Heavier Than Heaven By Charles Cross

The grim biography about Kurt Cobain is based on more than four hundred interviews, four years of research; and exclusive unpublished diary entries. Heavier Than Heaven follows Cobain’s life from his early days in a trailer outside of Washington to his rise to international fame. The detailed first hand stories and insights into Kurt’s troubled mind put in perspective the rollercoaster rockstar life that ultimately ended with suicide.

RATING: 4.6/5

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KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• He yearned for closeness while fearing being close would result in abandonment down the road. 

• There could never be enough money, enough attention, or—most important—enough love, because he knew how quickly it could all vanish. 

• Rather than lose someone he cared for, he would withdraw first, usually by creating some mock conflict as a way of lessening the abandonment he felt was inevitable. 

• Ryan could recognize a torment inside Kurt: “He was the shape of suicide. He looked like suicide, he walked like suicide, and he talked about suicide.” 

• Kurt filed his 1991 taxes—after deductions his gross income was just $27,000 during a year he played before hundreds of thousands of fans and sold almost two million records. 

• Kurts feeling towards his father. “I love you; I don’t hate you; I don’t want to talk to you.” 

• “The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I’m having 100% fun. Sometimes I feel as if I should have a punch in time clock before I walk out on stage.”

• “He had the desperation, not the courage, to be himself. Once you do that, you can’t go wrong, because you can’t make any mistakes when people love you for being yourself. But for Kurt, it didn’t matter that other people loved him; he simply didn’t love himself enough.”