother granted his father full custody on June 28, 1979. Cobain’s adolescent disobedience proved too much for his father, who placed his son in the care of family and friends. He became a passionate Christian and often attended church services while living with his friend Jesse Reed’s born-again Christian family. He eventually left Christianity and went on “anti-God” rants, according to reports. “Lithium” is a song about his time living with the Reed family. Religion continued to play an essential role in his personal life and ideas.

Despite his disinterest in sports, Cobain was enrolled in a junior high school wrestling team at his father’s request. He was a great wrestler who disliked the sport. Because of the mockery he received from his teammates and coach, he allowed himself to be pinned to make his father upset. Later, his father enrolled him in a Little League Baseball club, where he intentionally struck out to avoid participating. Cobain met a gay boy at school and was bullied by his classmates, who assumed he was gay. In an interview, he stated that he liked being connected with a gay identity because he disliked people, and when they assumed he was gay, they ignored him. “I started becoming incredibly proud of the fact that I was gay even though I wasn’t,” he added. When his friend tried to kiss him, Cobain backed away, indicating to him that he was not gay but stayed friends with him. According to Cobain, he used to spray paint “God Is Gay” on Aberdeen pickup trucks. According to police records, Cobain was detained for spray painting the slogan “ain’t got no how whatchamacallit” on other people’s cars.

In 1981, Cobain performed on the drums at a Montesano High School assembly. During class, Cobain would frequently draw. He would draw various objects, particularly those related to human anatomy. [Another explanation is required] Cobain drew Michael Jackson for a caricature project for an art class, but the teacher informed him the image was improper for a school hallway. He then created an “unflattering” portrait of then-President Ronald Reagan. Cobain met Roger “Buzz” Osborne, vocalist and guitarist of the Melvins, through art and electronics studies, who became a buddy and exposed him to punk rock and hardcore music. The first concert Cobain attended, according to numerous of his classmates and family members, was Sammy Hagar and Quarterflash at the Seattle Center Coliseum in 1983. Cobain, on the other hand, said that his first live show was with the Melvins, who performed a free concert outside the Thriftway store where Osborne worked. Cobain spoke about this encounter in his notebooks and interviews, emphasizing the influence it had on him. As an adolescent growing up in Montesano, Washington, Cobain sought solace in the flourishing Pacific Northwest punk scene, attending punk rock events in Seattle.

Cobain moved to Aberdeen with his mother during his sophomore year of high school. He dropped out of Aberdeen High School two weeks before graduation after finding he didn’t have enough credits to graduate. His mother gave him the option of finding work or leaving. After a week, Cobain discovered his clothes and other possessions in cartons. Feeling exiled, Cobain remained with friends, sneaking back into his mother’s basement on occasion. Cobain also claimed that when homeless, he stayed under a bridge over the Wishkah River, which inspired the song “Something in the Way.” Later, his future bandmate Krist Novoselic stated, “He hung out there, but it was impossible to live on those muddy banks with the waves coming in and out. That was his revisionism at work.”

Cobain moved into an apartment in late 1986, paying his rent by working at the Polynesian Resort, a themed resort on the Pacific coast in Ocean Shores, Washington, about 20 miles (32 kilometres) west of Aberdeen.

During this time, he frequently travelled to Olympia, Washington, to see rock concerts. During his travels to Olympia, Cobain became involved with Tracy Marander. The couple had a tight connection, but it was frequently strained due to financial issues and Cobain’s absence when on tour. Marander supported the couple by working in the Boeing plant cafeteria in Auburn, Washington, and frequently stole food. During his relationship with Marander, Cobain spent most of his time sleeping till late at night, watching television, and working on creative projects. Her insistence that he acquires a job sparked disputes that inspired Cobain to write “About a Girl,” which was included on Nirvana’s album Bleach. Marander is credited for taking the album’s cover photo. She didn’t realize Cobain had written “About a Girl” about her until years after his death.

