Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

Kurt Cobain's work in Nirvana was entirely about his personal life, yet it was written in a code no less cryptic than T.S. Eliot's. With the definitive biography Heavier Than Heaven, Charles Cross has finally broken the code and gained complete access to Kurt Cobain's thoughts and emotions. Thanks to more than 400 interviews, it divulges a great deal of information. It also includes lines from Kurt Cobain's suicide letters and diaries as well as an unpublished Nirvana masterwork. Finally, we understand how he produced, how deception contributed to his demise, how his love life and family influenced his work, and what the actual meaning of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is. (Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill wrote the graffiti following a double date with Dave Grohl, Cobain, and the "over-bored and self-assured" Tobi Vail, who was wearing Teen Spirit perfume. Hanna wanted to make fun of the emotionally attached Cobain for breaking the no-strings-attached dating code of the Olympia, Washington, "outcast teen" underground by wearing Vail's scent after sex. About six successful songs, including "Aneurysm" and "Drain You," exploded with Cobain's stomach-churning desire for Vail.

Cross finds a ton of news, much of it compelling and depressing. When Cobain was a teenager, he claimed to have "suicide genes," and his family had a strangely rebellious streak: one of his suicidal ancestors had stabbed himself in the stomach in front of his family before tearing apart the wound in the hospital. Cobain was paradoxical—a lovely, well-liked teenage athlete and a menacing berserker; a young person who laughedly slaughtered a cat and saved wounded birds; a gifted but very macabre graphic artist. He became a billionaire, slept in automobiles, stole one, and was a devoted buddy who mercilessly betrayed his closest and dearest pals. Essentially, he was a man of barely controlled contradictions. Many misconceptions about Cobain are dispelled by Cross, writer of the authoritative book about the development of the iconic record, Nevermind: Nirvana. (Cobain never slept under a bridge; the Aberdeen bridge that was memorialized in Nevermind's song number twelve was a tidal slough.) He provides the most comprehensive description of Kurt Cobain's life to date. Heavier Than Heaven surpasses Come As You Are, which is equally essential. The book delves deeply into the life of pop's worst fallen star. -- Mark Appelo