It was 28 years ago on Friday (just gone) that Kurt Cobain took his own life. I remember when it happened and the effect it had on popular culture. The effect it had on me and my friends. We were about thirteen years old. Fortunately (at that age), our experiences of death had been quite few and far between. There had been rumours of people who had died in car accidents. There were stories in the newspaper. But as far as “someone close to you”, or dear to you dying were concerned? Well, save for a couple of our grandparents - this was the first time we’d been confronted with the real life reality of, err, death. It’s interesting to think back on that time now though. When you’re a kid and someone tells you "Hey, the lead singer in your favourite band just died", the stages of grief are, as you’d expect, almost textbook, almost childish. Disbelief first. Denial. Then come the slightly more bizarre thoughts, the bargaining: “It’s so weird to think he was alive and breathing last week. And it feels so close. And yet there’s nothing we can do to just go back a couple of days and save him,” we’d muse. Next comes the acceptance. The feeling that, yes, this is real. He’s not coming back. It’s over. But of course, it’s not over, is it? Yes, it’s true you won’t see any new Nirvana albums anytime soon, but that just means you’ll rabidly froth over the gems that are still out there. You obsess over everything your dead idol ever did. Ever said. Looks they gave the camera. Is there something more you missed out on, perhaps? A CD of bootlegs? Maybe a t-shirt you hadn’t seen? A magazine interview you hadn’t read? What did he say? What did he mean? WAS THERE ANYTHING PRESCIENT!? I BET THERE WERE THINGS THAT WERE PRESCIENT, DAVE, CLUES ETCETERA FRANKLY WE SHOULD’VE SEEN THIS COMING. It’s uncouth to rage at the dead, like “how dare you take your own life, you beautiful blond prick”. But it’s also impractical. Nothing much is solved by having a go at a human being who's no longer around to roll their eyes at you. It's much easier to blame yourself... like you should’ve picked up on the dangers this poor, unreachable fellow was ish-kinda-sorta referring to behind a complex web of metaphor and vague suggestion 3,000 miles away. "Why didn't you do something? Why didn't you step in, 13 year-old-Aid? Huh? Yeah, you say kids can't get close and give counsel to their idols but look at Michael Jackson. That's why he'll still be around in 2030, Aid. Because his fans truly love him!", you'd lambast yourself. I digress. Of course occasionally, you’re drawn back to the shock; when you walk past a copy of Kerrang! or MTV show Unplugged In New York again, but day-by-day, week-by-week, gradually and glacially, you begin to move on. Before you know it, it’s been four years since it happened and now you’re mad into hip hop. Weird. Interestingly, 28 years later.. after several other iconic favourites have died - from Winehouse to Tupac to George Michael - I now look back on that period of life, of driving my parents insane blasting out In Utero - and I feel a mix of fondness of the time itself, as we all do for our teenage years - but also a deeper sadness, for Cobain himself. Because although in the immediate-aftermath-sinkhole of a shocking suicide, we’re all shaken by the poor soul’s absence; be it an empty chair in the classroom or a now-dormant Twitter account - years later you’re just sad at what they miss out on. We say they lost their life. But it doesn’t quite capture it. It doesn’t capture how much life they lost. Their kids starting primary school, their siblings getting married, or re-married, the new project they would’ve gotten into, the languages they could’ve gone on to learn, the great love they went on to find. When an idolised figure like Cobain dies young, we show an ugly breed of selfishness. Especially as teens. We spoke like *we* were being robbed of him, of his magic and of his music. Like that’s the great tragedy. But it’s the second and third act of his life he robbed himself of, that feel more like the tragedy to me, now. He was famously twenty-seven when he passed. If I’d have died at that age, I would’ve probably died drunk, after-hours, in a job I wasn’t happy in, single and lonely. I would’ve never tried standup. I would’ve never believed, as I’d approached the Pearly Gates, that the future could’ve offered love, a family, a home, a job I truly enjoy, I wasn’t into politics yet, etc etc. To think Cobain’s life should’ve started and stopped at “Lead Singer Of Band” feels... dismissive and naive. More broadly, away from his skills and interests, we have to consider his nearest and dearest. Now, by all accounts they weren’t a totally happy family. But that’s not a unique situation. A lot of families have problems. I remember reading a couple of books and articles throughout the years, watching the Kurt & Courtney documentary by Nick Broomfield - and coming away with the feeling that Cobain had effectively been ordered to get clean or face losing custody of his daughter - in a (soon to be) messy divorce from Courtney Love. You’ll have to forgive the lack of references/links on that. Perhaps I dreamt it all. I can’t find shit now. I just have this cemented impression in my mind that it was only when he was cornered into having to choose between drugs and life that he decided he couldn’t go on. This is the thing. When you’re fourteen years old, combing through Nirvana memorabilia and reading quotes from journalists, you totally buy into the whole “he just couldn’t take the pressures of fame”. But as a 41 year-old father of two, you think “hang on, what?”. He could’ve quit. He could’ve just cancelled his tour. He could’ve got divorced or worked out whatever the fuck it was he was facing with his family lawyer. And you look back at his death, at his situation, and through contextualising it through the many conversations and situations you've been through since, you figure: on the balance of probabilities, as a grown man, as someone who has now met a few addicts and, yes, seen a few divorces among certain circles - it feels more likely he was just hopelessly addicted to heroin and couldn’t see a way out. I suppose that’s the take away; this realisation that after almost three decades since rock’s most jarring suicide, that although this was a guy who is still largely seen as having checked-out, out of some romantic, anti-pop, tormented artist grand-gesture - that really his was a story of how crushing addiction can rob you and your family of your second and third act.
