Kurt Cobain’s Body Is Found

A listener note.

This episode contains references to suicide and drug addiction.

It may not be suitable for all audiences.

It's April 8th, 1994, at Seattle Rock Station KXRX FM.

DJ Marty Reamer is getting ready for his morning shift on air.

Part of the prep work involves screening calls to the station, but he knows that the phone lines aren't usually busy this early in the morning.

So when the phone does ring, Marty's a little surprised.

On the other end of the line, an unnamed man tells Marty that he has a scoop of the century.

Apparently, Kurt Cobain has just been found dead in his Seattle home.

Kurt is the lead singer of the rock band Nirvana and one of the most famous musicians on the planet.

Marty figures this is just a prank call and hangs up, but seconds later, the man calls again.

Marty's getting irritated now, but the caller is insistent.

He tells Marty that a friend of his is a contractor who was hired to install a new security system in Kurt's house, and he was the one who discovered Kurt's body.

Marty is still pretty sure that this guy's a prankster, but at this point, he decides that checking in with the Seattle police wouldn't hurt.

So he calls and asks if there's been any activity near the Cobain house.

Cops don't offer a lot of details, but they do tell Marty that a police cruiser was dispatched to the house this morning.

This new information starts to change Marty's mind about the anonymous caller.

All of a sudden, the so-called scoop of the century seems far more plausible.

But by now, it's time for Marty's shift, and with all this swirling through his mind, he decides to take a chance.

Live on air, he tells Seattle listeners that the station has unconfirmed reports that Kurt Cobain has been found dead in his home.

Within minutes, the phone lines at KXRX explode with people calling in trying to get more information, but Marty has nothing more to tell them.

He and everyone else in Seattle must wait until later that day when the rumor sweeping the city is finally confirmed by police.

Kurt Cobain is dead.

For years, press coverage of Kurt Cobain, his relationship with singer Courtney Love, and even his role in the band Nirvana was tinged with speculation over Kurt's mental health and his struggles with addiction.

His friends and family worried about him too.

Many feared that Kurt's story would have an unhappy ending, but fans, journalists and loved ones alike were still shocked when a Seattle radio station broke the news that Kurt Cobain was dead on April 8th, 1994.

From Noiser and Airship, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is History Daily.

History is made every day.

On this podcast, Every Day, we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is April 8th, 1994.

Kurt Cobain's body is found.

It's January 11th, 1992 in New York City, two years before Kurt Cobain's death.

Head bowed, his hair hanging loose about his face, Kurt stands on the stage of Saturday Night Live with the rest of his band, Chris Novoselic on bass and Dave Grohl on drums.

Next to the stage, the episode's host delivers the line that Kurt, Chris and Dave have been waiting for.

Ladies and gentlemen, Nirvana.

Hearing this, Kurt immediately rips into the opening guitar chords of the band's breakout hit, Smells Like Teen Spirit.

This song is responsible not only for the meteoric success of Nirvana, but also for introducing a new genre of music to a growing international audience, grunge.

Grunge music started as a local sound in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, but it's now growing in popularity all across America and the rest of the world.

And with his snarling vocals and introspective lyrics, Nirvana's Kurt Cobain has become the face of the entire genre.

The performance on Saturday Night Live comes right at the beginning of the band's international tour, promoting their new album Nevermind.

It's an exciting new chapter for the band and should be a cause for celebration.

But the moment is soon overshadowed.

At an SNL after party, Kurt overdoses on heroin and falls unconscious.

His partner, musician Courtney Love, resuscitates him and saves his life.

But Kurt doesn't treat the overdose as anything more than an inconvenience.

The band has a performance back in Seattle in a few days and he's not gonna miss it.

This nonchalance might be due to the fact that this is not the first time this has happened to Kurt.

He's been struggling for years with a dependency on alcohol, heroin and other drugs.

But by 1992, more and more people around Kurt are beginning to question whether he's losing control over his addiction.

