Kurt Cobain's Last Days Detailed by Manager Danny Goldberg

Music industry veteran Danny Goldberg has touched upon genius for more than four decades. From doing PR for Led Zeppelin, running Atlantic Records, Mercury Records and Warner Bros. Records, launching Stevie Nicks' solo career and managing Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, among countless others, Goldberg's storied business trials and triumphs have become the stuff of legend. In his memoir, 'Bumping Into Geniuses: My Life Inside the Rock and Roll Business,' Goldberg recounts his personal graces with artists like Patti Smith, Warren Zevon, Bruce Springsteen, Kiss, Hole and more. In the excerpt below, Goldberg discusses his relationship with Cobain just as Nirvana was signing to Geffen for the release of 'Nevermind.' Cobain met Courtney Love soon thereafter, and the two were married in a small ceremony in Waikiki. While Cobain claimed to have never been happier than in his marriage, his drug use was spiraling out of control.

My relationship with Kurt Cobain was the most important of my career and had many contradictory levels. I was his manager, where I did a decent job, and his friend, where I failed. I saw him as a great songwriter and singer, a visionary about the imagery of rock 'n' roll, as someone who both coveted and reinvented superstardom and who hated many of its by-products. He was an extraordinarily thoughtful and supportive friend, a loving husband and father, as well as a tormented depressive and textbook druggie. As with all of the great rock icons, his place in history is the result of a combination of his own talents and ambitions and the timing and context in which he did his work.


When my business partner, John Silva, and I first met with Nirvana, drummer Dave Grohl was the youngest of the three and by far the quietest. Most of the talking was done by Krist Novoselic, an affable giant of six feet six. The singer Kurt Cobain, short and slight, sat quietly, but when he chimed in, always in a low and understated voice, I quickly recognized his authority among them. As had been the case when Jimmy Page spoke during Led Zeppelin meetings, it was clear that Kurt had the final say.

I was sensitive to the fact that many punk-influenced bands preferred indie labels. I asked the band if they wanted to stay with Sub Pop. Kurt emphatically answered, "Absolutely not." The band wanted to reach more people. "And you know who wanted to reach more people the most of the three of us?" Krist asked me rhetorically years later, "Kurt. He wanted to make it big."

Once assured that Geffen would give the band creative control and match the highest offer, it was a done deal. Though excellent for an indie band, the deal provided only around $50,000 in cash for each band member. Prior to that, Kurt hadn't even been able to afford his own apartment and had been sleeping on Grohl's floor.

In the spring, Nirvana recorded the album 'Nevermind.' The cover was, like everything else connected to Nirvana, Kurt's idea. He had seen a picture of a baby underwater and made a drawing that showed a baby being lured by a dollar bill on a fishhook.

We all wanted 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' to be the single because it seemed to sum up the essence of the band. An early edit of the video had a shot of Kurt looking right into the camera while he walked toward it. The director took it out because he thought it was too "commercial." Kurt insisted that the shot be put back in, delaying completion by a day. He wanted his fans to be able to look him directly in the eye.

I finally saw Nirvana in concert when they were booked as the opening act for Dinosaur Jr. Although most of the songs the band played had not come out yet, Kurt had a mystical and powerful connection with the audience. After increasing cynicism about what rock 'n' roll had turned into, I felt the naive excitement of a teenager.

Somehow Kurt was able to be both on the stage and in the audience, rocking the crowd out and yet also among them. It was only then that I realized he was not just a smart, quirky rock artist but also a true genius. I shivered at the thought of how casually I had taken the signing of Nirvana.

Within days of the September 24, 1991, release of 'Nevermind,' it was clear that Nirvana was not just another cult band. The earnest guys who had cheerfully worked on the album in relative obscurity were about to become rock stars with a velocity that the music business had not experienced since the days of 'The Ed Sullivan Show.' Kurt had made a connection, and he understood that Nirvana, within the first few days of the release of 'Nevermind,' was no longer limited in appeal to the punk-rock press. Until the day he died, he would always make himself available to the fanzines who had supported Nirvana as an indie band, but he also focused on the larger mainstream audience.

Up until this point, Kurt had been in charge behind the scenes but chose to stay out of the spotlight. He couldn't even figure out what he wanted to call himself, experimenting with spelling his name "Kurdt" and "Curt," before deciding on the original. After the album came out, Kurt decided that he would be the primary spokesman for the band.

Nirvana played one more time in the indie-rock venues that had nurtured them before they went on to conventional arenas. At Chicago's Metro, on October 12, 1991, a tall blonde introduced herself to me as Courtney Love of the band Hole. She said she had come to keep her friend Lori Barbero, of the band Babes in Toyland, company. Lori was the latest alt-rock woman who had a crush on Grohl. I was charmed by Courtney's self-effacing affect, although I'd soon learn that she had numerous personae she could call up at will, and this would be the last time I would ever see Courtney as an underdog. After the show I saw her sitting on Kurt's lap, a comical image given how much bigger she was than him. But there was nothing comical about their connection. From that night on, they were inseparable.

