Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love Pt. 1: No Direction Home

Kurt Cobain is a celebrated and defiant icon of Generation X. His wife, Courtney Love, was once the most hated woman in America. Courtney, like Kurt, was unapologetic, fierce, determined, ambitious, authentic, and a total hypocrite. They were both totally in love and for a minute shined brighter than most. They challenged gender norms and the music industry patriarchy and reluctantly played the roles of their generation’s John and Yoko by way of Sid and Nancy all while making great music, but only one of them would make it out of the nineties alive. To see a full list of contributors, visit disgracelandpod.com. https://www.disgracelandpod.com/ This episode was originally published on March 14, 2019. Visit www.disgracelandpod.com/merch https://cms.megaphone.fm/organizations/c83125d2-8508-11ed-bd28-ff0aff7ee233/podcasts/efca2ef8-85f9-11ed-8fe3-bb208936046f/episodes/d117e93e-5e36-11ef-8745-5373bae4c0ff/www.disgracelandpod.com/merch to see the latest Disgraceland merch! Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER https://mailchi.mp/doubleelvis/disgraceland-email-newsletter Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/disgracelandpod/ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@disgracelandpod X https://twitter.com/disgracelandpod (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/491024204626127/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:10Jake Brennan?

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• 2:13Jake Brennan?

  All right, guys, welcome into this week's rewind episode of DisgraceLand. We are getting into our Nirvana story this weekend, and we released these episodes originally back in March of 2019. I gotta say, when they were released, I was shocked. I was legitimately shocked at the reaction, the blowback from people who really believed that Kurt Cobain did not commit suicide.

• 2:42Jake Brennan?

  It was so strong that it forced me to dig back into the research and see if I missed anything, and I came out the other side, and I still believe what I believed when these were originally released and written. You know, Courtney Love, think what you might about her. I do not believe she is a killer, despite what some documentaries might say. When you look at the actual evidence, including evidence from a so-called study that came out in February of 2026, it got a lot of hype, a lot of news. We looked at all of that and came to the same conclusion. Kurt Cobain was a deeply tormented artist.

• 3:23Jake Brennan?

  Courtney Love is a deeply complicated person and artist, and their story is tragic. The story of Nirvana is singular in the history of rock and roll, and these two episodes reflect those two points. Releasing them again now for a specific reason. There's a Courtney Love documentary coming, I don't know when, in the next couple of months, at some point. And I think, I think what I want to do is I want to hear from you guys and hear what you think on this story. Do you still, after listening to both of these episodes, still believe that Kurt's death was not the official cause? Suicide, death by suicide? Or do you believe something nefarious happened? I want to know.

• 4:08Jake Brennan?

  617-906-6638, voicemail and text to let me know. At DisgraceLandPod on the socials, [email protected]. And based on the reaction I get from you guys, I might end up taking a deeper look into the so-called conspiracy theorists who believe that something else was at play. We'll get into that later. Here's part one of the Nirvana story.

• 4:34Jake Brennan?

  DisgraceLand is a production of Double Elvis.

• 4:49Jake Brennan?

  Kurt Cobain is a celebrated and defiant icon of Generation X. His wife, Courtney Love, was once the most hated woman in America, and to this day, still does what she can to wear that crown. Courtney Love, like Kurt Cobain, was unapologetic, fierce, determined, ambitious, authentic, and a total hypocrite. The two were also totally in love and at times completely insane. They spit in the face of authority, did more heroin than Johnny Thunders, and one of them lived long enough to brag about it. They challenged gender norms in the music industry patriarchy and reluctantly played the roles of their generation's John and Yoko by way of Sid and Nancy. Despite his marriage to Courtney Love and birth of their daughter Frances Bean,

• 5:34Jake Brennan?

  Kurt Cobain never really had a home. He was born into dysfunction and as a child was rejected by his family, his community, and society at large. He never had a chance. But for a minute, before burning out, he shined brighter than most. He channeled his rejection through the saving grace of his beloved punk rock, and in doing so, became the reluctant voice of a disaffected generation and popular beyond his wildest dreams. Wanted by everyone, even by his account, the most attractive and talented female artist on the scene at the time, Courtney Love. It goes without saying that Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love made great music, and that music you heard at the top of the show, that wasn't great music.

• 6:17Jake Brennan?

  That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called Mellow Street Corner Serenade BK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to "I'm Too Sexy" by Rightside Fred. And why would I play you that specific slice of Cheeky Cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on February 24th, 1992, and that was the day that Kurt Cobain married Courtney Love, creating what would become one of, if not the, most notorious couples in rock and roll history. On this, the first of a special two-part episode to commence season three. Cheeky Cheese, A Street Corner Serenade, No Direction Home, Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.

