Ever since the relationship between Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen (68: Punk, Hotel Rooms, and Heroin – Beat Marches On), the tabloids tend to speculate as to who is going to be the next disaster couple. Pete Doherty and Kate Moss, Amy Winehouse and Blake Fielder-Civil, and even Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee.
In the early nineties, however, we seemed to get that tumultuous couple. Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love. Some have even thought they were worse than the punk rock couple. As it would have been their 32nd wedding anniversary today, let’s have a look at a timeline of the couple’s relationship. This week The Beat Marches On to 24th February 1992, when Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love got married.
It depends on what source you use, but when Kurt met Courtney is up for debate. Some sources say late 1989 at a show in Portland, Oregon, others say early 1990 in Seattle or even as late as 1991. The most likely of which is probably 1990 as both artists were starting to make their way up the music ladder.
The couple were aware of each other as Love had acted a little bit, most notably starring in Sid and Nancy in a supporting role. Nirvana wasn’t the star act they are known as currently, but they were a band people were talking about. From here the timeline begins.
Late 1990
Courtney, after finding out that Kurt is single, sends him a heart-shaped box which contains a porcelain doll, three dried roses, a miniature teacup and shellac-covered seashells, and sprays her perfume on it. Many believe this is the inspiration behind the song Heart-Shaped Box on the In Utero album. Courtney said as much on Twitter when Lana Del Ray covered the song. Among mentioning the song was about other intimate parts of her body.
12th October 1991
Courtney Love who was in a long-distance relationship with Smashing Pumpkins singer Billy Corgan, surprises the singer in Chicago, only to find him in bed with another girl. After a slur of insults Love storms out of the apartment and into a taxi. By chance, Nirvana happens to be in town, and she goes to watch them. That night Kurt and Love start dating.
Many warn Love of Cobain’s not-so-secret heroin addiction, including close friend Jennifer Finch of L7 who knew she was no stranger to the drug herself, but treated it as a party drug before, just snorting it. Kurt introduced her to injecting quite soon after they started dating.
4th November 1991
Mary-Lou Lord, a subway busker from Boston, surprises Kurt in Bristol. The two had a fling while touring around the North-East of America. Shocked by the surprise Cobain takes her back to his room, when at 3 am the next morning Courtney calls him. A DJ had told her about the relationship with Lord and demanded an explanation from the frontman. He said nothing was going on although the busker was only four feet away in the bed. Love said if she heard anything more about Lord then they were history. After this Love wrote one of her most famous songs Doll Parts.
8th November 1991
Nirvana appears on TV for the first time in London. Playing on the controversial TV show The Word. Just before they play their latest single Smells Like Teen Spirit, Kurt announces to the world that ‘Courtney Love is the greatest fuck in the world’. This is how Mary Lou Lord finds out their relationship is over. She didn’t even know who Love was.
10th December 1991
At TJ’s in Newport, Wales, Kurt proposes to Courtney. Her band Hole was headlining the venue with Therapy? And Daisy Chainsaw. The details are sketchy, but most agree this is when they were engaged. Some people disagree and claim it’s only folklore.
January 1992
Kurt and Courtney find out that they are expecting a child. The couple make a sincere attempt to get clean and sober for the sake of the baby. However, it doesn’t take.
24th February 1992
Only six months into the relationship, Kurt and Courtney get married in Hawaii. Only eight guests attended, mostly the road crew from Nirvana who were in the state for some shows, Kurt’s best friend Dylan Carlson and his girlfriend were the only people to fly out from Seattle. Bass player Krist Novoselic did not attend the ceremony claiming he was uninvited.
18th August 1992
Courtney Love gives birth to a baby girl. Frances Bean Cobain. The name Frances is due to the couple’s interest in Frances Farmer a disgraced actor from the golden age of Hollywood. Knowing of the pair’s drug use the Child Protective Services (CPS) investigated the couple but took no action.
1st September 1992
Vanity Fair releases a bombshell feature on the couple. A quote that stands out from the feature is a quote from Love who took heroin while knowing she was pregnant. The frontwoman claimed she was misquoted but the court of public opinion had already passed judgement.
This time the CPS took away baby Frances and put her in custody of Courtney’s half sister Jamie Rodriguez. The Cobains could only see their child under supervision until they passed drug tests.
