When Pete Townshend was asked to help Kurt Cobain
The late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain is among the most iconic names in rock history thanks to his innovative work over the late 1980s and ’90s, bringing grunge music to the forefront of popular rock. However, memories of the icon’s musical achievements are often overridden by those of his shocking and untimely death in April 1994.
Like those of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Amy Winehouse, Cobain’s death was attributable to a damaging relationship with drugs. A spiralling dependence on heroin, compounded by a struggle with the spotlight, saw Cobain turn in on himself. Sadly, the 27-year-old creative felt he had nobody to turn to and no hope for the future.
Following his death, a suicide note was found that Cobain had written before pulling the trigger on himself. The final letter for his family, friends and fans hauntingly held the words, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away” from Neil Young’s classic 1979 track ‘Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)’.
In his 2012 autobiography, Young admitted that the suicide note left a mark on him. “When he died and left that note, it struck a deep chord inside of me. It fucked with me,” the so-called ‘Godfather of Grunge’ noted.
“He was forced to do tours when he didn’t want to, forced into all kinds of stuff,” Young continued, addressing Cobain’s struggle. “I was trying to get a hold of him – because I had heard some of the things he was doing to himself – just to tell him it’s OK not to tour, it’s OK not to do these things, just take control of your life and make your music. Or, hey, don’t make music. But as soon as you feel like you’re out there pretending, you’re fucked.”
Young concluded: “I think he knew that instinctively, but he was young, and he didn’t have a lot of self-control. And who knows what other personal things in his life were having a negative impression on him at the time?”
In the run-up to Cobain’s suicide, several notable figures and friends in the music industry became aware of his precarious state, including the R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe. As it transpires, The Who’s guitarist and creative lead, Pete Townshend, was also alerted to the situation.
“When Cobain was in deep trouble with heroin addiction in 1993,” Townshend wrote in the Guardian in 2002, “I was visiting New York regularly in connection with my own child-abuse story, Tommy, which had hit Broadway. I met Michael Azerrad, who had written Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana. Azerrad asked if I would contact Cobain, who was in constant danger of overdosing. I had chosen this year to give booze another gentle try after 11 years. When Azerrad approached me, I was not drunk nor unsympathetic, but I did not make the necessary judgment I would make today that an immediate ‘intervention’ was required to save his life.”
Although he had avoided drugs for most of his youth, Townshend suffered from alcoholism through the late 1960s and ’70s. Following the death of The Who’s founding drummer, Keith Moon, in 1978, Townshend entered a spell of heroin addiction from which he thankfully recovered. However, like Cobain, Townshend had his share of close calls.
Speaking to The Irish Times in 2019, Townshend recalled one evening with Phil Lynott in the 1980s when he overdosed on heroin. “We had a great night out in [promoter] Steve Strange’s Club for Heroes in London once, with people like Paul Weller and Chrissy Wood, Ronnie Wood’s ex-wife,” he said. “I woke up with a needle in my arm, and Phil, standing there, looking at me passed out.”
“Do you know what my big disappointment was? That I wasn’t on the front page of the newspaper the next day. I was in a club with Paul Weller and Phil Lynott, and it was the only time in my life I was ever going to overdose, and nobody knew,” Townshend reflected.
In his 2002 article for The Guardian, in which he reviewed the publication of Cobain’s Journals, Townshend continued, “It is desperately sad for me to sit here, 57 years old, and contemplate how often wasteful are the deaths of those in the rock industry. We find it so hard to save our own, but must take responsibility for the fact that the message such deaths as Cobain’s sends to his fans is that it is in some way heroic to scream at the world, thrash a guitar, smash it up and then overdose.”
Townshend agreed to review Cobain’s Journals, in part, because his lyrics were quoted within: “I hope I die before I become Pete Townshend.” This adapted line from The Who’s early single ‘My Generation’ holds similar gravity to the above-mentioned Neil Young quote, with the original line reading, “I hope I die before I get old.”
“The scribblings of a crazed and depressed drug addict in the midst of what those of us who have been through drug rehab describe as ‘stinking thinking’,” Townshend wrote in his review. In conclusion, he criticised the choice to publish Cobain’s personal notes as” a despicable exercise in sensationalist rock necrophilia.”
