It almost goes without saying that Kurt Cobain was troubled during his lifetime, but the British website LouderSound.com has come up with some truly disturbing audio of the Nirvana frontman.
It’s a series of NSFW answering machine messages that he left for journalists Victoria Clarke and Britt Collins, who were working on a Nirvana book that Cobain and his reps had initially backed, but which they’d begun to feel was delving too deeply into areas they didn’t want explored.
Cobain’s call followed a slightly less threatening one from his wife, Courtney Love, who according to Louder Sound said she and Kurt would “use every dollar we have and every bit of our power to basically [mess] you up.”
The six-and-a-half-minute audio of Cobain’s messages, which is included with the story,” sees him begging the two to call him to “work out a deal” and includes a number of threats. In one he says, “If anything comes out in this book that hurts my wife, I’ll [effing] hurt you. I don’t care if this is a recorded threat, I’m at the end of my ropes…I’ve never been more serious in my life.”
In another call, he tells them, “I suppose I could throw out a few thousand dollars to have you snuffed out, but maybe I’ll try the legal way first.” He then accuses one of them of “not writing about my band, [but] writing about how jealous you are of my wife.”
It’s impossible to know from the contents of Cobain’s calls what information Kurt and Courtney were worried about them putting out, but his desperation to stop it from getting out seems very real.
According to Louder Sound, Nirvana’s management eventually filed a lawsuit against the two and was able to stop their book from being published.
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