‘It felt like my own death’ – Kurt Cobain fans remember Nirvana star’s impact 30 years on

We unpack Kurt Cobain’s lasting impact on the 30th anniversary of his death (Credits: Getty Images)

‘We have some sad news folks, it’s being reported that Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of Nirvana, has been found dead.’

Those were the words that caused an American Nirvana superfan to veer onto the side of the highway on April 8, 1994 – almost exactly 30 years ago. 

While he can’t remember the radio station or even which car he was driving at the time (he suspects it was a Toyota, ‘maybe a Corolla, definitely something lame’), he says he can hear the timbre of the radio presenter’s voice in his mind as clearly as if he were hearing it now. 

‘It was like finding out about my own death, that’s how it felt. It felt like I’d died and no one had told me,’ he said, his voice still full of urgency nearly 30 years later. He recalls trying to take deep breaths as he processed the news that his idol was dead, gripping the steering wheel as cars whizzed by at 60 miles per hour. 

Suspicious of what he calls ‘mainstream media,’ the former North Carolina businessman (he does ‘a little of this and that’ now) prefers not to be named but is obviously keen to talk about his favourite band. He still listens to Nirvana’s music ‘almost every day.’

When trying to describe what Nirvana, and more specifically Kurt Cobain, meant to him, he struggles with the words: ‘I had this f***ing boring job, but I wasn’t [boring].’ 

Cobain was the primary songwriter of the group (Picture: Kevin Mazur/WireImage)

Nirvana fans have echoed this hard-to-articulate sentiment for decades. 

Cobain was and is more than a punk rock frontman; he’s the patron saint of the misunderstood teen, the minimum-wage worker with a poet’s heart, and all those who are certain that the world isn’t a blank canvas but a heavy burden on their shoulders. 

A bespoke philosopher and political advocate (in so far as generic anger at existing power structures is inherently political), Cobain remains the quintessential symbol of Gen X disillusionment. 

The rocker, who was born in 1967, founded Nirvana with Krist Novoselic and Aaron Burckhard in 1987, soon becoming a prominent part of the grunge scene in Seattle.

Dave Grohl eventually took over on the drums, and the early 90s saw Nirvana swept up in unprecedented success as the single Smells Like Teen Spirit from the band’s second album Nevermind blew up globally. 

Nirvana concerts were wild affairs, with punk rock fans coming together to mosh and scream along to the music(Credits: Jason Childs)

In their three short years as an active band, Nirvana received an American Music Award, Brit Award, and Grammy Award, as well as seven MTV Video Music Awards and two NME Awards.

The group is remembered as one of the best-selling of all time, having sold more than 75million records. They’re also credited with ushering in an era of grunge rock and ending the hair metal wave of the 80s. As an NME critic put it in 1991, with Nevermind, ‘Nirvana have made an LP which is not only better than anything they’ve done before, it’ll stand up as a new reference point for the future post-hardcore generation.’

Cobain, who wrote many of the band’s songs, was the planet around which the Nirvana universe revolved. 

Dave Grohl, Kurt Cobain, and Kirst Novoselic were the final lineup that rose to fame as Nirvana (Picture: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)

Handsome in a way that seemed to imply he’d recently emerged from a smoky basement with your friend’s older brother and outspoken about his radical opinions on everything from gay marriage to the Industrial War complex, the Washington state native was the ideal rock icon for the disgruntled 90s. 

Now, as Cobain remains a household name decades after his death, it’s impossible not to question if his suicide has bolstered the mythology surrounding his life – for better or for worse. 

On April 8, 1994, Cobain‘s body was found in a greenhouse above the garage of his Seattle home shortly after 9am.

He had been missing for six days when an electrician discovered the scene of the 27-year-old’s suicide. 