• 7:30Jake Brennan?

  Courtney Love killed Kurt Cobain.

• 7:34Jake Brennan?

  Not literally, figuratively.

• 7:38Jake Brennan?

  Like most everything else in Kurt's life, his wife was too much for him to handle. His fame, his success, and all the trappings that came with it that he tried in vain to reject, not to mention the pressure of living up to the height, his addiction to heroin, his crippling stomach pain, the deep wounds of his childhood, and his inability to find comfort or a sense of home anywhere or with anyone.

• 8:00Jake Brennan?

  Despite his complex yet loving relationship with Courtney, her own heavy personal baggage piled on top of everything else became unbearable for Kurt Cobain.

• 8:11Jake Brennan?

  Most people point to his heroin addiction as the main reason for his death, or that he was simply depressed, but those explanations are too easy. Others lay the Yoko trip on Courtney Love, but that is, as John Lennon would say, thick and ordinary. Courtney Love came into a relationship with Kurt Cobain as an experienced heroin user, sure, and she did indeed enable Kurt's addiction, but the real truth is that he enabled hers just as much. No one thing was responsible for his death, and no matter how intriguing the conspiracy theories are, the ones that try to paint the death as some wild murder scheme cooked up by Courtney are, in a word, untrue. Courtney Love did not literally kill Kurt Cobain, but she did quite literally save his life.

• 8:57Jake Brennan?

  In early January 1992, Kurt Cobain was becoming the biggest rock star in the world, and he was miserable. He was away from home, whatever that was, and suffering through the highs and lows of a serious heroin addiction. Heroin for Kurt had a dual effect. On the one hand, it was the one thing that stymied his crippling stomach pain, a psychosomatic illness that doctors were never able to officially diagnose. But it bared similar symptoms to the worst aspects of every stomach ailment you know of: IBS, ulcers, rumination disorder. Certainly, this pain demanded something stronger than more milk and laxatives. On the other hand, heroin was an express ticket straight to oblivion, a trip for Kurt

• 9:39Jake Brennan?

  Cobain that had become a necessity. He began using a few years earlier when his band Nirvana was just starting out. He knew the danger involved, but he also knew his pain and his heartache. And he knew that no other drug, not the acid he'd swallowed, the quaaludes he'd taken, the speed he'd snorted, none of it, had the power to suppress the deep feelings of loneliness and rejection he'd carried with him since adolescence.

• 10:03Jake Brennan?

  So heroin, for Kurt, was about self-medication, physical and psychological. For Courtney, though not without her own childhood pain and demons, heroin was about getting high. She'd started using earlier when she first struck out as a musician because shooting dope was, quite literally, in her estimation anyway, what the cool kids were doing. But Courtney, at least in comparison to Kurt, had it under control, which meant that the burden of being the responsible one usually fell to her. And what that meant, in hardcore junkie reality terms, was that she was the one who had to take care of Kurt when he overdosed. And he overdosed a lot.

• 10:41Jake Brennan?

  But this time, he was dead, lying on the floor of the Omni Hotel in New York City, next to the bed his fiancee was asleep in, Courtney Love, the singer of the rapidly rising grunge band Hole. A few hours earlier, Nirvana had made their live television debut on Saturday Night Live. It had also been the same weekend that Nirvana's major-label debut album, Never Mind, knocked Michael Jackson's Dangerous from the number-one slot in the Billboard charts. It was a moment Kurt had long dreamed of.

• 11:09Jake Brennan?

  For astute fans of Nirvana, it was obvious that their performance on SNL was uneven, but nonetheless, it was still a triumph. It was not only their first live TV performance on a long-running late-night tastemaking series, no less, but it was also the first live national television performance of a "grunge band," the new sound percolating out of the cloudy confines of America's Pacific Northwest. And beyond that, for many young Americans, Nirvana's first SNL appearance was their first look at punk rock. Sure, Nirvana had a new take on the genre that first broke back in 1977, but at its core, the band was punk as fuck in style, sound, and ethos.

• 11:50Jake Brennan?

  For suburban kids watching that night, their first look at the band must have been arresting. A three-piece, the band couldn't have looked more mismatched. The drummer is barely seen behind his massive kit, but holy shit can he be heard, flailing about wildly with a distinct hardcore energy, the type that can only be learned on the makeshift stages of all ages shows at VFW halls and in friends' sweaty basements. The bass player is like, what, 14 feet tall? A giant bearing down on his black-fender precision bass, making it look like a ukulele in his grip. And the scrawny little singer next to him, otherwise an afterthought in comparison to the Charisma Despair rhythm section, were it not for his intensity. It's obvious from the first second you lay eyes on him, despite his disinterest in the song he's playing,

• 12:35Jake Brennan?

  that he's unlike anything you've seen before. His hair is dyed plum-red, a deeper shade of Johnny Rotten. His jeans are baggy and so torn you assume they're his only pair. He's wearing a button-down cardigan sweater that is two sizes too big over what appears to be a homemade concert t-shirt for a band called Flipper that most of the world has never heard of before.