2nd September 1992
At the MTV Music Awards Kurt and Courtney get into a verbal altercation with Axl Rose of Guns N Roses, backstage. For more info see this article: (35: Rivalries, Award Shows, and The Tabloids – Beat Marches On)
4th June 1993
Police in Seattle are called to Kurt and Courtney’s residence after an argument ensues about guns. The report states that Love threw a glass of juice in Cobain’s face. He retaliated by shoving her and attempting to choke her. The police arrest the Nirvana singer and confiscate his guns. The argument was actually about drugs, with Kurt delving deeper into the grips of addiction, and Love trying to stay clean. He would go on to have over a dozen overdoses in 1993 alone.
8th September 1993
For the only time at a benefit concert, Kurt and Courtney perform on stage together. It was to raise money for victims of rape. They performed Pennyroyal Tea and Where Did You Sleep Last Night.
3rd March 1994
In what is described as an accidental overdose in the media, Kurt attempts to commit suicide while waiting for Courtney in a Rome hotel. No one knew other than his wife. Even his bandmates thought it was an accident. A mixture of Champagne and 60 Rohypnol tablets was taken and there’s a three-page suicide note which included quotes from Hamlet. Cobain is in a coma for about 20 hours. Novoselic noticed a change in the singer’s demeanour after and believed the attempt had damaged his brain. The current European tour is cancelled, and Nirvana will never perform again.
18th March 1994
Police are called to the Cobain residence. Kurt locks himself in the master bedroom and threatens to kill himself. Courtney tries to kick the door down to get access to him as all of his guns are in the room. She was unsuccessful and then got the authorities involved. The officers write in their report of the incident that he ‘was not suicidal and doesn’t want to hurt himself…He stated that he locked himself in the room to keep away from Courtney’ they confiscated the guns in the bedroom.
25th March 1994
Courtney stages an intervention for Kurt. She has been trying to stage one since the Rome incident, but someone tells him and manages to run out before. This time she takes precautions by slashing the tyres on his cars. Cobain’s friends, family, and bandmates all are in attendance. After a few hours of unpleasant conversations, he agreed to go to a rehab clinic. He hits back at his wife telling her she’s as fucked up as he is, and she agrees to go into treatment also. They both agreed to fly to LA the next day to the clinic. He doesn’t actually go into treatment until 30th March.
1st April 1994
Kurt escapes the treatment clinic (even though they have an open door policy) He and fellow inpatient Gibby Haynes, singer of The Butthole Surfers, were only laughing at how people kept jumping the wall at the clinic when they can just use the door. When Courtney found out she left her treatment centre (they were staying at different clinics) and travelled around the different drug dens in LA looking for her husband. She also spread a rumour that she overdosed to try and coax him back to her.
2nd April 1994
Kurt arrives back in Seattle. He sits next to Duff McKagen of once rival band Guns N Roses and Seattle native. Duff offers Cobain a ride back to his home but, when he turns around to him he has gone.
3rd April 1994
Courtney hires Tom Grant, an LA-based private investigator to help find Kurt. She tells him to stake out Cobain’s favoured drug haunts and Dylan Carlson’s house. At their Seattle home that morning, Cali Frances’ Nanny, thought he saw Kurt sitting on the bed but assumed it was a dream. It wasn’t until Jessica Hopper, Cali’s girlfriend, told him that it actually happened that he realised it wasn’t a dream. This would be the last time anyone would see Kurt alive.
4th April 1994
Claiming to be his Mother, Courtney files a missing persons report to help find Kurt. After finding out he has access to a shotgun her fears are getting worse. She also cancels his Credit Cards.
5th April 1994
Kurt wakes up before dawn and writes what will be his final suicide notes. One just for Courtney and Frances and another to be found with the body. He goes up to the room above the Greenhouse, not wanting to haunt the main house. He injects himself with a huge amount of heroin and then aims a shotgun at his head and pulls the trigger.
Meanwhile, during that day, Courtney sends her guitarist Erik Erlandson to have a look at the house for Kurt. Although his body is a few feet away from the house Erlandson doesn’t find him.
