Courtney & Kurt

Courtney Love loses rights to Kurt Cobain's image

Income from late Nirvana singer's name and likeness pass from widow to daughter, Frances Bean, in exchange for $2.75m loan

Sean Michaels

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 May 2012 11.20 BST


Kurt Cobain with Courtney Love and Frances Bean in 1993, seven months before the singer's death. Photograph: Terry Mcginnis/WireImage

Courtney Love is no longer the keeper of Kurt Cobain's public image, according to a report. Publicity rights for the late Nirvana singer's estate are reported to have passed from his widow to his 19-year-old daughter, Frances Bean Cobain.

In 2010, Love apparently stepped down as manager of the company that administers Cobain's publicity rights, including rights to his name and likeness. According to documents obtained by the Fix, an online magazine dealing with addiction and recovery issues, Love ceded her role at The End of Music in exchange for a $2.75m (£1.7m) loan from her daughter's trust fund. Until the loan is repaid, Love is not entitled to income from any new deals relating to Cobain's image.

Frances Cobain broke with Love in 2009, when her aunt and a paternal grandmother were named her new legal guardians. She turned 18 in August 2010, taking ownership of most or all of her trust fund. She and her mother are now apparently locked in a battle over a collection of Cobain's belongings, including musical equipment, clothing and several of the singer's paintings. But rights to Nirvana's music seems to have nothing to do with either of them: administrative rights for Cobain's songs are overseen by a company called Primary Wave Music, and Primary Wave's Larry Mestel also owns 50% of the publishing rights. He would have made the decision to license Smells Like Teen Spirit to the new Muppets movie.

Despite frequently ranting about her daughter online, Love recently apologised to her on Twitter. "Bean, sorry I believed the gossip," she wrote. "Mommy loves you."

Kurt Cobain, before the age of the digital zombies

As Courtney Love cedes all rights to Cobain's image, where it will be used in an age of CGI and holograms is anyone's guess

Jonathan Jones

guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 May 2012 13.50 BST


Kurt Cobain of Nirvana pictured in 1993. Photograph: Stephen Sweet/Rex Features

Even the background of this picture is a ghost. Kurt Cobain stands on West 42nd Street in Manhattan in 1993, in front of a semi-derelict cinema bearing the words Men Don't Protect You Anymore. The photographer had noticed it and Cobain dug the idea of posing in front of it. Soon he would be gone and so would the grungy squalor of this part of New York, reclaimed and turned into a street of multiplexes, safe for tourists. Cobain shot himself in 1994. This week, it emerged in reports that his widow Courtney Love has ceded all rights in the licensing of his name and image to their daughter Frances Bean in return for a large loan.

These "publicity rights" are said to be immensely valuable. Of course they are: in a world where the dead can be made to walk and talk, images of dead celebrities may turn out to be among the most valuable commodities of this century.

There has not, so far, been a hologram appearance by Cobain at a music festival to match the recent return of Tupac Shakur to live performance. Tupac, who was killed in 1996, materialised as an electronic ghost at the Coachella music festival crying: "What the (blank) is up, Coachella?" It is clearly no coincidence that this bizarre Frankensteinian experiment took place in California, home to the world's most advanced computer engineers. It is also no surprise that in a culture infected by digital utopianism it was reported using words like "resurrected" and "returned from the dead" when in reality the new Tupac is a digital zombie manipulated by its creator, not an animate being, not "resurrected" at all. What is the future for such zombies of the famous? What is the future for Kurt Cobain?

We are at an incredible moment in history when phenomena are reported with irony and wonder – as the Shakur manifestation was – that are actually real, imminent and disturbing. Everyone laughs at James Cameron's asteroid mining project but will we laugh in 20 years when a starving planet looks up with envy at the space zillionaires on their moon base? Google Earth will take on a whole new meaning when the Google tycoons found their space empire. Is Google Earth in reality a souvenir, a digital memory bank of a place to be left behind by the lords of the net? Similarly with the image of Kurt Cobain. Dead celebrities walking are no longer a joke or science fiction.

