Amazon.co.uk Review
The art of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain was all about his private life, but written in a code as obscure as TS Eliot's. In Heavier than Heaven Charles Cross has cracked the code, and this definitive biography is an all-access pass to Cobain's heart and mind. It reveals many secrets, thanks to 400-plus interviews, and even quotes Cobain's diaries and suicide notes revealing an unreleased Nirvana masterpiece. At last we know how he created, how lies helped him die, how his family and love life entwined with his art--plus, what the heck "Smells Like Teen Spirit" really means. (It was graffiti by Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna after a double date with Dave Grohl, Cobain, and the "over-bored and self-assured" Tobi Vail, who wore Teen Spirit perfume; Hanna wrote it to taunt the emotionally clingy Cobain for wearing Vail's scent after sex--a violation of the no-strings-attached dating ethos of the Olympia, Washington, "outcast teen" underground. Cobain 's stomach-churning passion for Vail erupted in six or so hit tunes like "Aneurysm" and "Drain You".) Cross uncovers plenty of news, mostly grim and gripping. As a teenager, Cobain said he had "suicide genes" and his clan was peculiarly defiant: one of his suicidal relatives stabbed his own belly in front of his family, then ripped apart the wound in the hospital. Cobain was contradictory: a sweet, popular teenage athlete and sinister berserker, a kid who rescued injured pigeons and laughingly killed a cat, a talented yet astoundingly morbid visual artist. He grew up to be a millionaire who slept in cars (and stole one), a fiercely loyal man who ruthlessly screwed his oldest, best friends. Cross, the co-author of Nervmind: Nirvana, the definitive book about the making of the classic album, puts numerous Cobain-generated myths to rest. (Cobain never lived under a bridge--that Aberdeen bridge immortalised in the 12th song on Nevermind was a tidal slough, so nobody could sleep under it). He gives the fullest account yet of what it was like to be, or love, Kurt Cobain. Heavier than Heaven outshines the also indispensable Come As You Are. It's the deepest book about pop's darkest falling star. --Tim Appelo
Review
‘Superbly researched and harrowing...The squalor is ghastly but the sheer sadness of Cobain's brief life is beautifully conveyed here. Cross has painstakingly accumulated a wealth of telling detail’ (Robert Sandall, Sunday Times )
‘Cross’s research is impeccable...HEAVIER THAN HEAVEN is, or should be, the last word on Kurt Cobain.’ (Lynn Barber, Daily Telegraph )
‘I was very glad to read this biography, the result of four years' research and 400 interviews, not to mention the sainted Kurt's police and medical records AND his unpublished journals. I was in hog heaven all the way through - in a caring, wistful way, of course.’ (Julie Burchill, Guardian )
'Cross's portrayal of a shy but prodigiously gifted child, in artistic as well as musical terms, is a joy to read' ( Observer )
‘The secret here is that Cross was allowed unprecedented access to Cobain's world; his diaries, artworks and most significantly the people who surrounded him. Cross may vividly depict the seemingly inevitable demise of a rock star but he also successfully conveys just what all the fuss was about in the first place.’ ( The List ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
‘Cross’s research is impeccable...HEAVIER THAN HEAVEN is, or should be, the last word on Kurt Cobain.’ (Lynn Barber, Daily Telegraph )
‘I was very glad to read this biography, the result of four years' research and 400 interviews, not to mention the sainted Kurt's police and medical records AND his unpublished journals. I was in hog heaven all the way through - in a caring, wistful way, of course.’ (Julie Burchill, Guardian )
'Wins immediate entry into the rock lit pantheon. Five stars'
( Q Magazine )'Cross's portrayal of a shy but prodigiously gifted child, in artistic as well as musical terms, is a joy to read' ( Observer )
‘The secret here is that Cross was allowed unprecedented access to Cobain's world; his diaries, artworks and most significantly the people who surrounded him. Cross may vividly depict the seemingly inevitable demise of a rock star but he also successfully conveys just what all the fuss was about in the first place.’ ( The List ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Q Magazine
'Wins immediate entry into the rock lit pantheon. Five stars'
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Product Description
Based on more than 400 interviews; four years of research; exclusive access to Cobain's unpublished diaries; and a wealth of documentation, Heavier Than Heaven traces Cobain's life from his early days in a trailer to his rise to fame and the adulation of a generation. Cross reveals the familial turmoil that fuelled Cobain's creativity and the unusual love story with Courtney Love. Drawing on medical and police reports. Cross reveals the truth about Cobain's health and his tragic final days. Charles Cross's work is a remarkable portrait of a creative genius.
