First Royalty Check Kurt Cobain Got For Debut Album Will Shock You

5
155

Kurt Cobain’s friend John Purkey discussed one of Kurt Cobain’s first royalty checks for Bleach in a new video on his Observer YouTube channel.

So, I went down to visit Kurt and I get there and he has he’s like cooking a little bit of leftovers of a frozen pizza and he split with me. I mean I was actually, I was actually hungry I was like shit man, a frozen pizza, that’s awesome. And about the same time the mail shows up at his door and it’s a it’s a letter from ASCAP or BMI and it was a royalty check for radio play for specifically “Blue” and “About a Girl” and it was for $18. So, as I, I mean, I was like, “Wow. You know, that’s awesome you got a royalty check.”  I mean, it was just like, it wasn’t that much but still, I mean it was probably more than what Kurt had in his pocket. And, I mean, you know, at that point I was lucky if I had $5, $10 in my pocket, you know.

So, we walk downtown to the bank and cash the, he cashed the check. And then we went to, we went to a local bar or whatever and got some pizza. I don’t remember. It was like by the 4th Ave Tavern in Olympia. But Either they didn’t card me cause I got in. Kurt’s about a year and eleven months older than I am but I remember, I think it was a bar. Anyway, we got pizza, played some pool and yeah, yeah it was you know, it was a good, a good memory. You know, hanging out with Kurt was just like that. Pretty much. You just, I mean, just hanging out with a friend.  Like he was really, he was a good guy. He was always, he had some video, or you know song or something to like you know show me that he’d been working on. Yeah, anyway so there’s that; That story.