Cobain Quotes

And for him [Kurt Cobain] to do that [suicide] - I didn't like that. I thought that was just wrong. It just sent a bad message to a troubled generation.

I feel it's such a tragic thing [Kurt Cobain's suicide]. Here is a guy, a young guy, that had everything in his hands. He could have had a great life. He had a wife, he had a child, he had a fantastic career. He was important to a generation. And for him to do that - I didn't like that. I thought that was just wrong.

To be told that you're the voice of your generation is such an incredible amount of pressure, and I haven't faced that. Maybe by the time our third record rolls around, I will. My goals are to be a band like that in five years. At the moment, though, I can't really relate in any sense to the scale that Kurt Cobain fame has reached.

Kurt Cobain represents a very legit, realistic outlook. Before that, in my head, to be a white artist was to be privileged.

I don't think of Kurt as 'Kurt Cobain from Nirvana'. I think of him as 'Kurt'. It's something that comes back all the time. Almost every day.

I always thought it was strange when these artists like Kurt Cobain or whoever would get really famous and say, 'I don't understand why this is happening to me.' There is a mathematical formula to why you got famous. It isn't some magical thing that just started happening.

If Nirvana had remained a small, underground punk rock band, Kurt Cobain would still be alive. And he'd probably be living in Seattle, getting kind of fat and balding, be relatively happy and producing records for other people.

I remember the first time I saw the 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' video. I will never forget that day. I just wanted to see Kurt Cobain's face. I had a feeling he was very cute. But, I couldn't see his face. When I finally did see him, he was even cuter than I imagined!

How is it possible that Courtney Love looks worse than Kurt Cobain?

Im doing pretty good as far as geniuses go ... Im like a machine. Im a robot. You cannot offend a robot ... Im going down as a legend, whether or not you like me or not. I am the new Jim Morrison. I am the new Kurt Cobain ... The Bible had 20, 30, 40, 50 characters in it. You dont think that I would be one of the characters of todays modern Bible?

It had a huge impact on me, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ – and I was very proud when I found out that Kurt Cobain was a fan of mine. I thought he was awesome.

I feel like the Kurt Cobain of my generation, but people just don't understand me.

I don't feel like I'm half as important as Elliott Smith or Kurt Cobain. And I'm not going to be somebody that became so unhappy that he succumbed.

I think Kurt Cobain and Nirvana represent this giant wave that came crashing in and turned music on its head again, and there's definitely something to be said for that.

I like strong/vulnerable interesting women, and then sometimes I like painting beautiful men, like Kurt Cobain, or Mr Darcy.

I'm like part of the Kurt Cobain school of writing lyrics, which is the syntax of the words is more important than... is where it all comes from.

You have Kurt [Cobain], and he's singing about your experiences. They're our collective experiences.

Everybody feels protective and possessive about Kurt [Cobain] , and I think that can be attributed to his unique gift, an ability to touch our lives, and make us feel like he's our friend.

I've never had access to another person's art and work or, particularly, someone who is as prolific and was able to externalize his interior world as deeply as Kurt [Cobain] could.

One thing about Kurt [Cobain] is before he was a musician, and before he was a rock star, he was an artist, and an artist with a capital A. What that means is that he had to create. It wasn't something that he chose to do - it chose him.

I was doing that [a collaboration with Kurt Cobain] to try to save his life. The collaboration was me calling up as an excuse to reach out to this guy. He was in a really bad place.

When someone like Kurt Cobain or Jack White comes out, they didn't go, "He sounds just like Muddy Waters," did they? They just said, "He's great, he sounds like him." When women come out and men write about them, they tend to write about them in a way that other men can understand, which sometimes can seem a bit patronizing.

Kurt [Cobain], from the moment he could hold a paintbrush in his hand, was painting. And from the moment he could hold a guitar, he was playing

And if I'm honest about it, I was obsessed with Nirvana and Pearl Jam. This is like '92, right in the throes of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and Nirvana. I think I probably wanted to be Kurt Cobain.

I used to love Kurt Cobain, when he was telling people we're a pop band. People would laugh, they thought of it as good old ironic Kurt. But he wasn't being ironic.

Kurt Cobain was, ladies and gentleman, I just - he was a worthless shred of human debris.

I always thought Kurt Cobain was the perfect embodiment of the great alternative guitar player.