• 12:56Jake Brennan?

  And he's going through the motions, but the rhythm section is going apeshit. "Sail On" goes the song.

• 13:04Jake Brennan?

  Their first single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," which up until that point had been a heat-seeking missile on the charts and ubiquitous on radio and MTV, is getting a good live working over by a band that America is falling in love with right there in that moment on live television.

• 13:22Jake Brennan?

  If in 1992 you'd been listening to college radio or staying up late to watch Dave Kendall on MTV's 120 Minutes or sweating it out in punk rock clubs, the song's elements were nothing new to you. The quiet, loud, quiet verse-chorus-verse arrangement was straight-up pixies, and the discordant guitarist stunk of sonic youth. The pounding rhythm hit you hard like Seattle's Melvins, a band whose t-shirts were worn proudly by both members of the rhythm section onstage that night. But taken in composite, layered onto one another, and combined with their own unique style and attitude, the band was something completely new for the time. The second performance on SNL was the pummeling Petro pace territorial pissing. It's more

• 14:06Jake Brennan?

  punk than grunge sounding, faster, angrier than "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and more subversive with its lyric. "Never met a wise man. If so, it's a woman."

• 14:16Jake Brennan?

  The singer is screaming bloody murder, and you're wired into his pain. It's deeper and more visceral than anything else mainstream music had offered to that point. John Lennon may have paved the way with his primal scream, but it never made its way to the top of the charts. And the singer's shattered torture is obvious, and right there on the screen, it's balanced out by the precision of the rhythm section. The song ends, and the band trashes their equipment, but there are no Mad Hatter Keith Moon grins from past generations. The destruction is pure violence, all menace, three times the peep.

• 14:55Jake Brennan?

  During the show's end credits, the band is aligned onstage next to the host, Northern Exposure's Rob Morrow. Cast members, notably Chris Rock, Kevin Nealon, and David Spade millabout behind them. The band picks up as Morrow says goodnight, and then the bass player grabs the drummer by the sides of his face and plants a full-long tongue kiss on him. The singer notices what's happening and can't help but smile. He grabs them both in a group hug, and is grabbed by the bass player and kissed just as forcefully as his drummer was. He backs off. He's hysterical, and is picked up by his drummer and swung around joyfully. Everything about it spoke to me as a 17-year-old at the time, watching it all play out alongside my closest high school stoner buddies on the couch at my friend Dorf's house. It was

• 15:39Jake Brennan?

  smart, funny, juvenile punk, and pissed. It was loud, fast, feminist, queer, and confident, and it was fun and totally and completely subversive. It was Nirvana, and it was 100% unlike anything else that had been on live national television before. As a culture, thanks to Nirvana, we had entered new territory, and Chris Novoselic, Dave Grohl, and Kurt Cobain had gloriously pissed all over it, marking it as their own. So it was a triumph. But Kurt Cobain wasn't in the mood for celebrating. Fuck the cast party. He needed to get high.

• 16:33Speaker 01

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• 17:39Jake Brennan?

  The needle puncturing the skin was part of the addiction. The piercing, the droplet of blood, thumbing down the syringe, it all meant one thing: oblivion.

• 17:51Jake Brennan?

  And oblivion was what Kurt Cobain craved. He prepped the China White, slammed it into his arm, and drifted off.

• 18:00Jake Brennan?

  The dream was less a dream and more a pastiche of shame and rejection. It was one of the things Kurt hated about heroin. Usually, if he used enough of it, and he was kind of legendary for the amount of dope he could handle at one time, the high would be heavy enough to suppress the dreams. But every now and then, those days back in Aberdeen crept up from his subconscious.

• 18:22Jake Brennan?

  In the dream, it was Kurt in jail, writing porn for his fellow inmates to jerk off to. This, of course, never happened in real life, but that didn't stop Kurt from telling this story to help bolster his own mythology. And the lie seeped into his subconscious. It wasn't that he was ashamed of the lie, or the masturbation, or even the arrest over a slew of minor offenses that resulted in an eight-day stay in the local Aberdeen jail. He was ashamed because he had no one to call to bail him out. He was 19 years old and literally didn't have anyone. And it had been this way for most of his adolescence.

