Nirvana…. The word to us just means one of the biggest bands in the world with a look and sound that came to define music in the decade. But to her, it means a lot more than that. The ‘her’ here is Mary Lou Lord.
She does not have closure after 25 years of Cobain’s death and leaving her with a million questions unanswered. The late Kurt Cobain took his own life, at 27, on April 5, 1994. All we know is that Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain had a thing.
But what we do not know isabout the story behind Cobain and Mary Lord. Lord finally reveals her story that started even before Nirvana attains international fame. The 26-year-old knew Nirvana because her radio DJ friend had given her a copy of their demo tape that included songs from “Nevermind” before it was released.
She loved it and had spent the whole summer listening to it in her Walkman. Something about their sound kept pulling her in, she said, like a magnet. The first time she saw the band was when the bouncer at the Rat decided to not let them in. However, some persuasion from her side leads to him eventually letting them in.
After they talked Lord gave Cobain a ride to the band’s stay Howard Johnson where they spent the entire night talking and had a nice time watching the sunrise the next day. They discovered that both of them had an affinity to under-appreciated bands and shared the same taste in music.
Their band, Nirvana received appreciations and applause from all around the world after theirsong streaming on MTV for the first time where Lord shared their victorious ecstasy. Then, the two parted ways. Lord headed back to Boston, and Nirvana continued on to perform thatnight in Chicago.
It was where Cobain’s romance with Courtney Love would begin. The dispute between Love and Lord dominated the media’s coverage on Lord’s story, but the account of Lord’s relationship with Cobain has remained a relatively unknown chapter in the public picture of Cobain’s story.
When Cobain took his own life in Seattle, Lord felt as though she had lost him for the second time. She mourned his loss along with shellshocked fans and friends there. Lord says she doesn’t remember Cobain as a rock star, because he wasn’t one when she met him. She remembers him as a “good kid” who loved music, but one who was “born with a certain kind of loneliness.”