SEATTLE — On the 25th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death, dozens of people left flowers, candles and handwritten messages at a Seattle park near the house where the Nirvana frontman killed himself.
Cobain, whose band rose to global fame in the city’s grunge rock music scene of the early 1990s, was 27 when he died April 5, 1994, in his home in a wealthy neighborhood near Lake Washington.
Fans trekked Friday to nearby Viretta Park, leaving memorials on benches, where flowers mixed with handwritten phrases like “thank you for your art” and “find your place.”
In an essay on the Crosscut news website, Cobain biographer Charles R. Cross wrote that few Seattle musicians “have been as tied to Seattle in the mind of the popular zeitgeist as Kurt Cobain.”
Nirvana’s breakthrough album, “Nevermind,” was released in 1991. Featuring the hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the album went to No. 1 on the Billboard charts and has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide.
Nirvana was the most prominent of the era’s series of Seattle grunge bands, including Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, that would go on to release best-selling records.
Cobain’s angst-filled lyrics and his band’s powerful, dark rock struck a chord with young people. Days after his death, thousands of people gathered near the Space Needle for a public memorial.
An investigation determined he took a massive dose of heroin and then shot himself.
