FEATURE:
Endless, Nameless
IMAGE CREDIT: Cassie Workman/Brett Boardman
Cassie Workman’s Aberdeen, and the Influence Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain Had on the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ Community
__________
I am just down the road…
PHOTO CREDIT: Jake Bush
right now from where a must-see play, Aberdeen, is running. It is open until next Saturday (16th December). Staged on the Soho Theatre on Dean Street, there are a couple of reasons why I wanted to spotlight this play. Tickets are still available for the remaining dates. I am going to come to interviews with the late great Kurt Cobain. Where he spoke about L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ rights. Where he gave his voice and support to the community. I understand that, in the 1990s, the term would most likely have been ’L.G.B.T.’ - but, because of Aberdeen as its significance on its author and performer, Cassie Workman, it is important to be as inclusive as possible. Workman is an Australian-born comic, actor and writer who came out as transgender in 2017 and began transitioning. You can find more out about her here. Kurt Cobain was born in Aberdeen, Washington (hence the play’s title), in 1967. Next year marks thirty years since Cobain took his own life. In many ways, Aberdeen seems timely and timeless. Remembering the legacy and importance of Cobain in terms of his voice for the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. How he was this advocate and refreshingly tolerant, embracing, accepting and kind-hearted male figure in a Rock and Grunge scene where one would not expect that. Maybe that is stereotyping. Even so, just look at a lot of the toxicity that has blighted these scenes for decades. How male bands in the mainstream are problematic and bigoted. Cobain was an idol who was not ego-driven and concerned with controversy and himself. He was troubled by demons and depression, though he was this incredibly powerful and influential songwriter and lead who inspired a generation.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kurt Cobain/PHOTO CREDIT: Koh Hasebe/Shinko Music/Getty Images
I am going to come to some archive relating to Kurt Cobain. Importantly, NME posted about Aberdeen. Sourcing words from Cassie Workman. I think the play (or maybe more a performance piece or monologue) will make people think more deeply about Kurt Cobain as an advocate. Almost rebellious when you look at the attitudes of his male peers:
“The creator of a new play about Kurt Cobain has explained how the Nirvana frontman “made a huge difference to the LGBTQ+ community”, and how her work is a reflection on “depression, alienation and detachment”.
Aberdeen opened at London’s Soho Theatre this week, receiving its press night last night (Thursday December 7) after receiving critical acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe. Penned and acted out by writer and comedian Cassie Workman, the one-woman poetry play is a homage to Cobain as she “traverses time and space in a bid to save the life of her hero, in his US hometown of Aberdeen, Washington”.
“I’m transgender, and transgender people go through a second puberty,” Workman told NME. “During that time, you look back on your first adolescence and the things that were important when you reassess them from an adult perspective. One of those things was Nirvana. Looking back as an adult on Kurt Cobain and his life and how deeply that affected everyone in my generation, I thought it was really interesting grounds for a story. I became obsessed with it.
She continued: “I started writing, then I decided to go to Washington to research where he lived and see the places where he hung out and where he died. While I was there, standing under the Young Street Bridge, I had this epiphany that I should turn it into a poem. The entire show is in rhyming couplets.”
Cobain and Nirvana were renowned advocates for gay rights and spoke out against homophobia during a time that was rife with prejudice off the back of the AIDs epidemic of the ’80s. In the liner notes for the 1992 B-sides compilation album ‘Incesticide’, Cobain wrote: “If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different colour, or women, please do this one favour for us: leave us the fuck alone! Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records”.
Workman explained how moves like this meant a lot to her throughout her life.
“It was very hard to be queer back in the early to mid ‘90s, or even just being an ally would get you a lot of negative attention,” she said. “He definitely made a huge difference to how the LGBTQ+ community was perceived. The coolest person in the world was saying, ‘This is OK’ – and that really means something. As a queer icon, he’s incredible. He deserves all the credit that he gets and he was certainly a big influence on me.”
