The Senseless Suicide Of Nirvana's Cobain

THIRTY-FIVE years ago, the soaring career of a brilliant young musician crashed and burned in an Iowa field. Buddy Holly was 22.

Now it has happened again. Kurt Cobain was 27. Like Holly, he was independent, an artistic pioneer rather than a fellow traveler. Both men had been married a short time and fathered children.

But there the similarities snap and break. Buddy Holly was killed in an airplane crash while on tour trying to build his career. Cobain was seemingly strung out on success and abruptly ended it with a shotgun blast to the head. Holly's death was tragic, Cobain's was senseless.

Beyond senseless, really. It was pointless.

Private demons cannot be interrogated, so no one will probably know what drove Cobain from contemplating suicide to actually pulling the trigger. But few people in the world where art and entertainment intersect ever had it as good as Kurt Cobain.

I am not talking about his money, fame, and glory. Cobain openly derided those things. What he had that other musicians trade away early in their careers with the hope of buying it back later was success on his own terms. Cobain had almost complete artistic freedom and a slim but solid body of accomplishment. No selling out. No cheap commercialization. No hits that became ditties for selling cars or mouthwash.

He also had fans. Lots of them, and they were incredibly nonjudgmental about his conduct. It did not matter that he had a drug problem. It did not matter whether he was heterosexual or homosexual (Cobain himself seemed to be unsure), whether he wore jeans or dresses onstage, whether he made acid comments from time to time, or how he treated others. They were loyal. He had a band. He also had a wife and daughter.

Didn't he feel an obligation to any of these people? Turning your back on your career is one thing. But on the people around you?

Cobain wrote and sang about the pain and trauma he felt as a boy when his parents divorced. A lot of us have endured that. Why would a man who knows that pain make his wife a widow and 10-month-old fatherless?

Cobain's suicide letter refers several times to his "sensitivity." His act appears precisely the opposite.

Several friends and supporters say he couldn't handle the sudden success that drove his band to the top of the charts and the cover of Rolling Stone. But reading about his life leaves little doubt that Cobain would have teetered toward self-destruction regardless of success.

In a sense, Cobain is what the spirit of the '60s once envisioned: complete freedom from social, moral or political constraints; almost universal license to compose and explore whatever landscape he chose to climb; liberation from middle America and its traditional values.

In fact, Cobain oozed contempt for his working-class community, admitting that he used to spray-paint graffiti on trucks and buildings in Aberdeen. He was definitely emotionally unstable and possibly mentally ill - a life with no borders.

But no borders also means no guardrails, no cushions of constraint provided by obligations to God, family, friends or other loved ones.

Cobain wrote in his suicide letter that, "I must be one of those narcissists who only appreciates things when they are alone - I'm too sensitive." This is indeed the spirit of the 60s - complete self-absorption. Paint your selfishness as a virtue. Do your own thing. The problem is, self-absorption, whether material or artistic, is hollow. And pretty soon life seems that way too.

"I haven't felt the excitement . . . for too many years now," Cobain wrote in his suicide note. But instead of searching for fulfillment through family, religion or a new career that emphasizes new priorities and values, Cobain chose heroin, thus accelerating the decline.

Toward the end of his suicide note, Cobain wrote what Neil Young once sang: "It's better to burn out than to fade away." How sad and pathetic. Cobain didn't burn out. He self-immolated. John Carlson is president of the Washington Institute for Policy Studies in Seattle and hosts an afternoon program on KVI (570 AM). His column appears Tuesday on editorial pages of The Times.