Cobain was contradictory: a sweet, popular teen athlete and sinister berserker, a kid who rescued injured pigeons and laughingly killed a cat, a talented yet astoundingly morbid visual artist. As a teen, 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's stomach-churning passion for Vail erupted in six or so hit tunes like 'Aneurysm' and 'Drain You.')Ĭross uncovers plenty of news, mostly grim and gripping. (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. At last we know how he created, how lies helped him die, how his family and love life entwined his art-plus, what the heck 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' really means. It reveals many secrets, thanks to 400-plus interviews, and even quotes Cobain's diaries and suicide notes and reveals an unreleased Nirvana masterpiece.

Now Charles Cross has cracked the code in the definitive biography Heavier Than Heaven, an all-access pass to Cobain's heart and mind.

The art of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain was all about his private life, but written in a code as obscure as T.S.

Charles cross heavier than heaven