Kurt Cobain's Hometown Rejects Plan for Memorial Bridge

Kurt Cobain of Nirvana

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

Kurt Cobain's hometown of Aberdeen, Washington has decided against a proposal to rename a bridge after the late Nirvana frontman. Despite a recommendation from the city's local parks board, the plan was ultimately scrapped because many on the city council were afraid that the memorial would glorify Cobain's drug use and suicide.

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As a compromise, the council did approve a plan to rename a small strip of land near the Wishkah river in his honor. That bit of land is near a nearby park where Cobain is memorialized with a plaque and a statue of a guitar.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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