With the Brett Morgen-directed Kurt Cobain documentary Montage of Heck set to premiere on HBO May 4, the film's executive producer Frances Bean Cobain is speaking out publicly for the first time about her father. In an interview with Rolling Stone, for whom she interned a few years back, she reveals that she is not, in fact, a Nirvana fan.
"I don't really like Nirvana that much [grins]," she told RS. "Sorry, promotional people, Universal. I'm more into Mercury Rev, Oasis, Brian Jonestown Massacre [laughs]. The grunge scene is not what I'm interested in. But "Territorial Pissings" [on Nevermind] is a fucking great song. And "Dumb" [on In Utero] - I cry every time I hear that song. It's a stripped-down version of Kurt's perception of himself - of himself on drugs, off drugs, feeling inadequate to be titled the voice of a generation."
She added that it "would have felt more awkward" if she had been a fan.
"I was around 15 when I realized he was inescapable," she explained. "Even if I was in a car and had the radio on, there's my dad. He's larger than life, and our culture is obsessed with dead musicians. We love to put them on a pedestal. If Kurt had just been another guy who abandoned his family in the most awful way possible . . . But he wasn't. He inspired people to put him on a pedestal, to become St. Kurt. He became even bigger after he died than he was when he was alive. You don't think it could have gotten any bigger. But it did."
Elsewhere in the interview, she explained why she thinks her father was driven to suicide.
"Kurt got to the point where he eventually had to sacrifice every bit of who he was to his art, because the world demanded it of him," Frances told RS. "I think that was one of the main triggers as to why he felt he didn't want to be here and everyone would be happier without him."
But "in reality, if he had lived," she continued, "I would have had a dad. And that would have been an incredible experience."
She described the Montage of Heck documentary as "emotional journalism" and said she was adamant about not representing her father with "the mythology of Kurt or the romanticism." Instead she wanted the film to focus on "factual information" rather than just "tall tales that were misconstrued, misremembered, rehashed, retold 10 different ways."
"It was factual evidence of who my father was as a child, as a teenager, as a man, as a husband, as an artist," she said. "It explored every single aspect of who he was as a human being."
Read the full interview here, and check out the preview of his previously unheard song.
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