Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain
by Charles R. Cross
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Book Summary Information
Author: Charles R. CrossEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2002-08-21
ISBN: 0786884029
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Hyperion
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780786884025
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Book Reviews of Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain
Book Review: Solid, But Was The Author Scared of Courtney??
Summary: 3 Stars
A solid, well-researched and competently written book that paints a sympathetic portrait of Kurt Cobain as a deeply disturbed young man with enormous natural talent for music and for making art. Ambitious and lazy, sensitive and callous, self-centered and self-loathing, Cobain was a bundle of contradictions. By the end of reading this book you can't help but feel sorry for him: He was a certifiable weirdo as well as a genuine rock and roll genius, one who openly sought the fame and fortune that likely helped destroy him.
Between his drug abuse and the demands of the music industry and his own dark psyche, Cobain seemed doomed once Nirvana's Nevermind started to blow up. This book traces his life in a straight ahead fashion and the farther in you read, the sadder it gets. Here's a man who came up in the world feeling unloved and carried that feeling to his grave, despite the fact millions were deeply moved by him and what he could do in a song (including me).
One major complaint I have about Heavier Than Heaven is that its portrayal of Courtney Love is so tame and gentle you have to wonder whether Cross was writing this book with her cooperation or if he was writing it in fear of her.
Second, where the hell is Dave Grohl? With one half of the Nirvana's most famous rhythm section basically absent from this book, it's hard to be confident you're getting the whole deal here on what Cobain was really like. His lack of inclusion - or lack of cooperation - is a shame and a glaring omission. Krist Novoselic is interviewed extensively and comes off as soulful and decent, while Cobain's close friend and drug buddy, Dylan Carson, comes off as both thoughtful and unapologetically subterranean.
This is a good book. But a better one should be written someday and maybe it will, but only when people around Cobain care a little less about legacy and more about presenting a greater historical truth. Cross could write this book. The question is, will those who can tell it let him do it?
Summary of Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain
This is the first in-depth biography of the troubled genius Kurt Cobain. Based on exclusive access to Cobains unpublished diaries, more than 400 interviews, four years of research, and a wealth of documentation, Heavier Than Heaven traces Cobains life from his early days in a double-wide trailer outside of Aberdeen, Washington, to his rise to fame, fortune, and the adulation of a generation.The art of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain was all about his private life, but written in a code as obscure as T.S. Eliot's. Now Charles Cross has cracked the code in the definitive biography Heavier Than Heaven, an all-access pass to Cobain's heart and mind. It reveals many secrets, thanks to 400-plus interviews, and even quotes Cobain's diaries and suicide notes and reveals an unreleased Nirvana masterpiece. At last we know how he created, how lies helped him die, how his family and love life entwined his art--plus, what the heck "Smells Like Teen Spirit" really means. (It was graffiti by Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna after a double date with Dave Grohl, Cobain, and the "over-bored and self-assured" Tobi Vail, who wore Teen Spirit perfume; Hanna wrote it to taunt the emotionally clingy Cobain for wearing Vail's scent after sex--a violation of the no-strings-attached dating ethos of the Olympia, Washington, "outcast teen" underground. Cobain's stomach-churning passion for Vail erupted in six or so hit tunes like "Aneurysm" and "Drain You.")
Cross uncovers plenty of news, mostly grim and gripping. As a teen, Cobain said he had "suicide genes," and his clan was peculiarly defiant: one of his suicidal relatives stabbed his own belly in front of his family, then ripped apart the wound in the hospital. Cobain was contradictory: a sweet, popular teen athlete and sinister berserker, a kid who rescued injured pigeons and laughingly killed a cat, a talented yet astoundingly morbid visual artist. He grew up to be a millionaire who slept in cars (and stole one), a fiercely loyal man who ruthlessly screwed his oldest, best friends. In fact, his essence was contradictions barely contained. Cross, the coauthor of Nevermind: Nirvana, the definitive book about the making of the classic album, puts numerous Cobain-generated myths to rest. (Cobain never lived under a bridge--that Aberdeen bridge immortalized in the 12th song on Nevermind was a tidal slough, so nobody could sleep under it.) He gives the fullest account yet of what it was like to be, or love, Kurt Cobain. Heavier Than Heaven outshines the also indispensable Come As You Are. It's the deepest book about pop's darkest falling star. --Tim Appelo
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