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4.03 AVERAGE
4.03 AVERAGE
informative
medium-paced
I feel like the author didn’t like Kurt Cobain all that much. It was well written and now I know a lot more about Nirvana than before. Thinking about the postcard Cobain sent Tracy that just said I love you twenty times
After reading two depressing biographies about dead rock stars, I'm starting to question my own sanity.
I was absolutely obsessed with Nirvana when I was in middle school. By the time I entered ninth grade, The Smashing Pumpkins would be my favorite band. But as someone who came of age in the mid to late 90s, there was no way to disown Nirvana completely. Their music wasn't just the soundtrack to my life for a couple of years. It was a part of my life in a way that I don't think any other band has been. There are bands I've listened to a lot more than Nirvana over the years-I've probably listened to Pearl Jam's Ten hundreds of times since I first bought it in 94-but I don't think I would put any of them in the same category as Nirvana. Their music is more than just music, even to the casual fan who can remember 1994. It's something that is so ingrained in our psyche that even 17 years later, someone like me would even bother to read Heavier Than Heaven.
I read Michael Azzerad's "official" Nirvana biography, Come As You Are, a number of years ago, and was expecting this book to be more of the same. While Come As You Are is a satisfactory biography of Nirvana, it was written when Kurt Cobain was alive, and really doesn't do much more than scratch the surface when it comes to things like Kurt's childhood and his drug use. Heavier Than Heaven does refer to Come As You Are a couple of times, almost as if it is asking the reader to spot the differences. The differences are many. So many, in fact, that at times I wondered if I had read about some of these things in Come As You Are and had just completely forgotten about them.
I don't think that any one book or piece of writing on Kurt can really tell the whole story, but I think that Heavier Than Heaven tells a lot of it. I would also recommend reading Chuck Klosterman's essay "Oh, the Guilt" if you are looking for additional insight. Ironically, this essay compares Kurt Cobain to David Koresh, but it touches on a lot of the factors that probably ultimately led to Kurt's suicide.
I think I'm going to read something a little less serious now.
I was absolutely obsessed with Nirvana when I was in middle school. By the time I entered ninth grade, The Smashing Pumpkins would be my favorite band. But as someone who came of age in the mid to late 90s, there was no way to disown Nirvana completely. Their music wasn't just the soundtrack to my life for a couple of years. It was a part of my life in a way that I don't think any other band has been. There are bands I've listened to a lot more than Nirvana over the years-I've probably listened to Pearl Jam's Ten hundreds of times since I first bought it in 94-but I don't think I would put any of them in the same category as Nirvana. Their music is more than just music, even to the casual fan who can remember 1994. It's something that is so ingrained in our psyche that even 17 years later, someone like me would even bother to read Heavier Than Heaven.
I read Michael Azzerad's "official" Nirvana biography, Come As You Are, a number of years ago, and was expecting this book to be more of the same. While Come As You Are is a satisfactory biography of Nirvana, it was written when Kurt Cobain was alive, and really doesn't do much more than scratch the surface when it comes to things like Kurt's childhood and his drug use. Heavier Than Heaven does refer to Come As You Are a couple of times, almost as if it is asking the reader to spot the differences. The differences are many. So many, in fact, that at times I wondered if I had read about some of these things in Come As You Are and had just completely forgotten about them.
I don't think that any one book or piece of writing on Kurt can really tell the whole story, but I think that Heavier Than Heaven tells a lot of it. I would also recommend reading Chuck Klosterman's essay "Oh, the Guilt" if you are looking for additional insight. Ironically, this essay compares Kurt Cobain to David Koresh, but it touches on a lot of the factors that probably ultimately led to Kurt's suicide.
I think I'm going to read something a little less serious now.
Was a pretty decent account if Kurt's life. His music was pretty influential to me growing up in the 90s. The guy was clearly on a pretty destructive path from the early days. Highly creative and deeply emotional he was one hell of an artist. This book is well written and does a great job of detailing his relationships and gets into his head without all the clichés. Nirvana burned out along with Kurt before their time, but I think this was always to be his destiny. I took plenty of notes and learned way more about his life and career.
This couldn’t be a more perfect cautionary tale about how you will not find happiness outside of yourself.
Cross did an exceptional job of illustrating the complex and deep nature and life of Kurt Cobain. He elegantly managed to portray both Cobain’s ego and vulnerability, like two ends of an ever teetering scale.
There were insights that made it hard to like Cobain like when we renegotiated the royalties with his bandmates retrospectively, how he constantly sought external approval only to shun it when given or how he acted like a non-confrontational wimp when dumping people from the band or his personal relationships. This only served to make Cross’ portrayal of Cobain so very human and all the better for it.