Until Courtney came along, Kurt had never spoken to me about anything personal. He was moody, prone to depression and capable of quietly scathing bitterness. Kurt could create a distancing aura that made me feel I needed to walk on eggshells when I approached him about even the most routine issues. But most of the time he had a sweetness and gentility about him. He rarely took out his bad moods on the people around him. And when the clouds of despair parted, his scintillating smile and wry humor could light up any room.

Courtney's very presence was a metaphor for the end of one era in the band's life and the beginning of another. Often she was just a mouthpiece for what Kurt himself wanted and didn't feel like asking for. Although I knew Courtney could be difficult or irrational, it was also obvious that Kurt's attachment to her was no passing fancy.
The weekend in January 1992 that Nirvana did 'Saturday Night Live' for the first time was a turning point that put into focus the heroin problem that was to haunt Kurt for the rest of his life. (He dyed his hair pink for the show, which somehow added a sense of dissolution.) Courtney called me at home the morning the show aired and asked me to get Kurt $5,000 in cash so they could do some "shopping." I felt pretty uncomfortable as I delivered the package of $100 bills to her at the hotel. Abruptly, the dark cloud of drug excess had entered the band's life. I was confronted by the baroque facade of lies and the awful glassy-eyed deadness that regular heroin use provides. I resolved to confront them about it after we got through the next few days in New York.

Backstage at 'Saturday Night Live,' I was told that Kurt had nodded out several times during a photo session for the show. But the sweet, intoxicating perfume of zeitgeist trumped everything, at least for the moment. Nirvana performed capably and 'Nevermind' went back to number one on the charts; around the same time it went double platinum. Johnny Rotten was quoted as saying, "Nirvana has done what the Pistols and the Clash could never do. They've taken punk to the top of the charts."

Soon after, on February 24, Kurt and Courtney got married, in Waikiki, where they had stopped on the way back from Australia and Japan. It was a very small wedding attended by the other band members and some of the crew. In the early months of his marriage Kurt spoke about Courtney in terms that were almost courtly, a fantasy of the way he imagined a loving husband would talk about his wife.


Kurt's sentiment about his marriage was reflected in a cover story on him and Courtney in the teen magazine Sassy. "In the last couple of months I've gotten engaged and my attitude has changed drastically," Kurt said. "I can't believe how much happier I am. At times I even forget that I'm in a band, I'm so blinded by love. I know that sounds embarrassing, but it's true. I could give up the band right now. It doesn't matter, but I'm under contract." Kurt was being disingenuous. He was well aware that his contract didn't force him to be in a band or to record, it simply meant that any recording he chose to release would have to come out on Geffen Records.

Early in 1993 Nirvana began recording 'In Utero.' Kurt was focused on balancing songs with punk energy with those that could work on the radio. When he finished 'Heart Shaped Box,' he called and ebulliently announced to me, "I've got the first single." While he was writing 'All Apologies' he played the Beatles' 'Norwegian Wood' over and over again, hour after hour. When 'In Utero' was about to come out, Geffen heard that Wal-Mart would not carry the album unless a different album cover was chosen, because the original included pictures of fetuses. Kurt had designed the artwork, and I assumed he would resist any pressure to change it.

I reassured Kurt that the band was coming off a number-one album and that he could hold firm. Nirvana fans, I assured him, would find the album elsewhere. Kurt calmly but firmly interrupted me and said in his earnest slacker monotone, "Of course I want our records in Wal-Mart. When I was a kid, the only place near where we lived to buy records was a Wal-Mart. One of the reasons I make records is for kids like me." He had no problem creating an alternative cover in order to reach Wal-Mart shoppers.

In September, the band performed at the MTV Video Music Awards. Kurt reluctantly agreed to the performance. "I'm doing a lot of things I never thought I would do. I guess someday maybe I'll even wear a tuxedo," he said with an edge of self-loathing that my objections were unable to wash away. One of the most poignant things about Kurt's destructiveness was that it was focused almost entirely on himself. To me, he was incredibly gracious and generous.

Whenever he was with his daughter, Frances, he was a doting father who took delight in her every grunt and movement. But such moments of satisfaction were brief, and he was frequently restless and troubled by his career. A lot of the time he sank into depression and drug abuse. His chronic, excruciating stomach pains were impervious to conventional medical care, making the lure of opiates, legal and illegal, all the more potent.

On March 4, Kurt was hospitalized in Rome after overdosing on Rohypnol. Then, during the third week of March, Courtney called to ask if I would fly to Seattle to participate in another intervention. She said Kurt was the worst he had ever been, referring to his heroin use, and that she feared for his life. I had no way of knowing at the time that the intervention would be the last time I'd ever see him.

Editor's Note: This excerpt is also featured in this year's annual Fashion Rocks Magazine supplement in anticipation of Fashion Rocks 2008.

Reprinted by arrangement with Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., from 'Bumping Into Geniuses' by Danny Goldberg

Copyright © 2008 by Danny Goldberg

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