He was hammered, not the ideal condition for tightrope walking. I thought that I was about to witness a horrific moment in rock history, but he made it. Everybody in the room cheered. Then one of the crew tried it. And I was petrified all over again, but he made it, too. Then the guy in the band went a second time. By now, I was thoroughly freaked out. But he made it again, and, thankfully, there were no more ledge walks.
I made a beeline for the drinks table. Courtney eventually forced her way into the bathroom and saw Kurt turning blue. He claimed it would be boring, but then he said everything about his life was boring. The long, concrete-floored hallway leading to their room was lined on one side with cremation urns, which were manufactured in another area on the floor.
It was late when we arrived, and the entire building was silent. The room was about six hundred square feet, with windows that looked out onto other industrial loft buildings. A small riser for the drum set was as fancy as they got. There was a modest P. They had no soundproofing, no sound person, no special lights, no recording equipment, no well-stocked bar. A few mismatched old chairs were strewn around the room, some concert posters hung on the wall, and there was a small fridge. They fussed with the P.
They played sections of songs, starting and stopping until Kurt felt that things were right. I suppose this was what Kurt thought was the boring part, but it was illuminating to see how much he controlled things, how exacting he was with music that appeared so rough-hewn. It was difficult to hear some of the flaws Kurt wanted to correct, but when the band fixed them it was obvious that everything had snapped into place.
I was a relatively steady person, a little older, and drug-free. She figured that I would be good company for Kurt on the road, maybe help keep him on the straight and narrow—if only by example. Sometimes a cloud gathered over the touring party.
But everyone in the band felt some sort of tension: even if they tried to make light of it, Kurt, the bassist Krist Novoselic, and the drummer Dave Grohl felt the enormous pressure of being a world-famous rock group and resented the invasive journalism that comes with it.
There were tensions within the band, too. The thing was, Dave was staying in the room right next door. I was sure that Dave heard the whole thing. He told his biographer, Paul Brannigan, that on a flight from Seattle to Los Angeles he had overheard Kurt bad-mouthing his drumming two rows back. Once they landed, Dave told their trusty Scottish tour manager, Alex MacLeod, that he was quitting the band after the last scheduled show.
MacLeod talked him out of it. After we reached Dallas, Kurt called my room and asked whether I wanted to walk around downtown with him, the kindly Pat Smear an early L. We rolled out with Kurt pushing Frances in her stroller, making her laugh with a ridiculous assortment of rude noises. The emptiness of downtown Dallas on a weekday afternoon was baffling to me, a provincial New Yorker, but great for Kurt, who could stroll around without being hassled by fans.
Walking down a wide boulevard, we found ourselves at the edge of a big open space. An enormous flock of grackles circled above, forming an undulating disk so vast and dense that the sunlight filtering through looked gray. It felt apocalyptic. Except for the occasional car, there was not another human being in sight. It dawned on me that this was Dealey Plaza, the site of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Eventually, Frances needed baby supplies, so Kurt rolled off with her to a drugstore.
That was the last time I saw Kurt Cobain. On or about April 5, , Kurt went up to an attic over his garage, took a lot of heroin, and then killed himself with a shotgun.
He left a note. The quality of empathy was very important to Kurt; he spoke of it often. Which might come as a surprise, given all the wanton vandalism and assorted other mischief he committed as a teen and indeed throughout his all-too-brief adult life, not to mention his avowed disdain for so many of the people around him.
How much empathy did he have when he hit a man on the head with his guitar during a show in Dallas, in ? But maybe, as Kurt claimed, opiates really did still his misanthropic impulses and help him experience empathy, or something resembling it.
Maybe his outspokenness about empathy was actually a passive-aggressive plea for people to have empathy for him. At any rate, Kurt avowedly cherished the ability to imagine what other people are feeling, right down to the last moments of his life. His name was in the smallest lettering on the whole page. Mason describes what happens almost every time someone finds out that he used to work with the group, whose singer, Ian Curtis, hanged himself, in He was a nice guy, got into a strange situation, and the only way he could think about [it] at that time was to kill himself.
