One year ago Saturday, Kurt Cobain's body was found in his lakeview Seattle home, but his now-defunct band Nirvana may be more popular than ever.
The trio's "MTV Unplugged in New York" album is going strong among the top 40 biggest albums in the nation five months after its release, with more than 3 million copies sold. Two other Nirvana albums, the groundbreaking "Nevermind" and the abrasive "In Utero," are among the top 200. "The Man Who Sold the World," a track from the MTV disc, is No. 10 on Billboard's modern rock chart and a staple on several radio formats.Cobain was 27 when he shot himself, leaving a widow, their toddler daughter and a bizarre suicide note scrawled in red ink.
Cobain hasn't been universally mourned like John Lennon - or even the recently murdered Tejano chanteuse Selena - mainly because he wasn't all that widely loved. Cobain's music and personality were too abrasive for that kind of universal love.
"We'd rather celebrate his birthday than the death day," said Jim Merlis, the band's publicist, adding that no new Nirvana releases were planned at this point.
Although Nirvana was vastly popular at the time of the death, the band was clearly troubled, as evidenced at its last Los Angeles date at the Forum in December 1993, where a hollow-eyed Cobain stood center stage, oblivious to a blizzard of guitar noise and stage divers.
"When I heard about it, I felt sick," the Who's Pete Townshend has said of Cobain's death. "All I could think of was where was the doctor? There was one following Elvis around who kept him alive for maybe 10 years too long, but at least someone cared about him."
Before Nirvana made it big, alternative and post-punk rock wasn't considered profitable or commercial enough to sell to more than a small cult of fans. But the band's breakthrough album, "Nevermind," and initial hit single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," proved to be the catalyst for the alternative rock explosion of the '90s.
Today, young bands such as Green Day, Offspring, Live, Bush and Mad Season fill the charts, selling millions of copies. Hole, the band fronted by Cobain's widow, Courtney Love, released what was considered one of the best albums of last year, "Live Through This."
In a recently uncovered 1992 interview with Nirvana, completed just as "Teen Spirit" was sweeping the country, Cobain is revealed as somebody with a clear idea of what he could accomplish. At the same time, the 25-year-old is shown to be strangely in touch with his early childhood.
"Before I wanted to be in a rock band, I wanted to be a stunt man when I was in third grade," Cobain said in the interview. "I used to take all the bedding and pillows out of our house and put them on the deck and go up on the roof and jump off."
Kurt St. Thomas, program director of Boston's alternative-rock radio station WFNX-FM and an early fan of the band, went to Nirvana's label, Geffen/DGC, in late '91 and asked to do an interview that the label could use as a promotional device. The tape was recorded in January 1992, the week-end the band was in New York to appear on "Saturday Night Live."
"Kurt was incredibly nice," St. Thomas recalls today. "They all were. I imagine his music will be around forever. People will look back in the same way they look back at the music of the Sex Pistols and Jimi Hendrix. There's something to be said for being frozen in time."
St. Thomas said that even from its earliest beginnings, Nirvana had a softer, melodic side that often was overshadowed by the bombast of songs such as "On a Plain," "Teen Spirit" and "Penny Royal Tea."
"They always had (softly melodic) songs like `About a Girl' or `Something in the Way,' " St. Thomas said. "So, the acoustic MTV album wasn't really such a shock."
Steve Alper, a music store manager, recalls seeing the trio play a poorly attended free show one afternoon at Westwood's Rhino Records when the "Nevermind" album was released four years ago.
"It was loud and not many people were there," he said. "But Nirvana has now reached legendary status, so I keep meeting people who say they were at that show, even though I know they couldn't have been.
"Nirvana was carefully crafted and molded for stardom by Co-bain. In spite of his pain and the endless complaining about fame, this was something he aspired to from a very young age."
In the past year, there have been several books about Cobain. Perhaps the best is "Cobain: A Commemorative Book From the Edi-tors of Rolling Stone," a 142-page hardcover examining the singer's life and death. In addition to numerous paperback quickies, author Michael Azzerod has added an epilogue to his authorized (and airbrushed) biography, "Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana."
Of course, the two surviving members of Nirvana - bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl - are still alive, but have moved on and never talked publicly about Cobain's demise. This year, Novoselic helped form JAMPPAC, the Joint Artists and Music Promotions Political Action Committee, and recently debuted a new band in Seattle.
Grohl, now singing and playing guitar, has formed his own band, the fast-and-loud Foo Fighters, which also includes Pat Smear (who played guitar with Nirvana) and the rhythm section from Seattle's Sunny Day Real Estate.
The band's debut album probably will be recorded for Capitol Records, where Gary Gersh, the executive who signed Nirvana to Geffen, is president.
One of the last songs Cobain wrote was titled, "I Hate Myself and Want to Die." But in the '92 interview, he explained that he often wrote songs from the viewpoint of somebody else. Apparently, however, not this time.
"What a . . . way to grow up," singer Henry Rollins told a British music weekly last year. "When the (Cobain) kid is 4, she's gonna go, `All my friends have daddies. Where's mine?' (And someone will tell her) `Well, here's your dad on the cover of Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone has made your dad into the John Lennon of his era.' "