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Cobain biography transcends rock opera cliche, February 15, 2002

In "Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain," Charles R. Cross shows a three-dimensional Cobain, complete with sharp edges and unexpected crevices. In doing so, Cross has taken the musician's life from the cliched realm of rock opera to reality.

The author is uniquely suited to his subject. Former editor of "The Rocket," Cross has an encyclopedic knowledge of the musical climate that shaped Cobain. More importantly, Cross also grew up in Washington State. Reared on the incessant rain, heartbreaking beauty and financial depression of the rural Pacific Northwest, Cross evokes Cobain's childhood in Aberdeen with the lyric beauty of Truman Capote.

Cross does not let his masterful writing obscure his subject, however. The book explores Cobain's life with razor-sharp insight and hindsight. Cobain began experiencing excruciating stomach pain and depression after his parents' vitriolic divorce. One anecdote finds the nine-year-old writing on his wall: "I hate Mom/I hate Dad/ Dad hates Mom/Mom hates Dad/ It simply makes you want to be so sad."

This book also explores Cobain's bouts of poverty and homelessness, his drug abuse, and a preoccupation with the macabre that have been genetic (a spate of suicides mar both sides of his family tree). We see Cobain as a drug and shame-addled adolescent, taking sexual advantage of a "half-retarded girl" and impressing his art teacher with precocious drawings. We see Cobain as a high school drop-out, demonstrating a death-wish so tangible one friend later described him as "the shape of suicide." We see him don the protective armor of "Kurdt" Cobain, a dark alter-ego who ingested more heroin than food. And finally, we see Cobain kill himself at the height of fame and the beginning of his daughter's life.

But "Heavier Than Heaven" is not an unmitigated weep and gore-fest. Cross paints Cobain as an ambitious man who sought fame as vigorously as he decried it. This drive led him to perform 100 shows in 1989 alone. Cobain could also be funny. Once at a party, Cobain happened upon a gold record earned by the soft-metal duo "Nelson." He declared the award "an affront to humanity" before destroying the plaque in a microwave.

Cobain could be a nerd, proudly wearing a Sammy Hagar shirt to school after attending the concert his freshman year, then shoving it in a drawer after discovering punk a few months later. And Cobain could be tender; he was limp with relief when a sonogram showed his unborn daughter would be unharmed by her parents' drug use.

Like an expert chef, Cross lays out the ingredients of Cobain's explosive sound: creativity, trauma, and a force that make it seem inevitable that Cobain explode onto the post-`80s musicscape. Then, the book is over, as abruptly and abortively as Cobain's life. "Heavier Than Heaven," destined to earn a place among the best rock biographies, is a hell of an epitaph.

HEAVIER THAN HEAVEN IS AVAILABLE THROUGH AMAZON.COM

Learn more about this author, Sarah Torribio.
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