Sorry, no secrets. People often ask me why Kurt killed himself. Actually, what frequently happens is, they wind up telling me why he killed himself. They have their opinions, despite never having met him, and dismiss my firsthand observations of Kurt as incompatible with what they already believe. He also had a long family history of suicide.
Somehow she survived and lived to be ninety-four. He survived but died later, after purposely reopening the wounds in a psychiatric hospital. John apparently reached in his pocket for a cigarette and accidentally knocked his pistol out of its holster.
The gun dropped to the floor and discharged, killing him. In , when Kurt was twelve, Burle killed himself with a gun. Five years later, Kenneth did.
All I knew was that I had the distinct feeling that Kurt would not live a long life. But what, if anything, could I do about it? Was it even my place to get involved? A couple of times, I did get involved. One evening, in , I got a panic-stricken call from Courtney, who told me that Kurt had locked himself in a room in their house. He was distraught, she said, and had a gun and was threatening to use it on himself.
She was terrified. So was I. I asked if I could speak with Kurt, but there was no way to get the phone to him. I could hear him yelling in the background. I told her to call the police and to keep me posted. I relayed what was happening and said that such a volatile person, who did drugs and had a small child, absolutely should not have guns.
When Kurt started spiralling down, I remembered a visit to his hotel room while he was on tour in New Orleans. Kurt would more often than not throw up before shows due to stage fright 3. Kurt almost joined the Navy at one point, even meeting with a recruiter 5. Cobain started using Heroin to alleviate chronic stomach pain 6.
As a child, Kurt had a Mickey Mouse drum kit He insisted Nirvana rehearse 5 times a week when they first started out Kurt was an animal lover and considered buying a Zoo Kurt was terrified of playing acoustically ahead of MTV Unplugged , insisting that some of the guitars were actually plugged in Kurt had written an entire solo record before he died He created the sense that you knew him, even standing at the back of the crowd.
That was when I realised that I had stumbled onto something very, very special. I remember the way I felt driving home afterwards, and how euphoric I was. I was 40 years old. I was pretty jaded. I'd been in the business since I was I'd worked for Led Zeppelin and a lot of other bands, and seen hundreds of shows, and I was trying to run a small business. I was not romantic about the business at that point, but I was romantic about Nirvana after I saw them — after I saw Kurt's combination of power and vulnerability.
BBC Music : Your book, Serving the Servant, is one of the few accounts that have come out of what you might call the inner circle around Nirvana. What was it that made you want to just share your memories at this particular moment in time? Goldberg : Over the years, especially in the last decade or so, it seemed to me that Kurt's image had become overwhelmed by his death, his drug addiction and the darker sides of him. I certainly am aware of those sides, and I don't shy away from describing my encounters with them in my book.
This book is not a biography of Kurt. It's a memoir of the last three-and-a-half years of his life when I worked with him. Not everyone who is a genius is a nice person to other people, but he was. His darkness was all directed at himself, not at others, and I thought that there was a portrait of him that I could add, which would broaden out his legacy. I'm not criticising the other depictions of him, because a lot of them are accurate.
But they are incomplete. I wanted to add a perspective of someone who saw, up close, how creative and brilliant he was, and how Kurt was a sweetheart to the people around him during most of the period of time.
I'm an unreliable narrator. It's biased. I loved the guy. I saw him and still see him through rose-coloured glasses. BBC Music : The general perception of Kurt Cobain is someone who was immensely talented but complex, dark and, in many ways, an unwilling participant of Nirvana's success.
But you paint another picture, of a person who was much more in control and calculating about the band's image and success. Goldberg : Oh, he was the architect of Nirvana's success. He made every single decision. He wrote all the songs, all the famous songs, anyway, the lyrics and the music.
He made the final decisions about every mix, about the mastering. He designed the album covers. He was the lead singer and the lead guitar player.
He did most of the interviews.
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