27: Kurt Cobain (9 page)

The next day Kurt overdosed once more while sitting in his parked car, after visiting junkie friends. On realizing the state he was in, they had made him leave, terrified he would die there. He eventually he came to, in even greater emotional pain than ever.

Kurt agreed to treatment. On 29 March Krist, trying to help his old buddy, came to take Kurt to Sea-Tac airport for a flight to Los Angeles, where he was scheduled to enter the Exodus Recovery Centre. But Kurt had had second thoughts. After trying to get out of Krist's car on the I-5, he then hit his bass player in the face. The last a sobbing Krist, Kurt Cobain's closest friend, saw of him was as he ran manically away through the airport.

The next day Kurt decided to submit to the programme. Before going, he persuaded Dylan Carlson to use his name to purchase a gun – in case of prowlers, he said. Together they bought a Remington M-11 twenty-gauge shotgun and shells. Kurt also did as much heroin as he could manage during the day. That night he flew to Los Angeles.

At Exodus he was not placed in the locked-down psychiatric unit. Had the facility known of the truth about the Rome overdose, he would have been.

Another patient at Exodus, one from Kurt's world, was Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers. He and Kurt would spend time together, smoking cigarettes in the garden, joking about the guy who broke out by climbing over the rear wall – even though the front gates were never locked. On Friday 1 April, Kurt seemed truly happy, almost ecstatic. When Frances briefly visited him, brought by a friend, he was all over her, tossing her up in the air and making her laugh, holding her closely and tenderly whispering in her ear. His thinking was clear, and there was almost a glow about him.
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Late that afternoon he spoke to Courtney. ‘Just remember, no matter what, I love you,' he told her, and put down the phone.

At 7.25 that evening, Kurt Cobain climbed over the rear wall, the same act of stupidity he and Gibby had joked about. Three hours later, he was taking off from LAX to Seattle. His credit cards reinstated, he had been able to buy a first-class ticket. Sitting next to him on the plane was Duff McKagan, the bassist with Guns N' Roses. The two musicians had a secret link: Duff McKagan was also an addict, though he was making active efforts to come off drugs. For most of the two-and-a-quarter hour flight, they talked and drank. ‘And he was pretty down,' the bass-player thought. But there was not one mention made of ‘heroine'.

At Sea-Tac, Duff met his driver and thought they should give Kurt a lift, maybe take him back to Duff's place and try and cheer him up. When he turned round to suggest this, Kurt had vanished.

At 1.45 a.m. Kurt reached home. The oil-fired central heating in the house had run out of fuel.

At around 7.30 in the morning, Kurt called a cab. He told the driver he needed to buy bullets. Nowhere was yet open downtown. Kurt got the driver to drop him off on seedy Aurora Avenue, where it is thought he checked into either the Crest or Quest Motel. Nearby was a drug connection, and at one point Kurt was seen at a Jack in the Box restaurant.

On Sunday, 3 April, Kurt went for supper at the Cactus restaurant in Seattle. He was with a woman, who may have been his heroin dealer, and a man. Kurt began his meal with banana pudding sautéed in brown sugar and rum, junkie food. His credit card was declined. Again, Courtney had stopped his flow of his own money. Writing out a cheque clearly caused him some difficulty: he wrote the amount where the name of the payee should be. Again he was seen at Linda's Tavern, an etiolated, spectral figure drifting through.

Kurt Cobain was not seen alive again.

*

Kurt's suicide note, found in the conservatory in which he shot himself, at the rear of the house on 5 April 1994, was written ‘To Boddah', his imaginary childhood friend.

He had worked hard on his final statement. ‘There's good in all of us,' part of it reads, ‘and I think I simply love people too much, so much that it makes me feel too fucking sad. The sad little sensitive, unappreciative, Pisces, Jesus man. Why don't you just enjoy it? I don't know! I have a goddess of a wife who sweats ambition and empathy and a daughter who reminds me too much of what I used to be, full of love and joy, kissing every person she meets because everyone is good and will do her no harm. And that terrifies me to the point where I can barely function. I can't stand the thought of Frances becoming the miserable, self-destructive, death rocker that I've become. I have it good, very good, and I'm grateful, but since the age of seven, I've become hateful towards all humans in general. Only because it seems so easy for people to get along and have empathy. Only because I love and feel sorry for people too much, I guess. Thank you all from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach for your letters and concern during the past years. I'm too much of an erratic, moody, baby! I don't have the passion anymore, and so remember, it's better to burn out then to fade away.

Peace, Love, Empathy. Kurt Cobain.'

[ends]