Danny Goldberg recalled a conversation he had with Courtney Love about Nirvana and Kurt Cobain in a new Washington Post interview.
The Washington Post asked, “Kurt was sometimes seen as sort of a slacker king or a guy who didn’t care all that much. As you present him, he actually cared about every detail.”
Courtney Love responded, “Yes, when I was talking to Courtney [Love, Cobain’s wife], she said: ‘We were both really ambitious. In my mind I was going to take Madonna down.’ And then she paused, and she said: ‘You know, Kurt was just as ambitious. He just hid it a little better.’ But that was part of his art. He was extremely focused and disciplined about accomplishing what he wanted to accomplish. This is someone who insisted on months of rehearsal before they went to the studio to do a record, who had a tremendous work ethic. And at the same time he created a character called Kurt Cobain. Hiding some of his ambition was conscious, and it was part of the creation of a persona that he felt that he wanted to create and that he would have admired as a kid. He’s not the only one who did that. I think Bob Dylan and the guys in R.E.M. did it.”
Danny Goldberg will release Serving the Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain next week
