The rock 'n' roll world, long accustomed to headlines about tragic deaths of its brightest young stars, is reeling from the news of Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain's suicide. He was 27.
The troubled singer, whose stinging lyrics and aggressive music made him a grunge rock idol and reluctant Generation X guru, was discovered dead Friday in his Seattle home by an electrician, who also glimpsed the last two lines of a suicide note: "I love you, I love you." Police will not release the note, addressed to his family.
However, at a candlelight vigil Sunday night at the Seattle Center attended by about 3,000 fans, a tape recording from Cobain's wife, Courtney Love, was played over the loudspeakers. In a sobbing voice, she read part of a note from Cobain, punctuated with her own, often profane comments:
"I feel the same way you guys do," Love said. "I don't know what happened . . . he always said he would outlive everybody and be 120."
In the note, said Love, Cobain expressed emptiness and alienation. "I haven't felt the excitement of listening to and creating music . . . for quite a few years now." He also said that he wanted to give his thanks to everyone "from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach."
Cobain's note ended, "It's better to burn out than fade away," and was signed "peace, love and empathy."
After finishing the note Love added, sobbing, "This is all bulls---."
She added she regretted trying to get him off drugs. "We should have let him have his numbness . . . instead of trying to strip him to the bone."
Fan reactions around the country to his death were mixed, from sorrow and shock to anger and resignation.
"I'm thoroughly bummed," San Diego student Carl Baylor, 16, says. "He was a geek and a god. I really dug him."
Says Tom Weaver, 22, of Norfolk, Va., "What a loser. I used to like him but he took the cheesy way out."
At a concert Friday in Fairfax, Va., Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder told the audience, "Sometimes, whether you like it or not, people elevate you. It's real easy to fall . . . I don't think any of us in this room would be here tonight if not for Kurt Cobain."
Record chains reported a run on Nirvana's current In Utero and '91 breakthrough, Nevermind. Fearing copycat suicides, radio stations nationwide enlisted counselors and promoted suicide hot lines to assist grief-stricken fans through the weekend.
"A lot of fans are taking it very hard," says Rick Lambert, program director at Seattle's KNDD, which logged non-stop calls since Cobain's death Friday. "People are crying, not wanting to believe it. . . . This has hurt Generation X, the heart of our audience."
"The mood here is somber," says San Francisco rock critic Gina Arnold, in Seattle with friends and colleagues. "At all the regular bars, everyone was laughing and making dark-humored jokes, but nobody thought it was funny. It was ugly. There's a lot of heavy drinking."
The author of Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana says she was not surprised by Cobain's death. "I had felt for some time that Kurt was quite self-destructive and had a short-lived career ahead of him. I underestimated how unhappy he was."
As stunned fans grieved their fallen anti-hero, sketchy details of Cobain's last days unfolded.
His mother, Wendy O'Connor, filed a missing-person's report a week ago, after Cobain abruptly checked out of an L.A.-area rehab center and vanished. Her son had "bought a shotgun and may be suicidal," the report said.
"Now he's gone and joined that stupid club," a sobbing O'Connor said Friday, referring to such rockers as Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Seattle-born Jimi Hendrix, all dead at 27.
On Wednesday, Lollapalooza '94 organizers announced that due to Cobain's health problems, Nirvana would not be on the tour's summer bill. "I sensed a lot of turmoil within their own camp," tour co-founder Perry Farrell told USA TODAY.
Many now believe Cobain's overdose of tranquilizers and alcohol, which resulted in a near-fatal coma last month in Rome, was a suicide attempt, not an accident as reported. In fact, industry insiders had been speculating about the band's status since the Rome overdose. Rumors of marital discord, drug use and friction with bandmates Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic swirled around the embattled Cobain, described in recent weeks as fragile and withdrawn.
On March 18, Cobain locked himself inside his new lakefront home, prompting Love, who feared he would kill himself, to call police. Four guns were confiscated.
Cobain's widow, in Seattle with the couple's 19-month-old daughter, Frances Bean, was out of town when her husband shot himself. In L.A. recently to promote her band Hole's highly praised second album, Live Through This (due Tuesday), Love told the Los Angeles Times she was worried about Cobain.
Longtime pal Pleasant Gehman, an L.A. music writer, is concerned about Love. "She's not the evil, crazy, power-hungry person people make her out to be. The last time I saw Courtney and Kurt, they and the baby were doing fine. They aren't a normal couple, in quotes, but they had a totally real, loving thing.
"It's a tragedy. It must have been exceedingly difficult to be under the intense scrutiny they always were under. Now it will get worse for Courtney and the baby."
"Kurt was such a great songwriter," says Charles Cross, editor of Seattle rock magazine The Rocket, lamenting Cobain's untapped potential. "He was meant to write a lot more great songs. He put so much personal passion into his music, you knew it was authentic, not filtered down or manufactured and shoveled into kids' mouths."
"Unlike so many rock artists, I don't think Kurt would have put out bad albums for the next 20 years," says critic Arnold. "His contribution went beyond being a brilliant songwriter and creative musician. Nirvana changed the way the industry thinks about new bands."
An uneasy spokesman for disaffected youth, Cobain led a musical revolution with raw, punk-propelled grunge rock and an angst-filled voice that howled with the pain and rage of alienation. He captured the mainstream by not catering to it. But fame, wealth and even love could not heal the wounds of his shattered childhood in the logging town of Aberdeen, Wash., where he was passed around to relatives after his parents divorced when he was 8.
He telegraphed his own demise in lyrics and interviews, writing songs like I Hate Myself and Want to Die and telling reporters of his suicidal tendencies.
He told Rolling Stone recently that seven years of stomach pain, diagnosed as irritable bowel syndrome, had become unbearable. "I wanted to kill myself every day. I came very close many times."
And in a Details magazine interview last year, he said, "I was suicidal on our last tour - I really wanted to blow my head off." He refused to explain a freshly scrawled message on his wall: "None of you will ever know my intentions."
