Kurt
Cobain, the lead singer of Nirvana, was found dead of an apparently
self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head on April 8, 1994, in a small
shed behind his home in Seattle, Washington.Marking the seventeenth anniversary of his death last week, rock scribes and magazines the world over rehashed the gory details of his final days: the drug abuse and depression; the gun purchases, estrangement from his band mates, and a previous, failed attempt to remove himself from this mortal coil.
Much was made as well of the cultural significance of the so-called “Grunge” movement he spearheaded, with Cobain often represented as the era’s generational spokesman, the Bob Dylan of late twentieth-century, disaffected youth.
Too often lost within the reams of hyperbole, however, was the very singular gift which found focus in the band he shared with Kris Novoselic and Dave Grohl; nearly absent from these adoring or dismissive articles was the one thing the man should be remembered for—his music.
Like most people, my first encounter with Cobain’s strange talents came in 1991 by way of the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which seemed to have rocketed in from somewhere beyond the great glossy void
