Highlights
- Kurt Cobain had conflicting feelings about fame and success, often changing his mind on wanting to be really famous.
- Despite his struggles with fame, Cobain worked hard to achieve it and was actively involved in managing the band’s image and success.
- Cobain was sensitive to the pressures and expectations of fame, but he valued his fans and felt a sense of responsibility towards them, even in his darkest moments.
Nirvana’s frontman Kurt Cobain has been a symbol of “counterculture” and was even called, “World’s Most Famous Outcast” by Pitchfork. Almost three decades after his tragic suicide, his former bandmate, Krist Novoselic revealed that the grunge music icon “wanted to be really famous” despite famously hating the mainstream success of Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Months before Cobain’s death, the singer whose broken guitar sold for millions at an auction, also admitted that “success doesn’t really suck. Here’s what he really felt about fame — from Nirvana’s early success to becoming a father to his daughter, Frances Bean Cobain with his wife Courtney Love.
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Krist Novoselic Said Kurt Cobain Often “Changed His Mind” On “Wanting To Be Really Famous”
During an interview in February 2023, Novoselic said he “busted” Cobain for “changing his mind” a lot about Nirvana’s popularity.
“Kurt was counterculture but then he also really wanted to be really famous,” said the band’s former bassist. “He was like a windmill, and he would just say one thing, and then he would change his mind on it.”
Novoselic added that he would catch Cobain during his contradicting statements. “I would even point it out and say, ‘Do you know what you just said?’” he recalled. “He’d laugh because he knew he was busted. Like you just contradicted yourself, right?” He went on to share that “you hear it in the lyrics, too.”
In 2004, Nirvana’s former manager Danny Goldberg told USA Today that Cobain “definitely wanted to be famous” and that “he worked assiduously with tremendous clarity to achieve that.” The vocalist even “designed the band’s T-shirts, commented on detailed aspects of the bios, was acutely aware of every review and interview and how often the videos were on. He knew which songs would be singles.”
Courtney Love said Kurt Cobain just “wanted to stay in the apartment and do heroin and paint” at the height of Nirvana’s fame.
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Kurt Cobain “Didn’t Know How To Deal” With Nirvana’s Fame
We can’t blame fans for believing that Cobain didn’t enjoy Nirvana’s fame. After all, he wrote in his suicide letter: “When we’re back stage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins, it doesn’t affect me the way in which it did for Freddie Mercury, who seemed to love, relish in the the love and adoration from the crowd which is something I totally admire and envy.”
But based on his interviews, he was really just “too sensitive” to handle his celebrity. “It was so fast and explosive,” he told Rolling Stone of Nevermind‘s success, three months before he passed away. “I didn’t know how to deal with it. If there was a Rock Star 101 course, I would have liked to take it. It might have helped me.”
He wrote the same sentiment in his suicide note; only this time, he’d already given up finding his “passion,” which he started to lose at “the age of seven” when he’d “become hateful towards all humans in general.” But Cobain didn’t resent his fans at all. If anything, he felt like he owed them during his last years.
“The fact is, I can’t fool you, any one of you. It simply isn’t fair to you or me,” he wrote. “The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I’m having 100% fun.”
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Kurt Cobain Had “Never Been Happier” About His Life Months Before He Died
In the same Rolling Stone interview, Cobain seemed optimistic about his lost passion. Aware of the slander of his counterculture image, he told the outlet: “I still see stuff, descriptions of rock stars in some magazine — ‘Sting, the environmental guy,’ and ‘Kurt Cobain, the whiny, complaining, neurotic, b—hy guy who hates everything, hates rock stardom, hates his life.’”
“And I’ve never been happier in my life,” Cobain said back then. “Especially within the last week, because the shows have been going so well — except for tonight. I’m a much happier guy than a lot of people think I am.”
He even said he was off heroin and was “on the road to recovery.” Being a father to then-two-year-old Frances also helped him feel grounded back then. “I’ve been relieved of so much pressure in the last year and a half,” Cobain told the magazine. “I’m still kind of mesmerized by it. Pulling this record off. My family. My child. Meeting William Burroughs and doing a record with him.”
Kurt Cobain was “not extravagant” despite his $50 million net worth at the time of his death. “I still eat Kraft macaroni and cheese because I like it, I’m used to it,” he said.
Source: NewsFinale