Speaking of how the genesis of the play came to be, Workman explained how she travelled to Aberdeen and discovered Washington to be “a really magical and spiritual place”.
I am keen to come to some reviews that have come in for Aberdeen. It has scooped a lot of acclaim. Critics left teary and moved by the words of Cassie Workman. A play that will definitely incentivise and compel others to reframe a musician who has had an impact on a community or movement we might not know about. Maybe people do know about Kurt Cobain’s advocacy though, when articles are published about him, it is about Nirvana and their music. The Soho Theatre gives us more insight about Aberdeen. It has got some kudos from, among others, Phoebe Waller-Bridge:
“In 1994 the world lost one of its most beloved musicians; grunge icon, Kurt Cobain. Part eulogy, part fantasy, part biography, Aberdeen, is an in-the-round conversation with Kurt, about life and death, taking place across Washington, including his hometown, of Aberdeen. Traverse time and space as multi award-winning comedian and storyteller Cassie Workman races in a desperate bid to save the life of her hero, by attempting to manipulate time itself.
Aberdeen is an epic, about loss, music, and memory; an extraordinarily heartfelt love poem, to the voice of a generation”.
“I was captivated from start to finish... Cassie is a phenomenal storyteller. I could practically feel the rain that she conjured. We were lulled by the elegance of her writing and wit into an unforgettable story of raw pain, fury and fragility. It is a howl of a poem. I was floored'
Phoebe Waller-Bridge”
IN THIS PHOTO: Phoebe Waller-Bridge/PHOTO CREDIT: Dylan Coulter/The Guardian
There have been some amazing reviews for Aberdeen. The Play Is the Thing UK provided their take on an amazing and deeply moving play that is both obviously personal – yet it is something that will speak for so many people. It will resonate with so many people:
“Fresh from a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe, Cassie Workman brings her lyrical 55-minute poem to the intimate upstairs space at the Soho Theatre. A spoken-word performance of uncommon intensity, it tells the fictional and fantastical story of the narrator traveling back in time to try to save Kurt Cobain from committing suicide. It touches on additional, more universal themes and issues however, so it isn’t just for the Kurt Cobain fans to enjoy.
This is a stark departure from Workman’s normal stand-up comedy performances, and is clearly deeply personal. Within this framework of the play, Cassie draws parallels between her life in the titular Aberdeen, and Cobain’s in Seattle. An absorbing tour of Cobain’s iconic life and tragic death commences. The show is moving and at times witty, and with some theatrical flourishes in such a involving the lighting that are a surprise in such a small venue. The rhymes and iambic pentameter of the text’s rhythm really work to showcase the poetry in the piece. Some of the more intense descriptive passages are hard to watch, especially when they describe Kurt’s suicide and death.
Ending with a good portion of the audience wiping a tear away, this is a lovely and worthwhile production dealing with difficult yet important topics. Hopefully it is a show which has a strong future and long life ahead of it”.
Prior to coming to some Kurt Cobain press and interviews, I want to bring in this interview. Yet more love and respect for a play that must have been cathartic and challenging to write. Having transferred from Edinburgh’s Fringe, I wonder whether there will be a short film or further adaptation of Aberdeen. I can see it working as a short film. Maybe backed by Nirvana songs or archived words from Cobain. I am sure that his widow, Courtney Love, would definitely approve:
“Multi-award-winning comedian and storyteller Cassie Workman takes the audience on a poetic journey through the space time continuum on a mission to save Nirvana’s former frontman and member of the ‘27 Club’, Kurt Cobain, from himself in Aberdeen.
Workman is an accomplished storyteller and spoken word artist, wheeling the audience away from the blank space of the undecorated set to the grim, rain-drenched Aberdeen, Washington - childhood home of Cobain.
Workman’s poetry is hauntingly and desolately beautiful, with creeping echoes of the master of American horror, Edgar Allan Poe. Workman matches the isolation of young Cobain with the bereavement and anger of the generation of lost souls he left behind. This elegiac piece moves from powerfully evocative scene-scaping to angry dialogue between the poet and her hero in an attempt to understand what drives people to take their own lives.
