I never got to meet Kurt Cobain, but I did have the opportunity to interview him, through a series of trans-Atlantic phone calls and faxes. In the months before his death, Kurt had been designing a guitar with the Fender company (what came to be known as the ‘Jag-Stang’ guitar – a custom built Fender Jaguar, Fender Mustang hybrid).
Kurt enjoyed his dealings with the company and had consequently agreed that he would, at some point, grant an interview for Fender’s Frontline magazine. When I first contacted him to do that piece – in February 1994 – Nirvana was in Europe on what would be their final tour. Kurt was, somewhat understandably, less than eager to submit to interviews at the time, but it was made clear to him that the idea of the piece was not to prod him about any of the sensational rumors that were circulating about the band but to just let him speak frankly about his music. He graciously consented.
After having heard much about Cobain’s reputation as a smack-addled cipher, egocentric brat and/or prickly press hater, I was very pleasantly surprised to find that he was a warm, forthcoming, insightful and very funny interviewee. When our communications came to an end, I considered it a privilege to have made his acquaintance and wanted to make sure that the Cobain I had spoken with came through clearly in my piece. Unfortunately, before that piece had ever been written, Kurt had over-dosed on champagne and Rohypnol while the band was in Rome. This was, at first, described as an accident but eventually it was revealed that it had been a calculated suicide attempt.
A month later, Cobain, having escaped from a rehabilitation facility in Los Angeles, made his way back to Seattle. On April 5, 1994, he barricaded himself in a room above his garage, put a shotgun to his head, and ended his life. After Cobain’s death, the Frontline piece was re-edited, and what ran were excerpts from the following interview, along with a short memorial. Here is the full transcript of what was almost certainly one of Cobain’s final interviews.
