f the birth of grunge rock music’s birthplace is Seattle, it’s greatest son was and still is Kurt Cobain, a man who never did take Nirvana where it could’ve gone but was surprised by the success that followed him and his band. Seattle was also the place that gave us Soundgarden, and the legendary (and late) Chris Cornell as well as the founder of the heavily overrated Foo Fighters, the irritating Dave Grohl, and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, with whom Chris had formed another short-lived group. But those are just side notes.

Heavier Than Heaven, which has been dubbed the definitive biography of Nirvana co-founder, lead guitarist, singer and lyricist Kurt Cobain, is written by someone who defied the ordinary himself in search of the extraordinary.

Unlike Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine, who started the whole thing because he wanted to know the people who were making that kind of music including Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Doors and refused to see beyond certain names, Charles R. Cross was the editor of The Rocket magazine in Seattle and it was his love for rock ‘n’ roll music that led him to the music magazine and the moment he met Kurt Cobain in 1989.

However, the book is certainly not a homage to the 27 club or a throwback to youthful indiscretions. A joy to read, the commemorative edition addresses the fact that Kurt Cobain has been dead for more years than he was alive. As we go down the rabbit hole to try and understand the story about a man who was full of messy contradictions, we get a piece of non-fiction that is nearly as beautiful as the performances Nirvana has left behind along with the music.

We may know the date and the year of his death, but what Heavier Than Heaven does is letting us learn about Kurt Cobain, his inherent artistic talent, a celebration of his life and a look inside his entrance in the world of drugs and addictions, self-destructive behaviour, and what turned out to be a tragic end.

“With the lights out, it’s less dangerous/Here we are now, entertain us/I feel stupid, and contagious.” – ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’ by Nirvana

“Four years of research, 400 interviews, numerous file cabinets, hundreds of musical recordings, and miles and miles of drives between Seattle and Aberdeen” are not the only sources quoted in the book.

Our journey is like time-traveling. You don’t think someone can have the last word on Cobain, he’d have the last word if he were alive but this book really is the last word on the rock star, who lives on, through music, memory, fans that are old and new. It is also an exploration of the idea whether there is a relationship between art and descent into what only comes across as madness.

The story begins with a prologue. The year is 1992 and Courtney Love wakes up in bed to find Kurt missing, she remembers. A night before, Nirvana had made history by being the first grunge act to receive such (live) viewership as they did after being invited to Saturday Night Live. Kurt Cobain was 24 years old.

Born in February 1967 in Aberdeen, Washington, he grew up in in the small Hoquiam that had a population of 19,000. His parents did struggle with budgets, thanks to the economy and a war being waged by the great superpower of America in Vietnam, and money was tight. Yet, Cobain was a cherished child and his parents never cut corners when it came to him. 

As we go through the chapters, it is clear that nobody, not Kurt Cobain or the rest of Nirvana, nor their previous label, no one had thought that Nirvana would make its major label debut and top charts with a little song called ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’.

The lyrics are somewhat playful but also written in the style only a poet like Kurt Cobain could and did add enough pop layers to a grunge song for it to become the voice of generations. But it did and he didn’t know where to look and what to do with the success, going back and forth on his answer.

As we go under the radar of Seattle grunge, not even Sound-garden, who had seen more success than Nirvana at the time, were bamboozled to see Nirvana’s major debut label record, or Nirvana knock Michael Jackson off the Billboard charts.

“Fame and success only seemed to make him worse,” notes the book. On one hand, life was finally going his way as he and Courtney Love, recounts the book, were the ‘it’ couple of rock ‘n’ roll but it was also a conversation that also was eerie in a way because there was always an angle of drug abuse to it.

What, no one, not even Kurt knew, were that his emotional pains, says Heavier Than Heaven, that made up a part of his early life. Many months before his death, Kurt Cobain was doing heroin, so on that fateful day, instead of being with Love who was sleeping in the same room, Kurt Cobain took more heroin than his body could sustain. But it was just his first heroin overdose. It wasn’t his last.

Born in February 1967 in Aberdeen, Washington, he grew up in in the small Hoquiam that had a population of 19,000. His parents did struggle with budgets, thanks to the economy and a war being waged by the great superpower of America in Vietnam, and money was tight. Yet, Cobain was a cherished child and his parents never cut corners when it came to him.

As they moved to a different middle class neighborhood, Kurt would go on to describe it as ‘white trash posing as middle class.’

His interest in music and art came at an early age even though his exposure to music was significantly limited. His parents did try to avoid fights but they were not exactly in love either and were overwhelmed by the reality, the economy, the children, but for years Kurt did have a reasonable childhood, one without abuse and the kind of neglect that would make the department of families and children put him in foster care. But it wasn’t happy either.

All of that emotional upheaval in his familial life also fueled his lyrics although unless you read this book, you will never truly know the meaning even as you sing along.

If there is a painting of Kurt Cobain that could still provide a glimpse into the life of Kurt Cobain even today, it can be found in this book, a book that is written not by a leading music journalist but first and foremost a fan who is as moved by Smells Like Teen Spirit today as he was when he first heard it.