On April 8, 1994, Kurt Cobain, the lead singer and guitarist of the American rock band Nirvana, was found dead at his home on Lake Washington Boulevard, Seattle. Forensic investigators and a coroner determined that Cobain had died on approximately April 5, three days prior.
The Seattle Police Department incident report stated that Cobain was found with a Remington Model 11 shotgun across his body and had suffered a visible gunshot wound to the head; a suicide note was also discovered nearby. Seattle police confirmed his death as a suicide.
Conspiracy theories that Cobain was murdered were spread and reported to the FBI, partially due to an Unsolved Mysteries episode dedicated to Cobain's death.
Background
Kurt Cobain was the lead singer and guitarist of the American rock band Nirvana, one of the most influential acts of the 1990s and one of the best-selling bands of all time. Throughout most of his life, Cobain had chronic bronchitis and intense pain due to an undiagnosed chronic stomach condition. He was also prone to alcoholism, suffered from depression, and regularly used drugs and inhalants. Cobain had two uncles who died of suicide by firearm. Cobain's cousin Beverly, a nurse, said that the family had a history of suicide, and that Cobain had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and ADHD.
Cobain said that his stomach pain had been so severe during Nirvana's 1991 European tour that he became suicidal, and that taking heroin was "the only thing that's saving me from shooting myself right now". He said later: "I remember saying I'll never go on tour again until I have this fixed because I wanted to kill myself. I wanted to fucking blow my head off. I was so tired of it."
On March 4, 1994, Cobain was hospitalized in Rome following an overdose of Rohypnol (Flunitrazepam) and alcohol at the Westin Excelsior Rome. His management agency, Gold Mountain Records, said the overdose was accidental and that he was ill from influenza and fatigue. However, Cobain's wife, Courtney Love, later said the overdose had been a suicide attempt: "He took 50 pills. He probably forgot how many he took. But there was a definite suicidal urge, to be gobbling and gobbling and gobbling."
Love arranged an intervention regarding Cobain's drug use on March 25, 1994. In Charles R. Cross's biography Heavier Than Heaven, the Nirvana bassist, Krist Novoselic, is quoted on seeing Cobain in the days before the intervention: "He was really quiet. He was just estranged from all of his relationships. He wasn't connecting with anybody." Novoselic's offer to buy dinner for Cobain resulted in unintentionally driving him to score heroin: "His dealer was right there. He wanted to get fucked up into oblivion ... He wanted to die, that's what he wanted to do." The drummer, Dave Grohl, reflected that when Nirvana recorded the song "You Know You're Right", "It was not a pleasant time for the band. Kurt was unwell. Then he was well. Then he was unwell. The last year of the band was tough."
Cobain agreed to undergo a detox program, and he entered a residential facility in Los Angeles for a few days on March 30, 1994. The same day he left for Los Angeles, Cobain asked his friend, Dylan Carlson, to buy a shotgun for him saying it was for "self-protection". On April 1, Cobain left Exodus Recovery Center, the Los Angeles drug rehabilitation clinic he had checked into two days before, by scaling a six-foot wall.
Death
On April 8, 1994, Cobain's body was discovered in the greenhouse above the garage at his Lake Washington Boulevard East house by a VECA Electric worker who was there to install security lighting. The worker thought Cobain was asleep until he saw blood coming from his ear. He also found a suicide note with a pen stuck through it inside a flowerpot. A Remington Model 11 20-gauge shotgun purchased for Cobain by his friend, musician Dylan Carlson, was found on Cobain's chest. It had been legally purchased by Carlson at Stan Baker's Gun Shop in Seattle.
Cobain did not want the gun purchased in his name because he thought that existing red flag laws would result in police seizing the weapon for his own protection; his guns had been confiscated twice in the ten months before his suicide. The King County medical examiner noted puncture wounds on the inside of both the right and left elbows. The shotgun was checked for fingerprints on May 6. The Seattle police report states that the shotgun was inverted on Cobain's chest with his left hand wrapped around the barrel.
On April 14, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that Cobain was "high on heroin when he pulled the trigger". The paper reported that the toxicological tests determined that the level of morphine in Cobain's bloodstream was 1.52 milligrams per liter and that there was evidence of Valium in his blood. The report contained a quote from Randall Baselt of the Chemical Toxicological Institute and author of all 12 editions of the common forensic toxicology textbook Disposition of Toxic Drugs and Chemicals in Man (including its chapter on heroin) which stated that Cobain's heroin level was at "a high concentration, by any account" but that the strength of the dose would depend on many factors, including how habituated Cobain was to the drug.
In March 2014, the Seattle Police Department (SPD) developed four rolls of film that had been left in an evidence vault. According to Seattle police, the photographs depict the scene of Cobain's corpse more clearly than previous Polaroid images taken by the police. Detective Mike Ciesynski, a cold case investigator, was asked to look at the film because "it is 20 years later and it's a high media case". Ciesynski stated that the official cause of Cobain's death remained suicide and that the images would not be released to the public; however, the images were released in 2016. According to a police spokesperson, the SPD receives at least one request weekly, mostly through Twitter, to reopen the investigation. This resulted in the maintenance of the basic incident report on file.