Like many myths and legends, Aberdeen proves that fate is immutable, and the show is shadowed with the dreadful inevitability of Cobain’s demise, the ‘patron saint of suicide’, whose life and legacy have been indelibly marked by his death. Workman poses questions around the responsibility of artists towards their fans, the painful irony of inspiring figures and voices of their generation losing their own voice and will to live.
Workman’s verse is dense, intense and unrelenting. If you don’t know anything about Kurt Cobain, that won’t stop you appreciating this heartbreaking tribute to a broken hero.
Engaging, beautiful and poignant – a staggering hour of spoken word”.
Back in 2019, Washington Post ran a feature about how Kurt Cobain was a gay rights hero. Writer Aaron Hamburger described how, as a teen in Midwestern America, being closeted and maybe not having anyone who was life-changing and provided strength; Cobain’s advocacy and openness was revelatory and possibly life-saving:
“Though Cobain might not be the first name you think of when it comes to gay rights, his band was never shy about its politics, especially where LGBTQ issues were concerned. In 1992, Nirvana played a “No on #9” benefit concert and issued a public statement opposing Measure 9, a statewide anti-gay citizen ballot initiative in Oregon that would have required “all governments” in the state to treat homosexuality as “abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse.” And in the liner notes of their album “Incesticide,” released that December, they warned: “If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us — leave us the f--- alone! Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.” The liner notes to their next album, “In Utero,” echoed that admonition: “If you’re a sexist, racist, homophobe or basically an a--hole, don’t buy this CD. I don’t care if you like me, I hate you.”
Cobain himself repeatedly and publicly affirmed his pro-gay stance. In a 1993 interview with the Advocate, which I remember reading breathlessly in a Borders bookstore with the cover folded over so no one could tell what I was holding, Cobain called himself “gay in spirit” and revealed that as a teenager, he often questioned his sexuality and sprayed “God is gay” graffiti in the small town of Aberdeen, Wash., where he grew up. (The line “God is gay” later popped up in the Nirvana song “Stay Away.”) During the end credits of a “Saturday Night Live” episode in 1992, he made out with bandmate Krist Novoselic. And in 1993, Cobain appeared on the cover of the music magazine the Face wearing a dainty flower print dress.
All this played out in the early ’90s, when AIDS jokes and the word “fag” were common, ideas about allowing gays to openly serve in the military were considered radical, and politicians were waging culture wars over “family values.” Sure, there were rumors about the complicated sexuality of R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, but Nirvana’s pro-gay gestures and its iconoclastic sound were remarkable for any popular music act. Guitar-smashing rock bands on MTV and mainstream music stations (Warrant, Poison) were generally uber-macho hair-metal acts, and even Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould was in the closet at the time — not to mention wholly off my radar. The idea that you could make music that was aggressive, hard and loud and be an ally to the gay community seemed revolutionary, especially for me, a closeted prep school graduate from Detroit’s suburbs.
By the time Cobain killed himself at the end of my junior year of college, I was coming out to my friends and family. Having found my own confidence in his unapologetic approach to life, I didn’t fully appreciate just how insecure Cobain was until more than 20 years later, while researching a novel that pays tribute to his influence. The rock star I idolized was just one aspect of a real human being who created great art but also suffered great pain, both physical and emotional. And yet, during his relatively short life and career, he spoke with a clarity that inspired me to do the same, creating a kind of role model for me to follow”.
Before wrapping up, in 2019 (twenty-five years after Kurt Cobain’s death), Advocate revisited their 1993 interview with Cobain. With In Utero, Nirvana’s final album, a darker and rawer alternative to 1991’s Nevermind, it was towards the end of the band’s time together. A year before Cobain’s suicide, it is fascinating reading this interview:
“The world still dearly misses Kurt Cobain, the brilliant, genre-smashing guitarist and lead singer of Nirvana. Today marks a quarter-century since he died by suicide, haunted by depression, drug addiction, stomach pain, and an aversion to the fame machine. His legacy endures -- not just for the brilliance of Bleach, Nevermind, and In Utero, but for the way he changed the definition of "rock star."
