Carla Black<\/a> remembers how her sympathy for a grieving Courtney Love in the wake of Kurt Cobain’s death twenty-five years ago sparked a decade-long journey to bring gender parity to modern rock.<\/em><\/p>\nLike most people of a certain generation, I remember exactly where I was on April 8th, 1994, when the news broke that Kurt Cobain had ended his own life three days before. My son David had just turned six; the previous weekend, I\u2019d slipped the organist at Pizza and Pipes an extra twenty to play a hilariously church-like version of \u201cSmells Like Teen Spirit\u201d on the giant pipe organ at his birthday party. It was his favorite song. As a part time bassist in an all-female \u201860s cover band, I wouldn\u2019t dream of subjecting him to kid music as insulting to his intelligence as Barney the Dinosaur. Nirvana\u2019s 1991 breakout hit, a paean to disaffected youth with its quiet verses, angry chorus, and video set in a flaming high school gym, had catapulted mysterious and shy Kurt into the spotlight. Fans and critics alike had already proclaimed him \u201cthe voice of his generation.\u201d Now, I was hearing about his senseless death from an aid at my son\u2019s school as I left the parking lot.<\/p>\n
It was shocking, but not completely. Only a month before, Kurt had overdosed in Rome, reportedly an accident. Every station – not just MTV – covered Kurt\u2019s suicide. He had shot himself in the greenhouse of the Seattle home that he and his wife, fellow grunge rocker Courtney Love, had only moved into a few months before with their infant daughter Frances Bean. Photos from the old-money neighborhood of Denny-Blaine splashed onto the screen. Kurt\u2019s unkempt hair and facial scruff cut a stark contrast to the well-dressed, clean-shaven looks of the anchors that reported it. Grunge pilgrims flocked to tiny Viretta Park, the lot next to their home, etching goodbyes into the park bench with Sharpies and Swiss army knives. Courtney emerged from behind the gate and joined them in mourning.<\/p>\n
As a newly single mother myself, I struggled to explain the death of David\u2019s favorite rock star. I remember standing in front of the magazine rack at Barnes & Noble. It was Courtney, not Kurt, who graced the covers of most of the music magazines. Coincidentally – or maybe not – Live Through This<\/em>, the major label debut album with her band Hole, was released the same week as Kurt\u2019s death, and had already been getting significant airplay. I bought every one the magazines I found with her picture on the cover and pored through them, hoping to find an answer to explain Kurt’s passing to my young son.<\/p>\n
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