Bipolar Opposites Attract - Kurt Cobain, from "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter."
Time magazine included Kurt Cobain in a 2002 list of “manic geniuses” who made great contributions to music, art, or literature. Manic Depression is what Bipolar Disorder used to be called back in the day. However, it's not clear if Kurt Cobain was ever officially diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. As someone with Bipolar disorder I can see it in his writings. We'll get into that later.
A lot of what we know comes from his cousin, Bev Cobain, a registered nurse with a background working in mental health:
"Kurt was diagnosed at a young age with Attention Deficit Disorder [ADD], then later with bipolar disorder...Bipolar illness has the same characteristics as major clinical
depression, but with mood swings, which present as rage, euphoria, high
energy, irritability, distractibility, overconfidence, and other
symptoms. As Kurt undoubtedly knew, bipolar illness can be very
difficult to manage, and the correct diagnosis is crucial. Unfortunately
for Kurt, compliance with the appropriate treatment is also a critical
factor" - Bev Cobain
Attention Deficit disorder and Bipolar can often be confused and their symptoms often overlap. I was originally misdiagnosed as having ADD myself before I was eventually and correctly diagnosed as having Bipolar Disorder. Drug abuse is also common with Bipolar Disorder. Cobain's biography Heavier then Heaven writes about several overdoses that Kurt had before his death. According to statistics presented by the American Journal of Managed Care:
About 56 percent of individuals with bipolar who participated in a
national study had experienced drug or alcohol addiction during their
lifetime.
Suicide is also common with Bipolar Disorder. According to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry At least 25% to 50% of patients with bipolar disorder also attempt suicide at least once.
Kurt Cobain wrote a song called, "I Hate Myself and Want to Die."
He also wrote a song called "Lithium," which is a popular drug used to treat Bipolar Disorder. The lyrics resemble the highs and lows that characterize being Bipolar: The feelings of no self worth and loneliness that is depression and the elevated mood and excitement that one experiences in mania.
I'm so happy...I'm so ugly...I'm so lonely...I'm so excited...I'm so horny...- Lithium
His two biographies, Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana & Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain both tell stories of his moodiness, depression and also higher more elevated moments of extreme creativity.
The life of Kurt Cobain shows us the immense creativity that can come from having Bipolar Disorder. Yet at the same time it also shows us the disaster that Bipolar Disorder is when it's left untreated.
If you answered A, you are obviously on the wrong blog. If you answered B, you're way, way under. And if you answered C you're correct.
Original Bluesman Robert Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain are just a few of the members of this prestigious club. But there are a few rules for membership:
27 Club Rules
1. You have to be a famous musician.
2. You have to be dead at age 27
3. Your death must be from something drug or alcohol related.
* the third rule isn't really a rule, just more of a guideline.
The Truth About the 27 Club
The truth is, there is no 27 Club and its all bullshit. There is nothing unusual or mysterious going on, and there is no curse that causes musicians to die at age 27. Furthermore, this phenomenon has been studied by scientists and researchers and it has been proven that musicians are just as likely to die at any age, not just 27.
An Australian study conducted at the Queensland University of Technology performed a mathematical analysis of over 1,000 musicians and found 86% died at ages other than 27 while only 7% did. (source: Time.com)
Likewise, the British Medical Journal published a study in 2011 that also concluded there was no increased risk of musicians dying at age 27.
For all the poor, unlucky bastards who died at 27, there are just as many , if not more musicians who died at other ages. John Lennon (40), Elvis (42), Jerry Garcia (53), Sid Vicious (21), John Bonham (32), Bon Scott (33), Keith Moon (32) Layne Staley (34) are just a few I can name off the top of my head.
And don't forget the ones who have used drugs/alcohol heavily and survived like Ozzy Osbourne, Keith Richards, Steven Tyler, Alice Cooper, and Lou Reed to name a few.
Getting Old: What Rock Stars Dread
PsychologyToday.com has written that getting older is a major threat to our creative enterprises.
After age 30, we become more emotionally stable, more conscientious, more agreeable and less open to new experiences.
The fact is, becoming older more boring, conforming and adjusted can be a major threat to a rocker who's livelyhood depends on being youthful, rebellious, wild and dangerous. The public wont buy into it.
Want proof? Look at Paul McCartney. He wrote/cowrote 27 number 1 songs with The Beatles all by age 30. Since then? His last number one hit was Say Say Say in 1983 over 30 years ago.
The Rolling Stones, who began their careers with several number 1 hits, last topped the charts with Honky Tonk Women in 1969
What Does This Prove?
Rock n Roll is for the young, and for those rock stars nearing age 30, getting older can be a scary concept. To think that they are only 3 years away from waking up one morning 30 years old, irrelevant, obsolete and your palm blinking red hoping to God that perhaps you will be renewed.
