Books: Late Rocker's Journals Give Biography Depth
By: TERESA K. WEAVER, Staff - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
August 12th 2001 4:00am
BIOGRAPHY
Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain. By Charles R. Cross. Hyperion. $24.95. 352 pages.
Late rocker's journals give biography depth
The 1994 shotgun suicide of Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana, prompted wails of pure anguish from a generation branded X. From every other generation, though, came a resounding chorus of "Kurt who?" "Heavier Than Heaven" may not unravel the eternal mysteries of fame --- why are so many disaffected youth so deeply affected by one particular songwriter? --- but it may help answer the question of who that troubled young man was. The book is being published on Wednesday, the 10-year anniversary of the release of Nirvana's "Nevermind," the album that is widely credited with pushing alternative rock into the mainstream. Author Charles R. Cross, former editor of an influential Seattle music magazine called The Rocket, conducted some 400 interviews over four years, with Cobain's relatives, friends, bandmates, former girlfriends, teachers, groupies, druggies, nannies and more. But his master coup was twofold: He got access to Cobain's widow, the fabulously outspoken Courtney Love, and to Cobain's extensive private journals. "I knew Kurt had written a lot, but I had no idea of the extent," Cross, 44, says by telephone from his home in Seattle. "Part of writing a book like this is gaining the trust of the family and friends. . . . One day when Courtney and I were talking, she said, 'Oh, you've gotta read Kurt's journals.' "My jaw virtually dropped." With only a little more urging, Cross soon found himself in the basement of Love's manager's house with a duffel bag full of 28 journals. "She gave me unqualified, unlimited access to the journals, no strings attached," Cross says. For any biographer, that would be considered striking the mother lode. For the biographer of a drug-addicted loner who flamed out at age 27, it's more like finding . . . well, nirvana. "Rarely do we have a chance --- with mental illness, depression or addiction --- to see exactly what someone's thinking," Cross says. "And Kurt had so detailed his descent . . . it was sometimes chilling to read." Over the years, Cobain wrote compulsively in his spiral-bound notebooks, drafting song lyrics, letters (never sent), album liner notes (never used) and occasional all-purpose rants. "Somebody, anybody, God help, help me please," Cobain wrote in a stunning 1993 entry. "I want to be accepted. I have to be accepted. I'll wear any kind of clothes you want! I'm so tired of crying and dreaming. I'm soo soo alone. Isn't there anyone out there? Please help me. HELP ME!" It was a long and twisted road from a working-class harbor town of 19,000 in Washington state, where Kurt was born in 1967. He wrote his first "lyrics" at age 4, upon returning from a trip to the park with his aunt: "We went to the park, we got candy." By age 6, he showed musical talent, whether picking out a simple melody on the piano, pounding on his Mickey Mouse drum set or strumming his aunt's guitar. At age 7, the hyperenergetic little boy was prescribed his first drug, Ritalin. And at age 9, his parents divorced. "To Kurt, it was an emotional holocaust --- no other single event in his life had more of an effect on the shaping of his personality . . .," Cross writes. "Rather than outwardly express his anguish and grief, Kurt turned inward. That June, Kurt wrote on his bedroom wall: 'I hate Mom, I hate Dad. Dad hates Mom, Mom hates Dad. It simply makes you want to be so sad.' " As a teenager, Kurt was petulant, restless, stoned much of the time, decidedly uninterested in school. At 14 he told a friend, "I'm going to be a superstar musician, kill myself, and go out in a flame of glory." It's always a stretch to read too much into the casual ramblings of a teenager, but biographer Cross makes much of that statement and later ones about Cobain's "suicide genes." (His great-grandfather and two great-uncles had died of their own hands.) Was it destiny? Or was it simply self-fulfilling prophecy? Cobain was an ambitious slacker, ultimately becoming a successful loser. He complained about Nirvana's overexposure on MTV, but called to whine if their videos weren't played often enough. He bought a million-dollar house, but lived in his car on occasion. He courted fame tirelessly, but rebelled against it when it came. And he drove a Volvo --- the safest family car ever made, he bragged to friends --- to meet his heroin dealer. Perhaps predictably, Cobain's wife was also a study in opposites. Courtney Love's frankness is a wonder to behold in this book. ("You have got to get boxers," she told Cobain after discovering that he wore zebra-striped briefs.) From their first encounter ("I've met the coolest girl in the world," Cobain gushed to a friend), the two were a public relations powder keg. And the portrait Cross paints of Love is not sugarcoated: She did heroin while pregnant with baby Frances Bean Cobain, for instance, and she and Kurt were near divorce at the time of his death. "There were some things Courtney wouldn't talk about . . .," Cross says. "But she was very honest about everything else. I got the sense that she really wanted Kurt's story told." Early in the book, Love recounts the first of an incredible number of near-fatal overdoses. Seven hours after Cobain and his bandmates had made their national television debut on "Saturday Night Live," Love woke up to find Cobain on the floor. " 'It wasn't that he OD'd,' Love recalled. 'It was that he was DEAD. If I hadn't woken up at seven . . . I don't know, maybe I sensed it. It was so (expletive). It was sick and psycho.' " It's one terrifying moment among many in this truncated life.
 Copyright 2001 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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