It is this same raw and honest perspective that makes you feel for Cobain. The way he constantly disassociated from himself, referred to himself in the third person or referred to himself as Kurdt. It’s like he was always on this mission to forget himself and his self-hatred was unmistakable.
For me, it was Cobain’s dissatisfaction with every realised dream that made me reflect on how fruitlessly we seek fulfilment from all things external. Cobain revealed pockets of joy but only when referencing the future, like when they were about to get famous or when he was about to make Courtney his wife. The saddest part of this is that it acts to demonstrate how anticipation of whatever it is we seek is oft better than the achievement itself. The achievement instead ends up providing the precipice off which to throw ourselves over because whatever happiness we had hoped for wasn’t at the top.
It’s clear there was a lot of hurt in Cobain’s life that was never properly dealt with and I think this is super relatable no matter your past. We all have shit we’re not dealing with that we bandaid over. For Cobain this created a scarcity mentality where there was never enough; not enough money, fame, love, nothing. The hole was too big to fill. It seemed to illustrate that misery just transfuses on to whatever you can cling to as your life upgrades, if it was the weather when you were poor, it’s now the media attention (or lack there of it) when you’re rich. Despite the fame Cobain “still represent[ed] a pure distillation of what it’s like to be unsatisfied in life”.
The lack of Cobain’s self-control and ability to pull himself back from the edge was so sad but not a generally unfamiliar story. Cross did well to examine Kurt and Courtney’s co-dependant relationship in which they acted as if “they were two characters in a play, and they’d simply switch parts” when it came to their drug addiction and multiple attempts to get clean. How hard it is to answer what is the “right” way to truly be supportive around matters of addiction and rehabilitation was clear. The point around how Cobain’s personality constantly got in the way of the recovery process resonated with me.
With Cobain it felt like he couldn’t escape this reality he has designed, sure life had thrown him some dud cards but it also had thrown him ones other people only dream of. It didn’t matter though as he had designed his own reality to suit the story he wanted to perpetuate about himself to himself and he couldn’t let go of it for anything.
This book hit me on a very personal level. It pushed me to acknowgdlge that how we treat ourselves, the decisions we make and the daily actions we take reflect very directly on the relationships we have with ourselves. Do you like yourself enough to not eat shitty food or not drink too much alcohol or not talk rubbish about other people or not spend all your money? In a very insidious and natural way, this book made me take more responsibility for how I look after myself and has encouraged me to try to do a better job of it.
The only qualm I had about the book - but it wasn’t enough to take it off 5 stars - was the way Cross portrayed how Cobain took his life. In the beginning of the book Cross often used “perhaps” when filling in the blanks but for this part of the book, his suicide play-by-play was told as fact. I don’t know but it felt like it would have been more respectful to just tell the facts and lay off the story telling for this part.
Cross did an exceptional job of illustrating the complex and deep nature and life of Kurt Cobain. He elegantly managed to portray both Cobain’s ego and vulnerability, like two ends of an ever teetering scale.
There were insights that made it hard to like Cobain like when we renegotiated the royalties with his bandmates retrospectively, how he constantly sought external approval only to shun it when given or how he acted like a non-confrontational wimp when dumping people from the band or his personal relationships. This only served to make Cross’ portrayal of Cobain so very human and all the better for it.
It is this same raw and honest perspective that makes you feel for Cobain. The way he constantly disassociated from himself, referred to himself in the third person or referred to himself as Kurdt. It’s like he was always on this mission to forget himself and his self-hatred was unmistakable.
For me, it was Cobain’s dissatisfaction with every realised dream that made me reflect on how fruitlessly we seek fulfilment from all things external. Cobain revealed pockets of joy but only when referencing the future, like when they were about to get famous or when he was about to make Courtney his wife. The saddest part of this is that it acts to demonstrate how anticipation of whatever it is we seek is oft better than the achievement itself. The achievement instead ends up providing the precipice off which to throw ourselves over because whatever happiness we had hoped for wasn’t at the top.
It’s clear there was a lot of hurt in Cobain’s life that was never properly dealt with and I think this is super relatable no matter your past. We all have shit we’re not dealing with that we bandaid over. For Cobain this created a scarcity mentality where there was never enough; not enough money, fame, love, nothing. The hole was too big to fill. It seemed to illustrate that misery just transfuses on to whatever you can cling to as your life upgrades, if it was the weather when you were poor, it’s now the media attention (or lack there of it) when you’re rich. Despite the fame Cobain “still represent[ed] a pure distillation of what it’s like to be unsatisfied in life”.
The lack of Cobain’s self-control and ability to pull himself back from the edge was so sad but not a generally unfamiliar story. Cross did well to examine Kurt and Courtney’s co-dependant relationship in which they acted as if “they were two characters in a play, and they’d simply switch parts” when it came to their drug addiction and multiple attempts to get clean. How hard it is to answer what is the “right” way to truly be supportive around matters of addiction and rehabilitation was clear. The point around how Cobain’s personality constantly got in the way of the recovery process resonated with me.