...Ahh the firey ritual of Carrousel.
So yes some rock stars die at 27 but no more than at any other age.
If Hendrix or Morrison died in their thirties we would all be talking about the. "Thirty Something Club" today.
Back when MTV used to have music, The Unplugged series was a chance for artists to show off their hits in not only a new medium (acoustic) but it was also a chance to see your favorite artists in a small, intimate, and informal environment.
By the time Nirvana came around. It had become as essential for artists to go on Unplugged as it is now for Presidential candidates to go on SNL during election season. Paul McCartney, Stevie Ray Vaughn, & Mariah Carey are just some of the names that had already played on Unplugged. Eric Clapton even won six Grammy's for his Unplugged CD. If you were already a big star, doing Unplugged would make you even bigger.
And Nirvana was already big. I mean Nirvana fans would go so crazy they would do shit like this whenever they heard their music
But Nirvana's Unplugged was a departure from all that. It proved a hard rock band could be just as powerful when the amps weren't turned all the way up to 10. It proved that you don't need to play your hit songs or even your own music, and it showed just how powerful a stage presence Kurt Cobain really was. It was their swan song performance. It was the best performance of the Unplugged series, and it was their best of their televised performances. And if you don't agree then you are simply:
And you should also be laughed at like this:
And like this:
THE STAGE
It's almost prophetic watching this unplugged not just because this was filmed only a few short months before Kurt Cobain's death, but because it looks like you're watching a funeral. Lillies and black candles, subdued lighting, make it seem as if you're watching a suicide note versus a musical performance.
Then there's Kurt Cobain's demeanor. With the exception of a few moments onstage, he is sullen, softspoken, and almost aloof. He was going thru heavy drug withdrawls during the performance, but I heard that someone actually offered him drugs before the show. And it was caught on video, look below:
THE SET LIST
"About a Girl"
"Come as You Are"
"Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam" (The Vaselines)
"The Man Who Sold the World" (David Bowie)
"Pennyroyal Tea"
"Dumb"
"Polly"
"On a Plain"
"Something in the Way"
"Plateau" (The Meat Puppets)
"Oh, Me" (The Meat Puppets)
"Lake of Fire" (The Meat Puppets)
"All Apologies"
"Where Did You Sleep Last Night"
Unlike all the artists before Nirvana who used Unplugged as a chance to showcase all of their hits acoustically, Nirvana said "Fuck That" and went with a set list that MTV was not happy about and almost resulted in their show being cancelled.
Out of the 14 songs, 6 were cover songs and only one, "Come As You Are," was a hit song. Three of the six cover songs, were performed with The Meat Puppets, a band MTV was not happy with either, as they were trying to get Nirvana to agree to perform with bigger names a la an Eddie Vedder or someone like that.
THE LITTLE MOMENTS
All the stuff that MTV usually will edit out are the things that make this the best unplugged ever. I don't think they've ever officially released this on dvd but the bootleg copy I've had for years has some great little moments. It's these funny, quirky, unpolished moments that help make this great. 1. Dave Grohl is heard bumming smokes from Pat Smear (18:25) as they go to the backstage area for Kurt Cobain's solo version of Pennyroyal Tea 2. Kurt didn’t want to play “Dumb” and “Polly” back to back.“Because they’re exactly the same song,” Cobain explains. (26:43) “Who cares, it will be edited different. This is a television show!” he reasons. (22:30)
3. . Kurt and Krist discuss “Davey and Goliath.” “Remember
the little black bird on ‘Davey and Goliath?’” Novaselic asks Cobain
midway through the performance. Cobain
doesn’t, but he does have other memories of the show. “Remember that
really evil episode where he was really mad at this kid and he had all
these visions of how he was going to, ‘First I’m going to take him up to a hill and tie him to a tree and tar and feather him!’” Cobain recalls, adopting his best Davey voice. “It was evil! That wasn’t Christian at all.” (38:18)
4. There was almost a performance of “Sweet Home Alabama.”Kurt slurs and grunts his way through the first two lines of the Lynyrd
Skynyrd classic during downtime before the Meat Puppets are ready. (41:15)
5. Kurt came in early on the first chorus of “Lake of Fire.” Oops. Hear him catch and cover up his mistake at 50:12.
6. On his way off stage, Kurt stops to sign autographs for fans before (the story goes) arguing backstage with MTV producers because he refused to do an encore. And he was right. There was no way you could've topped that. (1:05:40)
7. Kurt is basically sitting in an office chair. You’ve
gotta sit in something, I guess, it just seems odd that for such a
ghostly performance, Cobain is sitting in a chair that looks like it was
picked up by an intern at the Office Max around the corner a few hours
before the show started.
8. The set list didn’t seem to be ironed out ahead of time.
Fans shout titles from the audience and the band considers them, and at
one point Grohl suggests they do “Sliver,” but Cobain decides against
it because he has to scream in it. “What else do you want to do?” Grohl
asks him. (57:30) The band also at one point toys with doing “School.”
