| KURT COBAIN WAS NOT SUICIDAL When Kurt returned to Seattle after the Rome incident: “I saw Kurt the day he got back from Rome. He was really upset about all the attention it got in the media.” Carlson didn’t notice anything abnormal about Cobain’s health or behaviour. Like many of Cobain’s friends,he regrets that neither Cobain nor anyone else told him that Rome had been a suicide attempt. (Dylan Carlson talking about Kurt, Cobain by the editors of Rolling Stone, p 90). Dylan Carlson, Kurt’s best friend Dylan, remembering Kurt on March 30th, when they bought the gun: “He seemed normal.....we'd been talking”. (Cobain by the Editors of Rolling Stone p 83). “At the time (they went to buy the gun, 30 March 1994,) Kurt definitely wasn’t suicidal or I would never have bought the gun. He was my best friend. I would have known if Rome was a suicide. No way. A year earlier I would have believed it because of the pain, but he wasn’t talking like that anymore. He was making all kinds of plans for when he got back from rehab.” (Dylan Carlson WKKC? p 91). “Kurt was facing lots of pretty heavy things but he was actually pretty upbeat. He was prepared to deal with things facing him.“ (Dylan talking to the Seattle Post Intelligencer April 15 1994). Mark Lanegan “I never knew (Kurt) to be suicidal, I just knew that he was going through a really tough time.” (Mark Lanegan, Cobain by the editors of Rolling Stone p 90) To Cobain’s friend Mark Lanegan Kurt was “an amazing guy, a complete gentleman”. (Sandford, p 340). His paternal grandmother, Iris Cobain, said “everything seemed fine“ when she and her husband last talked to Cobain in late March, “We never really asked him about Rome, he said it was just an accident.” In that last conversation, Cobain confirmed plans to go fishing in April with his grandfather. “When he talked to me he seemed happy,” Iris Cobain said. (Seattle Times May 11 1994). Buzzcocks supported Nirvana in Feb 1994. Bassist Tony Barber told the Maker: “I know he was not taking drugs on that tour. He was walking around drinking Evian water and looking clean every time I saw him. He didn’t seem to consider himself a star...He seemed like a shy bloke who didn’t have many friends. Often when I was talking to him, I felt like saying something like, “Look, if you need a mate just to go for a drink with or anything, I’m here.” And then I came home last night and saw it on the news. I couldn’t believe it. It’s just so sad.” (Melody Maker’s April 16 1994 edition). Pete Shelley vocalist and guitarist: “He seemed really clean when we were on tour. In some ways it was a bit awkward because he wasn’t really joining in the very mild debauchery that went on.”(Melody Maker, April 16 1994.) I’m looking at the contact sheet of Kurt Cobain’s last photo session. There he is, larger than life, grinning like a manic child, a deranged look in his mascara-ed eyes, a pistol nozzle pushed against his temple. In another pose he takes aim at the viewer, one eye closed, the other looking down the barrel of his gun. Then there’s the final sequence which Yuri Lenquette, the photographer, has refused to leak to the press. Here Cobain seems to be rehearsing his own death in some detail, posing with the gun in his mouth, then widening his eyes in pretend horror as he mimes the shock of impact. Throughout, and this is the scary thing, he looks like he’s having a good time. Which, as it happens, he was. “Kurt was like a child playing with a new toy,” Lenquette says as we peruse the photos together. “He wasn’t in a bad mood or feeling depressed when we did those photo sessions.” At one point the Nirvana singer even agreed to don a ridiculously large feathery hat. He refused, however, to pose for a single photo without the gun. (Loaded, June 1994). In the September 1996 edition of Photostory (a French publication, see cover, left) Youri Lenquette said that when he showed Kurt pictures of Cambodia, Kurt had been very interested and that Lenquette asked Kurt if he would like to go to Cambodia when the In Utero European Feb/March 1994 tour ended. Kurt had been very enthusiastic and even asked Lenquette as to how he would go about getting a visa. Lenquette said that people shouldn’t believe that Kurt was always sad, because he had a lot of humour and that he didn’t talk of suicide to Lenquette. (Thanks to Karim Djidjelli, Romuald Olliver and Olivier Roubin for the translation). Joe Mama visited Kurt at the Exodus rehab on April 1 1994, He said: “I was ready to see him looking like shit and depressed. He looked so fucking great.” (Cobain by the editors of Rolling Stone p 83. Also see M. Rossi’s Queen of Noise p 193) Rosemary Carroll friend of Kurt and Courtney, and also their lawyer in a conversation with Grant: “Kurt wasn’t suicidal Tom. He wasn’t suicidal”. (Wallace and Halperin’s WKKC? p 119). Charles Peterson, photographer and associate of Kurt:“What sticks in my mind is actually running into him on the street about 2 weeks um, before he, he killed himself. And it was just, you know, I guess in relation to events, I’m glad that I did, I’m glad that I saw him. We talked and he, we exchanged phone numbers and he was really happy about the fact the book, my book of photographs that I’m doing, he was like; 'Alright, at last,' you know, 'get the real thing.' And he was- we chatted and he was concerned about my wife’s illness and just really, you know, that sticks in my mind.”(From the Nirvana Teen Spirit video). Dr Osvaldo Galletta who treated Kurt in Rome after the Rome incident: “The last image I have of him, which in the light of the tragedy now seems pathetic, is of a young man playing with the little girl (Frances). He did not seem like a young man who wanted to end it. I had hope for him” (Newsweek April 18 1994). Cobain spent two days at the 20-bed clinic (Exodus.) He talked to several psychologists there, none of whom considered him suicidal. (Cobain by the editors of Rolling Stone p 83). On Feb 21st 1994, Kurt was thinking in terms of the stories he wanted to tell his grandchildren. He was looking forward to having grandchildren. He wasn’t suicidal. This can be found on the bootleg video of the Feb 21st 1994 concert at Modena, Italy. Courtney wanted everyone to believe that Kurt was suicidal with an out of control drug dependency in the last days of his life. But when Kurt’s body was found Krist Novoselic responded to the news of Kurt’s supposed suicide as follows: “smack was just a small part of his life.” (Seattle Post Intelligencer, April 14 1994). Novoselic said he did not understand his friend’s behavior. “I don’t have it all figured out right now,” he said. (Seattle Post Intelligencer, April 14 1994). Those aren’t the reactions one would expect if Novoselic believed Kurt was suicidal/drug dependent/planned to kill himself. Courtney Love’s Modus Operandi Back to Frances Barnett In Defence MAIN |