Kurt Cobain:With The Lights Out

Ch.4 The Present That Changed His Life

On his 14th birthday on February 20, 1981, Kurt's uncle offered him either a bike or a used guitar-he chose the guitar.

Soon, he was mastering Led Zeppelin's power ballad , " Stairway to Heaven ".
"Louie Louie" and The Cars ' "My Best Friend's Girl " were other cover versions learnt by Kurt before he began working on his own songs.

During high school, Cobain rarely found anyone with whom he could play music. While hanging out at the Melvins' practice space, he met Novoselic, a fellow devotee of punk rock.

Novoselic's mother owned a hair salon, and the pair would occasionally practice in the upstairs room of the salon. A few years later, Kurt tried to convince Novoselic to form a band with him by lending him a copy of a home demo recorded by his earlier band, Fecal Matter .

After months of asking, Novoselic finally agreed to join Cobain, forming the beginnings of Nirvana.

Religion appeared to remain significant to Kurt during this time, as he often used Christian imagery in his work, and maintained a constant interest in Jainism and Buddhist philosophy.

The band name "Nirvana" was taken from the Buddhist concept, which Kurt described as "freedom from pain, suffering and the external world", a concept that he aligned with the punk rock ethos and ideology.

Kurt would regard himself as both a Buddhist and a Jain during different points of his life. He was disenchanted after early touring, due to the band's inability to draw substantial crowds and the difficulty of sustaining themselves.

During their first few years playing together, Novoselic and Cobain were hosts to a rotating list of drummers. Eventually, the band settled on Chad Channing , with whom Nirvana recorded the album Bleach, released on Sub Pop Records in 1989.

Kurt, however, became dissatisfied with Channing's style, leading the band to find a new drummer, and they eventually settled on Dave Grohl. With Grohl, the band found their greatest success through their 1991 major-label debut, Nevermind.
With Nevermind' s lead single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit", Nirvana entered the mainstream, popularizing a subgenre of alternative rock called "grunge".