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Kurt Cobain’s Suicide Note on a T-Shirt

Online marketplace Etsy caused a kerfuffle recently by selling shirts emblazoned with the suicide note of the late Kurt Cobain.

Etsy and other e-commerce sites have since pulled the shirts from their virtual shelves, but the big question remains: Who in their right mind would wear such a thing?

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/jDyvClUsCJU

To be fair, some would wear it to make a statement about depression. But most kids just want to shock people.

I know, because I was one of those rebellious kids. Let’s go back about 23 years.

It’s 1992, I am in my early 20s and am pretty much pissed at the world. I have a chip on my shoulder the size of a bowling ball and harbor immature notions of what is cool.

At that time I was all about shocking people. Shocking people is a good way to change the subject, especially when the subject is why you’re such a fuck up. Of course, wearing the shirt proved I was just that.

I thought it would be a cool statement if I went around in a Charles Manson T-shirt. Guns ‘N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose was wearing one on stage, so I knew it was the cool thing to do.

My stupidity hit me clearer a few years ago, after I read Restless Souls: The Sharon Tate Family’s Account of Stardom, the Manson Murders, and a Crusade for Justice, written by Tate family friend Alisa Statman and Brie Tate, niece of Sharon Tate.

Patti Tate picked up the crusade against the Manson killers when her mom, Doris, passed away in 1992. In the book, she recalls seeing Rose in a video on MTV, sporting the infamous T-shirt. Here was a guy reaching millions of kids every day, essentially telling them that Manson was cool, a guy to look up to.

Fast-forward to 2015. With the Cobain suicide shirt, some worry that those wearing it are sending the message that suicide is cool. Cobain gave us important music, and there are far better ways to honor the man than wearing the symbol of his lost fight against the demons.

Cobain’s daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, has spoken out against the romanticizing of suicide in recent months. Shirts like this further illustrate the problem she has tried to address.

suicide-630x420

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Frances Bean Cobain Gets It Right

Update: Frances Bean Cobain threw more cold water on the romanticism of her dad’s life and death in this Rolling Stone interview.

Until now, we hadn’t heard much about Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain. Now she’s getting headlines, and it appears the young lady has a good head on her shoulders despite a tumultuous childhood.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/5wev8W9PDAg

She’s getting the headlines for telling another young star that her talk of dying young is misguided. Cobain should know. She never got to know her father, who killed himself 20 years ago.

Specifically, Cobain responded to Lana Del Rey’s recent “I wish I was dead already” proclamation, which came after an interviewer mentioned Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, who died in 2011. If she’s to be believed, Del Ray harbors a serious death wish, telling The Guardian that she sees an early death as glamorous. “I don’t want to have to keep doing this. But I am.”

Cobain’s response, according to Rolling Stone and other publications:

The death of young musicians isn’t something to romanticize. I’ll never know my father because he died young, and it becomes a desirable feat because people like you think it’s “cool.” Well, it’s fucking not. Embrace life, because you only get one life. The people you mentioned wasted that life. Don’t be one of those people.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. I know what it’s like to watch loved ones die young, by intent and from illness.

I do find myself wondering if Del Ray is serious or if she’s just saying it for attention. She wouldn’t be the first star to carry on that way. If she is serious, that interview could be her cry for help. If so, I hope she gets what she needs.

Some will say she’s being a snot, because here she has all the success and fame, and she’s saying she doesn’t want to live long. I remember hearing that kind of talk from bands like Mötley Crüe in the 1980s. There was the whole “live fast, die young” romanticism. Fortunately, the Mötley guys got beyond that, grew up and have lived full, meaningful lives — especially Nikki Sixx, who has four kids and too many successful business ventures to count on one hand.

Hopefully, Del Ray will grow up in similar fashion.

Maybe Cobain’s words of wisdom will help in that regard.

Frances Bean CobainImage by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images