• 18:56Jake Brennan?

  Kurt's mom, Wendy, kicked him out at the age of 17. Kurt went to live with his father, Don, and in the beginning, it was okay. Better than being with his mom and having to tell his horny friends to stop gawking at her. But then his dad met Jenny and decided to start a new family. It was clear to Kurt that he didn't fit into his dad's new life. Jenny had two kids, and Kurt frequently clashed with his new step siblings. His dad made a feeble effort at making it work, but ultimately acquiesced to his new wife's wishes and kicked Kurt out. Kurt bounced back to his mom's, and she took him in briefly. He fought constantly with her new husband until eventually landing back out of the house. Kurt went to stay with his grandparents in their trailer for a time, but that didn't work. So teenage Kurt Cobain shuffled from house to house, staying with friends and their

• 19:41Jake Brennan?

  families when he could, and eventually landing in various foster homes until he was old enough to move into an apartment with a friend at age 18. But at the time of the arrest, he was homeless, alternately sleeping at the house of a high school English teacher and in the backseat of a friend's mom's beat-up Volvo. Regardless of his living situation, Kurt had no family support system to call on from jail. He'd been rejected so fully, so often from both his mother and his father, that calling them, now, at age 19, would have been futile. If they weren't there for him when he was 17, then how, he reasoned, could they possibly be there for him as a young adult? Shame and rejection borrowed itself into Kurt Cobain, and despite the tremendous amounts

• 20:25Jake Brennan?

  of powerful heroin he injected, it still fucked with him. Oblivion was the goal because reality was too painful, even for a man on the verge of realizing his dreams. His heroin dreams were preferable to reality, as they were usually nothing more than big, black, heavily weighted blankets holding him down, compressing him to this cruel world as it spun wildly, doing its best to shake him from its surface. But this dream, the one where he was back in Aberdeen, in jail, writing porn, jailed rednecks surrounding him in the cell, some of them masturbating furiously, the rest of them looking at him with distrust and hate, and the feeling that he's trapped, unable to get out, unable to go home. This was a dream of deep emotional pain.

• 21:09Jake Brennan?

  Kurt searched for a way out, away from the hurt, deeper into the darkness. But when he saw his chance, he took it and dove headfirst into the black unknown. And there was a flat thud. In Kurt's unconscious, it was the sound of breaking through. But in Kurt's four-star New York City hotel room in the early morning hours after his legendary SNL performance, it was the sound of him falling off of his bed, onto the floor, and into a heroin overdose.

• 21:40Jake Brennan?

  When Courtney awoke and realized Kurt wasn't sleeping next to her, her heart jumped into her throat. She immediately feared the worst. She found Kurt on the floor next to the bed, his skin green and in a death-like unconsciousness. She pounced, straddling him as he lay on his back. She began pounding his chest with her fist to get his lungs pumping. When that didn't work, she got to her feet, grabbed the ice bucket on the room service tray with the empty bottle of champagne in it, and began palming hands full of whatever un melted cubes of ice she could find into her near-dead fiance's asshole. When that didn't revive him, she surveyed the room for Kurt's leather jacket, the one with the Vaseline's pin on it. She saw it crumpled on the floor in the corner. Courtney had the pin off in seconds.

• 22:23Jake Brennan?

  She pulled Kurt's dirty jeans down to his ankles, ripped off his boxers, and began poking his testicles with the pin, pausing only to smack Kurt across his acne cheeks, then returning to stab the scrotum with the pin again. Finally, he began to come back to life. Courtney threw cold water on his face and his eyes opened. She then pulled him to his feet, started dragging him about the room to get him moving again. Once he started to gain his strength and hold himself up a bit, she began rotating his arms to get more of the blood flowing. It was all routine to her. She'd saved his life before and would save his life again. It was a process he'd grown accustomed to, grown to depend on. He was familiar, like home.

• 23:06Speaker 05

  We'll be right back after this word, word, word.

• 23:11Speaker 01

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• 24:12Jake Brennan?

  Before Courtney, there was Tracy. Before stardom and four-star hotels, there was a one-room apartment in the college town of Olympia, Washington. Kurt moved there from Aberdeen to live with Tracy in a studio apartment. The place stunk and wasn't as tidy as Tracy would have liked, but it was home, their home, together.

• 24:34Jake Brennan?

  Tracy worked and made enough for them to get by, barely. Mostly, Kurt didn't work. He slept until noon and spent his days playing guitar, sometimes strumming in front of the TV, sometimes journaling or making art. Tracy shrugged off Kurt's clutter, his weird drawings, his apparent inability to wash a dish, and his neediness. She loved him, and so she took care of him, made sure he ate at least one meal a day, didn't sleep too much, that sort of thing. As for Kurt, he'd said it more than once. Tracy was the perfect girlfriend, and he only missed Wendy, his mom, a little.