I never met Kurt Cobain, but I felt like I got to know him in a manner probably more intimate than anyone I've known outside of my family.

[Kurt Cobain] had a lot of German in him. Some Irish. But no Jew. I think that if he had had a little Jew he would have [expletive] stuck it out.

I'm a different person. I don't want to be titled as Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain's daughter. I want to be thought of as Frances Cobain.

There will always be some kid who's the new Kurt Cobain writing great lyrics and singing from his soul. The problem is they're not marketing that anymore or putting it out there.

I saw all the suffering that Kurt Cobain went through. I saw this real vibrant person turn into a real shy, timid, withdrawn person.

I don't wanna be Courtney Love - I wanna be Kurt Cobain.

It's all magic to me. Country to punk rock, all of it. Chopin to Kurt Cobain. But it always all comes back to punk for me, because that was the last time, punk rock or grunge rock, was the last time that passion ruled the airwaves

You don't have to come from Trinidad to really love Harry Belafonte, you don't have to come from the West Coast to appreciate the simplicity and the beauty of the songs Kurt Cobain wrote.

People looked to Kurt Cobain because his songs captured what they felt before they knew they felt it.

I don't know, but I always loved that image of a girl putting toenail polish on a guy - her boyfriend, or something like that. Or a guy waking up in the morning and reaching over and putting on his girlfriend's shirt. Like Keith Richards putting on one of Anita Pallenberg's blouses, or Courtney Love putting nail polish on Kurt Cobain.

Kurt Cobain was Nirvana. He named the band, hired its members, played guitar, wrote the songs, fronted the band onstage and in interviews, and took responsibility for the band's business decisions.

I think so much of our society is geared towards mainstream media and pop culture and so forth. And there's a huge divide between the artist and the fan. And with indie culture that wall is removed. You actually do see the musicians walking around enjoying the show. It's a distinctly different culture and for the 99% of Nirvana fans that caught up with them with Nevermind, my book is gonna give them a whole different take on Kurt [Cobain] and the band.

I wish Kurt Cobain didn't die. I really don't know where he'd be right now, I don't know what he'd be like. I just like to fantasize that he would like our band and he would know what we were up to.

The perception of him as brooding and dark and miserable, that is baloney. Kurt Cobain was a funny dude.

Kurt (Cobain) was a fan of my standup, which was pretty weird. I know when people hear that, it's kind of like finding out that Jimi Hendrix really liked Buddy Hackett, but he interviewed me at a college radio station before they broke and did Bleach. And then, like, about two years later, I was opening for Nirvana at these huge sports arenas.

Bands like Nirvana had theatrical sensibilities, playing with image, challenging assumptions people were making about them, the apex being Kurt Cobain in a dress to make a point.

I simply constructed a project to try to snap Kurt [Cobain] out of a frame of mind. I sent him a plane ticket and a driver, and he tacked the plane ticket to the wall in the bedroom and the driver sat outside the house for 10 hours. Kurt wouldn't come out and wouldn't answer the phone.

I never really knew about my ancestors until this year, when I learned that the name Cobain was Irish. My parents had never bothered to find that stuff out.

Look, you see those groups talkin' about negativity and anger, and they'd do that for two albums, and then you'd see them change up. I knew they couldn't do a Kurt Cobain on their whole career. You can't stay like that all the time. It's like when Hammer tried to go gangster. You can't be something that you're not.

I didn't know Kurt Cobain or Amy Winehouse, but I was affected by both of their deaths because I admired their work so much and mourned their youth and work they would never produce.

Kurt Cobain OD'd on heroin before committing suicide, but he also OD'd on fame. Cobain was like Basquiat: They both wanted to be famous, and were brilliant enough to make it happen. But then what? Drug addicts kill themselves trying to get that feeling they got from their first high, looking for an experience they'll never get again. In his suicide note, Cobain asked himself, "Why don't you just enjoy it?" and then answered, "I don't know!" It's amazing how much of a mindfuck success can be.

Kanye West talks about being Axl Rose, being Kurt Cobain, being Jim Morrison. Adam Levine is selling acne ointment to teenagers.

You think about people like Elvis, Kurt Cobain, or the Beatles, who grew up without privilege and needed a certain validation through peoples' acceptance, or admiration from their peers. And money is part of that, but it always comes too late.