Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 – c. April 5, 1994) was an American musician. He was the lead vocalist, guitarist, primary songwriter, and a founding member of the grunge band Nirvana. Through his angsty songwriting and anti-establishment persona, his compositions widened the thematic conventions of mainstream rock music. He was heralded as a spokesman of Generation X, and is widely recognized as one of the most influential rock musicians.
Cobain formed Nirvana with Krist Novoselic and Aaron Burckhard in 1987, establishing themselves as part of the Seattle music scene that later became known as grunge. Burckhard was replaced by Chad Channing before the band released their debut album Bleach (1989) on Sub Pop, after which Channing was in turn replaced by Dave Grohl. With this finalized lineup, the band signed with DGC and found commercial success with the single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from their critically acclaimed second album Nevermind (1991). Cobain wrote many other hit Nirvana songs such as "Come as You Are", "Lithium", "In Bloom", "Heart-Shaped Box", and "Something in the Way".[1][2] Although he was hailed as the voice of his generation following Nirvana's sudden success, he was uncomfortable with this role.[3]
During his final years, Cobain struggled with a heroin addiction, stomach pain, and chronic depression.[4] He also struggled with the personal and professional pressures of fame, and was often in the spotlight for his tumultuous marriage to fellow musician Courtney Love, with whom he had a daughter named Frances.[5] In March 1994, he overdosed on a combination of champagne and Rohypnol, subsequently undergoing an intervention and detox program. On April 8, 1994, he was found dead in the greenhouse of his Seattle home at the age of 27,[6] with police concluding that he had died around three days earlier from a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head.[7]
Cobain was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, alongside Nirvana bandmates Novoselic and Grohl, in their first year of eligibility in 2014. Rolling Stone included him on its lists of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time, 100 Greatest Guitarists, and 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.[8] He was ranked 7th by MTV in the "22 Greatest Voices in Music", and was placed 20th by Hit Parader on their 2006 list of the "100 Greatest Metal Singers of All Time".
Kurt Cobain | |
|---|---|
 Cobain with Nirvana in 1992 | |
| Born | February 20, 1967 Aberdeen, Washington, U.S. |
| Died | c. April 5, 1994 (aged 27) Seattle, Washington, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Suicide by gunshot |
| Body discovered | April 8, 1994 |
| Occupations |
|
| Spouse | |
| Children | Frances Bean Cobain |
| Musical career | |
| Genres | |
| Instruments |
|
| Years active | 1985–1994 |
| Labels | |
| Formerly of | |
-----William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II (/ˈbʌroʊz/; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist. He is widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature.[2][3][4] Burroughs wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories, and four collections of essays. Five books of his interviews and correspondences have also been published. He was initially briefly known by the pen name William Lee. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, made many appearances in films, and created and exhibited thousands of visual artworks, including his celebrated "shotgun art."[5]
Burroughs was born into a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri. He was a grandson of inventor William Seward Burroughs I, who founded the Burroughs Corporation, and a nephew of public relations manager Ivy Lee.
Burroughs attended Harvard University, where he studied English, then anthropology as a postgraduate, and went on to medical school in Vienna. In 1942, he enlisted in the U.S. Army to serve during World War II. After being turned down by both the Office of Strategic Services and the Navy, he veered into substance abuse, beginning with morphine and developing a heroin addiction that would affect him for the rest of his life.
In 1943, while living in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. This liaison would become the foundation of the Beat Generation, later a defining influence on the 1960s counterculture.
Burroughs found success with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), but is perhaps best known for his third novel, Naked Lunch (1959). It became the subject of one of the last major literary censorship cases in the United States after its US publisher, Grove Press, was sued for violating a Massachusetts obscenity statute.
Burroughs is believed to have killed his second wife, Joan Vollmer, in 1951 in Mexico City. He initially claimed that he had accidentally shot her while drunkenly attempting a "William Tell" stunt.[6] He later told investigators that he had been showing his pistol to friends when it fell and hit the table, firing the bullet that killed Vollmer.[7] After he fled Mexico back to the United States, he was convicted of manslaughter in absentia and received a two-year suspended sentence.
Much of Burroughs's work is highly experimental and features unreliable narrators, but it is also semi-autobiographical, often drawing from his experiences as a heroin addict. He lived at various times in Mexico City, London, Paris, and the Tangier International Zone in Morocco, and traveled in the Amazon rainforest — and featured these places in many of his novels and stories. With Brion Gysin, Burroughs popularized the cut-up, an aleatory literary technique, featuring heavily in such works of his as The Nova Trilogy (1961–1964). His writing also engages frequent mystical, occult, or otherwise magical themes, constant preoccupations in both his fiction and real life.[4][8]
In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1984, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France.[9] Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift";[10] he owed this reputation to his "lifelong subversion"[11] of the moral, political, and economic systems of modern American society, articulated in often darkly humorous sardonicism. J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be "the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War," while Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius."[10]
William S. Burroughs | |
|---|---|
 Burroughs in 1983 | |
| Born | William Seward Burroughs II February 5, 1914 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. |
| Died | August 2, 1997 (aged 83) Lawrence, Kansas, U.S. |
| Pen name | William Lee |
| Occupation | Author |
| Education | Harvard University (BA) |
| Genre | Beat literature, surrealism, satire |
| Literary movement | Beat Generation, postmodernism, science fiction |
| Notable works | Junkie (1953) Naked Lunch (1959) The Nova Trilogy (1961–1964) Cities of the Red Night (1981) The Place of Dead Roads (1983) |
| Spouse | Ilse Klapper (1937–1946)[1] Joan Vollmer (1946–1951) |
-----
In 1993, Kurt Cobain, the frontman of Nirvana, made a notable visit to the house of William S. Burroughs, the legendary writer and icon of the Beat Generation, in Lawrence, Kansas. Cobain, who had long admired Burroughs' work, found himself in the presence of the author whose avant-garde and often controversial writings had shaped the counterculture. The meeting between the two artists was not only a momentous crossover of musical and literary worlds but also a unique blending of rebellious creative minds.
沒有留言:
張貼留言