• 25:10Jake Brennan?

  As perfect as Tracy may have been, Kurt left her back at the apartment on an April Sunday in 1988, and along with Chris Novoselic and Dave Foster, Nirvana's third drummer, loaded their gear out of their practice space, packed up a borrowed Conaline van, and drove 60 miles north to Seattle so that his new band could play a legit rock show in a real club with a real PA. Kurt was quiet, trying to ignore his clenching gut. He told himself things were good, things would be fine. Just a couple of months ago, they'd recorded their demo, and since then, Kurt had worked hard to get the tape into the hands of local tastemakers in the punk scene who could help him, not that he'd admit it. He'd asked for friends' help in circulating the demo and getting college radio airplay,

• 25:53Jake Brennan?

  and in doing so, managed to snag the interest of a partner at the newly-formed record label Sub Pop. An excited Jonathan Pullman shared the demo with his less-than-enthusiastic partner, the more business-minded of the two, Bruce Pavitt. The enterprising duo discussed whether to finance a single by the scrawny kid who they thought might, on his best day, someday, maybe, approach the coolness of their label's BMOC, Mark Arm of Mudhoney. So they invited Nirvana to play one of their Sub Pop Sunday shows at The Vogue in Seattle, where Kurt was told they'd have an audience of music executives and representatives. Pullman wanted the reaction of local tastemakers, their positive reaction, in order to justify signing the band.

• 26:37Jake Brennan?

  On the other end of the phone, Kurt imagined an adoring crowd, the faces of the members of Tad and other bands he loved, shining up at him on stage. He cleared his throat, and in his calmest whatever voice that he could muster, said, "Sure, cool."

• 26:53Jake Brennan?

  Chris gave the wheel a sharp turn and pulled into a lot beside the Vogue. It was late afternoon. Kurt hopped out to stretch and to check out the building that had hosted new wave acts and other bands. Bands that were better than Nirvana, bands that knew what they were doing. What if he sucked? He felt the nerves in his stomach, felt the bile burn his esophagus. He ripped off his jean jacket, held back his hair and vomited onto the pavement. Then he sat, head in hands, trying to control his breathing. His bandmates stood back and waited for him to pull his shit together. The show itself was kind of a haze. Kurt couldn't shake his nerves. After a soundcheck, they went backstage, assuming the club would fill up, as Pullman had promised.

• 27:36Jake Brennan?

  But when they got up to play, they saw their audience consisted of maybe 10 people, among whom were friends of friends and maybe one industry person, a DJ. What the hell? Kurt got shaky again, shaky and angry, deflated, nauseous. And while the rhythm section held the drone through the set, powering through technical glitches, Kurt hung on by a thread. He strummed and mumbled lyrics without intensity and with zero connection to the few people standing in front of the stage who he occasionally peered at from under the fringe of his hair. And there was little clapping, and there was no encore, and it was embarrassing. Offstage, and with a camera pointed at him, Kurt screamed, "We sucked!" They drove straight home. In the van, it was quiet.

• 28:20Jake Brennan?

  A loop of the night's disaster played over Kurt's brain. He told himself they'd practice more, at least five times a week, as any real band should, and that he'd write better songs, great songs, and that they would improve and rule the world, and if it wasn't with Sub Pop, it would be with some other label, a better label, without some P.T. Barnum wannabe in a flannel shirt at the helm. After the gig, Kurt committed himself, to himself. He drafted a new band bio. "Greetings, we realize that there was once a 60s band called Nirvana, but don't get us confused with them, because they totally suck big fucking dick. Nirvana, sounds like Black Sabbath playing the knack, Black Flag, Led Zeppelin and The Stooges with a pinch of Bay City Rollers."

• 29:04Jake Brennan?

  He rehearsed his answers to future interview questions. "Hi, I'm the moody bohemian member of the group. Blonde, frontman, the sensitive type. I like pasta, turtles, girls with weird eyes, writing, reading, keeping my mouth shut, cake decorating, horseback riding, gun cleaning, Sally Struthers impersonations, pina coladas and getting caught in the rain, butt fucking, acupuncture, painting, friends, cats, goats, mohair sweaters, cultivating a fine army of facial blemishes, scarification, blah, blah, blah." And he wrote letters to his friends and heroes whom he hoped to befriend. "Mark, whoa, Polly Peregwin is my favorite song of this decade. I've been soaking up the sounds of the Screaming Trees for a few months, and I think it's way better than most.

