Kurt Cobain Born: Grunge's Reluctant Voice of a Generation

Kurt Cobain was left-handed and played a right-handed guitar strung in reverse. Born on February 20, 1967, in Aberdeen, Washington, a logging town on the Pacific coast, he grew up in a fractured household. His parents divorced when he was seven, and the experience of being passed between relatives and sleeping under bridges as a teenager informed the sense of alienation that permeated his songwriting. He taught himself to play guitar and formed Nirvana with Krist Novoselic in 1987. Their debut album, "Bleach," was recorded for $606.17. Their second album, "Nevermind," came out in September 1991 and changed the trajectory of popular music. "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the lead single, was a song Cobain reportedly wrote in five minutes. It knocked Michael Jackson's "Dangerous" off the top of the Billboard chart in January 1992, an event that symbolized the end of one era of pop culture and the beginning of another. Nevermind sold over 30 million copies worldwide. Cobain was deeply uncomfortable with fame. He saw himself as a punk musician playing in clubs, and the stadiums and magazine covers felt like betrayals of the underground culture that had formed him. He married Courtney Love in 1992, and their daughter Frances Bean was born that year. His heroin addiction escalated throughout 1993 and 1994. He overdosed in Rome in March 1994 and entered rehab in Los Angeles the following month, leaving after two days. On April 5, 1994, he was found dead in his Seattle home from a self-inflicted shotgun wound. He was 27. The city of Aberdeen later added a sign at the city limits reading "Come As You Are," the title of a Nirvana song he wrote about a different kind of homecoming.