Here is the first biography to explore, with unflinching and shocking detail, the drama that formed this troubled, tragic rock star. Neither an apology nor a condemnation, it presents a vivid insider's view of the life and death of a man who galvanized a generation and gave birth to the "grunge" revolution. Sandford portrays the provocative, small-town rebel with the talent of a John Lennon, and then shows him at work on concert stages in Seattle, New York, and London. Readers follow the struggles of Cobain's emotional life - his tumultuous relationships with family and the band members in Nirvana, his drug addiction and sexual appetite, his stormy marriage to Courtney Love, and the birth of his daughter who, as Cobain wrote in his suicide note, "reminds me too much of who I used to be."During his research, Christopher Sandford has had access to Cobain's family, his colleagues, Charles Peterson (whose photos Cobain credited with popularizing grunge), his former friends and lovers, and even the author William S. Burroughs, whom Cobain considered to be his own "greatest influence." The result is a graphic account of the life that led to that final day in April 1994, when Cobain turned a shotgun on himself and became a martyr to disaffected youth around the world. Read Less