• 29:46Jake Brennan?

  Although in the pop genre, I like Pixies and Smithereens a bit better, but Polly Peregwin, Jesus God, what a complete masterpiece." He walked around the apartment, unconsciously crafting his nonchalant slouch. His blue-eyed rock god shrugged toward oblivion. His jeans ripped, his shirt flannel, his shoes chucks, and his hair, dirty. He calculated to look uncalculated. He cared, but didn't want to seem to care. He imagined his next time onstage, he'd get it right. Then, the phone rang. It was Pullman. The single with Sub Pop was on. "No shit," Kurt thought to himself. Of course Pullman and Pavitt loved the show, and so did the quote-unquote "industry execs",

• 30:28Jake Brennan?

  and the DJ from KCMU, and of course, whoever was in the crowd that night that passed his scenesters. In a good mood, the best mood he'd been in in a long time, Kurt wrote to his friend, Dale Crowver, drummer for the Melvins, to ask for advice/ drop a humble brag that his band had signed with Sub Pop. "It was a big deal," he casually mentioned, "and oh yeah, by the way, our final name is Nirvana." Tour, the road. This is where it all happens.

• 31:13Jake Brennan?

  The sex, the drugs, the rock and roll, the making of your myth. For a touring musician, the road offers plenty, but the reality is that no matter how many adoring fans you meet or a pure adolescent release you feel onstage, being away from home at some point really starts to suck. Your clothes stink in ways you didn't imagine possible, you can't find a decent, healthy meal, you're sick and tired of every last one of your bandmates, you haven't shit right in weeks, you get poor to no sleep and you crave intimacy, real intimacy, the kind that only a significant other, someone who truly cares for you, can give. This is what most musicians feel at some point on the road, no matter how experienced or successful.

• 31:57Jake Brennan?

  But as a new band, making little or no money, you're driving from gig to gig, playing to small but sometimes non-existent crowds. Sometimes you play to just the doorman and the bartender, but it's all good, because you're paying your dues, just like Black Flag, you tell yourself. You try to keep it together, keeping enough energy and reserve to stay sane, to remember who you are in civilian life back home. Now imagine that sense of loneliness with the added shit situation of not having a real home to go back to once tours ended. That's how it felt for Kurt Cobain. On the road, onstage, he had a hard time controlling his mood when things went wrong. When there were technical problems, when the sound onstage didn't match the sound

• 32:38Jake Brennan?

  in his head, he'd get frustrated, angry, he'd let it affect his performance. Added to that, he missed his girlfriend, and his stomach was a chronic mess that he tried drinking into a truce with Strawberry Nestle quick. He wanted connection and attention but had little. All of this took a toll on him as he toured in 1989 to support Nirvana's debut album, Bleach. Their European tour with the band TAD was brutal, 37 shows in 42 days. When there was enough money to stop in a hotel, Kurt would often share a room with TAD drummer Kurt Danielson. And with the lamps low, they'd shoot the shit. One night, an exhausted Kurt lay back on the soft white comforter, letting two fluffy white pillows cradle his head and sighed.

• 33:22Jake Brennan?

  Fuck, it was good to lie down, on a real bed. He and Danielson talked, as they often did, late into the night, the pauses between their words getting longer as they drifted towards sleep. Kurt's mind was on Tracy, how she was losing patience with the money situation. His thoughts then shifted to his mother Wendy. He remembered when he'd proudly played Nirvana's Love Buzz single for her on Christmas Eve. She'd been unimpressed and hoped he had a backup plan. He only let that hurt a little. She loved him, right? She had to, he thought. He was 22 years old, but in some ways, he was still just a boy. A boy who was about to go from total obscurity to super fame.

• 34:06Jake Brennan?

  "You know," he said to Danielson, "I've wanted to go home since the first week of this tour. I could go to my mom's right now, she'd let me, she'd wire me the money." There was a pause. The pain he felt now wasn't in his gut, but farther up, a tightness in his chest and throat. "She'd have me," he insisted, "she'd have me, you know?" Danielson didn't know. He couldn't tell if Kurt was talking to him or talking to himself, whether he was shooting straight or bullshitting. There are world-class bullshitters out there who are easily recognizable and repellent, the types of people you don't want to waste your time with. Then, there are different types of bullshitters. The type who spin lies, not to hurt or impress you, but to weave you into the alternate

• 34:49Jake Brennan?

