Wednesday Book: A star member of `that stupid club'

ROCK MUSIC loves a shooting star. When Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain took his own life with a shotgun in April 1994, his grieving mother Wendy told the world: "Now he's gone and joined that stupid club. I told him not to go and join that stupid club."

Like her son, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison died at the age of 27. Add John Lennon and Sid Vicious to the list and you get an idea of the impact Cobain's suicide had on the Nineties. Cobain may indeed have been the last of the great rock stars, and the abrasive, strident and petulant track, "Smells Like Teen Spirit", the equivalent of The Who's "My Generation" for slacker kids.

Charles R Cross, the former editor of The Rocket (a Seattle magazine which covered the grunge scene), namechecks all of the above in his sprawling book. Granted exclusive access to Cobain's journals by his widow Courtney Love, the writer also conducted more than 400 interviews with Cobain's friends and relatives. His biography is especially strong on the early years, telling of Cobain's desperate need for love despite being shuffled between grandparents and well- meaning families.

Too often obsessed with minutiae, Cross gives enough addresses to guide a location scout or rabid fan around Washington state. However, after the story moves away from the Pacific North-West, and especially to Europe, the biographer is not on such sure footing. Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl declined to be interviewed, though the hilarious quote by Jennifer Finch, the bassist in the group L7 - "Dave was raised in a van by wolves" - is bang on the money.

But, Cross fails to mention "Big" John Duncan, a former member of The Exploited [a Scottish punk band] who used to be a roadie for Nirvana and was mooted as second guitarist; and he doesn't pick up on the debt Nirvana's "Come As You Are" owed to the British Goth band, Killing Joke.

Cobain always admitted he borrowed the seminal riff of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from Boston's "More Than A Feeling" [Cobain actually performed the original at the Reading festival in 1992]. Mind you, Cross does trace the origin of the lyric back to graffiti spray-painted by Kathleen Hanna of the riot-grrrl group Bikini Kill. Her bandmate Tobi Vail used that brand of deodorant, and dated Cobain. He wrote several of the songs on the album Nevermind about their relationship and its break-up.

Cobain seems to have been on a quest to find a soulmate, and thought Boston singer-songwriter Mary Lou Lord was the one until Courtney Love came along. After Love, the singer with Hole, appeared on the scene, events spiralled ever faster out of control. The book, however, portrays her in a rather sympathetic light, ignoring her earlier dalliance with Julian Cope.

Cross stresses that by 1994 Nirvana's managers and label were pushing the already fragile Cobain too hard. Ultimately, the trailer- trash kid who craved recognition from parents and peers, and wanted success while retaining a punk ethic, made the rather obvious discovery that fame wasn't all it was cracked up to be. The constant self-hatred he felt because of his childhood rejection, as well as stomach pains that had never been properly diagnosed, fuelled his drug abuse.

Better supervision might have delayed the outcome. But however much he loved Frances, the daughter he had with Love, Cobain did not love himself enough to kick the habit. Indeed, his demise seemed inevitable. "I'm going to be a superstar musician, kill myself, and go out in a flame of glory," he told a schoolmate when he was 14. "I want to be rich and famous and kill myself like Jimi Hendrix." As they did with Hendrix, publishers and record companies are still cashing in on Nirvana and the iconic Cobain.

Charles R Cross has certainly not done a cut-and-paste job. His cautionary tale is mostly well-researched and only let down by some over-dramatic prose towards the end, when Cobain's diaries become sketchier. Heavier Than Heaven may be the biography of Kurt Cobain, but it's not quite the ultimate Nirvana book.