9. Pat Smear DIDN'T WEAR SHOES! See below
5. Kurt reads zines in his downtime.While a guitar
is being tuned off stage, Kurt can be seen on stage reading. (41:11)
It feels like you're watching the biggest rock band in the world rehearsing and having a good time, and showing that they weren't just another hard rock band. They showed themselves as something larger than music. If that performance never happened, I honestly think that Nirvana would've been relegated to just another part of that 90's fad that was grunge music.
To this day it still remains an intense, gloomy performance. I don't know if I'm alone in thinking this but I honestly have trouble watching the video or listening to the cd in its entirety just because it is that intense.
Dave Grohl talks about the beauty of minimalism in music, but have you seen and heard the shit he's been doing in recent years? its far from minimalist, stripped down music.
Hey all you young douchebags, Dave Grohl was actually in another band before Foo Fighters, you should look into it.
All Star jam at the White House? in a suit and tie? This isn't rock n roll
Celebrity Jam with Paul McCartney at a benefit concert?
Riding Led Zeppelins coat tails at yet another all star jam?
Another celebrity gig, the Kennedy Center Honors from 2012. You can't host an all star concert without Dave Grohl having to be involved.
And once again the Kennedy Center Honors from 2008.
Nirvana forever changed the landscape of rock music. They rallied against what was the socially acceptable musical norms of the time. It was a breath of fresh air when music had become boring, predictable, commercial, stale, and way too overproduced and image-oriented.
Dave Grohl has become the very thing that Nirvana was against. He has become the U2 of this generation. Formulaic, adult comtemporary, garbage with absolutely no artistic merit or relevance, and much like U2 eager to seek the spotlight of any all star jam, or benefit concert that might happen along.
Ever since The Color and the Shape, the Foo Fighters have been making the exact same album over and over again.
Dave Grohl exists only to attend grammy ceremonies, walk red carpets, host cable television shows, perform at benefit concerts, play in all star jams, form superbands and release highly commercialized and formulaic music. He's not a rocker, he's not a musician. He's just a professional celebrity these days.
If Kurt Cobain was alive to see Dave Grohl play with The Muppets he'd a died of shame.
If you die you're completely happy and your soul
somewhere lives on. I'm not afraid of dying. Total peace after death,
becoming someone else is the best hope I've got.- Kurt Cobain
Recently, I finally got around to reading, Heavier then Heaven, what is considered by many the definitive biography on Kurt Cobain. Today I want to talk about all those suspicions and murder theories surrounding Kurt Cobain's death, back in 1994.
First of all, do you wanna know what I think about the idea of Kurt Cobain actually being MURDERED?
Numerous theories about Cobain being killed by someone hired by Courtney Love or others, have been circulating around ever since his death. People cite the fact that he supposedly was attempting to have his will changed to remove Courtney Love, or they point to his decision to pull out of that Summer's Lolapalooza Tour - which would've cost many people many millions of dollars, as motivating factors.
There are a ton of books, and websites that go into all the detail, feel free to check them out.
I will admit though that the one thing that ever raised an eyebrow for me was the fact that granted the amount of heroin that he had in his system when he died - most people claim as proof that there was no way he could've held and fired a gun after injecting himself. But over the years for every doctor who says there was no way he could inject that much heroin and still fire that gun, there are just as many doctors who say that is conceivable that someone with a large enough tolerance level COULD still hold and fire the gun.
I want to just shed some common sense on this whole issue and put it to rest once and for all. Kurt Cobain, was a junkie with a death wish.
1. Heavier than Heaven chronicles numerous times that Kurt Cobain OD'd. Many times his heart stopping only to be revived back to life. Courtney Love has said he overdosed five times, and that she had to carry a can of narcan (used to revive heroin overdose victims.) around in her purse.
2. He used heroin to medicate a serious stomach ailment that plagued him for years. He consulted numerous doctors but it was never officially diagnosed. He had tried every medication and ultimately found that heroin was the only thing that would alleviate the constant pain.
This is the only thing that's saving me from blowing my head off right now - Kurt Cobain.
3. Kurt Cobain overdosed in Rome in March 1994, one month before he died. In an alleged suicide attempt, he was in a coma for 20 hours after taking alcohol and prescription tranquilizers
4. 2 of Cobain's uncle's committed suicide.
5. Cobain's cousin Beverly, a nurse, pointed out that there was a family
history of suicide. Beverly claimed that bipolar disorder and his
struggles with drug addiction led him to commit suicide
being bipolar myself I have struggled with suicidal thoughts since I was a teenager. I tried to kill myself 3 times after the end of my first marriage, and I spent some time in a mental hospital this past May during a horrible bout of depression where I nearly succeeded in carrying out another attempt.