  reality they've created for themselves, usually because their reality is too big of a drag to accept. Kurt Cobain was this type of bullshitter. You wanted to believe his bullshit as strongly as he did. But you could seldom tell what was real and what was myth with Kurt. Nowhere was this more obvious than within his lyrics, particularly throughout the songs on Nirvana's second album, Nevermind. The success of Nevermind, Nirvana's first for the major label DGC, was staggering. In four short months, Nirvana went from releasing a record their label predicted would have only modest success to number one on the Billboard charts by January 1992. The record was propelled by its first single, Smells Like Teen Spirit, a song which Kurt

• 35:31Jake Brennan?

  said was a direct ripoff of his favorite band, The Pixies. Kurt was being somewhat disingenuous. In total truth, the song had turned out to be exactly what he'd set out to write, the ultimate pop song. And Nirvana weren't only bringing fame to themselves, the success of Nevermind shone a light on the feedback-laden flannelled Seattle scene where they'd come from. And suddenly, all flights west were jammed with A&R men. Bands like Mud Honey and Pearl Jam signed to major labels on Nirvana's coattails. Hollywood got in on the action too, with movies like Cameron Kerr's highly stylized singles that romanticized Generation X in the context of Seattle with its coffee shops and quote-unquote grunge musicians, including Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and a host of other

• 36:14Jake Brennan?

  disenfranchised characters dressed in cargo shorts and long johns as they looked for love. Kurt clutched his gut as things got sillier when grunge music meshed with mainstream celebrity and fashion. First, bands like Soundgarden and Alice in Chains went mainstream. In the Lemonheads, Dreamy Evendando emerged as a grunge heartthrob. On the runways and in the fashion mags, designers hawked grunge-inspired styles, flannel layers, cardigans and ironic t-shirts, slip dresses, baby dolls and ripped tights. It was all androgyny and heroin chic, as gaunt, ethereal models slouched, imposed and scowled like rock stars or drug addicts. Kurt's anti-fashion had become fashion.

• 36:56Jake Brennan?

  The idea that Kurt Cobain, five foot nine inches of him, 130 pounds with his ripped jeans and duct taped sneakers, had become a fashion icon was ridiculous. The ridiculousness didn't stop there. Kurt's image was blasted across countless magazine covers. His voice rang out in regular rotation all over the airwaves. Tickets for his concerts were in high demand, he was in high demand. DJs, journalists, tastemakers hung on his every word. He was wanted by everyone. It was a feeling he could not get used to. Fame has a way of opening up the world, but for Kurt, it seemed that for every door that opened, another two would close. Old, familiar rituals were no longer possible.

• 37:39Jake Brennan?

  Kurt couldn't just pop into a record store, hell, he couldn't even pop into the local 7-Eleven for a pack of smokes. He'd be recognized, accosted. He didn't mind the real fans, but it was the new legion of fly-by-night fans, the meatheads and Johnny-come-latelies who didn't know the Melvins from the Munsters that bothered him.

• 37:57Jake Brennan?

  Kurt could see one now, no, two, outside the window of the 7-Eleven he was currently wandering around in. He was looking for Strawberry Quick, and they were looking through the window at what the magazines called "The New Voice of a Generation," and hoping for an autograph, or worse Kurt thought, "conversation." And they were big, northwestern lumberjack types. As they approached, Kurt seemed to recognize one of them. He was older, and of the two, had the fuller mustache. His hair parted in the middle, feathered on the sides, screamed 1981 in a way that his Red Hot Chili Peppers t-shirt did not. Kurt turned on the heels of his Chuck Taylors and walked straight for the magazine rack. He picked up the first mag he could reach, People Magazine, the one with Nick Nolte,

• 38:40Jake Brennan?

  the so-called sexiest man alive on the cover, and buried his face in its pages to throw the meatheads off the scent, or at least give them the impression that Kurt didn't want to talk. And he began reading the article on Nolte. Supposedly Nick was the strong, sensitive type, a man's man, the kind that women couldn't resist. And Kurt Cobain was at least one of those things, sensitive. The sight of the dude with the feathered hair jarred his memory and brought back to him again the details from his arrest in Aberdeen back in 1986. Sensitive as he was, the pain of that night, more specifically the shame of it, coupled with the embarrassment of being recognized in the moment, had his stomach in knots. The feathered hair, and the mustache, that was it.

• 39:24Jake Brennan?

  The cop, the arresting officer. More memories bashed his heart up into his throat, the feeling of the cuffs on his wrists, the ache in his cheekbone from having his face slammed onto the hood of the cruiser, the smell of spray paint for the can of Krylon. Mr. Feathered Hair seemed bigger than, maybe the uniform had something to do with it. It was for sure more authoritative than the Red Hot Chili Pepper shirt he was wearing now. Big or not, Kurt couldn't help but remember how mean the dude was. He had no tolerance for Kurt's kind, and the look in his eyes said that he'd rather be beating the tar out of Kurt than reading him his rights. The cop couldn't have been a couple of years older than Kurt, but he clearly hated him. And Kurt hated him right back. They both had their reasons.

