The Last Time I Saw Kurt

Gaslighting an idol

The first time I saw him was a shock to the system and a boot to the head, when I snuck into the now-legendary show at the Motorsports International Garage in September of 1990, where Nirvana shared the stage with Melvins, Dwarves, and The Derelicts. After months of playing my “Bleach” cassette until it began to warp, I could finally put a face to the voice, even if I was hopelessly late to the party, as I was convinced of at the time. This scruffy blond dude raged with an intensity that was incandescent, a kind of human cyclone drenched in sweat, flannel, and feedback. As I moshed and swayed and rode on the outstretched hands of the packed crowd, I felt like he was playing and singing straight to me, and just a couple songs in it was obvious that his trajectory would be nothing short of stratospheric. 

From that point forward Kurt Cobain became an inextricable part of my life, and while I never got to know him, I would have a few encounters over the course of the next few years: shaking his hand and a brief exchange just a month later at the North Shore Surf Club; lingering as he lay sprawled out on the floor of the Evergreen State College library after destroying his guitar with a hammer at the “No War for Oil” show; sitting next to him on the curb as he opened a stack of mail in front of the Capitol Theater while Soundgarden got ready to take the stage.

And then there was that time we crossed paths at Safeway. 

It was 1993 and I was living in Seattle and, like everyone else, playing in a band. We were tight but otherwise awful, competing for the crumbs with the rest of the bottom feeders at dead-end gigs at joints such Madd Dog’s and The Ditto Tavern. At this point the scene was bloated and every sideburned, long-haired, big-belt buckle band from Topeka to Tampa had moved to town to try and cash in on the label feeding frenzy that occurred in the wake Nirvana and others. What was left were hundreds of bands competing for Tuesday night slots at shitty clubs, usually playing only for the bar staff, the other acts, and any unfortunate girlfriends who chose to endure the proceedings.

It also bears repeating just how crazily omnipresent Nirvana became after Nevermind hit in September of ‘91. What was once your favorite local band went thermonuclear overnight, and suddenly your gawky sixteen-year-old cousin in braces was playing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” over and over at the family Christmas gathering, or packs of backward-baseball-cap bros at  U-District frat bars were singing along with “In Bloom,” oblivious to the fact that lyrics were mocking them. Nirvana, and Cobain in particular, was everywhere—from MTV to the cover of Rolling Stone—and while we original fans carried a certain amount of pride, it also felt like a betrayal of sorts. Suddenly we were forced to share our cool, precious thing with the rest of the world, and something about it felt at least a bit wrong.

On the night in question I  had just finished up band practice and was on my way home. Patrick, our drummer, was giving Ken (the bassist) and me a lift. Ken wanted to stop at the store to pick up some food. He was a hefty guy and liked to nurse the habit, so store stops were routine.

So we pulled into the old Safeway on Broadway on Capitol Hill in, en route to the Madrona duplex that I shared with Ken and his girlfriend. It was about one in the morning and the place was pretty much empty. As I strolled in, I adjusted my eyes to the sickly fluorescent brightness, while Muzak warbled Abba’s “Mamma Mia” from the store’s speakers. I noticed some people in the back cavorting and acting strangely, but we were on Capitol Hill, a lint trap for freaks in the Pacific Northwest, so I really thought nothing of it.

We walked down an aisle on our way to the frozen foods section. Ken had a hankering for some ham and cheese Hot Pockets, which was basically his personal crack at the time. Before we reached the end, a man pushing a shopping cart entirely filled with toilet paper careened around the corner, slamming into Patrick. 

The man was Kurt Cobain.

The three of us briefly took him in. He took us in. We then continued on our way, acting the part of cool band dudes who weren’t going to make a bother just because the world’s biggest rock star was stocking up on a year’s supply of ass-wipe.

Ken got his two-liter soda and Hot Pockets and we made our way to the cash register. Just then, a woman wearing a scarf over her head approached. She was followed by two lackeys. From their dopey grins and mad eyes, it was obvious that they were off their heads. And something else was obvious: The woman was Courtney Love.

“Hey — do you know that Kurt Cobain is back there?” she asked.

“Yeah, we know,” I said, soliciting nods from my buddies.

“Listen…” she said, flashing a malevolent grin. “I’ll give you five dollars if you go and ask him if he is the lead singer of Alice in Chains.”

I paused to think about it. Part of me wanted to talk to Cobain and part of me didn’t want to bug him, but now his own wife was encouraging me to go bother him. Maybe this was some sort of inside joke between them that would, in an inexplicable way, ingratiate me to him. I also was dead broke and the thought of five bucks considerably brightened my night. I could get a beer. And food. Moreover, it just seemed too intriguing to pass up.

“Okay,” I said.

“You really got to ask him if he’s the lead singer of Alice in Chains, okay?”

“All right,” I said.

“Meet me in the produce section when you’re done.”

So I took a deep breath and walked back to the aisle where I had seen him last. He was still there lost in his own movie, mesmerized by the ingredients listed on a can of oven cleaner.

“Hey,” I said.

He turned straight to me.

I took a deep breath and just got it out. “Are you the lead singer of Alice in Chains?”

He gazed at me with his ocean of blue eyes, eyes that for a moment seemed to absorb all of the sadness in the world.

“What’s your name?” he whispered.

My heart was galloping. I was beginning to sweat. Clearly starstruck, I could hear myself breathing. I also felt like I was doing something horribly, horribly wrong.

“Adolph,” I managed to stammer, drawing the first name that came to mind.

I bolted immediately, eager to get as far away from him as possible, encased in a sticky cocoon of shame.

As arranged, I met up with Courtney Love and her hangers-on in the produce section, where she demanded that I re-enact the encounter—which I did—to her endless amusement. Her eyes were aflame with an evil sense of glee, beaming out from her wrinkly, scagged-out babushka face. Her lack of makeup revealed cruel realities inflicted by a life of punk rock and hard drugs. In the end she was more than satisfied with my performance and handed me my five bucks.

I used the cash to buy a forty-ouncer of Rainier and two ninety-nine cent cans of Rosarita refried beans.

A year later Kurt was dead, having blown his own head off with a shotgun. Just as I wasn’t surprised when he launched into the stratosphere, fame wise, I wasn’t surprised when he ended his own life. I had looked into his eyes and knew immediately that this was a deeply troubled man.

My only question is this: How many other chumps did Courtney Love pay to fuck with his head?

There are some people who believe that she had him killed, that Cobain was murdered. This, to me, is absurd. She didn’t have to have anyone else do the job, when no one was more capable than Kurt himself. The one thing I am sure of is that she helped drive him to it. After all, I was a hapless accomplice in the greater crime.

Decades later, Kurt still lingers in my memory and mind. While my music tastes have branched out and diversified since Nirvana blew the doors off of my adolescent head, I still dive back into those glorious, raggedy riffs from time to time and am reminded of their potency. I’m also reminded that Cobain, despite all the deification, was just a dude. A dude who lived and loved and strummed a guitar in my hometown.

This is driven home every time I swing back through Olympia. One of my best friends has lived in Kurt’s old apartment for years now, and I always stop by. Sometimes I even crash on the little couch in the dank, cramped living room, where, dizzy and jittery with trans-Pacific jet lag, I inevitably jolt awake in the witching hours and scan the place for traces of his ghost.

He has yet to appear, but that’s okay, because despite the fact that I never knew him, he still managed to weave himself into my life to the point where he feels like an old friend. I was lucky enough to be there, seemingly close enough to touch the sun, but Kurt reached the middle of that fire until he was no more. He was a supernova and then suddenly a shadow, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to that.