Charles Cross starts his fourth rock 'n' roll book (and second on Nirvana), Heavier than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain, very much in medias res, a mere seven hours after the end of perhaps the most important day in alternative rock history, Jan. 11, 1992. Nevermind had just officially dethroned Michael Jackson for the number one album spot early that morning; backstage at NBC Studios, Weird Al Yankovic secured permission to parody "Smells Like Teen Spirit" just before Kurt Cobain's Nirvana became the first alternative band to be seen live by tens of millions of households across America that night.
Cross rightly declares this day the beginning of the new decade before revealing what will be one of many shocking revelations: Kurt Cobain clinically overdosed on heroin early the following morning and was clinically dead for at least five minutes before brought back to earth by a relentless Courtney Love.
And so the epic biography begins, taking us from the chilly Manhattan hotel room with the modified doorknob sign ("Do not EVER disturb! We're fucking!") back to Aberdeen, Wash. in the summer of 1966 and from there to the inevitable conclusion several miles away on April 5, 1994. Of course, the previous sentence is translated to almost 400 pages in Cross's book, for which rock and roll fans, cultural historians, and Generation X-ers should all be grateful. Heavier than Heaven is an essential portrait not only of Kurt Cobain or Nirvana, but also of the Northwest scene and the popular culture that enveloped - and eventually subsumed - the alternative "revolution."
Cross has clocked in the necessary hours and produced the proper credentials to assume the mantle of Cobain biographer; he is intimately familiar with the milieu, being the editor of The Rocket, the first magazine to do a cover story on Nirvana, and spent an astonishing four and a half years collecting approximately 400 interviews, researching drug addiction, and getting access from Courtney Love to read Cobain's own unpublished journals - 28 in all.
Although Cross's tome is the only biography authorized by the Cobain estate, it is by no means endlessly flattering to its subjects, nor does it draconically condemn any parties or actions, and this is why it is the definitive book on Cobain. As a reporter by trade, Cross is more interested in capturing the facts behind the myth of the rock star and often catches Kurt in lies where the truth is far more shocking. A typical example of this is a complete debunking of Cobain's famous recounting about living under a bridge by the Wiskah River - in reality, he spent those months sleeping in a hospital waiting room, pretending to be awaiting news of a dying relative.
All in all, the work succeeds in showing the contradictions behind an emotionally divided man who, willingly or not, stood for a generation: his (hidden) desires for endless success and fame versus his punk ethic, his repudiations of the past versus his obsessions with them, and so on.
Yet Heavier than Heaven does not attempt to psychoanalyze Cobain, and if anything, the book is sympathetic, but unrelentingly fastidious to the truth, in its documentation of the related parties. Although I had a hard time pulling myself from the book from the start, as I approached the end, the pace keeps on picking up despite itself; I know it's going to end in disaster, but this knowledge only pulls us like a black hole faster and faster towards the tragic, singular end.
For more information on Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, check out http://www.nirvanaclub.com.
Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The News-Letter.