18 years ago today, on April 5, 1994, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain passed away. You all know the story, voice of a generation, grunge icon, inadvertent music game-changer, Cobain committed suicide after grappling with depression and heroin addiction in the midst of a maelstrom of fame, there's not a lot more we can add.
Cobain’s long gone, but his memory obviously lives on. And you actually get to see some previously-unseen and very intimate footage of him, Courtney Love and Francis Bean Cobain in the upcoming documentary “Hit So Hard.”
“Hit So Hard: The Life & Near Death Story of Patty Schemel” focuses on ex-Hole drummer Patty Schemel who, as the title suggests, nearly died of her own addictions to booze, heroin and crack after she was kicked out of Hole in the late 90s. Why Cobain? Well, Schemel was as much a friend of Cobain’s as she was Courtney Love’s, and one of the revelations in the documentary is that Cobain had wanted to hire Patty for Nirvana before he came across Dave Grohl (though that's according to Courtney, so who knows…). Love says in the documentary that they had tossed around the idea of sharing Schemel as their drummer, who lived with the famous couple for a few months before and after the Nirvana heyday.
Due out in limited release on April 13, here’s a clip of Schemel below, with lots of intimate footage of Cobain playing with Francis Bean.