What If Kurt Cobain Didn't Die?

Chuck Klosterman theorizes on what the rock god's future could have held, had he not died 15 years ago.
Illustration by Lara Tomlin

In SPIN's April 2004 tribute issue to Kurt Cobain, then senior writer Chuck Klosterman posed a compelling and unique question: "What would have happened if Cobain lived?" Below, read Klosterman's theory about what the rock god's future could have held, had he not died 15 years ago.

April 1990

A year of magical thinking glimpsed through the lens of the craziest Spin ever

I looked at her, sleeping now. Her skinny body looked formless in her disheveled sweatshirt. Her mouth was slightly open, her large, beautiful brown eyes shut away. Her hair was flat and lifeless from traveling, lying in the darkened compartment in the pale, colorless illumination of the unseen station lights.

March 1992

Arriving three years late to the Nine Inch Nails party -- with a lot of questions

There are many people -- in fact, you may be one of them -- who devote much of their daily energy toward hearing about things first, even if those specific things don't particularly matter.

February 1998

My Akron year, Marilyn Manson, and the four millionth death of commercial radio

I don't know what I was doing in 1998. But it must have been awesome, because I can't remember one goddamn moment from that entire year.

January 1995

Ethically pure grunge and cokehead Britpop prove that history is bunk half the time

Whenever historians examine the past, they tend to put forth one of two points: They either want to show how things today are totally different, or they want to argue that things are pretty much the same.

December 1989

The month Cat Butt broke. And the infinite wisdom of Republican gambling addicts.

Whenever people write about the Rolling Stones, they inevitably feel obligated to make some kind of predictable joke about how the Stones are ancient, and how they recorded their first single, "Come On," during the Woodrow Wilson administration, and how Charlie Watts now resembles Jack Kevorkian's younger brother.

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