6. He wrote a song called, "I Hate Myself and Wanna Die"
Seriously, what makes more sense?
And as far as the whole 'Courtney Love hired someone to kill Kurt Cobain' story...This is the guy that who claimed that she offered him money to kill him...TAKE A GOOD LOOK
This is Eldon 'El Duce' Hoke. Now when you think 'HIRED HITMAN' is this the first image that comes to your mind?
I wouldn't pay this guy to exterminate the ant hill in my backyard much less someone I wanted dead.
By the way this guy was such a genius, he died after getting drunk and being hit by a god damn train.
Ok no more stupid conspiracy theories. Case Closed
In my early 20's I was basically a teenager with money. Then at 25-27 I hit the first ever introspective period of my life. That led to my late 20's which I basically ruined with my preoccupation over the fact that 30 was fast approaching.
Thats a very rare picture of me in my early 20's. Rocking my "Mr. Sensitive Pony Tail Man," Look.
Turning 18 was like life playing a cruel joke on you. You're old enough to vote, die for your country, buy cigarettes, win the lottery, go to certain non-alcohol serving titty bars, but not old enough to buy booze.
In my early 20's I traded hanging out at the mall, for hanging out at the bar - almost nightly, and then showing up to work everyday extremely hungover. Lots of house parties, concerts and clubs.
But not dance, top 40, rap friggin clubs. I'm talking more like industrial/rock clubs. Places that you would hear everything from Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails to more industrial, techno-ish stuff. Crowds of all rockers and goths.
My musical tastes underwent a drastic change. Metal gave way to Grunge, and as a guitarist this marked a fundamental change in the way I approached music and guitar playing.
Heavy Metal had been about how fast you can play, how many scales and modes do you know, how long can you guitar solo for and how many riffs can you fit into one song. And there were only two looks. Either you had long hair and looked like a sissy or you had long hair and looked like a psychotic drifter.
When Nirvana released Nevermind in 1992, it shared the Billboard Top Ten with the likes of Garth Brooks, Michael Jackson, Michael Bolton and MC. Hammer.
The first time I heard Nirvana, I didn't know what to make of it. It was the kind of confusion I imagine you would have meeting an alien civilization. There were no guitar solos, and the guitar was out of tune. As far as the vocals go, the earth shattering highs that you heard in most of the metal bands was obviously missing. Kurt Cobain was dressed more like a vagrant panhandler than a rock musician. From a guitarists point of view, the music was so simple and it was so damn heavy. I can't tell you how many nights I spent listening to Nevermind over and over again, playing along to the songs with an almost anger over how easy they were.
"These songs are so fucking simple, why couldn't I have thought of this?"
_____________________________________
The 90's was a great decade for rock music. I don't think the 90's have been given the proper credit they deserve, but I think time will eventually show this to be true.
So as my cassettes turned into cd's my music collection became filled with other innovators like Nine Inch Nails, Tool, Rage Against the Machine, Alice in Chains and many others.
After a while the 'newness' of grunge rock wore off and then it became a scene just as ridiculous as the whole metal scene had been before.
Boy You Said It Family Guy!
Just like Metal, which was cool, developed Hair Metal which was totally lame - Grunge which was cool developed this horrible caricature of itself which was also totally lame. Just like Family Guy said, you had this barrage of what I call 'low singers' you know your Dave Mathews, and Creeds, and Rob Thomases of the world .
So What Does All This Shit Have to do with Stage 2?
Ok so just in case I wandered too far off topic, let me explain
Grunge came along and (at least at first, when it was still new) showed people that you didn't have to fit into a certain stereotype if you wanna frigging rock out hard. You don't have to look or sound a certain way. Grunge was that weird kid in the back of class that nobody talked to, that wore ratty clothes and never combed his hair.
Once I saw Kurt Cobain, and the grunge movement show the world that, you should never conform to what others are doing, and its totally cool to be yourself, musically, artistically, personally - That was the day I decided to do the same.
My teens were spent desperately trying to fit in, and find an identity for myself...My twenties began with me realizing how futile that is. You can't find an identity for yourself, because "yourself" is the identity. The sooner you accept yourself, your life, your present circumstances, the sooner you can actually start living your life instead of just surviving thru it.
Some people never get past that, and spend the rest of their lives always trying in vain to "find themselves" always trying to please other people
Listen to these Other Famous Successful Graduates of Stage 2
“Don’t die with your music still inside you. Listen to your
intuitive inner voice and find what passion stirs your soul. Listen to
that inner voice, and don’t get to the end of your life and say, ‘What
if my whole life has been wrong?”- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other
people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out
your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow
your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want
to become. Everything else is secondary - Steve Jobs
Next time on Guitardedblog.com - The Five Stages of Rock: Stage 3
-DaveGrohl-Animool.jpg)