6th April 1994
Courtney now getting angrier because of Kurt’s disappearance starts to blame everyone for hiding him. She asks Tom Grant to search the house. He brings Dylan Carlson with him, to show where Kurt’s favourite drug haunts are. They come up with nothing at the house. They do not search the greenhouse area.
7th April 1994
Courtney phones Cali, who is now staying at a girlfriend’s house because the Cobain residence is creeping him out, and demands that he go back to the house and look for Kurt. He brought a couple of people to help and searched every room in the house, another female companion said ‘We were expecting him dead any minute’. Cali remarked after they left that he noticed something around the greenhouse area as they were going down the driveway, but they didn’t go back as they felt the house was too creepy.
8th April 1994
An Electrician, Gary Smith, arrives to install a security system for the house. Smith goes up to the room above the greenhouse and discovers Cobain’s dead body. At first, he thought it was a mannequin but then noticed all of the blood. He tells his supervisor at the base who promptly calls the radio stations before calling the police. Most of Kurt’s close friends and bandmates hear it on the radio before the cops even know.
10th April 1994
The vigil for Kurt’s death is held. Organised by Soundgarden manager Susan Silver, thousands of fans come to the Seattle Centre’s Flag Pavilion. First, a short message from Krist was played then Courtney’s message where you could hear she was on the brink of tears. She managed to get the crowd to call him an asshole for leaving them in that way.
At the same time, 70 people close to Kurt went to a private ceremony. Courtney was late as she stopped by the vigil first and gave away some of her husband’s clothes to the mourning fans. A few people spoke at the cremation, and it unified any differences for a moment. Then they separated as soon as the ceremony finished. This included two separate wakes, one hosted by Love, and the other by Novoselic.
17th April 1994
Courtney Receives the urn with Kurt’s ashes. She takes a handful and buries them underneath a willow tree outside their house. The rest stay inside until 1997 when the home is sold. Before Love sells they insist that they have a covenant that allows her to remove the willow tree.
3rd July 1998
A documentary on the couple, appropriately called Kurt and Courtney is released. Made by British director Nick Broomfield, the film starts with a look into the relationship of the pair and gathers a motive that Courtney is involved with the death of Kurt.
One of the biggest controversies from it is a member of a fringe band called The Mentors, called El Duce was offered $50,000 by Courtney to kill Kurt. He didn’t take up the offer, but it also could be smoke and mirrors as he was a known alcoholic. A few days later he dies playing on the train lines while drunk and is struck by a train. The documentary feels like it was trying to implicate Love because she didn’t want to be involved with the making of it.
31st May 1999
Wendy Cobain, Kurt’s Mother, organises a final service for her son. Scattering the rest of the ashes in a stream at the back of her house. Ever since Cobain’s death Wendy and Courtney got close. Frances Bean, now aged six, scattered the ashes while a Tibetan Monk recited a prayer throughout the ceremony.
The aim of this is not to lay blame for who’s at fault for the demise of the relationship. Although Courtney gets most of the blame from the media, she still has to go through the grief of losing her husband. From the outside, it looked like a couple who couldn’t take care of themselves rather than anyone else, but it was a couple who loved each other.
Many still believe Courtney was involved in the death of Kurt. For instance, The PI she hired, Tom Grant, still believes to this day that she was involved in some way. He has called on the Seattle police to re-open the case multiple times to no avail. Sometimes when you can’t accept the truth, you try to pin the blame on someone else, just like John and Yoko or Sid and Nancy, their respective bands were going to break up anyway with or without their muses.
The Beat Marches On is a music blog written by Jimmy Whitehead. Jimmy has been blogging for six years specialising in Sports (especially American Football). If you want to follow Jimmy on Twitter: @Jimmy_W1987
The Beat Marches On has a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/The-Beat-Goes-On-Blog-107727714415791 and an X page: @TheBeatGoesOnB1
The websites used for research were:
A timeline of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love’s relationship (faroutmagazine.co.uk)
A Complete Timeline Of Courtney Love And Kurt Cobain’s Relationship (nickiswift.com)
The book Heavier Than Heaven by Charles R Cross was also used for research.
If you want to request a story for The Beat Marches On blog, you can contact jwhiteheadjournalism@gmail.com. We cannot guarantee that the story will be published but will be considered