Brilliant Nirvana - The Life of Kurt Cobain

Author: Hao Fang / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features:
A must-read for 1970s people. – Cityweekend (Guangzhou)
A biography of non-mainstream figures, representing non-mainstream culture. – Shopping Guide (Beijing)
It showed Chinese youth another path. – Details (New York)
Hao Fang’s most famous work, praising the "cultural heroes of the post-20th century." – South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
Fierce passion, complete combativeness, and abundant linguistic talent. – Music Life (Beijing)
A masterpiece that influenced a generation. – China Business Times (Beijing)
It influenced many Chinese rock youth. – Shanghai News (Shanghai)
Brilliant Nirvana – The Life of Kurt Cobain, though related to personal emotions, showed that China’s mediocre rock scene needed to learn from this extreme approach to understand what made rock glorious and what made it tragic. – Economic Observer (Beijing)
A "required textbook" for rock youth. – Beijing Youth Weekly (Beijing)
In Hao Fang’s silent words, I heard the roaring music, and I felt so close to those bands. – China Reading News (Beijing)
In the Pacific Northwest of the United States lies Washington State, known as the "Evergreen State." On the edge of this evergreen state is a small town that was once indeed evergreen—Aberdeen. About 100 kilometers from Seattle, Aberdeen is located at a corner of the Pacific coast. This small town is about 4 miles wide and 3 miles long, connected to the east and north by small hills. It was once a thriving logging town and a notorious red-light district on the U.S. West Coast, but now it is slowly fading into silence due to dwindling timber resources and economic decline. Around the town are countless stumps of trees; the once bustling factories now appear like ghosts amidst heavy rain and dense fog; and the brothels once called "lady’s apartments" have long vanished into ashes. For years, the only thriving business in the town was its tavern, and the only profitable farming was the secret cultivation of marijuana and magic mushrooms. Many in the town often wandered under the shadow of unemployment, and some even took their own lives out of despair, avoiding a miserable existence. As a result, Aberdeen’s suicide rate ranks among the highest in the United States. This is where Kurt Cobain grew up—a town he tried desperately to escape but could never truly leave.
In the hills to the northeast of Aberdeen lived the town’s wealthiest people, the owners of the once prosperous sawmill. Their beautiful Victorian-style cottages still retained their charm. Below the hills lay a working-class neighborhood called "Apartment District," where Cobain grew up. Compared to the faded paint and broken roofs of the surrounding houses, Cobain’s home always seemed well-maintained, thanks to his father, Donald Cobain, who had always taken good care of it. Later, Cobain sarcastically remarked, "Puffing up your face to look better."
Cobain’s mother, Wendy Cobain, adored her blond son and later gave birth to his younger sister, but she always felt that young Cobain was the driving force of her life. Cobain once said, "I was an extremely happy child," and this was no exaggeration. He was the first descendant of Wendy’s eight siblings, and after Cobain was born on February 20, 1967, his aunts and uncles often fought over who could hold him. He became the center of attention in the entire family. As a child, Cobain was indeed striking—his talent for singing and dancing was evident from a young age, possibly influenced by family genetics. Wendy’s older relatives included a famous singer, and Cobain’s uncle Chuck was a member of a rock band. His aunt Mary was an excellent guitarist. From a young age, Cobain was not afraid of performing in front of others, singing and dancing for relatives, friends of his parents, and even the old candy seller. He also learned to perform various skits.
However, like many bright children, Cobain was frail and often ill. In his childhood, due to poor digestion, adults often gave him "Ritalin" (a stimulant), and his ADHD made it impossible for him to sit still, so sedatives often made him fall asleep in class. What troubled him the most was his chronic bronchitis, which later developed into mild scoliosis. All of this cast a shadow over his otherwise joyful childhood. But the first real shadow to fall on his young heart was undoubtedly his parents’ divorce. In 1975, when Cobain was just eight years old, years of arguments between his parents finally pushed this once warm family to the brink of collapse. Like many couples who drift apart, Wendy’s reason for divorce was that Donald did not love her. What made her situation different was that Wendy’s hatred was not directed at a third party but at Donald’s obsession with basketball and baseball. Although Donald never agreed to the divorce, his constant absence from home, busy with coaching and officiating, while neglecting his wife and son, laid the groundwork for Wendy’s anger.
Donald and Wendy spent their time blaming each other, even using Cobain as a bargaining chip, as is common among divorced couples. They had no time for their children’s pain and despair. This was a turning point in Cobain’s life. Most of the musicians who later joined the band Nirvana came from divorced families, which speaks volumes for itself. Wendy later fully realized this. She guiltily recalled, "After our divorce, he (Cobain) completely changed. I think he felt ashamed. He became very introverted—he hid everything inside. It broke him."
Cobain had once been a very loving child, hugging and kissing his mother’s face many times a day. He would get furious if any man looked at her for too long. Once, he even reported a man to the police because he felt the man shouldn’t be staring at his mother. But now he was transformed. On the wall of his room, he wrote: "I hate my mother, I hate my father, my father hates my mother, my mother hates my father—this is so sad." Higher up, he drew a cartoon of his parents and wrote "Dumb Dad, Dumb Mom" next to it. Below that, he drew a head with a huge question mark.
After the divorce, Cobain first lived with his mother, but she later had a lover, whom Cobain despised. So, he moved in with his father. After a period of seemingly close father-son life, Donald broke his promise to Cobain never to marry again and gave him a stepmother. As a result, Cobain no longer followed his parents’ wishes blindly. Wendy had always considered herself cultured and refused to let Cobain play with poor children. But Cobain found that the dirty, rough kids were cooler than the rich kids, so he half-intentionally defied his mother while genuinely enjoying hanging out with them [Years later, the grunge hair, ragged clothes, and lower-class spirit that Cobain learned from these kids would become global trends, even the celebrities in Vanity Fair would pretend to be down-to-earth, and Parisian models would start a new kind of coquettish pose]. Similarly, Cobain despised Donald’s dream of making him a sports star. Perhaps because he couldn’t fulfill his father’s great expectations, Donald pinned all his hopes on Cobain. He forced Cobain to join the high school wrestling team, hoping he could rise to prominence through it. But Cobain hated nothing more than being around those bulky, muscular wrestlers. Finally, he came up with a way to deal with his father. At the school wrestling competition, he knelt on both knees, hands on the ground, smiling at his watching father, waiting silently for the referee to blow the whistle to pin him down. Donald watched for a while before finally walking out of the arena in frustration. That night, Cobain was sent to stay with his uncle.
Donald had also taken Cobain hunting, but as soon as they reached the forest, Cobain refused to go further and instead wandered around aimlessly. He didn’t yet have the environmental awareness he would later develop—he just didn’t feel like doing that. Cobain had his own dreams, ones completely unrelated to Donald’s expectations. He knew his parents saw him as a problem child, but he voluntarily became an outsider to their way of life and ideals. He didn’t want to succeed through the paths they envisioned—he just wanted to do what he wanted. Compared to that dream, his parents’ wishes seemed so insignificant, and for that dream, he was willing to endure endless humiliation.
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