With Cobain it felt like he couldn’t escape this reality he has designed, sure life had thrown him some dud cards but it also had thrown him ones other people only dream of. It didn’t matter though as he had designed his own reality to suit the story he wanted to perpetuate about himself to himself and he couldn’t let go of it for anything.
This book hit me on a very personal level. It pushed me to acknowgdlge that how we treat ourselves, the decisions we make and the daily actions we take reflect very directly on the relationships we have with ourselves. Do you like yourself enough to not eat shitty food or not drink too much alcohol or not talk rubbish about other people or not spend all your money? In a very insidious and natural way, this book made me take more responsibility for how I look after myself and has encouraged me to try to do a better job of it.
The only qualm I had about the book - but it wasn’t enough to take it off 5 stars - was the way Cross portrayed how Cobain took his life. In the beginning of the book Cross often used “perhaps” when filling in the blanks but for this part of the book, his suicide play-by-play was told as fact. I don’t know but it felt like it would have been more respectful to just tell the facts and lay off the story telling for this part.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Intensely messed up.
But a well researched and brutally honest biography
But a well researched and brutally honest biography
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction
Moderate: Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gun violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Vomit, Suicide attempt
It feels like it doesn't matter how much you read about Kurt Cobain, you still won't be able to know him. He was a big contradiction, he was so many things at once.
Good book, a lot of inside information I didn't know.
That last chapter is probably the best one, it describes his whole process before killing himself and it made my heart ache a little bit.
I still don't understand why he hated himself so much or why his daughter wasn't enough motivation to get clean and get better. I can't believe he thought the life of his child would be better without him, i don't know how he went from wanting to give her everything he didn't have after his parents got divorced to wanting to leave her like that.
I still don't understand many things about this guy, he's a bit of an enigma.
His story breakes my heart, that's all.
Good book, a lot of inside information I didn't know.
That last chapter is probably the best one, it describes his whole process before killing himself and it made my heart ache a little bit.
I still don't understand why he hated himself so much or why his daughter wasn't enough motivation to get clean and get better. I can't believe he thought the life of his child would be better without him, i don't know how he went from wanting to give her everything he didn't have after his parents got divorced to wanting to leave her like that.
I still don't understand many things about this guy, he's a bit of an enigma.
His story breakes my heart, that's all.
Kurt Cobain adalah pemusik jenius di masa hidupnya yang pendek: 27 tahun.
Karirnya dengan Nirvana membuahkan karya yang depresif dan salah satu band yang menandai kelahiran jenis musik grunge.
Jalan hidupnya tidak patut dicontoh, tapi orang bisa belajar dari biografi ini. Bagaimana pribadi yang sulit seperti Kurt menghadapi perceraian orang tuanya, perjuangannya menghadapi sakit perut kronis yang tidak bisa disembuhkan dan ketika semua orang men"cintai" musik dan dirinya, satu-satunya orang yang tidak bisa mencintai dirinya adalah dirinya sendiri.
Pengarangnya melakukan 400 lebih wawancara dengan keluarga, teman, anggota band dan semua orang yang terkait dengannya.
Buku ini kadang bikin gemes dan berpikir betapa rapuhnya orang dengan alkohol dan narkotik. Dia pemusik jenius, sayang tidak bisa mencintai dirinya dan mengakhiri hidupnya di pucuk pistol...
Dia pernah bilang di depan temen-temen sekolahnya, "I want to have my own band, become famous and then kill myself like Jimmi Hendrix.
Too bad...
Karirnya dengan Nirvana membuahkan karya yang depresif dan salah satu band yang menandai kelahiran jenis musik grunge.
Jalan hidupnya tidak patut dicontoh, tapi orang bisa belajar dari biografi ini. Bagaimana pribadi yang sulit seperti Kurt menghadapi perceraian orang tuanya, perjuangannya menghadapi sakit perut kronis yang tidak bisa disembuhkan dan ketika semua orang men"cintai" musik dan dirinya, satu-satunya orang yang tidak bisa mencintai dirinya adalah dirinya sendiri.
Pengarangnya melakukan 400 lebih wawancara dengan keluarga, teman, anggota band dan semua orang yang terkait dengannya.
Buku ini kadang bikin gemes dan berpikir betapa rapuhnya orang dengan alkohol dan narkotik. Dia pemusik jenius, sayang tidak bisa mencintai dirinya dan mengakhiri hidupnya di pucuk pistol...
Dia pernah bilang di depan temen-temen sekolahnya, "I want to have my own band, become famous and then kill myself like Jimmi Hendrix.
Too bad...
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
slow-paced