Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Grunge and grace

I was trying to track down this quote:

"Grunge is what happens when children of divorce get their hands on guitars"


which was in an earlier post I did on the book Smashed.

I found the orginial Newsweek article text here and was drawn into the sad, sad story of Kurt Cobain.

Cobain's mother was a housewife; his father, Don Cobain, was a mechanic at the Chevron station in town. They divorced when the singer was 8. ...The image one gets is that of a frail kid batted between warring parents. "[The divorce] just destroyed his life." Wendy O'Conner tells Michael Azerrad in the Nirvana biography, "Come As You Are." "He changed completely. I think he was ashamed. And he became very inward-he just held everything [in]....I think he's still suffering." As a teen, Cobain dabbled in drugs and punk rock, and dropped out of school. His father persuaded him to pawn his guitar and take an entrance exam for the navy. But Cobain soon returned for the guitar. "To them, I was wasting my life," he told the Los Angeles Times. "To me, I was fighting for it." Cobain didn't speak to his father for eight years. When Nirvana went to the top of the charts, Don Cobain began keeping a scrapbook. "Everything I know about Kurt," he told Azerrad, "I've read in newspapers and magazines." ...Ed Rosenblatt, Geffen Records president, says, "The world has lost a great artist and we've lost a great friend. It leaves a huge void in our hearts." That is certainly true. If only someone had heard the alarms ringing at the rambling, grayshingled home near the lake. Long before there was a void in our hearts, there was a void in Kurt Cobain's.


And now I am reminded why I am writing about the incredible hope and healing we have in Christ.

1 comment:

Kelly C said...

thanks for sharing, kristine. very interesting.