33 Things You Should Know About Nirvana

1. Kurt’s imaginary friend got drafted to Vietnam.
Kurt Cobain was born on February 20, 1967. At age 2, he was living in Hoquiam, Washington, and had an imaginary friend, Boddah. Parents Wendy and Don Cobain were so concerned about their son’s propensity for fantasy that, when an uncle was drafted to Vietnam, they told young Kurt that Boddah had been called up too.

2. Years before they met, Kurt and Courtney did the same drugs.
In 1974, second grader Kurt was prescribed Ritalin to curb hyperactive behavior. Courtney Love was also given Ritalin and later reflected that this contributed to the couple’s eventual heroin problems: “When you’re a kid and you get this drug that makes you feel that feeling, where else are you going to turn when you’re an adult?”

3. At church, Kurt found God — and Krist Novoselic.
On Wednesday nights, Kurt went to Christian Youth Group, where he befriended 19-year-old Krist Novoselic, whom he’d first met in high school. They started covering Led Zeppelin songs together. Kurt was baptized and, according to youth counselor Dave Reed, “accepted Jesus Christ into his life,” but his religious fervor soon waned.

4. Kurt saved people’s lives. When he wasn’t mopping toilets.
In May 1985, Cobain started work as a janitor and — in the case of staff shortage — a substitute lifeguard at the local YMCA. One night that summer, he graffiti’d the YMCA building. Kurt didn’t seem to realize that as janitor his first assignment the next day would be to clean it up.

5. He nearly joined the navy.
In 1984, Don Cobain asked a navy recruitment officer to speak to his son. Kurt listened but didn’t follow up until a year later, when his friend Trevor Briggs enlisted. Kurt took the aptitude test and passed it, but pulled out at the last minute.

6. Being a Cobain pet was high risk.
In 1981, Kurt killed a cat by trapping it inside his parents’ chimney. Five years later he accidentally stepped on the head of his pet rat, Kitty, and was forced to beat it to death with a plank. In 1991, Kurt dyed his kitten, Quisp, red, white and blue with Kool Aid — then watched it have sex with his pet rabbit Stew.

7. A chainsaw helped form Nirvana…
In 1986, Cobain formed the Sellouts, a Creedence Clearwater Revival tribute band. He played drums, Novoselic played guitar and pal Steve “Instant” Newman played bass. Newman quit when he lost his fingers in a gruesome logging accident. After recruiting drummer Aaron Burckhard and swapping instruments, the band evolved through names like Skid Row, Ted Ed Fred, Throat Oyster and finally Nirvana. Said Cobain, “I wanted to put out a record or play some shows instead of having it all fall apart like everything else for the past six years.

8. …and so did Springsteen.
Burckhard left the band in 1987 after he got busted for driving drunk in Kurt’s car. He was pulled over by a cop named Springsteen and proceeded to abuse the cop with cries of “Hey Bruce! What’s up Bruce!” The police impounded the car, and Kurt fired Burckhard from the drum stool.

9. At first, only furniture thought Nirvana were cool.
One of Nirvana’s first shows was booked at Seattle’s Central Tavern early in 1988. However, the attendance clocked in at an underwhelming zero. Cobain disappointed the expectant chairs and tables. “We loaded up our stuff and left,” he recalled.

10. Cobain painted on the side. And jizzed on his work.
In 1989, Kurt’s neighbor Amy Moon visited his apartment to commission a painting. Cobain told her that once a piece was finished he would add his “secret ingredient.” “My seed is on this painting! Look, you can see how it glistens,” he announced to her.

11. Nirvana’s first album was financed by Alaskan fish.
Recorded in 1989, Bleach cost $605.17 to record — a figure far beyond Cobain’s means. Kurt’s friend Dylan Carlson introduced him to Jason Everman, who made good money as a fisherman in Alaska. Everman liked the band’s sound and paid for the recording.

12. Kurt spent his first Nirvana paycheck on guns and vomit…
In 1990, Cobain received $3,000 in a publishing deal. He spent nearly $1,000 at the mall with friends Mikey Nelson and Joe Preston. Not content with a Nintendo system and BB guns, Cobain also loaded up on fake dog feces, vomit and severed limbs. “It was just a bunch of junk he could destroy,” says Preston.

13. …then tried heroin.
In November 1990, Kurt first injected heroin. He had previously smoked pot, experimented with LSD and even inhaled fumes from aerosol cans. In the fall of 1991, though, Kurt’s journals record an eerie decision: “I decided to use heroin on a daily basis because of an ongoing stomach ailment.”

15. Courtney kept Kurt’s gayness in check.
“I’m definitely gay in spirit,” Kurt told The Advocate in 1993. “If I hadn’t found Courtney, I probably would have carried on a bisexual lifestyle.”

16. The band were outsiders, even at their own parties.
At Seattle’s Re-bar for the Nevermind launch party on September 13, 1991, Novoselic threw dip at Kurt, who responded with a bowl of herb dressing. “We got thrown out of our own party!” Novoselic remembers.

17. Kurt once dumped a girl on live TV…
In 1991, Nirvana and Hole were on tour in the U.K. and Kurt’s flirtation with Love was ongoing. But musician Mary Lou Lord believed she was his girlfriend. When Lord visited the U.K., Cobain couldn’t bring himself to tell her in person. When Lord switched on Channel 4 to watch Nirvana perform, she heard Kurt announce, “I just want everyone in this room to know that Courtney Love, of the pop group Hole, is the best fuck in the world.”

