Music Monday: Nirvana—All Apologies, Pennyroyal Tea, Man Who Sold The World

Two months after my dad died Kurt Cobain killed himself.

The two events, in the larger scheme of things are not really connected. But there are linked for me.

After my dad passed away, I was in a deep, deep funk. I remember spending a lot of time alone. I tried to put on a stoic external appearance, keeping a stiff upper lip but I was crumbling inside. Two things worked to keep me sane as I found myself going through the motions in my day to day life:

1) I was starting to write again in a battered and bruised black and white marble composition book.  (It is one of the few things I've managed to hang on to all these years, as many of my personal possessions have vanished into the ether.)

2) Music was keeping me sane. I had gotten a Discman-type device for Christmas and was also a member of Columbia House. (How delightfully 1990s. I know.)

Anyway, I was listening to a lot of grunge, and In Utero in particular was high in my rotation. I was making it through the depression one day at a time.

And then I got home from school one April day in 1994 and saw breaking news on MTV. Because I actually watched MTV back then; they still showed videos at that time.

 

I know there are apparently still some conspiracy theories regarding was Cobain murdered or did he actually commit suicide. There will probably always be speculation and you could probably chalk his death up to suspicious circumstances.

 

I'm not buying into the theories, though. I'm in the camp of he killed himself and that's that.

 

It might sound harsh to be so final about the outcome of someone that I was a fan of, but it's also hard to mince words 20 years later.

 

Kurt battled drug addiction and mental and physical ailments. He had, for lack of a better term, issues. And the overwhelming success of Nevermind did nothing to assuage whatever pain he was feeling; in fact, it seems to have only escalated the timetable of his demise.

And on many levels, that is a shame. I mean, I don't know how things would have turned out if Kurt had stayed alive; maybe Nirvana breaks up and Kurt goes solo. Maybe they stay together and we don't get Dave Grohl founding the Foo Fighters.

Maybe we get Nirvana playing the county fair circuit. Maybe this, maybe that. Who knows?

All I know is that I am grateful, even today, that I had the music that was produced at the time to get me through one of my darkest times.