On my show I was spinning all these cool records on labels like Amphetamine Reptile, Touch & Go, C/Z, and, yes, Sub-Pop. I was a rock club promoter and a college radio DJ in my hometown of Cincinnati, so I was right in the thick of things at the beginnings of what became known as grunge. When I first found out about Nirvana, I was all set not to like them. To me, it’s like that almost happened in spite of who he was. He rocked because it was a way to work out his own deep-seated emotional stuff, something he had to do, and because he enjoyed making music and connecting with others who loved music in the same way that he did. So in my view fame was the furthest thing from Kurt Cobain’s mind from the moment he picked up a guitar to the moment he died. I’m no psychoanalyst, but at least that’s how it looks to me. And, not to judge, but unfortunately I think it was this confused, underlying desire for love that led him to confuse the glitter-grabbing attentions of certain unbalanced, media-mongering parasites for the genuine article. I matter, just like you matter.” I think he felt unloved, and very much wanted to be loved-but simply for who he was, not as some kind of second coming of John Lennon or something. So I think he became a musician for the same reasons that many people become musicians: to express what they’ve been carrying around inside, to do something that says, “Hey, I’m here. From what I know of Kurt’s childhood and early family life, he experienced the kind of fucked-up shambles that would leave most kids feeling alienated and unwanted. There are those who decry the inner struggles of artists when it comes to stuff like this, saying things along the lines of, “Well, why the heck did you become a singer in a rock ’n’ roll band if you didn’t want to be famous?” Kurt Cobain became famous because he was a great singer and performer and an utterly brilliant songwriter, one who, fortunately for those of us who have been moved by his music, was recognized as such by the people at Sub-Pop Records and a handful of other sage folks early on and didn’t fall through the cracks, like so many great artists have. Kurt’s reluctance to accept his fame is well documented, and indeed that aspect of his personality is now part of his mythos as some kind of perceived rock ’n’ roll martyr. Driving to work and meeting his lonely eyes at the stop sign every day always saddened and unsettled me to no end.) But that’s fame for you, I guess many, many people knowing your work and knowing you exist, and thinking that that somehow means they know you, too. (When I lived in Saugerties, New York, in the mid 2000s, there was a house at the end of my block whose ground-floor window shade had been decorated with a giant line drawing of Kurt’s face.
Which is, of course, the great irony, as he’s now one of the most iconic figures in music history, with a voice and visage that’s recognized by people of all walks of life, everywhere from Chicago to the Congo. I get the feeling that not a lot of people ever did, really.
I met Kurt a couple of times, but I can’t say I knew him. The screams and snarls of the power-lunchers at the counter and the clackity-clack of the electric staplers faded into the far-off distance as I stood dazed and frozen at the report that Kurt Cobain was no more. On April 5, 1994, however, with that phone call, it all suddenly turned to watery, slow-moving mush. This kind of chaos spiraled around you the instant you punched in, every day. Always a swirling shit storm of buzzing machinery and stressed-out employees, and an endless assault of irate, besuited, steam-spewing customers who needed 80 million copies of some thousand-page, spiral-bound sales report done in 15 minutes.
Especially if you drank as much coffee as I did back then.
#Backstage pass game trainer plus#
Plus a job there meant all the free press kits and fliers I could sneak out the door, which was many. Turnover was high, so between my band’s tours I could always find an opening at one of the stores. Over the course of my nearly 10 years in New York I’d worked at pretty much every damn Kinko’s in the city. We were at Kinko’s copy shop, the branch at 12th and University, right down near NYU. “Kurt Cobain is dead, man.” His girlfriend had called with the news. Part of The Morrison Hotel Gallery and Dream Downtown's exhibit KURT COBAIN by Jesse Frohman, displayed April 4-May 6.
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