Nirvana

February 12, 2007
True's history of the superstar 1990s band gets off to a rough start when he invokes the "live fast, die young" cliché and declares, "Kurt Cobain left one of the best-looking corpses around," perhaps not the most tasteful epitaph given the singer' s shotgun suicide. Subsequent chapters on Cobain' s early years are bogged down with interviews with just about anyone who ever met him, many with little apparent editing from the original transcripts. Fortunately, the pace picks up as Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl join the band, and the trio rocket to fame. True trades heavily on his role as one of the first music journalists to write about the Seattle scene, as well as his status as Cobain's "drunken English buddy" and an ambiguously close relationship with Courtney Love (he also takes credit for introducing the two to each other). His insider perspective, combined with a tighter control over the interview selection, brings thoughtful insight to Cobain's dramatic crash-and-burn. Yet though largely respectful, True is somewhat ambivalent, questioning the extent of Cobain's talent and openly wondering if Nirvana had any real influence on rock. His opinionated, idiosyncratic take on the band is sure to set tongues wagging and respark the debate over how things went so wrong for Cobain so fast. 32 pages of photos.

March 1, 2007
British rock journalist True ("Hey Ho Let's Go: The Story of the Ramones") was friends with the members of Nirvana during the band's short time in the world spotlight in the early 1990s. Here, he assembles his own recollections, published sources, and hundreds of interviews into a detailed biography that recountsamong instances of drug and domestic abuse, suicide attempts, spirited stage shows, recordings, and business travailshis introducing frontman Kurt Cobain and future wife Courtney Love. When the inevitable contradictions arise, True makes sense of his interviewees' varying versions of the past, often offering up his insider thoughts on the sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll that was Nirvana. Yet despite the largely kiss-and-tell-and-everything-in-between nature of this biography, True manages to analyze successfully the Seattle grunge sound and put Nirvana and other grunge bands into their proper context. Recommended for public libraries to complement Michael Azerrad's "Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana", long the go-to biography of the band featuring interviews with Cobain, and Charles R. Cross's "Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain".James E. Perone, Mount Union Coll., Alliance, OH

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