Exhibition reveals pre-stardom Cobain, Nirvana
Most people know two, maybe three things about Kurt Cobain. He founded the band Nirvana in Seattle, ground zero for grunge music. He was married to former stripper and punk-grunge bad girl Courtney Love. And he died at age 27 of a suicide said to be fueled by drug use and depression, just as the band reached its pinnacle.
Cobain was the straw-haired Nirvana front man who made his mark with crazed on-stage antics and blazing guitar riffs punctuating the band’s performances throughout the U.S. and Europe. Despite his and the band’s meteoric rise to super stardom, Cobain had a somber, lonely side —one not shown on stage or to the public until now.
“I was a friend of Kurt. He was a very sensitive, quiet, gentle person,” said Bruce Pavitt, co-founder of Sub Pop Records which put Nirvana’s early tunes on disc. The record man and former DJ spent eight days touring with the band in 1989, taking candid photos throughout, including some that capture Cobain in private, unguarded moments.
Pavitt’s photos have been published in Experiencing Nirvana, a book of 350 images. Selections from the book are on display at Pompano Beach Cultural Center, which on July 12 premiered the exhibition of 13 large-format frames from Pavitt’s collection.
“We were touring in Europe with two other grunge bands, Tad and Mudhoney,” Pavitt said. “The tour took a toll on Kurt. He was somewhat depressed in Rome and he had a breakdown. He smashed a guitar and climbed a 14-foot speaker tower, threatening to jump off.”
Cobain, exhausted from a dizzying zig-zag of European tour dates, worried the band might not perform up to par at an important concert in London.
“Spending six months on the road was pretty tough on Kurt. He was exhausted and downcast. But the tour brought the band together in a super tight way. When they played England, it was great.”
Not just great. The usually jaded British press proclaimed Nirvana was “Sub Pop’s answer to the Beatles.” The performance rocketed Nirvana and grunge to fame and is a seminal moment in rock ‘n’ roll history.
Pavitt’s exhibit is a photographic story of an iconic music breakthrough amid the early stages of what would become an equally iconic mental breakdown.
One particularly expressive photo in the display of 16-by-20-inch prints on aluminum shows Cobain outside a hotel in Rome, sitting with his head in his hands. Pavitt said it was taken the morning after Cobain’s meltdown.
In early 1994, Cobain went missing for six days after returning home from touring. On April 5, an electrician found his body. Dead of a head wound, Cobain had a shotgun lying across his chest and, nearby, a scrawled suicide note. An autopsy showed Valium in his bloodstream along with a high concentration of heroin.
Pavitt said Cobain’s passing was a death knell for grunge music, though other groups in the genre, Soundgarden in particular, continued to succeed. “Kurt was a recluse,” he said, “he was not seen much socially. The more famous he got, the more reclusive he became.”