Heavier Than Heaven, A Biography of Kurt Cobain, by Charles R. Cross.
I should have known better. Amanda read this book and had the same reaction.
I loved Nirvana. I still remember the first time I heard them on 89X, the alternative station out of Windsor. I played my cassette of Nevermind until the tape broke. Then I bought the CD. No other band sounded quite like Nirvana nor expressed the same sentiment.
It was dark, it was raw, it was painful and gut-wrenching and real. But you could still dance to it. As an aside, I was only ever injured at two concerts. One was a Bob Segar concert I saw at Pine Knob (okay so it may be called the DTE Theater now, but it will always be Pine Knob to me) and we were sitting in the front rows rather than sitting on the lawn as usual and a very drunk hillbilly next to me kept crashing into me, leaving me with two large bruises from his fat ass elbows. The only other concert I was hurt at was Nirvana at the State Theater in Detroit. Ex asshole had wandered off somewhere and I was standing close to the stage when a mosh pit started. The large grunge master guy next to me jumped literally over me into the mosh pit and I got trampled. I had a boot print bruised into my arm for two weeks after. At the time, I was convinced my arm was broken and was pissed since it was my throwing arm and it was softball season.
This was a book review, wasn't it?
Charles Cross was the editor of The Rocket, a highly regarded Northwest music and entertainment magazine. He had many occasions to interview to Kurt during his life and was an insider to the whole grunge movement. He can string together a sentence fairly well, too.
The thing that strikes me most reading this was the fact that even thought Kurt Cobain was surrounded by people, both friends, family and business associates, all of whom knew how self-destructive he was, he still killed himself. Numerous rehab stays, interventions. He had suffered serious clinical depression since childhood and had only been treated for it sporadically and never seriously. Why didn't someone, anyone, step in and overcome him?
His talent was enormous. In addition to music, he was also a prolific artist and a gifted writer. The most important thing to him was his daughter, Frances Bean. He also loved his wife Courtney Love tremendously. I think it helped that she was also an attention whore and a junkie and dangerously self-destructive.
Kurt wanted to die. This is painful for me to digest, because he had so many gifts and used them but it still wasn't enough. He was determined to live fast, die young.
He makes me so angry because of this. My final conclusion? What. An. Asshole.
A great book, though, very well-written, very readable and well researched. Even if I hated the story, I liked the book.