Danny Goldberg knew Kurt Cobain for only the final few years of Cobain’s short life, but as Nirvana’s manager—and something of a father figure—Goldberg had a rare vantage point from which to experience Cobain’s rapid ascent and tragically blunt end. So, by necessity, Goldberg’s Serving The Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain blurs the line between biography and memoir. In fact, those who’ve read Goldberg’s 2008 memoir, Bumping Into Geniuses, will recognize many of the stories he conveys here, though they’ve been expanded from one chapter into 17. In this book, he manages to both give Cobain the credit he deserves for a seismic pop culture shift and to portray him as a regular human being.
For the things Goldberg didn’t personally experience, he relies on new conversations and other sources: He casually mentions getting in touch with Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, as well as Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic, to fill in the gaps of Nirvana’s early years. That part of the book is relatively well-trod territory, considering how much has been written about the band over the years. There’s Michael Azerrad’s biography Come As You Are, published before Cobain’s death. And there’s Charles Cross’ exhausting but some would say factually overreaching Heavier Than Heaven, which was criticized for speculating about Cobain’s final days. The facts of the Nirvana story have been told and re-told.
Goldberg’s version, though it lacks much in the way of new information, at least approaches its subject from a more earth-bound place. Sure, he praises Cobain’s genius in some breathless passages, but mostly he’s interested in telling the story of the person he knew: The hero worship is present, but it’s tempered by insight into Cobain’s personality that few people were privy to. Cobain, according to Goldberg, wasn’t nearly as opposed to corporate entities as he wanted his more strident, punk-leaning fans to believe. Instead, Cobain cultivated a strong relationship with MTV—particularly a young employee named Erin Finnerty—in order to get maximum exposure. He complained to Goldberg at one point that MTV was playing Pearl Jam videos three times for every one time they spun his. “Kurt kept telling everybody that he had only wanted Nirvana to be as big as the Pixies,” writes Goldberg. “I’m almost certain that he was being disingenuous and that he had been thinking about how to react to success with the same intensity that he had brought to musical rehearsals.”
This is partly a function of Goldberg wanting to see in Cobain what he saw in himself: business savvy. He admits as much when he claims not to have been as aware of Cobain’s drug use as others in their inner circle were, focusing instead on the intricacies of recording and promotion. Still, Goldberg was close enough to the family—he also ended up managing Hole, Love’s band—that he was there for the various interventions attempted on the couple over the years. When Love learned she was pregnant, it was Goldberg and others who guided her to good doctors and helped school her on the dangers of drug use to the baby; Frances Bean would be born in the midst of Nirvana’s superstardom in 1992. And though he admits to viewing his memories through rose-colored glasses, Goldberg doesn’t let Cobain off the hook completely. At one point, he refers to Cobain as exuding “an odious junkie smugness.”
Goldberg also thoroughly recounts the couple’s battle with Vanity Fair, specifically writer Lynn Hirschberg. Her piece, “Strange Love: The Story Of Kurt Cobain And Courtney Love” painted the couple as more or less hopeless heroin addicts who’d almost certainly be unfit parents. Its power was more than rumor mongering: A hospital worker sent the article to Los Angeles Social Services, which led to an investigation. (The article still reverberates: Frances Bean told Goldberg that someone referred to her as a “crack baby” in her teens.) Goldberg helped usher the couple through that situation, as well as a more comical feud with Axl Rose—details of which are far more abundant in this book than has been previously published.
He’s also not shy about sharing financial details: Cobain at one point asks Goldberg how much money he’d make if In Utero—the “difficult” follow-up to the smash Nevermind—didn’t sell very well, and if the band didn’t tour much. Goldberg replies—and publishes—that Cobain would still take home more than $2 million for the year. Unfortunately, as Goldberg eventually realizes, that much cash can be deadly to someone with a drug addiction. In March of 1994, Cobain overdosed and went into a coma; Goldberg foolishly hoped it might be a wake-up call. By early April, Cobain was dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Serving The Servant arrives 25 years later, almost to the day. Goldberg spoke at Cobain’s funeral, and was mocked by naysayers for treating him too reverently—apparently pouring your heart out isn’t punk.
