The Beatles song played at Kurt Cobain’s funeral
When Kurt Cobain died at the tragic age of 27 back in 1994, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich poignantly reflected: “With Kurt Cobain, you felt you were connecting to the real person, not to a perception of who he was – you were not connecting to an image or a manufactured cut-out.”
As the drummer put it, “You felt that between you and him there was nothing – it was heart-to-heart. There are very few people who have that ability”. And millions of teenagers in poster-clad bedrooms all over the world agreed.
It was this naked vulnerability that made him so endearing to a generation of youngsters. He attracted a cult of fans in the wake of his bold individualism, puncturing the hot air of an era where everything was for show with a sharp assegai of punk sincerity.
Now, long after his passing, that same sense of a direct, unadorned connection has never ceased to shine through in any way. Cobain and his artistic output with Nirvana have remained an essential part of the iconography of alternative culture. The sales figures still prove it.
As Bruce Springsteen put it to Guitar World: “That’s a band that reset the rules of the game. They changed everything, they opened a vein of freedom that didn’t exist previously. The singer did something very similar to what Dylan did in the ’60s, which was to sound different and get on the radio.”
Beyond Dylan, this enduring legacy is matched by very few artists. However, one trailblazing band whose star has refused to fade away just so happened to get Cobain into music in the first place. “At a really early age, I wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll star,” the Nirvana frontman once declared.
But not just any rock star, as he put it, “Ever since I got my first Beatles record, I wanted to play drums. I wanted to have the adoration of John Lennon but have the anonymity of Ringo Starr.” That’s the sort of evocative world the group created.
So, like millions of others before him, the Fab Four introduced him to music in a perfunctory sense, and they remained a constant fixture throughout his life thereafter. So, when he passed in April 1994, it naturally followed that they were a fixture in the celebration of that life, too. As Dave Grohl said of the star’s memorial service: “Everyone got to celebrate Kurt’s love of The Beatles one last time together.”
Speaking to BBC Radio 2, the Nirvana drummer then revealed his late bandmate’s farewell anthem. “That day, after everyone had said their piece, this next song came over the speakers […] Still to this day, when I hear it, it touches a place in me that no other song ever will,” he said.
Continuing, “It’s called ‘In My Life’ and knowing how much of a fan Kurt was of The Beatles, and how much of an influence they were to everything we’ve done ever done…I’d like to play this one for him,” Grohl earnestly proclaimed.
The Beatles’ anthem, ‘In My Life,’ is from their classic Rubber Soul album, which Cobain described as his favourite period of the Liverpudlian revolutionaries. The track offers an autobiographical reflection on Lennon’s fraught life, fittingly presented in the same open-book way that Cobain poured into his introspective work… and even the way he lived, for that matter.
It is a ballad of reflection and love untold. Though like much of Nirvana’s own work, it might sound solemn or even maudlin on a cloudy day, ‘In My Life’ looks at how loss and longing are alleviated by memories and reframed by a love that comes along and changes the weather forever in a stirringly positive way. It’s a song that feels like warm sun on a winter’s day.
Beyond the inward psychology is the beauty of the music itself, which prompted Lennon to remark, “I was writing melody with the best of them” when reflecting on his pomp with the band. This, too, feels like a touchstone to Cobain, who pined for the simplicity of melodious release in his own output as a songwriter; beyond the grit of Nirvana’s sound aesthetic, he achieved this wondrous feat with aplomb.
Nirvana were a pop band in disguise, just as The Beatles were before them.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.