Before Nirvana hit it big with their single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in 1991, the male rock star was epitomized by Guns N' Roses' Axl Rose and other hair-band lead singers. These men were proudly sexist and homophobic (Skid Row's Sebastian Bach famously wore a T-shirt that read, "AIDS Kills Fags Dead").
Cobain, on the other hand, was sensitive and effeminate -- someone who regularly spoke out for minorities and called out racism, misogyny, and homophobia. While many remember Cobain and his Nirvana bandmates wearing dresses and kissing in videos and live performances, virtually forgotten is the fact that Nirvana performed at a gay rights benefit in Oregon in 1992.
While promoting Nirvana's late-1992 compilation album Incesticide -- which included the following statement in its liner notes, "If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us: leave us the fuck alone! Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records" -- Cobain spoke to The Advocate, granting the LGBTQ publication his only interview at that precarious time.
At the time, Cobain and wife Courtney Love were still reeling from a Vanity Fair article from the previous year, where the writer described the two as heroin addicts and Love as using the drug while pregnant with their daughter.
In the Advocate article, Cobain displayed comfort in speaking with an LGBTQ publication and a familiarity with gay culture, often using terms like "homophobia" and "misogyny," appreciating the description of Love as a "fag hag," and recalling the time he saw the Village People in concert.
Here are some of the choicest quotes from the interview with journalist Kevin Allman.
The Advocate: I read the liner notes you wrote on Incesticide. I've never seen somebody on a major label say, "If you're a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, we don't want you to buy our records."
Kurt Cobain: That's been the biggest problem that I've had being in this band. I know there are those people out in the audience, and there's not much I can do about it. I can talk about those issues in interviews -- I think it's pretty obvious that we're against the homophobes and the sexists and the racists, but when "Teen Spirit" first came out, mainstream audiences were under the assumption that we were just like Guns N' Roses.
These were his words: "You shut your bitch up, or I'm taking you down to the pavement." [Laughs] Everyone around us just burst out into tears of laughter. She wasn't even saying anything mean, you know? So I turned to Courtney and said, "Shut up, bitch!" And everyone laughed and he left. So I guess I did what he wanted me to do --be a man. [Laughs]
Does he remind you of guys you went to high school with?
Absolutely. Really confused, fucked-up guys. There's not much hope for them.
When he was singing about "immigrants and faggots," people were excusing it by saying, "Well, he's from Indiana --"
Oh, well, that's OK then. [Laughs] Insane. Later, after we played our show and were walking back to our trailer, the Guns N' Roses entourage came walking toward us. They have at least 50 bodyguards apiece: huge, gigantic, brain-dead oafs ready to kill for Axl at all times. [Laughs] They didn't see me, but they surrounded Chris, and Duff [McKagan of Guns N' Roses] wanted to beat Chris up, and the bodyguards started pushing Chris around. He finally escaped, but throughout the rest of the evening, there was a big threat of either Guns N' Roses themselves or their goons beating us up. We had to hide out.
Well, when we played that No on 9 benefit in Portland, I said something about Guns N' Roses. Nothing nasty -- I think I said, "And now, for our next song, 'Sweet Child o' Mine.'" But some kid jumped onstage and said, "Hey, man, Guns N' Roses plays awesome music, and Nirvana plays awesome music. Let's just get along and work things out, man!"
And I just couldn't help but say, "No, kid, you're really wrong. Those people are total sexist jerks, and the reason we're playing this show is to fight homophobia in a real small way. The guy is a fucking sexist and a racist and a homophobe, and you can't be on his side and be on our side. I"m sorry that I have to divide this up like this, but it's something you can't ignore. And besides they can't write good music." [Laughs]
You know, you were probably taking money from people who were voting yes on 9 [an antigay ballot measure] -- but they really wanted to see Nirvana.