The prose is mostly simple and conversational in Serving The Servant (and the less said about that dumb title, including its explanation, the better), but that’s mitigated by the fact that Goldberg brings some new perspective to Cobain’s story. His subject was complicated and sometimes selfish, though also kind and earnest. Goldberg clearly loved Cobain, and he humanizes him with the kind of small stories that wouldn’t necessarily make sense for a more sweeping biography, like the fact that Cobain cherished The Chipmunks Sing The Beatles so much that he owned four copies. And though Goldberg does put Cobain’s musical contributions on a well-earned pedestal, he also shows the young man—just 27 when he died—as mortal, in ways both good and bad. He knew Cobain intimately, but admits, too, that “Sometimes I felt as close to him as a brother and other times he seemed a galaxy removed, barely perceptible.” Goldberg conveys that split nicely—and, perhaps more importantly, humanely—in his telling of the Cobain story.
43 Comments
So this is just an unironic exploration of Kurt Cobain as a flawed person that the author nevertheless liked and admired? That is one way to go I guess. I was more expecting a new weird conspiracy theory about who supposedly murdered him (Sleater-Kinney?)
I heard it was El Duce from the Mentors! He died soon afterwards under mysterious circumstances. Completely believable!
That’s long been the rumor: did you see the Mentors doc on Amazon? They try to delve into it and the one guy flips out and leaves the interview.
There is a Mentors doc? I will have to watch it
It’s pretty good: a lot of live footage and interviews.
Duce said he did it, but he was a teddy bear.
Who knows tho.
In the ‘90s, a self-styled journalist named Richard Lee hosted a weekly show on public access called “Kurt Cobain Was Murdered.” He believed Courtney and Dave Grohl were behind the killing and would review the threads in a pre-Glenn Beck style. However, that soon devolved into a stream-of-consciousness montage of movie, TV and found footage that I guess was supposed to prove Lee’s theory in oblique fashion.
In 1999 my wife, a friend and I went to a PAC fundraiser in Seattle hosted by Kris Noveselic. Lee crashed it with his video camera and was “escorted” out. When we left, we saw Lee waiting outside for his moment. My friend went back in to warn Kris, who eventually tried to jump into his limo in the back alley. Lee was there of course, but was only able to harass Kris for a minute. Of course, it was all featured on the next episode of KCWM.
Dunno if Lee’s still around, but he may have been the first to go conspiracy on Kurt’s death.
Truman Capote’s ghost beat him over the head with a canned ham.
He knew Cobain intimately, but admits, too, that “Sometimes I felt as close to him as a brother and other times he seemed a galaxy removed, barely perceptible.” I wonder if this isn’t a retroactive perspective. Four years ago, almost to the day, my best friend hanged himself. He was like my brother, but after that happened, I started questioning how well I really knew him and how close we really were. Surely, I tell myself still, if he loved me as much as I loved him, he would have said something to me about how much he was hurting. Some days I think maybe he was trying to spare me his pain. Fuck. Why did I have to think about this stuff at work.
I had a friend who overdosed on anti-depressants, which I told him in the hospital was a surprise to me because he was the happiest person I knew. He said that he was stunned that my perception was so off.
Makes you feel like you never really knew the person eh. A bunch of stuff came out about my friend after his death that were profoundly surprising to me… Four years later I’m still processing it
A close friend killed himself over a girl. Co-workers found him.I’m still trying to figure this out, 15 years later.
I might read this. As a person born in 1993, I have to admit I’ve never really understood Cobain’s particularly lofty place in pop culture.
The fact that he basically killed of hair metal single-handedly might have something to do with it…God bless him.
Guns N Roses fired the fatal shot and Nirvana buried it.
I love GnR, but they were already starting to disappear up their own asses long before Nirvana charted.Plus, let’s be honest, most of their stuff was hair metal, it’s just that they knew how to play and didn’t focus so much of their energies on just getting laid.
How much do you recommend listening to GnR’s early albums if I’m only familiar with the big hits like Welcome to the Jungle and Sweet Child O’Mine?
IMO, I think Appetite still holds up fairly well. If you like the hits, there should be at least couple of other songs on the album that’ll grab your attention.
What about use your illusion?
