{"id":25150,"date":"2014-04-08T01:50:35","date_gmt":"2014-04-08T05:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=25150"},"modified":"2014-04-08T18:28:18","modified_gmt":"2014-04-08T22:28:18","slug":"gone-too-soon-kurt-cobain-and-peaches-geldof","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/gone-too-soon-kurt-cobain-and-peaches-geldof\/","title":{"rendered":"Gone Too Soon: Kurt Cobain and Peaches Geldof"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twenty years ago today — April 8, 1994<\/a> — the body of 27-year-old Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was discovered in the greenhouse of his Seattle home. He had killed himself<\/a> with a shotgun on April 5.<\/p>\n

\"kurt<\/a>

I cut the front-page obituary out of the New York Times and put it in a scrap book. I wrote the date of death on it rather than the date of the story publication.<\/p><\/div>\n

April 8 was a Friday. I was working at the Wall Street Journal at the time, and my work week was Sunday through Thursday, so I was at home. As soon as the story came across the wire services, a colleague called me to break the news. It was someone with whom I had a very difficult professional relationship at times, but he was very nice when he called. He knew how crazy I was about the band. The colleague — and everyone else at work — had seen me fussing over what I was going to wear when I went to the taping of Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged<\/em><\/a> episode the previous November. I had to go straight from the office and I couldn’t possibly go to MTV in a suit, looking like the corporate person I was, so I’d brought along jeans and motorcycle boots to change into.<\/p>\n

As I’ve mentioned before<\/a>, a very sweet guy who was doing the still photography for Unplugged<\/em> brought me to that taping. I think he had to pretend I was assisting him to get me in, so I held a spare camera bag and protected his working space like my life depended on it. When MTV VJ Kennedy <\/a>encroached on a spot that my friend wanted to stand in, I shooed her away. I was okay sitting next to Kate Moss though. I remember when we came in, the MTV crew was moaning and groaning, expecting a late night. The Stone Temple Pilots had taped their Unplugged<\/em> recently, and they had to keep doing multiple takes of their songs. Everyone was bored and no one could leave — not even people in the audience. You couldn’t have the audience mysteriously fluctuating from song to song when this thing aired on TV. But Nirvana ran through their set with hardly a hitch. One thing that stands out in my mind was that Kurt was musing aloud about what song to do next and a would-be comedian called out, “Kumbaya!” Kurt thought someone had yelled, “Hurry up!” and was quite miffed.<\/p>\n

My favorite song from the evening is still the cover of blues singer Lead Belly<\/a>‘s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.” I like that you can see Kurt smiling over someone’s offer to sell him Lead Belly<\/a>‘s guitar for $500,000 before he starts the song. You can also see a little smirk on his face in a photo taken by my photographer friend here<\/a>.<\/p>\n