Conspiracy Theories

Kurt Cobain

On April 8th, 1994, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was found dead of a gunshot wound sustained on April 5th, 1994, in his Seattle home. Many, including the Seattle Police Department, believe this gunshot wound was self-inflicted. Some do not.

When there's room for it, and even sometimes when there isn't, distraught fans of beloved celebrities taken before their time will construct theories to compensate for the sometimes random and often reckless, tragic waste that is the loss of the celebrity's life. Did Elliott Smith stab himself, or did his girlfriend do the stabbing? What about Marilyn Monroe—did she kill herself, accidentally or on purpose, or did someone want her dead? Is Tupac alive somewhere, laughing, just LOLing his butt off, having a blast?

Some of these theories are more compelling than others. (For real, who killed Marilyn?) (And also I don't buy the Elliot Smith story.) (And where is Tupac?) Today, we'll sift through a theory that has nagged at me since I was a brainless 12-year-old; a case the Seattle Police Department receives requests to reinvestigate at least once per week, mostly through Twitter: The death—murder?—of Kurt Cobain.

The Rome Overdose

Unfortunately for Courtney Love—Hole frontwoman, Cobain's erstwhile wife, and the mother to his child, Frances Bean Cobain—it is impossible to talk about the theory that Kurt Cobain was murdered without acknowledging the theory that Courtney Love was the woman behind the murder. It is, more or less, the only theory.

The seeds of this theory were planted about a month before Cobain's death. While touring in Munich in March 1994, he was diagnosed with bronchitis and laryngitis.

Because of these health issues, Nirvana canceled the remainder of their European tour and Cobain flew to Rome for treatment. On March 3rd, 1994, Courtney Love joined him there, along with the couple's live-in nanny Michael Dewitt, and described the trip in an interview with Rolling Stone published in December of 1994:

Kurt had gone all out for me when I got there [Rome]. He'd gotten me roses. He'd gotten a piece of the Colosseum, because he knows I love Roman history. I had some champagne, took a Valium, we made out, I fell asleep. The rejection he must have felt after all that anticipation–I mean, for Kurt to be that Mr. Romance was pretty intense.
Love claims she woke up around 4 A.M. and found Cobain unconscious after he ingested "50 fucking pills," leaving behind a note Love claims read, in part, "You don't love me anymore. I'd rather die than go through a divorce." He'd overdosed on Love's prescription Rohypnol, mixing it with champagne.

When asked if she thought this was a suicide attempt, Love told Rolling Stone, "...There was a definite suicidal urge, to be gobbling and gobbling and gobbling."

This, and similar statements made after his death regarding his overdose in Rome, is why the Rome incident is often cited in the case against Love. (Well, this and because some believe Love slipped Cobain the Rohypnol in a murder attempt, but this more frequently.) Many believe she only categorized it as a suicide attempt after Cobain's death in order to plant the idea that Cobain had, in the months preceding his death, been suicidal.

Others involved in the incident maintain that it was never thought of as such.

A doctor who treated Cobain that morning was quoted in Max Wallace and Ian Halperin's murder conspiracy text Love and Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain saying, "We can usually tell a suicide attempt. This didn't look like one to me." In a Rolling Stone piece about Cobain's death, Janet Billig, of Nirvana's management Gold Mountain Entertainment, maintains Cobain clarified his non-suicidal intentions after recovering from the overdose: "A note was found but Kurt insisted that it wasn't a suicide note. He just took all of his and Courtney's money and was going to run away and disappear."

Not very nice, but, you know.

Pete Cleary, a friend of Cobain's, spoke directly about the Rome incident and alleged Cobain history-rewriting in Who Killed Kurt Cobain? (an earlier version of Wallace and Halperin's Love and Death):

"The thing you have to remember about all the talk of Kurt being suicidal is that all the talk only started when Courtney came out after the death and said Rome was a suicide attempt and the media picked up on all her examples of Kurt being suicidal. That's when all these people started saying, 'Of course he was suicidal, just listen to his music.' But that's a bunch of crap. Sure he was a moody guy and got depressed quite often. That applies to a hell of a lot of people, including me. But nobody ever talked about Kurt being suicidal before he died, nobody."
Hmm...

A New Attitude

In a theory that dovetails with the idea that Love attempted to plant false ideas of a drug-addled and suicidal Cobain in the media, Cobain murder truthers insist he had turned a corner in the months before his death. He was serious about sobriety, a happy, new father, and—perhaps most significantly—cured of the persistent and debilitating stomach pain the led him to abuse heroin.

The fix came after a specialist diagnosed a pinched nerve related to his scoliosis in the summer of 1993. Cobain's close friend Dylan Carlson spoke about the effect this had on Cobain in Max Wallace and Ian Halperin's Who Killed Kurt Cobain? saying:

"Kurt became a new person after that. He stopped retreating into the dark side that everybody came to associate with him and actually seemed cheerful. Part of it was Frances, I think, but the stomach thing was the most important."
Music journalist Everett True wrote about a more upbeat Cobain in the March 1994 edition of Melody Maker:

"Although it's no secret that in the past Kurt Cobain has taken drugs, sometimes to excess, the last time we met (in Seattle, last December -1993), he seemed completely 'clean.' That is, he was clean, optimistic and happier than he'd been for years....I knew that he'd cut down on his drug taking for a while....He hadn't taken alcohol in any serious quantity for several years, that's for sure."
In the April 1994 edition of Melody Maker, published after Cobain's death, Buzzcocks frontman Pete Shelley—who had been on Nirvana's final tour—also noted that he seemed clean in his last months:

"He seemed really clean when we were on tour. In some ways it was a bit awkward because he wasn't really joining in the very mild debauchery that went on."