Cobain began dating Tobi Vail, an acclaimed punk zinester of the riot grrrl band Bikini Kill who supported the DIY ethos, soon after his divorce from Marander. Cobain vomited after meeting Vail, overcome with fear as a result of his crush on her. In the song “Aneurysm,” the lyric “love you so much it makes me ill” was inspired by this experience. While Cobain saw Vail as his female counterpart, his connection with her deteriorated; he craved the maternal warmth of a traditional relationship, which Vail saw as sexist in a countercultural punk rock environment. Alice Wheeler, Vail’s acquaintance, described her lovers as “fashion accessories.” Cobain and Vail spent the majority of their time together talking about politics and philosophy.

They worked together on a musical endeavour called Bathtub Is Real in 1990, in which they both sang and played guitar and drums. They recorded their tunes on Vail’s father’s four-track tape equipment. Vail is quoted in Everett True’s 2009 book Nirvana: The Biography as saying that Cobain “I’d play his songs, he’d play mine, and we’d record them on my father’s four-track. Sometimes I’d sing and play the drums on the songs he was writing… He was quite interested in the fact that I was creative and interested in music. He’d never played music with a girl before, I believe. He was awe-inspiring and a lot of fun to play with.” Slim Moon describes their music as follows: “Olympia is recognized for her minimal quiet pop tracks. They were both excellent singers.”

When Kurt Cobain got intoxicated with his friend Kathleen Hanna, another member of Bikini Kill, she scrawled on his wall, “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit.” Hanna meant that Cobain smelled like the deodorant Teen Spirit, which she and Vail had discovered while shopping. He then asked her if he could use the phrase in a song, which startled her. Cobain claimed he was ignorant of the deodorant until months after the single’s release and mistook it for a revolutionary cry while discussing anarchist and punk rock.

Kurt Cobain’s Career

Kurt Cobain’s uncle offered him a bike or a secondhand guitar for his 14th birthday on February 20, 1981; he chose the guitar. Soon, he was attempting to perform “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin. Before he began writing his songs, he learnt to play “Louie Louie,” Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust,” and the Cars’ “My Best Friend’s Girl.” Despite being compelled to write right-handed, Cobain played left-handed.

After dropping out of Aberdeen High School in early 1985, Cobain formed Fecal Matter. It was one of “many joke bands” that formed from the Melvins’ group of pals, and it first comprised Cobain singing and playing the guitar, Melvins drummer Dale Crover playing bass, and Greg Hokanson on drums. They spent months rehearsing original material as well as renditions of songs by The Ramones, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix. Faecal Matter split up in 1986, while the Melvins were promoting their debut EP, Six Songs.

Cobain rarely found somebody with whom he could play music in high school. He met Krist Novoselic, a fellow punk rock fan while hanging out at the Melvins’ rehearsal space. Novoselic’s mother owned a hair salon, and the two periodically practised in the salon’s upper room. A few years later, Cobain attempted to persuade Novoselic to join him in forming a band by lending him a copy of a home demo recorded by Fecal Matter.