On the one hand, it was nice to see them evolve. On the other hand, it’s about 50% filler. Not to mention that’s it’s loaded with baggage, both explicitly on the album (not that that’s necessarily a bad thing) and in a more meta sense, since this is the period where GnR effectively died.My recommendation would be to queue up up the albums, and skip anything that doesn’t grab you immediately, since the quality stuff is scattered around. Oh, and you can definitively skip Coma. Even back when the albums first came out and we were predisposed to be generous to the stuff that didn’t work as well, no one liked that dirge.
Thanks for the suggestions.I thought you were referring to another song (My World) at first, which I am sadly familiar with. I just looked up Coma and see that it’s over ten minutes long. I can only assume how vehemently you’re telling me to skip it.
With what? Appetite? Then it had a four friggin’ year wake? Not to mention, there’s those three lousy power ballads of GnR that came out while Nirvana was bringing punk back, which I guess are better than Aerosmith’s shitty trio of power ballads that came out a little later than those.
Appetite is the one genuinely great record to come out of the entire hair band era, but it’s still a hair band record. Yeah, it’s rough and dirty, but there were a lot of rough and dirty bands at the time, and I remember GnR and Skid Row both hit around the same time, and both were scummier, and they became huge hits because of power ballads. Appetite for Destruction to this day sounds great and Skid Row . . . does not, but GnR was not a seismic shift in any way. It was just a perfectly produced, actually metal hair metal album.Now, Nirvana? Cliche or no, I literally remember where I was the first time I heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. Whether or not it was marketing or MTV or whatever, it really did change everything. “Alternative” was something you heard on college radio or on mix tapes some friends’ cool older brother handed you, and that was literally the only way it existed. Post-Nirvana, it was everywhere.
I was going to respond back to you, but the three gents below me did a better job than I could have. As someone who actively dislikes GnR, I find a lot wrong with your post. Still, I upvoted you just for the user name…
I appreciate that, though I am not a GnR fan either. As I am old as shit, I remember the rise of hair metal like Crue and Poison and Cinderella. There was the speed metal underground (Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth etc.) vs. the hair metal but hair metal was much more popular. When Appetite came out, it was a galvanizing thing as seemingly EVERYONE (but me) loved it. It was not seen as hair metal at the time – my fellow metalheads liked it and considered it hard rock (like AC/DC or Zep), the hair metal people liked it, and moved towards it more than the more girl-focused hair metal (garbage like Firehouse or White Lion.) This weakened hair metal and heavier stuff + hard rock stuff grew in strength. I should probably say “fired the FIRST shot” as this was what began the decline of hair metal, and I agree that grunge/ altrock (Nirvana, PJ, Soundgarden, AiC) did kill hair metal – but Cobain didn’t do it all alone – it was already happening! (For the record I am a Nirvana fan.)
Old as shit here as well! I also didn’t like Appetite, but I think it’s because I had just discovered that second punk wave (that we called hardcore initially) like Dead Kennedys, Black Flag and Misfits. And much like you I loved the speed metal bands back then (and some of the ‘crossover’ bands like DRI).I agree that Cobain didn’t quite do it all himself: a lot of that was built up from 20 years of the Stooges failing, The Ramones not making it huge, the NY Dolls and all those other proto bands who put the gas in the room but couldn’t light the match. I always thought Cobain just happened to be the guy that walked in the room with the match, said match being that video for Teen Spirit.
It’s hard to understand why Nirvana was a big deal unless you understood what rock music was in the years right before they broke, and how much of a stranglehold MTV had on what music was popular and what music was never heard.
Go watch a video by Warrant, Poison, Motley Crue, etc. 100% of rock music was crossdressing guys singing herp-derp anthems about drinking and their dicks. The musicianship was horrible (with a few exceptions), and clothing and fashion determined what bands got the most airplay on MTV. That was ALL rock music was, and no internet to provide access to anything underground for most people. There were NO other options.
So the idea of “people in ordinary clothes singing about something weird or depressing or otherwise emotionally intense and relatable” was a HUGE revelation. Nirvana wasn’t even as musically interesting or innovative compared to a lot of other bands around at the time, they were just the ones chosen by MTV to be the avatar of this new type of music.
In the end it was really just MTV deciding “you don’t like this music anymore, you like THAT music”. Even Cobain, Vedder, Cornell and others were pretty quick to call the whole “grunge” thing a big pile of marketing bullshit whenever interviewed.
