Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain still haunts soul of rock

Kurt Cobain was born on February 20, 1967 in Aberdeen, Washington, USA and died on April 5, 1994 in Seattle. He became famous as the lead singer, guitarist, and main songwriter of the band Nirvana.

Cobain had a generally happy childhood until his parents divorced when he was nine. After that event, he was often anxious and angry, and his emotional pain became the theme and catalyst for much of his later music, CE Report quotes Kosova Press.

As a teenager, he moved between the homes of various relatives, stayed with friends' parents, and occasionally slept under bridges, while he began using drugs and participating in petty vandalism as forms of teenage rebellion.

Cobain was musically inclined from a young age, and in the mid-1980s he began playing with members of the local band the Melvins, who themselves would gain national fame in the 1990s

In 1985 he created a homemade cassette of several songs with the Melvins drummer that later caught the attention of local bassist Krist Novoselic.

Cobain and Novoselic formed the band Nirvana in 1987 and then recruited a series of drummers to record demo tapes and play small shows throughout the Northwest.

One of the band's demo tapes found its way to Jonathan Poneman of the Seattle independent record label, Sub Pop, who signed the band for its first single, "Love Buzz," in 1988 and its first album, Bleach, in 1989.

With new drummer Dave Grohl, who joined the band in 1990, Nirvana released its seminal album Nevermind (1991), which contained the hit song "Smells like Teen Spirit" that achieved great popularity.

Nevermind catapulted Nirvana to worldwide fame and Cobain was hailed as the voice of his generation, a title he was never comfortable with.

In 1992, Cobain married Courtney Love, then the leader of the band Hole, and the couple had a daughter that same year.

The following year, Nirvana released its final studio album, In Utero, in which Cobain railed against his fame.

Cobain had long suffered from depression and chronic stomach pain. In March 1994, he was hospitalized in Rome after overdosing and slipping into a coma in what was later characterized as a failed suicide attempt.

A month later he sneaked out of a drug treatment center in the Los Angeles area and returned to his home in Seattle, where he shot and killed himself, KosovaPress reports.

Cobain remained an icon of the era after his death and was the subject of a number of posthumous works, including the book Heavier than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain (2001). In addition, a collection of his journals was published in 2002. In 2014, Nirvana was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.