After months of pleading, Novoselic ultimately consented to join Cobain in founding Nirvana. During this period, religion appeared to be a significant muse for Cobain, as he frequently used Christian iconography in his work and had a growing interest in Jainism and Buddhist philosophy. The band name “Nirvana” was inspired by the Buddhist concept of “liberation from pain, suffering, and the external world,” which Cobain associated with the punk rock attitude and ideology.
Cobain became disillusioned with the band’s early touring due to the band’s inability to draw large crowds and the difficulty in maintaining themselves. During their early years as a band, Novoselic and Cobain hosted a rotating cast of drummers. Nirvana eventually landed on Chad Channing, with whom they recorded the album Bleach, which was released on Sub Pop Records in 1989. Cobain, on the other hand, got displeased with Channing’s technique and fired him. He and Novoselic finally replaced Channing with Dave Grohl. Grohl assisted the band in recording their major-label debut, Nevermind, in 1991. Nirvana swiftly reached the public with Nevermind’s lead single, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” popularizing a type of alternative rock known as “grunge.” Nirvana has sold over 28 million records in the United States alone, and over 75 million globally, since its debut. The popularity of Nevermind gave several Seattle bands, including Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, exposure to new audiences. As a result, throughout the first part of the 1990s, alternative rock became a popular genre on radio and music television in the United States. Nirvana was seen as the “flagship band of Generation X,” and Cobain was grudgingly appointed as the generation’s “spokesman” by the media. He was irritated by this because he believed the audience had misread his artistic meaning.
“When you’re in the spotlight, you have no choice but to be raped repeatedly — they’ll drain every ounce of blood from you until you’re drained. I’m excited about the future. It will only be a year until everyone forgets about it. — Kurt Cobain on the media frenzy that followed the release of Nevermind in 1992. “Cobain struggled to reconcile Nirvana’s huge popularity with his underground background and ambition. He too felt harassed by the media, likening himself to Frances Farmer, after whom he wrote a song, and came to hate people who professed to be fans of the band but failed to recognise or misconstrued, the band’s social and political convictions. He was an outspoken opponent of sexism, racism, and homophobia, and he was openly happy that Nirvana had performed at a gay rights event in Oregon in 1992, in support of No-on-Nine. The event was conducted in opposition to Ballot Measure Nine, which sought to mandate that homosexuality be taught in Oregon schools as “abnormal, improper, unnatural, and perverse.” Nirvana participated in L7’s Rock for Choice campaign, and Cobain was an outspoken supporter of the pro-choice movement. For participating in the pro-choice movement, he received death threats from a tiny number of anti-abortion campaigners, with one activist promising to shoot Cobain as soon as he went on stage.

Members of Nirvana and fellow American alternative rock band Screaming Trees founded the Jury in 1989. Cobain sang and played guitar in the band, as did Mark Lanegan, Krist Novoselic on bass, and Mark Pickerel on drums. On August 20 and 28, 1989, the band recorded four songs that were also played by Lead Belly: “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”, an instrumental version of “Grey Goose”, “Ain’t It a Shame”, and “They Hung Him on a Cross”, the last of which featured Cobain performing solo. [36] After obtaining a tape of Lead Belly’s Last Sessions from friend Slim Moon, Cobain was inspired to record the songs; after hearing them, he “felt a kinship to Leadbelly’s nearly physical displays of hunger and want.”

Cobain approached William S. Burroughs about a prospective collaboration in 1992. Burroughs’ response was to send him a recording of “The Junky’s Christmas” (which he recorded in his studio in Lawrence, Kansas). Cobain provided guitar backup to “Silent Night” and “To Anacreon in Heaven” two months later at a Seattle studio. Soon after, in Lawrence, Kansas, the two would collaborate on “The “Priest” They Called Him,” a spoken word version of “The Junky’s Christmas.”

Kurt Cobain’s Relationship

The date Kurt initially met Courtney Love at the same Satyricon nightclub venue in Portland but a different Nirvana show, January 12, 1990, when both were still leading ardent underground rock bands. Love made advances, but Cobain resisted. Because he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be in a relationship, Cobain cancelled dates and refused Love’s advances early on. Cobain stated, “For a few months, I was resolved to be a bachelor. But I knew straight away that I liked Courtney so much that it was a hardship to stay away from her for so long.” Love watched Cobain perform for the first time in 1989, during a performance in Portland, Oregon. They had a brief conversation after the show, and Love got attracted to him. In his 2006 book, Everett True, a friend of both Cobain and Love, challenges the prior stories, alleging that he introduced the couple on May 17, 1991.

Love was already known to Cobain thanks to her role in the 1987 film Straight to Hell. According to True, the pair first met at a concert featuring L7 and Butthole Surfers in Los Angeles in May 1991. Love began chasing Cobain in the weeks that followed, after learning from Grohl that they shared mutual interests. They were frequently together and connected through drug use in late 1991.

Cobain and Love married on Waikiki Beach in Hawaii on February 24, 1992, just a few days after Nirvana’s “Pacific Rim” tour ended. Love wore a satin and lace gown originally owned by Frances Farmer, while Cobain wore a Guatemalan pocketbook and green pyjamas because he was “too lazy to put on a suit.” Grohl was one of eight people in attendance for the ceremony.