Courtney Love and Cobain were married in 1992 (Picture: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)

Cobain’s death came just months after Nirvana’s highly anticipated third studio album, In Utero, topped both the US and UK album charts in late 1993 and was almost universally acclaimed by critics. With this, Nirvana became the world’s first triple-platinum punk-rock band, a bittersweet victory for a group who had built their following by decrying the mainstream. 

The singer was more than a little aware of this contradiction, telling Rolling Stone: ‘I don’t blame the average 17-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout.’

As his friend Greg Sage, the frontman of fellow punk band Wipers, later put it: ‘Well, I can’t really speculate other than what he said to me, which was, he wasn’t at all happy about it, success to him seemed like, I think, a brick wall. There was nowhere else to go but down, it was too artificial for him, and he wasn’t an artificial person at all.’

For Cobain, who had been struggling with drug addiction and depression for years, the success of In Utero was little more than a source of exhaustion. 

Nirvana performed with the Vaselines (frontman Eugene Kelly, right) at Reading Festival(Picture: Mick Hutson/Redferns)

On March 25, 1994, 10 friends and an intervention counsellor sat Cobain down in his Seattle home and tried to convince him to get help for his heroin problem. He eventually agreed to meet his wife, Courtney Love, at a rehab centre in LA (where she went ahead to seek treatment for tranquillizer use) but hopped the facility’s fence after just two days there. Despite friends and family’s attempts to track him down, Cobain flew back to Seattle before his wife could cancel his credit cards and took his own life several days before his body was found. It’s estimated that he died on April 5, 1994.

Rumours swirled in the years following the tragedy that the suicide was staged by some nefarious actor, with suspects ranging from a hitman to Love to bigwigs in the music industry. Love has always fervently denied any involvement in Cobain’s death.

The prevalence of these theories was revealed when a long-withheld FBI file was finally released in 2021. 

Nirvana was a massive hit on channels like MTV, where they performed for MTV Live and Loud in 1993 (Picture: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)

The document, a mere 10 pages, features two letters sent from redacted sources that urge the bureau to investigate Cobain’s death as a murder. One of the letters, written in 2003, reads: ‘Millions of fans around the world would like to see the inconsistencies surrounding his death cleared up once and for all.’

The second letter cites several of the most popular pieces of ‘evidence’ fans have clung to as indications of foul play. The letter claims, ‘there were no prints on the gun he supposedly shot himself with’ and that in Cobain’s suicide note: ‘He mentioned nothing about wanting to die except for the part of it that was in another handwriting and appeared to be added at the end.’

While the file reveals that the bureau told the letter senders that the case didn’t fall under their jurisdiction, online sleuths have continued to speculate about the death anyway. 

Cobain and Love had daughter Frances Bean Cobain in August 1992 (Picture: Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images)

The suicide letter is a particular source of fascination, with many insisting that it was merely meant as a retirement announcement and that whoever killed Cobain transformed it into a suicide note; Love is often unjustly blamed.

It only takes a short scroll on Reddit or a brief conversation with your weirdest uncle to discover that a huge number of people still wholeheartedly believe the false conspiracy theory that Love is responsible for her husband’s death.

Reddit user Charming_Can_7786 posted in a popular thread about Cobain’s death that ‘there’s lots of compelling evidence pointing to Courtney,’ before going on to list a myriad of largely unverifiable claims, including the popular (though baseless) idea that papers were found that showed Love was practising imitating her husband’s handwriting. 

Nirvana fans crowded the fountain in the middle of Seattle Center the day after Cobain’s body was discovered (Picture: Tribune News Service via Getty)

Another user, sleaze_breeze, posted multiple paragraphs about a much-circulated, discredited theory that Love had contacted a hit man named El Duce to kill her husband. 

These two examples echo the sentiments of countless online posts and even published books, including the bestseller Who Killed Kurt Cobain? The Mysterious Death Of An Icon.

