"Oh Pleez GAWD I can't handle the success!"

While in rehab, Cobain meticulously detailed his history of heroin use, a sad memoir that foreshadowed his demise. After a prescription mix-up, Cobain writes, "I instantly decided to kill myself or stop the pain. I bought a gun but chose drugs instead." Though the proximate cause of his heroin use was physical pain, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that there was more emotional pain at the root of his malaise than is made clear in "Journals."

Most entertaining are his travails with fame and superstardom, something with which Cobain never felt comfortable. His favorite bands were fairly broke and pretty obscure, and he felt as though he had betrayed them, as though his music was intended to be niche-oriented and was tainted by his alliance with David Geffen and their mutual goal of mass distribution.

"If we were going to be ghettoised, I'd rather be in the same slum as bands that are good like Mudhoney, Jesus Lizard, the Melvins and Beat Happening rather than being a tennant of the corporate landlords regime ... I would love to be erased from our association with Pearl Jam or the Nymphs and other first time offenders."

But that was a deal that Cobain had made with the Man. Though he and bandmates Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl (who seems to be quite comfortable with fame) initially disliked the polishing that the record company gave to "Nevermind," they went along with it. It was a deal Cobain couldn't back out of, and as a result, he was unable to find the balance between being a great rock musician and being a rock star.

"Oh Pleez GAWD I can't handle the success! The success! And I feel so incredibly guilty! For abandoning my true commrades who were the ones who are devoted who were into us a few years ago. And in 10 years when NIRVANA becomes as memorable as Kajagoogoo that same very small percent will come to see us at reunion gigs sponsored by Depends diapers, bald fat still trying to RAWK at amusement parks. Saturdays: puppet show, rollercoaster & Nirvana ..."

It never got to that point, and a gander at these diaries makes it clear that it never could have. Cobain writes that he hopes he'll have died before he becomes Pete Townshend (the most morbid yet fall-down funny line in the available excerpts). But the comparison is instructive: Cobain started out with Townshend's more mature, softer side, but never abandoned the hard-rocking angst with which Townshend began. Where the Who's critics have accused the band of smoothing out their music as time went on, there was always a tender accessibility to Cobain's dismay. But Nirvana's members never quarreled among themselves about it. Novoselic and Grohl did not violently oppose Cobain's softer side the way John Entwistle, Keith Moon and Roger Daltrey often did with Townshend.

This was just who Kurt Cobain was, a tortured soul whose pain was more identifiable than he wished it was. The insecurities he wrestled with turned out to be less bizarre than he thought -- check the record sales! -- a fact that would be cathartic to most. It created a fame that was more than his "enemeic [sic], rodent-like body" could handle. David Geffen didn't create Cobain's persona; it was what circumstance, nurture and his body predetermined for him.

Cobain didn't have to create a character like Townshend's Tommy. He was his own walking opera. If Newsweek's snippets are a true indication, the sheet music to that opera will be made available to the public, open for our discussion, contemplation and explication. Debate will erupt over the public's right to pore over a dead man's soul as though it were a fossil or an archaeological treasure. (Cobain even mentions in the journals that the kind of thing I'm doing now amounts to "rape.")

But that discussion is moot now. "Journals," better than any biography could hope to be, will make essential reading for anyone looking to understand the 1990s' most important pop star. It's more compelling than "The Rose That Grew From Concrete," the posthumous book of poetry by Cobain's hip-hop counterpart, Tupac Shakur, since it provides a much more intricate look at a figure so complex he couldn't even figure himself out.

One thing is easy to see while reading "Journals" -- great pain can make for great art, and it has a strange way of shedding light on brilliance. It also makes for short lives.

Story finder (3 ways to search Salon)

Search terms:

Salon the Web

Salon Directory (browse by topic)