I WILL ALWAYS BE WITH YOU
Thirty years after his untimely death, the poignant promise Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain made to the baby daughter he left behind could apply equally to the legacy of his powerful music that continues to inspire millions of fans
AROCK band who were masters at expressing discontent and despair at the world, grunge music icons Nirvana’s classic anthems have continued to resonate in the 30 years since singer Kurt Cobain’s death by suicide, remaining radio staples. Uneasy with a fame he never sought, wracked by decades of stomach pain which left him self-medicating with heroin, Cobain hoped to find a domestic bliss with his wife and daughter that was denied him by his own parents’ divorce. Tragically for the frontman dubbed the voice of a generation for his lyrics in timeless songs, such as Smells Like Teen Spirit and Come As You Are, domesticity did not conquer his demons.
But his daughter, just 20 months old when her father died three decades ago on April 5, 1994, has subsequently been able to lead the quiet life Kurt yearned for.
Frances Bean Cobain has controlled the publicity rights to her father’s name and image since turning 18 in 2010.And she has done it in a way that has pleased the band’s devoted fans – helping sell a total of 75million albums while avoiding cheesy cash-ins.
She movingly paid tribute to her father in a rare public statement on the 30th anniversary of his death last week, writing: “I wish I could have known my dad.
“I wish I knew the cadence of his voice, the way he liked his coffee, or the way it felt to be tucked in after a bedtime story.”
Frances, who is worth £15million and enjoying her own marital stability with husband Riley Hawk – son of US skateboard legend Tony Hawk – revealed a note that Cobain wrote when his wife Courtney Love, singer with rockers Hole, was pregnant.
It read: “Wherever you go or wherever I go, I will always be with you.” Frances stated: “He kept that promise, because he is present in so many ways.”
She posted it alongside a poignant black and white shot of herself with her father. Cobain’s presence is still felt by fans, too. Nirvana’s drummer Dave Grohl, who has become a huge star in his own right by fronting stadium-filling band Foo Fighters, believes Nirvana’s music is still hugely popular because of Cobain’s “simplicity and the beautiful, direct language of his lyrics”.
Grohl told US chatshow Amanpour and Company: “Kurt was very open to writing about his own pain, which I think millions of people could relate to and connect with.”
EVEN Oasis star Noel Gallagher said of Cobain: “He was the perfect cross between [John] Lennon and [Paul] McCartney. He belted it out like Lennon, but his melodies were so McCartney.” After Cobain’s death, Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic was too traumatised to remain in music. Although he occasionally plays in grunge supergroup Third Secret, Novoselic has mainly worked in politics. But Grohl formed Foo Fighters the year after Cobain died, with Nirvana’s legacy brought home to him when he tried to find seclusion in the Irish countryside in Co Kerry months after his friend’s suicide.
Grohl recalled: “Driving down a country road, I saw a hitchhiker in the distance. As I got closer, I noticed he had a Kurt Cobain T-shirt on. Even in the middle of nowhere, I had Kurt looking back at me. That’s when I realised, I can’t outrun this.”
There’s a grim irony in the fact that the thing to remind the drummer of the band’s global importance was a T-shirt. Though the trio rejected fashion, Nirvana T-shirts are still a method of appearing instantly edgy today. Wearing one – often featuring their yellowon-black smiley-faced logo – has signified rebellion ever since the release of their 30million-selling album Nevermind in 1991.
Teen idol Justin Bieber angered hardcore fans when he wore a T-shirt based on the band’s 1993 single Heart-Shaped Box at the MTV Awards in 2015. But Cobain’s widow Love approved, telling Bieber: “You’re cool in my book.”
Even fashion giant Yves Saint Laurent piggy-backed on Nirvana’s cool. In 2023, the luxury fashion house launched a line of vintage clothing, including a 1992 T-shirt of the sleeve of Nirvana’s compilation Incesticide, priced at a staggering £3,295.
It sold instantly.
Whether the anti-corporate Cobain would have approved of his band being co-opted by high-end fashion giants for astronomical sums is debatable.
One reason Cobain was so wary of Nirvana’s success is that he hoped his band wouldn’t appeal to a mass-market audience.
He once told a crowd that he wanted laddish “jocks” to leave the show, saying: “I hated you in high school and I don’t want to play for you now.”
Cobain was also passionate in ensuring Nirvana didn’t rip their fans off. During the band’s 1993 tour, Cobain was furious to learn that Madonna was charging £40 for her shows, compared to Nirvana’s £13.50.