[Laughs] Right! Chris went to a Guns N' Roses concert when they played here with Metallica a couple of months ago, and he went backstage, and there were these two bimbo girls who looked like they walked out of a Warrant video. They were sitting on the couch in hopes of sucking Axl's dick or something, and one of them said, "Chris, we saw you at that No on 9 benefit! We're voting yes on 9! You kissed Kurt on the lips! That was disgusting!" [Laughs] To know that we affect people like that -- it's kind of funny. The sad thing is that there's no penetrating them. After all that, after all the things those girls had seen us do, that was the one thing that sticks in their minds.
You used to push people's buttons like that in high school, didn't you?
Oh, absolutely. I used to pretend I was gay just to fuck with people. I've had the reputation of being a homosexual every day since I was 14. It was really cool, because I found a couple of gay friends in Aberdeen [Wash.] --which is almost impossible. How I could ever come across a gay person in Aberdeen is amazing! But I had some really good friends that way. I got beat up a lot, of course, because of my association with them.
People just thought I was weird at first, just some fucked-up kid. But once I got the gay tag, it gave me the freedom to be able to be a freak and let people know that they should just stay away from me. Instead of having to explain to someone that they should just stay the fuck away from me-I'm gay, so I can't even be touched. It made for quite a few scary experiences in alleys walking home from school, though.
You actually got beat up?
Oh, yeah. Quite a few times.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kurt Cobain’s mugshot in 1986 when he was arrested for spraying the words ‘GOD IS GAY’ on trucks
And you used to spray-paint GOD IS GAY on people's trucks?
That was a lot of fun. The funniest thing about that was not actually the act but the next morning. I'd get up early in the morning to walk through the neighborhood that I'd terrorized to see the aftermath. That was the worst thing I could have spray-painted on their cars. Nothing else would have been more effective.
Because people thought you were gay and you had gay friends, did you ever wonder if you might be gay?
Yeah, absolutely. See I've always wanted male friends that I could be real intimate with and talk about important things with and be as affectionate with that person as I would be with a girl. Throughout my life, I've always been really close with girls and made friends with girls. And I've always been a really sickly, feminine person anyhow, so I thought I was gay for a while because I didn't find any of the girls in my high school attractive at all. They had really awful haircuts and fucked-up attitudes. So I thought I would try to be gay for a while, but I'm just more sexually attracted to women. But I'm really glad that I found a few gay friends, because it totally saved me from becoming a monk or something.
I mean, I'm definitely gay in spirit, and I probably could be bisexual. But I'm married, and I'm more attracted to Courtney than I ever have been toward a person, so there's no point in trying to sow my oats at this point. [Laughs] If I wouldn't have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual lifestyle. But I just find her totally attractive in all ways”.
That is maybe a bit more non-personal context to Kurt Cobain and his influence on the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. It is important that a play/piece like Aberdeen exists. The fact is its voice, Cassie Workman, has been deeply affected and moved by Cobain and his advocacy. How Cobain felt he could have been bisexual. Someone who deeply respected women and was always supportive and kind. A spirit and soul whose importance and legacy extends way beyond the music, the fact that we have plays and creative projects with Kurt Cobain at heart shows just what a cultural icon he is. I would urge anyone near Soho to go and see Aberdeen. I think that it will have life beyond the stage. It runs for another week. The reviews have been really positive. A project definitely important to Cassie Workman, I was moved to write about it. As I say, I am around the corner from Soho Theatre. I am about to walk past it, so I will see the poster and get a sense of how people will feel waiting to see the play. Spotlighting Aberdeen has given me a deeper appreciation of Nirvana. Even in 1992, they were pushing back against homophobia. There was this hugely accepting nature about the band. A message that they would not tolerate any form of discrimination based on sexuality. That extended to women and misogyny that was rampant through music when they were coming through and famous. The band, as they have sung on record and preached in their interviews, urged all their fans to..
COME as you are.