And the more popular Nirvana becomes, the more interest the press starts taking in the story.

In particular, it's Kurt's relationship with Courtney, which is poured over by reporters.

While Courtney is often the one to bring Kurt back from the brink, she has had her own difficulties with addiction too.

The couple's talent, successes, and troubles make them ideal fodder for the tabloids and gossip comms.

Many of the reporters' claims are exaggerated or simply untrue, but it's impossible for Kurt and Courtney to shake the press intrigue.

In September 1992, everything comes to a head when Courtney is interviewed for a profile by the magazine Vanity Fair.

The piece largely serves up speculation about the nature of this rock star relationship.

It compares Kurt and Courtney to two different musician couples, the peace-loving duo of former Beatle John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono, or the violent erratic pairing of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen.

In the Vanity Fair piece, a nameless source speculates that Courtney might have been using heroin while pregnant with her daughter, Frances.

Courtney quickly denies a claim, but the damage has already been done.

Child services intervene, questioning whether Courtney and Kurt are fit to be parents.

An agent is assigned to monitor the couple, making it impossible for them to be alone with their daughter.

What started as press gossip now turns into an all-out public legal battle.

Kurt and Courtney must prove to the courts that they are responsible parents who do not need supervision from child protective services.

It takes until March 23rd of the following year, 1993, for the couple to resolve the issue.

That day, a Los Angeles court finally declares that they no longer need to be supervised by CPS.

The news comes as a huge relief for Kurt and Courtney.

Now they can both turn more of their attention back to their music.

Nirvana's album Nevermind was more successful than anyone predicted, but that just means expectations for their next record are that much higher.

The new album is slated for the fall of 1993, and Kurt is soon back in the studio working on material.

For Kurt and everyone around him, it feels like things have returned to normal, but that feeling won't last.

The debut of Nirvana's new album, In Utero, will see the band receive even more critical and commercial success, cementing the group's position as rock legends.

But privately, Kurt's struggles with addictions will deepen and increase concern among his friends and family.

Soon they will decide that they have no choice but to intervene and do something to try to save Kurt Cobain from himself.

It's March 5th, 1994 in Rome, Italy, a few months into Nirvana's European tour for their album In Utero.

In a suite at the Excelsior Hotel, Courtney Love tosses aside one of her husband's shirts and plops down in a chair with a magazine.

It's a lucky break that she and Kurt happened to be in Europe at the same time.

Courtney's band, Hole, is just about to start its own tour in the UK, so the couples met up for a few days' rest in Rome before they each head off on their separate ways.

Kurt's in the bathroom and while Courtney flicks through her magazine.

She tries to read, but as the minutes tick by in the silent hotel suite, she can't shake the feeling that something's wrong.

She calls out to Kurt but gets no answer, so she hurries over to the bathroom.

The door is thankfully unlocked, but what Courtney sees inside stops her dead in her tracks.

Kurt is lying unconscious on the floor with a trickle of blood coming from his nose.

Fearing the worst, Courtney immediately rushes Kurt to the hospital, and at first it seems like another accidental drug overdose, but then doctors discover something that makes Courtney wonder this was really an accident after all.

Kurt has not overdosed on heroin, his drug of choice.

Instead, he's taken a massive dose of sedatives, and there's more concerning evidence back in the hotel room.

The Italian authorities find a note that Kurt wrote before overdosing.

To Courtney and Kurt's friends, there's no question that it was a suicide note.

After he's recovered though, Kurt denies this and insists he wasn't trying to kill himself.

But to other people in his life, this moment in Rome comes as a wake up call.

Something seems wrong with Kurt.

He's distant with everyone, quieter than usual.

It's clear that he needs help.

In the wake of this incident, Nirvana postpones the rest of the European tour and Kurt returns to Seattle.

It's there on March 25th, 1994, that around 10 of Kurt's loved ones stage an intervention, a discussion of his drug use and their concerns for his mental health.

