Taking stock of grunge

A Kurt Cobain biography that teens can enjoy looks at more than just the man.
By DOUG ESSER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
"Kurt Cobain: Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind." By Jeff Burlingame. Enslow Publishers. 160 Pages. 27.93.
Growing up in Aberdeen, Wash., Jeff Burlingame was briefly a teenage friend of Kurt Cobain.
While Cobain flashed across the grunge music sky with the band Nirvana and burned out in his 1994 suicide in Seattle, Burlingame went to college and became the arts and entertainment editor at The Daily World newspaper in Aberdeen.
Burlingame's biography, "Kurt Cobain: Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind," offers insights about growing up in the timber town on the Washington coast and how Cobain became a musician and a celebrity.
Burlingame says he has some never-before-told stories, rare photos and two drawings made by Cobain when he was 12 or 13. The goal is to introduce Cobain to readers who weren't even born when he was around, telling how passionate art was created by a "skinny, introverted kid from a small town in the middle of nowhere who went on to change the course of music history."
"Kurt Cobain" also is a brief history of the grunge music scene in Seattle in the 1980s and early 1990s when Nirvana rose to fame along with Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and other bands.
Broad appeal
The book is written for readers 12 and up, a benefit for anyone who appreciates a simple, straightforward style. With a glossary, index, end notes and suggestions for further reading. it would be ideal for middle and high school libraries.
But how do you tell young people about an artist who also was a heroin addict and suicide victim? Burlingame doesn't ignore the negatives, but he is sensitive to his readers. A reference to marijuana is followed by a statement that it's an illegal drug, and heroin is a drug that kills many of its users. Cobain is quoted saying he lied about his heroin use because he didn't want his fans to follow his example.
Upon Cobain's death, his mother told an Aberdeen newspaper reporter, "I told him not to join that stupid club," a reference, Burlingame writes, to Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison -- drug-using popular musicians who died young.
Cobain's death at 27, when his band was at the height of its popularity, drew more attention to his music. It remains popular and influential.
Burlingame writes that grunge music combined the fast tempos of rock with the loud distorted guitars of heavy metal.
"Yet, underneath all the noise and sometimes hard-to-understand words, the songs themselves were melodic, memorable, and energetic," Burlingame writes. "Cobain's songs were a lot more poetic and catchy" than the music from most Seattle bands at the time.
The album "Nevermind" sold more than 14 million copies.
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