Them's Fightin' Words

Like countless millions of angst-filled teenagers in the 90s, I was pretty obsessed with Kurt Cobain. The only difference between me and them though is that 20 years later, I’m still pretty obsessed with him.

It’s something I don’t admit freely. It makes me feel vulnerable when I say how much I still admire and respect him because to average Joe, Kurt is just another junkie loser rockstar who killed himself.

Therefore, admitting to liking him is like saying “I dig junkie loser rockstars who kill themselves” which in turn makes people think you wish you were a junkie loser rockstar or worse, that you have a secret desire to kill yourself.

None of that is true in my case. I just think Kurt Cobain as a person, not as a rockstar, or a drug user, or someone who killed himself, was a fucking cool guy.

He had a great sense of humour for starters, a lot of people don’t realise that. They think he was this broody, too-cool-for-school artist type when really all he was was a big kid who never grew up.

He was brutally honest, almost to a fault, about himself and his place in the world. He was the Holden Caulfield of his generation, rallying against the glam and pretence of the 80s by being himself, by laying himself completely bare to the world which, sadly, was his undoing in the end.

It takes courage to go out on a limb like he did and I think it wore him out. I think he found the hypocrisy of rallying against commercial music and artists only to become one himself was too much to bear.

But anyway. I’m moving way off topic here. The real reason I’m writing this is to preface the rare images that Rolling Stone recently posted of Kurt that until yesterday, even a die-hard fan like me had never seen before.

Here, have a look:

At the heart of it all, I think I’ve stayed so obsessed with this man for so long because no matter how much I read up on him and find out about him and listen to his songs and even learn and play them myself, he still remains a mystery to me.

That’s why I love finding rare stuff like this – it adds to that mystery, fuels it, creates more unanswered questions about this man who single-handily changed the course of my life.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this post and looking at these pictures as much as I did writing it and discovering them.

Have a killer Tuesday everyone and remember, if Jesus doesn’t want you for a sunbeam, you can always come back as fire, burn all the liars and leave a blanket of ash on the ground.

-ST