• 40:07Jake Brennan?

  For Kurt, it was self-preservation; for the cop, it was disrespect, something Kurt had in spades. Disrespect for authority, for society, and for his elders. Why should he respect them? They were never there for him. He was alone, on his own. The only thing that ever showed up for Kurt Cobain was music, more specifically punk rock. But what was more punk than spray paint and "God is Gay" on a public wall? But Kurt was caught red-handed, and it was off to jail, or at the time, he thought he'd rot away forever, without anyone to call to come bail him out. Mr. Feathered Hair snapped Kurt out of it. "Hey, you're Nirvana. Hey, look, it's Nirvana. Hey Nirvana, sign my pack of smokes." Kurt recognized the voice. At least he thought he did.

• 40:52Jake Brennan?

  Aberdeen meatheads all kind of looked the same. Maybe it was his imagination that made the connection. This so-called fan in the here and now, was it possible that he was the same cop that locked him up six years ago? The irony was too much for Kurt. He turned his stomach, grabbed the pen, ripped off the cellophane from the pack of Marlboro Reds, signed Mr. Feathered Hair's box of smokes with an illegible scribble, and walked fast out the door. Kurt had what he wanted, success, but it was not what he expected. With the help of MTV and the strength of the surreal and captivating video for Smells Like Teen Spirit, his band had become so popular, so mainstream, that now, the same log-headed, mustachioed rednecks who beat him up and ridiculed him back in Aberdeen,

• 41:37Jake Brennan?

  to Kurt, all different versions of his mother's ex-boyfriends, were now card-carrying members of the Nirvana fan club. What the fuck? You spend your life as an outsider, thoroughly unwanted by almost everyone. Your parents don't want you, your school doesn't want you, you have few friends, you don't fit in, and you're ridiculed, so you turn inward. But there's always music, it's inside of you and outside of you. It's punk rock, and it's freedom. You hole up in your room or at your friend's house where you're crashing, consuming culture that is cast off by most kids. You read Barrows and Bukowski, you listen to Bad Brains and Black Flag, and the Beatles and Black Sabbath, and somehow, you feel yourself reflected back.

• 42:20Jake Brennan?

  There are others like you, other punks who live music, a loose-knit crew of outsiders. So maybe you're not so alone, you have kin, and you find freedom and connection, find a path for yourself, a way out. Music. You immerse yourself so fully in it, in everything else that you love, horror movies, cartoons, comics, you love it all, because it's dependable, stable, it can't kick you out. You find a couple of kids who think you're cool enough to play music with, and you jam. Then you play some shows, and suddenly, through the powers of repetition, osmosis, and just fucking doing it, everything you've ingested, all the seven inches in comic books and classic rock cassettes and horror movies, all of it comes out in a semi-form voice that is uniquely you.

• 43:04Jake Brennan?

  Your music starts to get out into the world, and you wake up one day and you learn that you aren't the only one. There are millions of other disaffected kids who feel the same as you, and you've given them a voice, and you've set it to a beat that is, almost by accident, unique. You've become the zeitgeist. Everyone is picking up what you're putting down, even the people who you despise, who drove you into your corner to create what you created in the first place. The jocks, the squares, the Mr. Mustaches and Tree Fuck Johnsons, all of them are into you, and they like to sing along, but they know not what it means. They've given you everything but what you really need, someone, someone to let you collapse into, who will listen, who will protect you, someone to love, who will love you back.

• 43:46Jake Brennan?

  You need somewhere to go to lay your heavy head, you need a home and someone to make it with. Otherwise, look out, oblivion, it's here you come.

• 44:17Jake Brennan?

  Disgrace Land was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgrace Land All-Access member, thank you for supporting the show, we really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgrace Land ad-free, plus you'll get one brand-new, exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelandpod.com/membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook,

• 45:00Jake Brennan?

  @disgracelandpod, and on YouTube at youtube.com/atdisgracelandpod. Rock-a'roll.

• 45:10Speaker 03

  He's a bad, bad man.

• 45:13Jake Brennan?

  Hey guys, thanks for checking out this rewind episode of Disgrace Land on Nirvana. That was part one. Part two comes up right now.

• 45:21Speaker 06

  I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast, the true crime comedy podcast all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week I bring on an amazing guest. Ooh, I scam them. What? I could talk to you for an hour. You're a generational yapper, like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to Scam Goddess on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Scam Goddess.