Suicide note
Cobain's suicide note reads:
To Boddah
Speaking from the tongue of an experienced simpleton who obviously would rather be an emasculated, infantile complainee. This note should be pretty easy to understand.
All the warnings from the punk rock 101 courses over the years, since my first introduction to the, shall we say, ethics involved with independence and the embracement of your community has proven to be very true. I havent felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music along with reading and writing for too many years now. I feel guilty beyond words about these things.
For example when were back stage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins It doesnt affect me the way in which it did for Freddy Mercury who seemed to love, relish in the love and adoration from the crowd which is something I totally admire and envy. The fact is, I cant fool you, any one of you. It simply isnt fair to you or me. The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if im having 100% fun. Sometimes I feel as if I should have a punch in time clock before I walk out on stage. Ive tried everything within my power to appreciate it (and I do, God, believe me I do, but its not enough). I appreciate the fact that I and we have affected and entertained a lot of people. I must be one of those narcissists who only appreciate things when theyre gone. Im too sensitive. I need to be slightly numb in order to regain the enthusiasms I once had as a child.
On our last 3 tours, Ive had a much better appreciation for all the people Ive known personally, and as fans of our music, but I still can't get over the frustration, the guilt and empathy I have for everyone. Theres good in all of us 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 dont you just enjoy it? I dont 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 to where I can barely function. I cant stand the thought of Frances becoming the miserable, self-destructive, death rocker that Ive become.
I have it good, very good, and Im grateful, but since the age of seven, Ive become hateful towards all humans in general. Only because it seems so easy for people to get along that 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. Im too much of an erratic, moody baby! I dont have the passion anymore and so remember, its better to burn out than to fade away.
peace, love, empathy. Kurt Cobain
Frances and Courtney, Ill be at your altar. Please keep going Courtney, for Frances. For her life, which will be so much happier without me.
I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU! [sic]
"It's better to burn out than to fade away" is a quote from the 1979 Neil Young song "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)".
Memorial and cremation
On April 10, 1994, a public memorial service was held at Seattle Center, where a recording of Courtney Love reading Cobain's suicide note was played. Near the end of the vigil, Love arrived, and distributed some of his clothing to fans who remained. In the following days, Love consoled and mourned with fans who came to her house.
Cobain's body was cremated. Love divided his ashes; she kept some in a teddy bear and some in an urn. She took another portion of his ashes to the Namgyal Buddhist Monastery in Ithaca, New York. There, some of his remains were ceremonially blessed by Buddhist monks and mixed into clay, which were used to make tsatsas. A final ceremony was arranged for Cobain by his mother on May 31, 1999, that was attended by both Love and Tracy Marander. A Buddhist monk chanted while Cobain's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, scattered his ashes into McLane Creek in Olympia, Washington, the city where he "had found his true artistic muse".
Reactions
Several of Cobain's friends were surprised by his suicide. Mark Lanegan, a long-time friend of Cobain, told Rolling Stone: "I never knew Cobain to be suicidal. I just knew he was going through a tough time." In the same article, Carlson stated that he wished Cobain or someone close to him had told him that the Rome incident was a suicide attempt. Danny Goldberg, founder of Gold Mountain Records, refers in his book Dispatches From the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit to "the crazy Internet rumors that Kurt Cobain had not committed suicide but had been murdered," stating that Cobain's suicide "haunts him every day".
The song "Tearjerker" from the Red Hot Chili Peppers album One Hot Minute (1995) was written about Cobain. Anthony Kiedis, the lead singer, wrote in his autobiography, Scar Tissue:
The news [of Cobain's death] sucked the air out of the entire house, I didn't feel like I felt when Hillel died; it was more like "The world just suffered a great loss." Kurt's death was unexpected ... It was an emotional blow, and we all felt it. I don't know why everyone on earth felt so close to that guy; he was beloved and endearing and inoffensive in some weird way. For all of his screaming and all of his darkness, he was just lovable.
The songwriter Neil Young, whom Cobain quoted in his suicide note, wrote in his biography that reading the note "struck a deep chord inside of me. It fucked with me." He said that he had been attempting to contact him to help him with his problems in the weeks before his death. A musical hero of Cobain's, Greg Sage, said:
Well, I can't really speculate other than what he said to me, which was, he wasn't at all happy about it, success to him seemed like, I think, a brick wall. There was nowhere else to go but down, it was too artificial for him, and he wasn't an artificial person at all. He was actually, two weeks after he died, he was supposed to come here and he wanted to record a bunch of Leadbelly covers. It was kind of in secret, because, I mean, people would definitely not allow him to do that. You also have to wonder, he was a billion-dollar industry at the time, and if the industry had any idea at all of him wishing or wanting to get out, they couldn't have allowed that, you know, in life, because if he was just to get out of the scene, he'd be totally forgotten, but if he was to die, he'd be immortalized.