18 …but he needed to learn a thing or two about underwear.
After Kurt and Courtney first had sex, at a Days Inn in Chicago, she told him to ditch his zebra-striped briefs and get boxers.

19. Ungrateful kids made Nevermind number 1.Until Christmas, Nevermind was a top 10 hit. In the week after Christmas, though, it finally reached number 1, toppling Michael Jackson’s Dangerous. “We saw an incredible number of kids returning the CDs their parents had given them for Christmas and buying Nevermind in exchange,” marveled a Tower Records exec.

20. Kurt grabbed all the royalties.
Initially Kurt had been happy to split royalties equally with David Grohl and Novoselic. But Nevermind proved more successful than their wildest dreams, and Kurt had written the words and music. In 1992, he threatened to dissolve the band unless he got 100 percent of revenue from lyrics and a 75/25 split for music. Grohl and Novoselic agreed.

21. Fearful of becoming Axl Rose, Kurt skimped on groceries.
Stunned by his meteoric success, Cobain was keen to establish that he wasn’t a decadent rock star like Rose, whom he despised. He stated that in the tax year 1992 to 1993 he earned $1 million: $380,000 went to taxes, $300,000 to a new house and the rest to doctors and lawyers. This left $80,000 for personal expenses, including food. “That’s definitely not what Axl spends in a year,” insisted Cobain.

22. The Nirvana baby’s penis was banned in Southern California.
In April 1992, a city-code enforcement officer in Ventura, California, cited Spencer Elden’s penis for violating the law. Elden was the 5-month-old baby immortalized on Nevermind’s cover. Staff at the city’s Wild Planet record store were forced to cover his penis with pink Post-it notes.

23. A wax statue of Cobain once got better VIP treatment than the real deal.
In August 1992, Cobain was strolling in London’s Piccadilly area before playing the Reading Festival. Desperately needing to pee, he tried to enter the Rock ‘N’ Roll Wax Museum — but guards told him toilets were for “patrons only.” The rejected Cobain was upset to see his own waxwork gazing at him from the window.

24. Sid and Nancy comparisons were not lost on Kurt and Courtney.
Cobain used to check into hotels under the pseudonym Simon Ritchie, the real name of Sex Pistol Sid Vicious. Love’s first acting role was as Nancy Spungen’s friend in Alex Cox’s 1986 movie Sid and Nancy.

25. Kurt’s chemical dependency counselor OD’d.
Drug rehab physician Rob Fremont had tried a radical and illegal detox method on Cobain. In 1993, Fremont was under investigation by the Medical Board of California for over-prescribing the drug buprenorphine to patients when he was found dead at his desk. Though the death was ruled a heart attack, his son Marc claimed it was a suicide by OD.

26. Kurt suggested a double suicide the day after Frances was born.
On August 19, 1992, the day after his daughter was born, Cobain read a Vanity Fair article claiming that he and his wife had used heroin during the pregnancy. Agitated, he took a .38 into the maternity ward and suggested to Love they commit suicide. As a ploy to disarm him, Love took the gun, saying she would die first.

27. Duff McKagan tried to save Kurt.
In April 1994, Guns N’ Roses bassist McKagan found himself next to Cobain on a flight from L.A. to Seattle. Cobain had just absconded from the Exodus rehab facility in Marina Del Rey after just two days’ treatment. “I knew from all my instincts something was wrong,” remembered McKagan. He offered him a ride from the airport, but Cobain slipped away.

28. Suicidal tendencies seemed to run in Cobain’s blood.
In 1979, his great-uncle Burle Cobain committed suicide with gunshots to the abdomen and head. His great-uncle Kenneth shot himself in the head in 1984. His great-grandfather James Irving stabbed himself, survived, but tore open the wounds in a psychiatric hospital and died. Aged 15, Kurt made a film called Kurt Commits Bloody Suicide. “He was the shape of suicide,” remembered friend and original manager Ryan Aigner.

29. He died listening to R.E.M.On April 5, 1994, at his Seattle home, Kurt Cobain arranged his heroin stash, his rifle and some towels around him. He then played R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People. His body was found by electrician Gary Smith on Friday, April 8, dead of a shotgun blast to the head.

30. The last note he wrote was addressed to Boddah.
He wrote one suicide note for Courtney and Frances and another to his fans. The latter was addressed to Boddah, his imaginary childhood friend.

31. Kurt was the Foo Fighters’ drummer. Sorta.
In January 1994, Grohl and Novoselic showed up to record in Seattle. Kurt skipped, so they recorded some of Grohl’s ideas. When Kurt showed two days later, he played drums on these sketches. In 1995, Dave Grohl formed the Foo Fighters and re-recorded some of these ideas.

32. Krist for President!
Novoselic has been politically active as a founding member of JAMPAC, an anticensorship group, and has stumped for electoral reform online. Combining memoir with politics, he published Of Grunge and Government earlier this year.

33. The Nirvana boxed set is a “treasure chest.”
The three-CD, one-DVD With the Lights Out marks the end of a three-year battle among Courtney Love, Dave Grohl and Novoselic over 68 previously unreleased tracks (81 tracks in all). “It’s a treasure chest,” says Grohl. “Few people expected it to see the light of day, even the guys playing it.”