Melvins frontman Buzz Osborne said in a new The Pit interview that Kurt Cobain’s death didn’t surprise him, because heroin addicts dying doesn’t surprise him.
The interviewer asked, “What was the perception of him after he died? You were there, you knew the area, you knew the vibes – do you think that over the years Kurt’s image and Nirvana, in general, has just been blown up? Warm fuzzy places in nostalgia versus where they were at the time…?”
Buzz responded, “It was clouded by the death of heroin. I’m never surprised when heroin addicts die one way or another.
“There was nothing I could do. I did feel like I did everything I could in that situation to keep that from happening. But it was not gonna happen. He was one of the people that had very little interest in me, very little interest in what I thought, and who was not there at the beginning of the whole thing.
And I think it’s sort of like Elvis, where you take a hick who has nothing and you give him tons of money and fame. They may not be ready for that in a way, especially when you mix in drugs in the same way, which leads to an early death.
As far as with the rest of what goes, I’m really happy that something I helped, I inspired those guys to do, change the music on a global level. So I feel like my initial ideas about music and how it should sound, and where it should go were correct.” Ultimate-Guitar transcribed his remarks.
