"The impromptu release of the photos last week by Seattle Police Department has drawn a lawsuit from Richard Lee, a self-described investigative journalist best known for making groundless assertions that Cobain was murdered. Lee -- a 50-year-old Seattle man who has run for mayor several times and who hosted the public access show "Kurt Cobain Was Murdered" -- is repressing himself in the suit."-Seattle Pi
Rather than try to earn money from a closed case or expose photographs of Cobain's heroin kit, which were included in the newly released photographs, I'd like to remember and commemorate the musician by remembering his his advocacy of LGBT people and women's rights.
In a 1992 interview with the Advocate when asked if he ever thought he was gay. Cobain said,
"Yeah, absolutely. See, I've always wanted male friends that I could be real intimate with and talk about important things with and be as affectionate with that person as I would be with a girl. Throughout my life, I've always been really close with girls and made friends with girls and. And I've always been a really sickly, feminine person anyhow, so I thought I was gay for a while because I didn't find any of the girls in my high school attractive at all. They had really awful haircuts and fucked-up attitudes. So I thought I would try to be gay for a while, but I'm just more sexually attracted to women. But I'm really glad that I found a few gay friends, because it totally saved me from becoming a monk or something."
"Yeah, absolutely. See, I've always wanted male friends that I could be real intimate with and talk about important things with and be as affectionate with that person as I would be with a girl. Throughout my life, I've always been really close with girls and made friends with girls and. And I've always been a really sickly, feminine person anyhow, so I thought I was gay for a while because I didn't find any of the girls in my high school attractive at all. They had really awful haircuts and fucked-up attitudes. So I thought I would try to be gay for a while, but I'm just more sexually attracted to women. But I'm really glad that I found a few gay friends, because it totally saved me from becoming a monk or something."
In this clip from the film About A Son Kurt goes into detail about his friendship with a gay friend in high school.
PBS did an animation for an interview Cobain had done in 1993 with Jon Savage
At 1:43 Kurt mentions his inability to make male friends leading to him having many female friends and understanding sexism better. As well as his acknowledgement of the prevalence of sexism in music specially hard-rock.
At 2:50 he explains how people thought he was gay as a teenager and his problems with his homophobic mother.
Cobain would go as far as interrupting songs half-way through to stop a male audience member who was touching a female audience member. Calling out, "Copping a feel eh buddy?" while the other members of Nirvana joined in.
PS.
If you're feeling good about third wave feminism and 90's punk rock and have a Netflix account try checking out the documentary The Punk Singer about artist Kathleen Hanna.
She performed with a band called Bikini Kill and lead the Riot Grrl movement. I can explain it or you can enjoy the trailer.
I really enjoyed The Punk Singer, from seeing it when it first came out in a select few theaters. I thought what she stood up for was incredible, especially how she went about doing that. I'm a huge fan of her, so listening to her music growing up really made me inspired to not let anyone walk all over me in a degrading way.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that you brought up Kurt Cobain, too. I think he was progressive in the 1990's punk scene. The punk scene can get aggressive with moshing, shoving or even verbally. I think that Kurt would stand up for the more vulnerable people and give them a voice, similar to Kathleen Hanna.