The 27’s – Kurt Cobain 1967 - 1994

Part 28 in a series on “The 27’s” – notable musicians who have passed away in their 27th year.

Kurt Cobain was best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the grunge band Nirvana which he formed with Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1985. Cobain has been remembered as one of the most iconic rock musicians in the history of alternative music. He was often uncomfortable and frustrated, believing his message and artistic vision to have been misinterpreted by the public and his personal issues often subject to media attention.

During the last years of his life, Cobain struggled with heroin addiction, illness and depression, his fame and public image, as well as the professional and lifelong personal pressures surrounding himself and his wife, Courtney Love. On April 8, 1994, Cobain was found dead at his home in Seattle, the victim of what was officially ruled a suicide by a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head.

Cobain had been disillusioned and frustrated for some time and the months leading up to his suicide had seen an increase in his drug use and depression. In early March 1994, while on tour in Germany, Cobain was diagnosed with bronchitis and severe laryngitis. He flew to Rome the next day for medical treatment, and was later joined there by his wife. The next morning, Love awoke to find that Cobain had overdosed on a combination of champagne and Rohypnol. Cobain was immediately rushed to the hospital, and spent the rest of the day unconscious. After five days in the hospital, Cobain was released and returned to Seattle. Love later said that this was Kurt’s first attempt at suicide.

A few weeks later, Love phoned Seattle police informing them that Cobain was suicidal and had locked himself in a room with a gun. Police arrived and confiscated several guns and a bottle of pills from Cobain, who insisted that he was not suicidal and had locked himself in the room to hide from Love. When questioned by police, Love said that Cobain had never mentioned that he was suicidal and that she had not seen him with a gun.

Love arranged an intervention shortly thereafter. The intervention was initially unsuccessful, with an angry Cobain locking himself in the upstairs bedroom, but by the end of the day Cobain had agreed to undergo a detox program. At the end of March Cobain arrived at the Exodus Recovery Center in Los Angeles. He spent that first day talking to counselors about his drug abuse and playing with his daughter Frances. This was the last time she would see her father. The following night, Cobain walked outside to have a cigarette and climbed over a six-foot-high fence to leave the facility.

On 2 April and 3 April 1994, Cobain was spotted in various locations around Seattle. Love contacted a private investigator and hired him to find Cobain. On 8 April 1994, Cobain's body was discovered at his Lake Washington home by an electrician who had arrived to install a security system. Apart from a minor amount of blood coming out of Cobain's ear, the electrician reported seeing no visible signs of trauma, and initially believed that Cobain was asleep until he saw the shotgun pointing at his chin.

A suicide note was found, addressed to Cobain's childhood imaginary friend "Boddah", that said, paraphrasing, "I haven't felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music, along with really writing . . . for too many years now.” A high concentration of heroin and traces of Valium were also found in his body. Cobain's body had been lying there for days, the coroner's report estimated Cobain to have died on 5 April 1994.

Dave Grohl would say that the news of Cobain's death was "probably the worst thing that has happened to me in my life. I remember the day after that I woke up and I was heartbroken that he was gone. I just felt like, 'Okay, so I get to wake up today and have another day and he doesn't.'"

A final ceremony was arranged for Cobain by his mother on 31 May 1999. As a Buddhist monk chanted, his daughter Frances Bean scattered his ashes into McLane Creek in Olympia, the city where he "had found his true artistic muse."