About the Author
Charles Cross has written for Rolling Stone, Esquire and many other publications. He is the author of Nevermind: The Classic Album, Led Zeppelin: Heaven and Hell and Backstreets: Springsteen, the Man and His Music.
Excerpted from Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain by Charles Cross. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The first time he saw heaven came exactly six hours and fifty-seven minutes after the very moment an entire generation fell in love with him. It was, remarkably, his first death, and only the earliest of many little deaths that would follow. For the generation smitten with him, it was an impassioned, powerful, and binding devotion – the kind of love that even as it begins you know is preordained to break your heart and to end like a Greek tragedy.
It was January 12, 1992, a clear but chilly Sunday morning. The temperature in New York City would eventually rise to 44 degrees, but at 7 a.m., in a small suite of the Omni Hotel, it was near freezing. A window had been left open to air out the stench of cigarettes, and the Manhattan morning had stolen all warmth. The room itself looked like a tempest had engulfed it: Scattered on the floor, with the randomness of a blind man’s rummage sale, were clumps of dresses, shirts, and shoes.
Toward the suite’s double doors stood a half dozen serving trays covered with the remnants of several days of room service meals. Half-eaten rolls and rancid slices of cheese littered the tray tops, and a handful of fruit flies hovered over some wilted lettuce. This was not the typical condition of a four-star hotel room – it was the consequence of someone warning housekeeping to stay out of the room. They had altered a “Do Not Disturb” sign to read, “Do not EVER Disturb! We’re Fucking!” There was no intercourse this morning. Asleep in the king-size bed was 26-year-old Courtney Love. She was wearing an antique Victorian slip, and her long blond hair spread out over the sheet like the tresses of a character in a fairy tale. Next to her was a deep impression in the bedding, where a person had recently lain. Like the opening scene of a film noir, there was a dead body in the room.
“I woke up at 7 a.m. and he wasn’t in the bed,” remembered Love.
“I’ve never been so scared.”
Missing from the bed was 24-year-old Kurt Cobain. Less than seven hours earlier, Kurt and his band Nirvana had been the musical act on “Saturday Night Live.” Their appearance on the program would prove to be a watershed moment in the history of rock ’n’ roll: the first time a grunge band had received live national television exposure. It was the same weekend that Nirvana’s major label debut, Nevermind, knocked Michael Jackson out of the No. 1 spot on the Billboard charts, becoming the best-selling album in the nation. While it wasn’t exactly overnight success – the band had been together four years –the manner in which Nirvana had taken the music industry by surprise was unparalleled.Virtually unknown a year before, Nirvana stormed the charts with their “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which became 1991’s most recognizable song,its opening guitar riff signifying the true beginning of nineties rock. And there had never quite been a rock star like Kurt Cobain. He was more an anti-star!
than a celebrity, refusing to take a limo to NBC and bringing a thrift-store sensibility to everything he did. For “Saturday Night Live” he wore the same clothes from the previous two days: a pair of Converse tennis shoes, jeans with big holes in the knees, a T-shirt advertising an obscure band, and a Mister Rogers–style cardigan sweater. He hadn’t washed his hair for a week, but had dyed it with strawberry Kool-Aid, which made his blond locks look like they’d been matted with dried blood. Never before in the history of live television had a performer put so little care into his appearance or hygiene, or so it seemed.
