Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [218]
AMY FINNERTY I was at work at MTV. The girl who worked there who was responsible for answering the fan phone line said somebody just called and said, “A body has been found at Kurt Cobain’s house.” I was hoping and praying that it wasn’t him, but when someone says, “There’s a body there,” what do you think, right?
ALICE WHEELER At first, nobody knew it was Kurt. We all thought it was Dylan. I don’t know why, because now it seems like there were more warning signs for Kurt. A friend of a friend was on police ride-along in the neighborhood where Kurt lived—I think it was a couple of days before he went to rehab—and they went to his house because Courtney had called. Kurt had locked himself in the bedroom with a shotgun or something. And Dylan was the one who had bought him the shotgun.
DYLAN CARLSON (Earth singer/guitarist) We used to go shooting together. He said he wanted the gun for protection. He had the cash.… He insisted on me buying him the gun.
BOB WHITTAKER I was in Seattle, and my friend David called me in the morning, saying, “Is it true?” I said, “What?” He goes, “They’re saying on the radio that Kurt’s dead.” I said, “Oh, my God, I don’t doubt it.”
I hung up the phone and the next call was from Nik Hartshorne, who was the King County coroner. Nik had been doing all the wrongful deaths in Seattle. We had a lot of mutual friends, and he used to go to shows all the time. We’d had drinks recently, and he asked, “How’s Kurt doing?” I said, “Not very good. I wouldn’t be surprised if he paid you a visit soon.” This was three days before they found him.
When I talked with Nik on the phone I said, “Jesus, I just heard. Are you getting stuck with the autopsy?” And he said, “I just got done.” And then he said, “I wish we wouldn’t have had that conversation the other day.”
KURT LODER (MTV News live broadcast, April 8, 1994) Hi, I’m Kurt Loder with an MTV News special report on a very sad day. Kurt Cobain, the leader of one of rock’s most gifted and promising bands, Nirvana, is dead.… Cobain’s body was found in a house in Seattle on Friday morning. He was dead of an apparently self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head. Police found what is said to be a suicide note at the scene, but have not yet divulged its contents. Cobain, who was 27, had reportedly been missing for about six days, according to his mother.
NILS BERNSTEIN The day Kurt’s body was found was horrible. It was total media insanity right off. But in a way, having to deal with the logistics of this media onslaught made it so no one had to just stand around and bum out. There were news crews who somehow got up to the roof deck around the penthouse and then tried to get up to the next level, literally scaling the walls of this building, so they could film inside the Sub Pop office. They were trying to shoot us, as if … what would we have been doing? The next day there was a TV reporter and camera person hiding in the bushes at my home.
When you live it and then you see how it’s covered, you’re like, Wow, that’s not accurate, or Oh, the feeling of this was different from how they portrayed it. It makes you wonder, was the Civil War really like people say it was, or is the way we think about it the way that five people who were never part of it to begin with said it was? Was it told by guys who just wanted to be cool ’cause they felt like pussies for not going? It makes you question history.
KERRI HARROP That morning, we had to make the decision: Should we open the Sub Pop Mega Mart? “Okay, yeah, I’ll go over and I’ll open the store.” So around 11, I went over across the street to the store, and already there were people waiting outside, which was something that never, ever happened. Ten people followed me into the store, which