Still, it was nice to have rock music that wasn’t just endless variations of “Nothin’ But A Good Time”. Cobain gets a lot of undeserved credit for the work of some MTV marketing executives.
I think part of the disconnect is that rock music isn’t really pop music anymore. Even though I loved hair metal for a good 5 years from the ages of like 10-15, it’s just so goofy that it’s hard to imagine a world where that’s the mainstream culture, which probably speaks to his relevance. And, yeah, pop culture is just so fractured that you don’t really get many of those kinds of singular personalities anymore in a marketing sense.From what you’re saying, it seems like a decent 2010s analogue would be if Kanye West had died in like 2012—as someone who broadened the sonic, emotional, and marketing palette of mainstream hip-hop.
Just ignore it and focus on the Jonas Brothers or whatever the fuck you like
I was born in ‘82 & I never really understood it. Did see the heroin chic junkie culture fuck up a few lives back in the day though. Nirvana! Good? Sortof. Better than Pearl Jam? Absolutely.
There’s ALWAYS a special place in the pop culture pantheon for druggies who die young. Jimi Hendrix, John Beluchi, Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison, Michael Jackson, Gram Parsons, River Phoenix, Janis Joplin, Sid Vicious, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Anna Nichole Smith, Heath Ledger etc etc. Its actually a VERY long list.
Do people still talk about Anna Nicole?
You really had to be there. I have my memories, and I’ll treasure them forever.
You had to be there,I guess.
I was there and I still missed it. Partly, I guess, because I used to play in cover bands a few years before: Scorps, VH, and Priest, Maiden, Rush, etc. So I was kind of a ‘musical snob’ and thought Yngwie Malmsteen was great. I still remember my buddy Phil pulling out the Nevermind album and …MAN YOU GOTTA HEAR THIS. And I did. And I liked it for the most part but still didn’t get it until many years later. Yep…I’m dumb.
It was actually Jessica Hopper: https://eye94.org/eye94originals/trendhopping
A question. Was Cobain’s manager ever implicated in getting him hooked on heroin? I doubt Cobain himself was on the street scoring dime bags. That sounds like the manager’s job.
I’m guessing it was his wife’s job.
Kurt was doing heroin long before this manager came along and not many people score dimebags on the street. Addicts have friends and drug connections. I’m sure Kurt had plenty of his own people he could score from without sending his manager.
It’s amazing how many people try to find ways to blame a serious heroin addict for being a serious heroin addict. At least it’s not Courtney Love’s fault this time.Cobain got himself addicted, and he stayed addicted. It’s nobody’s fault but his.
“Cobain got himself addicted, and he stayed addicted. It’s nobody’s fault but his.”Err, dangerously close to victim blaming here. Do you know why he self-medicated?
I don’t exactly have a clinical diagnosis, but it’s not victim blaming to point out Kurt Cobain had many opportunities in life to get clean, and the tendency for people who revere him to always find someone else to blame for his addictions got old long ago.Addition is awful, and is absolutely a disease, but, like any disease, you have to choose to get help for it. And, yes, it seems like he very much was self-medicating for depression, but that doesn’t change the fact that, at some point, an addict has to sit up and take responsibility for their life.
‘Cobain, according to Goldberg, wasn’t nearly as opposed to corporate entities as he wanted his more strident, punk-leaning fans to believe. Instead, Cobain cultivated a strong relationship with MTV—particularly a young employee named Erin Finnerty—in order to get maximum exposure.’FWIW, Mark Yarm’s Everybody Loves Our Town really (though subtly) digs into this side of Cobain. This statement, especially the relationship with Finnerty, comports with stuff in Yarm’s book. Cobain’s anti-corporate statements were posturing; dude wanted to be a rock star. So, ‘This is partly a function of Goldberg wanting to see in Cobain what he saw in himself: business savvy.’I’m not so sure of this–at least, I don’t think it’s right to suggest that Goldberg is projecting anything here. Cobain knew how to play to the punk/alternative and mainstream rock crowds, and it was crucial to his band’s success. Cobain’s a fascinating subject for anyone thinking about notions of authenticity in rock music.