Journals (2002)

Journals is a collection of writings and drawings by American musician Kurt Cobain, who was the lead singer and guitarist of Nirvana. Though the content is undated, it is arranged in approximately chronological order. It was published in hardcover by Riverhead Books in November 2002, and in paperback by Riverhead Books in November 2003. Journals opened at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list (non-fiction). It contains scrawled notes, drafted letters, shopping lists, and drawings by Cobain.

Release

Published in November of 2002, Journals was released one month after the release of Nirvana, the self-titled greatest hits album which features the previously unreleased song, You Know You're Right, the last recorded song of Cobain's band before his suicide in 1994. Billboard thus described the book as a "music driven blockbuster" with a first printing of nearly 375,000 copies.

Letters

Journals contains a number of letters, either early drafts or unsent, that Cobain wrote to friends or peers. Included are friendly letters to Dale Crover of the Melvins, Tobi Vail of Bikini Kill and Eugene Kelly of the Vaselines, a tender letter to his wife, Courtney Love, a letter thanking The Advocate following his interview with the gay and lesbian magazine in early 1992, and even a letter to Simon Fair Timony, the then-nine-year-old stepson of Half Japanese member Jad Fair, asking him to contribute artwork for what would become In Utero. It also includes a letter from Cobain and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic firing then-drummer Dave Foster from the band, and angry letters from Cobain to MTV and Rolling Stone.

Lists

Like many music fans, Cobain often made lists of his favorite bands and albums, several of which are included in Journals. His lists included artists from indie and alternative rock (the Vaselines, Pixies, the Breeders, Sonic Youth, R.E.M., PJ Harvey, Meat Puppets, Pavement); protopunk, punk rock and hardcore (the Stooges, the Velvet Underground, Butthole Surfers, Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Slits, the Saints, Black Flag, Bad Brains, Fear, Minor Threat, the Faith, Rites of Spring, Flipper, Fang); hip-hop (Public Enemy, N.W.A); blues (Lead Belly); and hard rock and metal (Black Sabbath's Master of Reality, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC,). On his "Top 50" albums list, offerings from such obscure artists as the Shaggs, Tales of Terror, Marine Girls, Swans and the Frogs coexist with albums by the Beatles, David Bowie, and Aerosmith. The 1973 Stooges record Raw Power is listed at No. 1 on all of Cobain's "favorite album" lists. He also noted an interest in grunge and the Seattle Sound (Melvins, Green River, Mudhoney, Screaming Trees, early Soundgarden).

Nirvana-related writings

Contained in Journals is an assortment of directly Nirvana-related material, including embryonic lyric drafts, early album tracklists, and even a set of unused liner notes Cobain had apparently written for In Utero in 1993. The lyric sheets are especially revealing, showing that some songs, including the band's biggest hit "Smells Like Teen Spirit", underwent major revisions before being recorded for release, while others, such as "Come as You Are", were changed very little, at least from the drafts included. The tracklists are also of interest, revealing, for example, that Cobain had intended to release "girl" and "boy" sides of Nirvana's breakthrough album Nevermind, with songs such as "In Bloom" and "Lithium" on the girl side, and songs like "Sliver" and "Polly" on the boy side.

Drawings

Journals contains a number of Cobain's rough sketches and drawings, some of which are light and humorous, such as his drawing of "Eddie", the Iron Maiden mascot, his sketch of the band as choirboys on a hypothetical Nirvana album cover, and his drawing of "Elvis Cooper", in which Elvis Presley and Alice Cooper are combined into a single entity, but many of which are darker or more violent. Included in the latter are his drawings of a sniper shooting members of the swastika-toting Ku Klux Klan from a rooftop (with swastikas drawn backwards), his drawing of a soldier with a football helmet hanging from a noose, and a sketch of his own emaciated body, as well as a comic strip called "Mr. Moustache", in which an unborn child kicks through its mother's belly to kill its macho father, which arguably influenced the song of the same title off of Nirvana's first album, Bleach. The strip was first published in Michael Azerrad's 1993 Nirvana biography, Come as You Are. Journals also contains a number of drawings of images which would later become a familiar part of Nirvana lore, such as Dante's Vestibule of Hell (which appeared on a Nirvana t-shirt), a skinny man on a cross (which appeared in the "Heart-Shaped Box" music video), and male seahorses giving birth (which appeared on the cover of the "All Apologies"/ "Rape Me" single).