Kurt was a complicated, contradictory misanthrope, and what at times appeared to be an accidental revolution showed hints of careful orchestration. He professed in many interviews to detest the exposure he’d gotten on MTV, yet he repeatedly called his managers to complain that the network didn’t play his videos nearly enough. He obsessively – and compulsively – planned every musical or career direction, writing ideas out in his journals years before he executed them, yet when he was bestowed the honors he had sought, he acted as if it were an inconvenience to get out of bed. He was a man of imposing will, yet equally driven by a powerful self-hatred. Even those who knew him best felt they knew him hardly at all – the happenings of that Sunday morning would attest to that.
It was January 12, 1992, a clear but chilly Sunday morning. The temperature in New York City would eventually rise to 44 degrees, but at 7 a.m., in a small suite of the Omni Hotel, it was near freezing. A window had been left open to air out the stench of cigarettes, and the Manhattan morning had stolen all warmth. The room itself looked like a tempest had engulfed it: Scattered on the floor, with the randomness of a blind man’s rummage sale, were clumps of dresses, shirts, and shoes.
Toward the suite’s double doors stood a half dozen serving trays covered with the remnants of several days of room service meals. Half-eaten rolls and rancid slices of cheese littered the tray tops, and a handful of fruit flies hovered over some wilted lettuce. This was not the typical condition of a four-star hotel room – it was the consequence of someone warning housekeeping to stay out of the room. They had altered a “Do Not Disturb” sign to read, “Do not EVER Disturb! We’re Fucking!” There was no intercourse this morning. Asleep in the king-size bed was 26-year-old Courtney Love. She was wearing an antique Victorian slip, and her long blond hair spread out over the sheet like the tresses of a character in a fairy tale. Next to her was a deep impression in the bedding, where a person had recently lain. Like the opening scene of a film noir, there was a dead body in the room.
“I woke up at 7 a.m. and he wasn’t in the bed,” remembered Love.
“I’ve never been so scared.”
Missing from the bed was 24-year-old Kurt Cobain. Less than seven hours earlier, Kurt and his band Nirvana had been the musical act on “Saturday Night Live.” Their appearance on the program would prove to be a watershed moment in the history of rock ’n’ roll: the first time a grunge band had received live national television exposure. It was the same weekend that Nirvana’s major label debut, Nevermind, knocked Michael Jackson out of the No. 1 spot on the Billboard charts, becoming the best-selling album in the nation. While it wasn’t exactly overnight success – the band had been together four years –the manner in which Nirvana had taken the music industry by surprise was unparalleled.Virtually unknown a year before, Nirvana stormed the charts with their “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which became 1991’s most recognizable song,its opening guitar riff signifying the true beginning of nineties rock. And there had never quite been a rock star like Kurt Cobain. He was more an anti-star!
than a celebrity, refusing to take a limo to NBC and bringing a thrift-store sensibility to everything he did. For “Saturday Night Live” he wore the same clothes from the previous two days: a pair of Converse tennis shoes, jeans with big holes in the knees, a T-shirt advertising an obscure band, and a Mister Rogers–style cardigan sweater. He hadn’t washed his hair for a week, but had dyed it with strawberry Kool-Aid, which made his blond locks look like they’d been matted with dried blood. Never before in the history of live television had a performer put so little care into his appearance or hygiene, or so it seemed.
Kurt was a complicated, contradictory misanthrope, and what at times appeared to be an accidental revolution showed hints of careful orchestration. He professed in many interviews to detest the exposure he’d gotten on MTV, yet he repeatedly called his managers to complain that the network didn’t play his videos nearly enough. He obsessively – and compulsively – planned every musical or career direction, writing ideas out in his journals years before he executed them, yet when he was bestowed the honors he had sought, he acted as if it were an inconvenience to get out of bed. He was a man of imposing will, yet equally driven by a powerful self-hatred. Even those who knew him best felt they knew him hardly at all – the happenings of that Sunday morning would attest to that.