But some Nirvana fans are less interested in theorising, with the community r/KurtCobain specifically forbidding it. The community, which has thousands of members, prominently displays their rules: ‘1. NO CONSPIRACY THEORIES – Breaking this rule will likely result in an immediate ban. 2. Be kind. 3. No Spam.’ r/Nirvana has similar guidelines. 

Many have accused Love of being involved in her husband’s death (Picture: Paul Harris/Getty Images)

The majority of the online posts about Cobain have an undercurrent of hero worship, verging on longing. Many speak reverently of Cobain and reference his death with a sense of easy acceptance, dismissing conspiracy theories wholly when they’re mentioned. 

Indeed, for the less conspiracy-minded and the more cynical, the news of Cobain’s suicide came as an earth-shattering shock and then a sort of religious epiphany. Some viewed the death as the icon’s final performance, a last ‘f**k you’ to the establishment he spent his career railing against. 

This raises the question: Is Cobain’s legendary status a direct result of his death?

If you frequented the more alternative corners of the internet anytime in the 2010s, you already know that Cobain is firmly entrenched in the minds of millennials. Moody black and white shots of the singer were all over emo teenager’s Tumblr profiles, making it clear that Cobain’s cross-generational appeal expanded far beyond Gen X, thanks in part to his tragic end. 

Nirvana was known for their explosive, high-energy live shows (Picture: Gie Knaeps/Getty Images)

Indeed, three decades after his death, the Nirvana frontman has become so much more than his music. A trip to any school in the UK or US will undoubtedly turn up teenagers proudly wearing Nirvana band T-shirts. While these young people may be unable to name a single Nirvana song, they can fire off a list of facts about Cobain and almost certainly quote his suicide letter: To them, he’s a symbol of old-school rebellion paired with poetic tenderness, a person who was simply too sensitive for a hard world.

So yes, the circumstances surrounding Cobain’s death and the media frenzy that followed have undoubtedly contributed to his lasting fame, but it’s not what made him special to so many. 

Many still connect with Cobain’s legacy of authenticity to this day (Picture: Michel Linssen/Redferns)

It was his music, of course, but also his unfailing insistence on authenticity in what many saw as an increasingly plastic world that continues to resonate with fans today.

Being a Nirvana fan was and is a way of self-identifying as a proud misfit, a person who doesn’t embrace the mainstream but instead proudly flouts it. Cobain created a community for these people that still exists – the persistent fascination with his death is merely an expression of persistent grief. 

The conspiracy theories and the insistence on considering Cobain’s death a final act of rock and roll rebellion are just attempts to make sense out of a senseless, tragic act. 

With the release of their third album Nirvana became the most successful punk-rock band of all time (Picture: Paul Bergen/Redferns/Getty Images)

For Wren Anwir, an American teenager who only recently discovered Nirvana, found something in their music and Cobain’s image that felt like home – and that feeling has nothing to do with the singer’s tragic death. 

Wren shared: ‘I have hardly felt like I had a community because of my oddities. That’s where Kurt Cobain comes in. He was just such an odd guy, and unapologetically so. He helps me dress how I feel, and act however I want, without trying to be cool.’

Fans all over the world gathered to mourn for Cobain after his death was announced (Credits: Sipa/REX/Shutterstock)

For our former-North-Carolina-business-man-who-maybe-drove-a-Toyota, many decades Wren’s senior, it’s the same sense of belonging Wren found that’s kept him devoted to Nirvana after all these years: ‘There was something about Kurt that made you feel [like] everything else was f***ed up, not you. He made it cool to be weird.’

Need support?

For emotional support you can call the Samaritans 24-hour helpline on 116 123, email jo@samaritans.org, visit a Samaritans branch in person or go to the Samaritans website.

If you’re a young person, or concerned about a young person, you can also contact PAPYRUS Prevention of Young Suicide UK. Their HOPELINK digital support platform is open 24/7, or you can call 0800 068 4141, text 07860039967 or email: pat@papyrus-uk.org between the hours of 9am and midnight.


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