“There are people who charge $50?” an outraged Cobain asked an MTV interviewer. “Who does that? Madonna does that?”
Nirvana’s one moment of aiming for mass appeal paid off, however. Smells Like Teen Spirit was Cobain’s attempt to “write the ultimate pop song”. It succeeded so well that Novoselic initially dismissed the classic as ridiculous and unsuited to Nirvana’s antiestablishment ethos.
Smells Like Teen Spirit’s title was inspired by Cobain’s friend Kathleen Hanna, of fellow grunge band Bikini Kill, when she wrote “Kurt smells like teen spirit” on his garage wall. It wasn’t until the song was already a hit that Cobain learned Teen Spirit was a brand of women’s deodorant. He’d assumed the message was a rallying cry of rebellion.
Cobain’s own rebellion began when his parents, car mechanic Don and waitress Wendy, divorced in 1976, when he was nine.
Kurt became sullen and withdrawn. In 1993, he told Guitar World, “I resented my parents for quite a few years” because he’d been denied a stable upbringing.
More bleakly, he wrote in his suicide note that he felt “hateful towards all people in general” from the age of seven.
It was during high school – Cobain was a regular truant – that his intractable stomach pains began. Initially believing his torment was a psychosomatic manifestation of his general unhappiness, Cobain began taking increasingly heavy-duty painkillers.
With his stomach condition remaining undiagnosed, Cobain eventually self-medicated with heroin.
Shortly before Nevermind’s release, he wrote in his diary: “I decided to use heroin on a daily basis because of an ongoing stomach ailment I’d been suffering for the past five years. It had literally taken me to the point of wanting to kill myself. Every single day, every time I swallowed a piece of food, I would experience an excruciating, burning, nauseous pain in the upper part of my stomach lining.”
While it’s been speculated that Cobain was suffering from either scoliosis, irritable bowel syndrome or GERD, the exact nature of his stomach pain was never confirmed.
Tragically, it lasted until Cobain’s death. In his suicide note, he wrote: “Thank you from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach.”
Alternative music provided Cobain with some solace.
Near the end of his schooldays, he befriended successful local punks The Melvins, meeting Novoselic at the band’s rehearsal room. Released in 1989, when Cobain was 22, Nirvana’s debut album Bleach gained cult acclaim.
Their concerts especially received rave reviews. Major label Geffen signed Nirvana, who replaced original drummer Chad Channing with Grohl. Nevermind was a game changer two years later.
By the time the band’s third and final studio album In Utero came out in 1993, Cobain was a married father. Courtney Love was as anarchic as Cobain, who famously announced “Courtney Love is the best f*** in the world” on Channel 4’s late-night live youth show The Word in November 1991, six months after they met. Nirvana had been booked to appear on The Word by future Radio 2 DJ Jo Whiley.
The couple married in Hawaii in February 1992, six months before Frances was born. Globally successful without wanting fame – and aiming for domestic bliss while seeking to return Nirvana’s music to the outer edges – Cobain’s contradictions were summed up by the opening line of In Utero’s first song, Serve The Servants: “Teenage angst has paid off well… Now I’m bored and old.”
Although it succeeded in jettisoning Nirvana’s casual fans, In Utero maintained the group’s independent spirit and wowed critics. But its tour was chaotic.
THE final month of Cobain’s life was played out in public, with Nirvana shows cancelled as heroin addiction took hold and Love tried to get her husband into rehab. Love’s music career has largely been one of unfulfilled promise since Cobain’s death and her relationship with her daughter has been strained at times.
Yet Love succeeded in keeping Frances out of the spotlight – and as a teenager, Frances herself rejected leading roles in Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland and vampire saga Twilight.
An artist, Frances’ judging slot on RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2019 has been her only notable onscreen appearance.
The surviving members of Nirvana have also been careful to maintain the band’s mystique. Grohl and Novoselic remain friends, but have limited their appearances together to a handful of benefit concerts. These include a 2012 hurricane relief show in New York, where they performed with Paul McCartney. They jammed an improvised song together, Cut Me Some Slack, which won a Grammy.
Pondering how Nirvana would sound now if Cobain had lived, Novoselic told NME: “If only Kurt would have hung in there, we would have known.
“Just to have Kurt in the world would make a huge difference. That’s all that really matters. I miss the guy.”
Few rockers have been able to channel pain so passionately since Nirvana ended. It’s no wonder their trio of albums remain rites of passage for disaffected teens – and why their T-shirts are still so popular too.