Journalist Amy Raphael about a strange interview with the Grunge legend.
It is almost two in the morning on July 24, 1993, and Kurt Cobain is on my bed. We are in one of the tasteless showers, as it is probably only in Manhattan: The dimensions of the Kingsize Monster are so huge that the slim cobain only takes a corner of the mattress. After a “secret gig” in the New York Roseland, he has now stored his tattered black-red sweater and-freshly showered-stripped a white t-shirt and torn jeans, plus converse sneakers that are littered with graffiti. Its red nail polish is fragile, its dark blonde hair glues moist on a classic, beautiful face. With one eye he follows old episodes of “Beavis & Butthead” on the silent television and notes that the streaked anarcho humor lively remind him of friends with whom he grew up in Aberdeen, Washington.
I have been hanging around in New York for three days to interview Kurt Cobain for “The Face”. You have just run into your way a few times: In one afternoon I am in the lobby, talk to Courtney Love and play with Frances Bean, her daughter when he appears out of nowhere. He comes up to us as if he moves in slow motion-as always in torn jeans, a white-pink knitting sweater and the sunglasses with the white plastic frame. Without looking at someone, he says: “Am I already expected?” No question: While Courtney only plays the diva with her flutter dress and the wanted controversial statements, he is the born star.
Upright dad or emaciated rock star?
A photo session for “The Face” is set on another day. It is a surreal situation: Cobain, dressed in a tiger fur costume, whizzed with Frances Bean in the stroller crisscrossed across the studio, both out of laughter. In view of this scene, it is difficult to remember the rumors that have been surrounded by Cobain for months: he is fully on heroin. Depending on custody juice. He is already dead. Courtney resides barefoot on a sofa and regularly demands a kiss. It is a demonstrative staging of your affection.
Every time an appointment is set for the interview, it is canceled again. No, he doesn’t have time in the hotel. Not even with the photo session. Especially not before the concert. When Cobain comes off the stage in the Roseland, he looks bad: his face is littered with spots, the last spark of energy seems to disappear from his body. He asked if he might have time for an interview. “Yeah, sura,” he murmurs hardly audibly. I go back to the hotel and wait. Close the room a little – as if that would notice him! – and try to get the jet lag under control.
When Cobain knocks on my door, I don’t know who to expect: the turned up dad or the emaciated rock star? In fact, he is neither of them. I meet a shy, pleasant, funny and-you just can’t get around it-terrifyingly depressed 26-year-old boy. He is two months older than me, but while I am looking forward to the future – whatever they may bring – he seems to have already completed his life. He lies on my bed, his head on two large pillows, and only moves to grab a new cigarette or shuffle on the toilet. Sometimes he has disappeared there for so long that I am afraid that he could already be dead on the marble.
The sensitive, artistically gifted child who had to grow up in a world full of alpha male
Every time he comes back from the bathroom, I feel trying to play the hobby therapist. In his sleepy West Coast accent, he tells me about his childhood that he spent 90 percent of the time in his room-the sensitive, artistically gifted child who had to grow up in a world full of alpha male. “When I was nine, I actually said goodbye to the idea of getting older than 21 because I felt like a foreign body everywhere.” I ask if Frances Bean has changed his life positively. “She completely turned my perspectives. I don’t know … ”He loses his thoughts. His eyes become wet. “I try to get my negativity under control since I was married …”
I just don’t manage to ask him if he has a shot in my bathroom, but I’m talking him to heroin in general. “I’m no longer addicted, but I will probably remain a junkie my whole life.” We talk about his conviction that absolute happiness is at the moment of death. He, he says, is not afraid of death, but about that at that moment to do the departure and to leave a widow and a baby behind. He talks about early death that I no longer wonder whether this case will ever occur, but only when.
It slowly gets light outside and Cobain is rapidly reducing. We go down to the lobby. On the way he mentions that he is now the big rock star. I open it with it until he finally grins briefly. “At least I’ll talk to myself.”
At that time Amy Raphael was the features of the London monthly magazine “The Face”. She wrote books such as “Never Mind the Bollocks – Women Rewrite Rock” (Virago) and “Danny Boyle: In his own words” (Faber and Faber). Most recently, she wrote for “Guardian”, “Observer”, “Times” and “The Telegraph”.
This article was first published in MusikExpress 10/2011.