The Death of Kurt Cobain 1994

Posted By:
Chad A. Hagy, USA, Kurt Cobain

I was a senior in high school in 1994. It was the height of the grunge rock era. The signature of grunge rock was ripped jeans, t-shirts underneath flannel shirts, and Chuck Taylor shoes (Converse high tops, as they are typically known). I bought in to the grunge style mainly because it was easy, but I also identified with the music that preached about teen angst and questioning authority.

The hesitant leader of this movement was Kurt Cobain – the lead singer of the band Nirvana. Their song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” hit the radio waves a couple years earlier and in 1994, the band was at the height of its popularity. April 5, 1994 is a day that I will always remember, though. I came home from school and plastered all over the news was the apparent suicide of Kurt Cobain. It was all over MTV. In fact, they had 24-hour news coverage of it which lasted well into the next day. And me, being the type of person that likes to document everything that happens in my life, started the video recorder and taped as much of the news coverage as I could. As a matter of fact, I still have those tapes in my collection.

The next few weeks, I was affected by the news of his death. I wasn’t one of those people that cried over it. After all, it’s not like I knew the guy personally. But I wondered about why his life was so bad. He just had a baby and he was one of the most successful rock stars in history. With only a few more weeks of school, I made an homage to Kurt Cobain every chance I could. Through class assignments, oral presentations, and constantly playing my Nirvana CDs in my Astro van, I tried to expose as many people as I could to the genius that was Kurt Cobain.