The ultimate reluctant celebrity, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was happy enough with life in the grunge underground, playing local shows and putting out 7 singles through indie labels. This was Nirvanas reality for four years until Cobain penned a song called Smells Like Teen Spirit and all hell broke loose. It shot the humble trio from Seattle into the Billboard top 10, parent album Never Mind hitting number one two weeks later. Suddenly Cobain, a troubled twenty-something with a history of manic depression, was hurled into the spotlight and declared the spokesman of his generation, a role he seemed uncomfortable with from the start. Indeed, while Never Mind was busy going platinum, Cobain was penning follow up In Utero into which he slipped several digs at both fame and the media's perception of his band. Teenage angst has paid off well, now Im bored and old, he states in the very opening line, going on to declare himself anemic royalty and reference the tabloids' obsession with his broken home: that legendary divorce is such a bore. While its tempting to construct an alternative reality for Cobain in which he walked away from fame and fortune and was found fifty years later working on a farm in Wyoming, by late 1993 he was knee-deep in heroin addiction, a destructive marriage and the kind of media frenzy that accompanies a broken soul on its downward spiral. He was found dead in April 1994 with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