In an interview with The Guardian, Love said that their marriage was opposed by a number of people, including:

“If you marry him, your life will not happen; it will destroy your life,” Kim Gordon [of Sonic Youth] tells me. But, as I already stated, “Whatevs! I adore him, and I want to be with him!” … It wasn’t his fault at all. He wasn’t attempting to do so.

Frances Bean Cobain, the couple’s daughter, was born on August 18, 1992. The artwork for Nirvana’s single “Lithium” featured a sonogram. Love admits to a drug binge with Cobain in the early weeks of her pregnancy in a 1992 Vanity Fair piece. She claimed at the time that Vanity Fair had misquoted her.

Love later confessed to using heroin before she found out she was pregnant. The reporters asked the pair if Frances was hooked to narcotics from infancy. The Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services paid a visit to the Cobains shortly after Love gave birth and eventually sued them to court, claiming that their drug use rendered them, unfit parents.

Kurt Cobain Net Worth

His brand is certainly big business—his estate was reportedly valued at $450 million—and it might expand as Nirvana gets inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April.

Kurt Cobain’s Height, Body Measurement

Cobain had always been a slight man, standing 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighing 125 pounds at the end of his life, but the heroin he used to relieve stomach aches didn’t help his frail appearance.

Kurt Cobain Death

On March 1, 1994, Cobain was diagnosed with bronchitis and severe laryngitis following a tour stop at Terminal Eins in Munich, Germany. The next day, he travelled to Rome for medical treatment, where he was joined by his wife, Courtney Love, on March 3, 1994. Love awoke the next morning to discover that Cobain had overdosed on a cocktail of champagne and Rohypnol. Cobain was brought to the hospital and spent the rest of the day comatose. Cobain was released after five days and returned to Seattle. Love later stated that the episode was Cobain’s first attempt at suicide. Love called Seattle police on March 18, 1994, to report that Cobain was suicidal and had locked himself in a room with a revolver. Police arrived and took several firearms and a bottle of pills from Cobain, who said he was not suicidal and had locked himself in the room to avoid Love.

On March 25, 1994, Love organized an intervention for Cobain’s drug addiction. Dylan Carlson, one of Cobain’s closest pals, was among the ten persons engaged. They included musician acquaintances, record industry officials, and one of Cobain’s closest friends. However, by the end of the day, Cobain had accepted to participate in a detox program. On March 30, 1994, Cobain came to the Exodus Recovery Center in Los Angeles. Staff employees had no idea Cobain had a history of depression and suicide attempts. When friends paid him a visit, they noticed no evidence that Cobain was in a bad mood. He spent the day talking to counsellors about his drug addiction and personal issues while cheerfully playing with his daughter Frances.

These interactions were Cobain’s final encounters with his daughter. The next night, Cobain went outside for a cigarette and climbed over a six-foot-high fence to escape the prison. He took a taxi to Los Angeles International Airport and then flew back to Seattle. He sat next to Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses on the plane. Despite his dislike for Guns N’ Roses, Cobain “seemed thrilled” to see McKagan. McKagan later stated that “all of my instincts told me that something was awry.” Most of Cobain’s friends and relatives had no idea where he was. Love recruited private investigator Tom Grant on April 3 to track down Cobain. The next day, Cobain was nowhere to be found.

On April 8, Cobain’s body was discovered by electrician Gary Smith[86], who had come to install a security system at his Lake Washington Boulevard home. Apart from a small quantity of blood pouring out of Cobain’s ear, the electrician observed no outward evidence of damage and assumed Cobain was asleep until he spotted the shotgun aimed at his chin.

A suicide letter, sent to Cobain’s boyhood imaginary friend Boddah, was discovered, in which Cobain wrote that he had not “felt the excitement of listening to as well as producing music, coupled with truly writing… for too many years now.” His body contained a significant percentage of heroin as well as traces of diazepam. Although conductor David Woodard had created a Dreamachine for Cobain, later discoveries refuted rumours that Cobain had been using the gadget excessively in the days immediately up to his suicide. Cobain’s body had been there for several days; according to the coroner’s findings, he died on April 5, 1994, at the age of 27.

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