Brett Morgen With Richard Bienstock (Hachette Australia) 2015, 157pp, $39.99
Writer, director, producer and editor Morgen’s book ties in with his movie, Cobain: Montage Of Heck, one of two Kurt-Cobain-related documentaries released this year (the other, Soaked In Bleach, has made too few friends), and it’s a fine companion to the film, even if reading the thing over an extended period can prove fairly depressing.
With an introduction from Morgen explaining how he was approached a few years ago to make a doco about Kurt and, through Courtney Love and Frances Bean Cobain, he was allowed access to an extraordinary and long-unseen archive of Kurt’s writings and personal effects, this features plenty of old family photographs, as interviews are offered with those who were closest to the late Nirvana frontman. There are people here who have never spoken to-camera about Kurt before: Kurt’s Mom Wendy O’Connor; his Dad Don and Stepmom Jenny; his sister Kim; his first girlfriend Tracy Marander; Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic (Dave Grohl, who’s usually asked for comment about Kurt, was unavailable); and Courtney Love, Kurt’s missus at the time of his much-discussed death in 1994, and a bit of a train-wreck here even though the doco was her idea.
And there’s much sad familiarity throughout, as we hear about the bright, bubbly and hugely talented little boy from Aberdeen, Washington, whose happy youth was tainted by family troubles, his parents’ divorce, his strict Dad (Don regrets it now) and, of course, medicine to calm him down and/or pick him up. Sometimes haunting animation from Hisko Hulsing was ingeniously used to depict key points in Kurt’s life and his psychological landscapes, and frames are reproduced here, along with some of his fairly graphic art and a few Nirvana mementoes (like tour guides, posters and a tape of their first primitive tracks).
A must for devotees (whose bookshelves are surely heaving with other books about the band by now), Morgen’s (and Bienstock’s) offering should prove enlightening and troubling even for the most dedicated expert, and fortunately doesn’t buy into conspiracy theories surrounding Kurt’s death, instead giving his friends and family the chance to lament the loss of a great musician, a brilliant artist, a good pal, a desperate addict and/or a mess of a man.
I Wake Up Screening 