Inside the Heart and Mind of Nirvana

If he can stand the heat, Cobain, extremely bright and unafraid to take provocative stands, may emerge as a John Lennon-like figure. The comparison with Cobain's idol isn't frivolous. Like Lennon, he's using his music to scream out an unhappy childhood. And like Lennon, he's deeply in love with an equally provocative and visionary artist — Courtney Love, leader of the fiery neo-feminist band Hole.

Cobain and Love were married on Feb. 24 in a secluded location in Waikiki, Hawaii, after Nirvana's tour of Japan and Australia, with only a female nondenominational minister and a roadie as a witness. "It's like Evian water and battery acid," Cobain said of the couple's chemistry. And when you mix the two? "You get love," says Cobain, smiling for the first time. Exhausted and bedridden, Cobain is still so smitten that he can proclaim: "I'm just happier than I've ever been. I finally found someone that I'm totally compatible with. It doesn't matter whether she's a male, female or hermaphrodite or a donkey. We're compatible." Whenever Love walks into the room, even if it's to scold him about something, he gets the profoundly dopey grin of the truly love struck.

I have thought about it, and I can't come to any conclusions at all," says Cobain of Nevermind's success. "I don't want to sound egotistical, but I know it's better than a majority of the commercials — that's been crammed down people's throats for a long time."

Nevermind embodies a cultural moment; "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is an anthem for (or is it against?) the "Why Ask Why?" generation. Just don't call Cobain a spokesman for a generation. "I'm a spokesman for myself," he says. "It just so happens that there's a bunch of people that are concerned with what I have to say. I find that frightening at times because I'm just as confused as most people. I don't have the answers for anything. I don't want to be a fucking spokesperson."

"That ambiguity, that's the whole thing," says Nevermind producer Butch Vig. "What the kids are attracted to in the music is that he's not necessarily a spokesman for a generation, but all that's in the music — the passion and [the fact that] he doesn't necessarily know what he wants, but he's pissed. It's all these things working at different levels at once. I don't exactly know what 'Teen Spirit' means, but you know it means something, and it's intense as hell."

Cobain agrees the message isn't necessarily in the words. "Most of the music is really personal as far as the emotion and the experiences that I've had in my life," he says, dragging on a cigarette, "but most of the themes in the songs aren't that personal. They're more just stories from TV or books or movies or friends. But definitely the emotion and feeling is from me. "Most of the concentration of my singing is from my upper abdomen, that's where I scream, that's where I feel, that's where everything comes out of me — right here," he continues, touching a point just below his breastbone. It just happens to be exactly where his stomach pain is centered.

When Nevermind hit No. 1, Cobain was "kind of excited," he says. "I wouldn't admit that at the time. I just hope that it doesn't end with us. I hope there are other bands that can keep it going."

Although Cobain is thrilled when underground bands infiltrate the mainstream charts, he's outraged by others who are riding the coattails of the alternative boom. His favorite target is Pearl Jam, also from Seattle, which he accused of "corporate, alternative and cock-rock fusion" in a recent Musician magazine interview. "Every article I see written about them, they mention us, and they're baiting that fact," says Cobain, sitting up cross-legged on the bed. "I would love to be erased from my association with that band and other corporate bands like the Nymphs and a few other felons. I do feel a duty to warn the kids of false music that's claiming to be underground. They're jumping on the alternative bandwagon."