This photograph captures what his image means – and it means the real. He is vulnerable, romantic, and all too mortal. Standing on the mean streets, he looks confused and hesitant. The saleability of Nirvana remains the saleability of the authentic in a corrupt world. In The Muppets movie, the Muppets torture their hostage Jack Black by performing a muppet light-entertainment version of Smells Like Teen Spirit. This is not an insult to the song – it's a homage, for the joke is that they are offending against something sacred. The sacredness is reconfirmed by this gentle profanation.

Yet there are so many ways Cobain's image can be exploited. We have yet to see a biopic – and with Courtney Love no longer controlling his image, there are surely more chances of that happening. There could be postmortem appearances in adverts, like the appearances by CGI recreations of Marilyn Monroe and other dead stars in a recent Dior commercial. Sadly the original Teen Spirit deodorant no longer exists for him to promote.

A photograph is a recording of light, at a particular moment in time. This black and white photograph is a trace of Cobain himself, at that moment, there. It is in the past. But now that every photograph is a piece of information that can be circulated and reconstituted and transformed, what does the emotional kick of a picture like this mean? Cobain lived at a moment when reality was beginning to be artfully packaged: MTV Unplugged became Nirvana's classic moment. But who will unplug the coming age of the living dead?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPQR-OsH0RQ
Smells Like Teen Spirit- Nirvana

This is the actual contents of Kurt Cobain's "suicide note":

To Boddah

Speaking from the tongue of an experienced simpleton who obviously would rather be an emasculated, infantile complain-ee. This note should be pretty easy to understand.

All the warnings from the punk rock 101 courses over the years, since my first introduction to the, shall we say, ethics involved with independence and the embracement of your community has proven to be very true. I haven't felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music along with reading and writing for too many years now. I feel guity beyond words about these things.

For example when we're back stage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins., it doesn't affect me the way in which it did for Freddie Mercury, who seemed to love, relish in the the love and adoration from the crowd which is something I totally admire and envy. The fact is, I can't fool you, any one of you. It simply isn't fair to you or me. The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I'm having 100% fun. Sometimes I feel as if I should have a punch-in time clock before I walk out on stage. I've tried everything within my power to appreciate it (and I do,God, believe me I do, but it's not enough). I appreciate the fact that I and we have affected and entertained a lot of people. It must be one of those narcissists who only appreciate things when they're gone. I'm too sensitive. I need to be slightly numb in order to regain the enthusiasms I once had as a child.

On our last 3 tours, I've had a much better appreciation for all the people I've known personally, and as fans of our music, but I still can't get over the frustration, the guilt and empathy I have for everyone. There's good in all of us and I think I simply love people too much, so much that it makes me feel too fucking sad. The sad little, sensitive, unappreciative, Pisces, Jesus man. Why don't you just enjoy it? I don't know!

I have a goddess of a wife who sweats ambition and empathy and a daughter who reminds me too much of what i used to be, full of love and joy, kissing every person she meets because everyone is good and will do her no harm. And that terrifies me to the point to where I can barely function. I can't stand the thought of Frances becoming the miserable, self-destructive, death rocker that I've become.

I have it good, very good, and I'm grateful, but since the age of seven, I've become hateful towards all humans in general. Only because it seems so easy for people to get along that have empathy. Only because I love and feel sorry for people too much I guess.

Thank you all from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach for your letters and concern during the past years. I'm too much of an erratic, moody baby! I don't have the passion anymore, and so remember, it's better to burn out than to fade away.

Peace, love, empathy.
Kurt Cobain

Frances and Courtney, I'll be at your alter.
Please keep going Courtney, for Frances.
For her life, which will be so much happier without me.


I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU!

Hand-written text:

Neil recorded title track of 'sleeps with angels' in memory of Cobain.

must mean corrupt in the way that
a digital ghost of Tupac is a digital zombie manipulated by its creator, it is not resurrection at all

though, if they take Cobain and say his was the authentic thing, that might turn as artificial as stating Tupac was resurrected
and one could find Tupac's digital ghost more convincing to the combination of reality of one

(who was Tupac?)