Photo by Getty Images
Today would have been Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s 56th birthday. We wish we could have seen everything else he could have accomplished if he had still been around today, but he did do more in his short 27 years than most of us do in a lifetime.
To celebrate the life of the legend lost too soon, here are some interesting facts about Kurt Cobain you might not have known:
- Kurt started singing at the age of 2 and wrote his first song at age 4 about the park.
- Kurt was arrested multiple times throughout his life, and the first time was when he sprayed graffiti on a bank wall in 1985. One of the phrases he graffitied was “Ain’T goT no how waTchamacalliT.”
- Before his music career, Kurt worked for a short period as a swim instructor for young kids at the YMCA in Aberdeen, Washington
- Although Kurt has said differently, several of his friends stated Kurt’s first concert was Sammy Hagar and his band Quarterflash at the Seattle Center Coliseum in March 1983. Apparently, Kurt was too embarrassed to admit this and told people his first concert was a punk band like The Melvins or Black Flag
- Kurt was a massive fan of Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of The Third Kind.
- Before settling on the name Nirvana, Kurt called his band several different titles including Pen Cap Chew, Ted Ed Fred, Skid Row, and Fecal Matter. We think he ended up with the right decision.
- Drew Barrymore and R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe are the godparents of Kurt and Courtney Love’s daughter Frances Bean Cobain.
- Kurt’s favorite book was Patrick Süskind’s Perfume. The book tells the story of a perfumist’s apprentice who kills women to steal their scent since he had no smell of his own. The novel inspired Nirvana’s song Scentless Apprentice.
- Kurt Cobain suffered from intense stage fright and would often vomit before Nirvana concerts out of nervousness.
- Kurt quoted Neil Young’s song Hey Hey, My My when he wrote “It’s better to burn out than to fade away” in his devastating suicide note.
We miss you Kurt, happy birthday!
