27 years after the death of Kurt Cobain: raw account of his last hours

Kurt Cobain barricaded himself in a room above the garage of his home in Seattle. He placed a stool against the door and closed himself to write a farewell letter. He had already removed his hunting cap, which he used so that people would not recognize him. It was April 5, 1994.

Cobain then took out of a tobacco box Tom Moore your drug paraphernalia and he injected three doses of heroin. He had already drunk beer and smoked cigarettes. He placed two towels on the floor, took out his wallet, and He left his driver’s license on display so they could verify his identity. He settled on the floor and rested his chest on his chest. .20 gauge shotgun. The barrel was aimed straight at his chin. With his thumb he pulled the trigger. An accurate shot.

“It is better to burn than to fade”, read his suicide note, written in red ink and dedicated to Boddha, his imaginary childhood friend. The phrase was taken from the song of Neil Young “Hey Hey My My.” In his last post, Cobain regretted not enjoying fame.

“I can’t bear the thought of Frances (her daughter) becoming the miserable, self-destructive rocker that I became”, He wrote, and in the last line of his text he assured that the little girl, then 20 months old, would be better off without him.

At that moment the life of the tormented singer ended, the hero of a generation of young people who saw in his band, Nirvana, a cry of rebellion against the society that judged them. With just three studio albums, the band had sales of more than thirty million copies.

The fame had been too much for him 27-year-old young man, born in the small town of Aberdeen (Washington) on February 20, 1967.

It was only April 8 when a electricista, Gary Smith, found the body of Cobain, who then He had been reported missing for several days.

Smith had come to Cobain’s house to install a security lighting system, and although they did not answer him when he knocked on the door, he decided to begin his work. In one of the rooms he thought he saw a mannequin on the ground with a shotgun on his stomach, but it was actually the singer’s body.

The spiral of death

The last month in Kurt Cobain’s life had been an uncontrolled descent. The first serious notice came on March 4 in Rome: a suicide attempt by overdosing on sleeping pills. The singer survived after passing 20 hours in a coma. Four days later, he was released from the hospital and returned to the United States.

His surroundings knew that drastic measures were necessary, but the attempt to admit him to a specialized clinic failed when Cobain learned of those plans.

On March 18, the police came to his home due to a heated argument with his wife, Courtney Love. The also rocker told the officers that Kurt locked himself in a room with a .38 caliber pistol and assured that he was going to kill himself. The police officers confiscated the weapon along with three others, as well as an unidentified bottle of pills.

Krist Novoselic, Nirvana bassist, Dylan Carlson, Kurt’s longtime friend, and others close to him, met on March 25 at the Lake Washington home in Seattle to discuss what else they could do for the singer.

Courtney threatened to leave him and Krist warned him that it would be the end of the band if he didn’t go into rehab. After several hours of confinement, it seemed that Kurt had decided to move on with his life.

However, she did not travel with Courtney to Los Angeles, as she wished, for the two to enter a rehab center together. Love would be sorry later. On March 26, at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, the singer began her treatment.

The last days

Cobain told his friend Carlson that someone had tried to break into his home in Seattle and asked him to buy him a gun, something he had done before.

On March 30, Kurt and his friend went to Stan’s Gun Shop and they bought a Remington .20 caliber shotgun, as well as a box of ammunition. They paid about $ 300.

The singer would travel to Los Angeles for his rehab treatment and Carlson offered to keep the gun for him, but Kurt insisted on keeping it.

“Just remember, no matter what, I love you”, Told him Cobain to Courtney Love the last time they spoke. The singer was already in the Exodus Recovery Center, where he remained a very short time, as he escaped, after scaling a fence, and returned to Seattle.

The next day Courtney hired private investigators to find the singer. Nobody saw it. No one knew where it was. His mother, Wendy O’Connor, filed a missing person report on April 4.

According to the magazine Rolling Stone, the police believe that it lasted the two days before his death, Cobain wandered the city without a clear purpose. Some neighbors saw him in a park, looking like “ill”.

It is also believed that he spent a night at his summer home together with a friend, but it was never confirmed.

No one really knows what happened during the last 48 hours of the singer who preferred to be hated for what he was and not loved for what he was not.