20 Years Ago Today... Kurt Cobain's Obituary and the Time I Met Him
Do you remember when you heard the news about Kurt Cobain? Those of us who were fans of Nirvana on April 8th, 1994 likely have Flashbulb Memories of where we were and what we were doing when the news of his suicide reached us. I remember it vividly, as it was a day that really put me on the course of writing professionally about music. It was also a strange moment as I had briefly met Kurt and the band just a few months prior.
The scene is backstage at the MTV Video Music Awards, on September 2nd, 1993. I was working one of my very first field productions for CNN as a production assistant. We were backstage at the Universal Amphitheater at Universal Studios Hollywood. (Ed. Note: That venue is now closed and has been demolished to make way for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park). It was windy, as you will be able to see from the backdrop and Kurt's hair in the video. We were in an outdoor location that had been tented to create the interview areas for the press, but the wind was still a factor.
Nirvana had won the award for Best Alternative Video for their song, “In Bloom” and was making the media rounds backstage. All three members were there, with baby Frances Bean Cobain joining them. This was the first, and only interview CNN had done with Kurt Cobain, which comes into play later in this tale. I was sitting just off camera, a bit diagonally in front of Dave Grohl.
And that’s it. Less than three minutes of conversation with a band and it’s creative genius who were just months away from their mutual ends. What you don't see from before the video rolled is about a minute where the producer, Julie (the voice you hear off camera and one of my professional mentors) got them seated, organized and the audio guy trying to get levels from them on the boom mic.
The band was pretty much acting this way even before the interview started. Being goofy, having fun, not taking things too seriously. I almost laughed on camera at Krist Novoselic's joke about the concept album. You can hear the producer pause at Kurt's comment at the 2:10 mark about quitting. I'm not sure if they said this to pretty much everybody that night or not, but, it could be that this moment, or repeated moments like it to multiple media outlets, is where break up rumors about the band came from.
After the tape stopped, Kurt asked me if we had any more cookies (as they had emptied the plate in front of them). I pulled out the box and Frances finally got one, as did Kurt. He said "Thanks man" and that was it. Their handler took them to the next tented "room". For perspective, there were dozens of different international press outlets there, as there are at all award shows. The press handlers usher winners and VIP guests through each media outlet and you rarely get more than a few minutes at a time in these interview settings.
Jump forward seven months, to the morning of April 8th, 1994. I was still relatively new on the job with CNN and had gone in a couple hours before my call time in to do some practice writing in an effort to improve my skills. The phone rings and it's my boss from New York (we had two offices and studios for our live, daily newscast) and he was very surprised that anyone even answered, being that it wasn't even 7:00 AM yet on the West Coast. He asked what I was doing there so early and after I told him he said, "Great. You get to practice for air right now. Kurt Cobain is dead."
And that is where my Flashbulb Memory of twenty years ago today begins. As mentioned earlier, that interview we conducted was the only interview CNN had ever done with Kurt Cobain. I spent the next crazy hour working with Mark Scheerer, who was the music beat reporter in CNN’s New York bureau, on creating Cobain’s obituary. He wrote the copy, I transcribed the things Kurt said in the interview for him and made suggestions on which to put in. I pulled the interview and music videos we had in our library and "fed" all the tape via satellite to the CNN Atlanta bureau, Mark tracked his voice and sent it the same way. A videotape editor in Atlanta took our two scripts (Mark’s words, my video edit instructions) and the video material and edited it together to get it on air as fast as possible.
I received many compliments for my hard work on the story. The whole time though, pushed somewhere to the back of my mind, I was kind of in shock, because as a music fan, here is this guy, who’s band had caused a revolution which had changed popular music just three years prior, with whom I'd briefly spoken to just months before, was gone. I remember going home that night and playing Nevermind with a very different mind set than I had previously when listening to this now classic album.
We would later learn from the coroner’s report that Kurt died on April 5th, but for many first-generation Nirvana fans, the 8th is still a bittersweet date to recall. Do you remember where you were or what you were doing when you learned Kurt died? Is your Flashbulb memory from that day vivid? I would very much like to hear your stories as well. Feel free to post in the comments or reach out to me via Twitter.
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Photo from Nirvana's concert at the Palasport, Modena, Italy, on February 21st, 1994. The band performed only six more concerts after this, prior to Kurt Cobain's suicide on April 5th, 1994.
Photo via Getty Images. Photographer: Raffaella Cavalieri
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