In an exclusive interview with David Fricke for Rolling Stone, Frances Bean, the daughter of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, has decided to speak about her father, the new HBO documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, of which she is an executive producer, and her experience having a “Nirvana reunion minus one” with Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear, among other things.
Bean describes the documentary as “emotional journalism. It’s the closest thing to having Kurt tell his own story in his own words – by his own aesthetic, his own perception of the world. It paints a portrait of a man attempting to cope with being a human….My dad was exceptionally ambitious. But he had a lot thrown on him, exceeding his ambition. He wanted his band to be successful. But he didn’t want to be the fucking voice of a generation.”
One time Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear all met up at the house she was living. They all had what she describes as the “‘K.C. Jeebies’….which is when they see me, they see Kurt. They look at me, and you can see they’re looking at a ghost….They were all talking amongst themselves, rehashing old stories I’d heard a million times. I was sitting in a chair, chain-smoking, looking down like this [affects total boredom]. And they went, “You are doing exactly what your father would have done.”
So, the daughter of Kurt Cobain doesn’t even like Nirvana: “Sorry, promotional people, Universal. I’m more into Mercury Rev, Oasis, Brian Jonestown Massacre [laughs]. The grunge scene is not what I’m interested in. But “Territorial Pissings” [on Nevermind] is a fucking great song. And “Dumb” [on In Utero] – I cry every time I hear that song. It’s a stripped-down version of Kurt’s perception of himself – of himself on drugs, off drugs, feeling inadequate to be titled the voice of a generation.”
Read the full interview at Rolling Stone.