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“Cobain Unseen”: Rare Photos, Artwork and Journal Entries
21-Oct-2008
Written by: Carlos Wall
Writer Charles Cross released a book of photos of Kurt Cobain.
Kurt Donald Cobain died 14 years ago. The Nirvana front man ended his life abruptly in 1994 and with him the short success span the band enjoyed ended too.
During the prime years of Nirvana, the group produced three studio albums and toured the world extensively. In Cobain Unseen, writer Charles R. Cross mines Cobain’s archives and creates a book that captures the musician through different stages of his life.
Nirvana gave birth to a new alternative musical style denominated grunge. They also cleared the way for other similar sounding bands that were emerging by that time such as: Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains.
Success for Nirvana was immediate after the release of their second album, Nevermind, in 1991, and their single, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” became, in no time, a number one hit. However, Cobain could not keep up with the “rock-star” label he was caged in, in fact he loathed it, and the degree of instant massive fame that came along with it was too overwhelming for him. A hardcore heroin addict, it was while cleaning himself out from it, that he escaped a rehabilitation center somewhere in Europe, flew back to his Seattle home, and shot himself in the head.
According to Rolling Stone Magazine, to research the rare photos, artwork, and journal entries that make up the new book, Cross was granted unprecedented access to Cobain's archives.
"It was like a James Bond movie," Cross says of the high-tech Seattle bunker. "But once you got past security, all his possessions were just in boxes." With these artifacts, put into storage following Cobain's 1994 suicide, Cross pieced together a remarkably revealing visual history of Cobain's private life — from his childhood drawings to snapshots (taken by Courtney Love) of Cobain and daughter Frances Bean.
"Kurt created work that has such mystery that we still can't capture its essence," Cross says. "It's that intangible thing that made him a star."
Although, artistically, he might not be in the same podium as Bob Marley, James Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix, all of whom, through one way or another, left the world way before their time, Cobain did manage in a way to also leave a stamp of influence still vivid throughout his music.
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