The intense personal talk stretch across two days until finally Kurt agrees to go into rehab.

Perhaps as a show of support, Courtney also decides to check into a detox facility and get herself clean too.

Kurt's treatment center is in California, but before he flies down there, he reaches out to a close friend for a favor.

He calls up fellow musician Dylan Carson and asks him to buy a gun on his behalf.

Kurt explains that he wants to have the shotgun on hand because he's worried about fans trespassing on his property.

Dylan finds this request a bit strange, especially considering the fact that Kurt is about to go to rehab and won't need the gun until he gets out.

But still Dylan obliges.

He buys a 20 gauge shotgun at a shop in Seattle and hands the weapon to Kurt.

With this transaction handled, Kurt travels down to the detox center in Marina Del Rey.

But he continues to behave strangely there.

On April 1st, only a few days into his stay, he calls Courtney, who is undergoing her detox at a different facility in Los Angeles.

On the phone, Kurt speaks cryptically and with an odd sense of urgency.

He tells Courtney that her band Hole has made an amazing record and that no matter what happens, he loves her.

Courtney is confused and concerned to hear Kurt speak like this, but he offers no further explanation before he hangs up.

That phone call with Courtney is the last time that Kurt ever speaks to her.

For the rest of the day at the rehab center, Kurt behaves more normally.

But that night, while unobserved by staff, he makes a sudden rash decision.

Stepping outside, he rushes across the gardens to the brick wall that surrounds the treatment center, scaling it and disappearing into the night.

The days that follow will be a terrifying period of uncertainty for everyone close to Kurt Cobain.

As his friends and family try to find any shred of information about his whereabouts, it will be impossible for them not to fear the worst.

And those fears will be finally confirmed six days later after Kurt's disappearance from the rehab center, when a voice will sound across the radio waves in Seattle with news that Kurt Cobain is dead.

It's April 9th, 1994, in Seattle, the day after Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain was found dead in his home.

16-year-old Kimberly Wagner sits on a wall across the street from the Cobain house and cries.

She's been here for hours, talking with other Nirvana fans who have come here to pay their respects.

As she looks around, Kimberly notices a reporter approaching with a notepad.

He identifies himself as a journalist for Rolling Stone magazine and gently asks why Kimberly decided to come here today.

Through tears, she explains that she was looking for answers, something that might give meaning to this terrible thing.

But as she wipes her sleeve across her face, Kimberly tells the reporter that she doesn't think she'll ever get an explanation.

Fans across the world have all been left stunned and grief-stricken by Kurt Cobain's death.

A clamor for more news, for some kind of insight into the mysterious final days of Kurt's life.

Forensic analysis does offer some information.

Authorities determined that Kurt was likely dead for several days by the time his body was found.

But this doesn't offer much comfort to those grieving.

On April 10th, a candlelit vigil is held near the Seattle Space Needle for Nirvana fans.

And across town on the same night, a private memorial is held for Kurt's family and friends.

Courtney reads some of Kurt's favorite poetry, and friends make speeches about his impact on their lives.

There's no casket for this event.

But once Kurt's body is released by authorities, his remains will be cremated and then scattered over the Pacific Ocean.

It will be the winds that carry Kurt Cobain away.

But his music will remain.

Just 27 years old at his death, Kurt helped create some of the most iconic sounds of the 1990s, influencing countless other artists in the years that followed.

His short life delivered much, but far more was left tragically undone when Kurt Cobain's body was found on April 8, 1994.

Next, on History Daily, April 9th, 1939, after racial segregation laws block her from performing at Constitution Hall, black opera star Marian Anderson performs an outdoor concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Mohamed Shazir, sound design by Molly Bach, music by Thrum.

This episode is written and researched by Georgia Hampton, edited by William Simpson.

Managing producer Emily Burke, executive producers are William Simpson for Airship and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.