Nirvana headlined one of their biggest shows of their career on August 30, 1992, the Reading Festival, so naturally Kurt Cobain was pushed out on stage in a wheelchair while wearing a long blonde frightwig and a hospital gown to play into the rumors he was sickly and creeping towards death.
These were the days when Reading only accommodated about 50,000 fans — today it’s twice that — but all eyes were on the skinny singer who had been in the newspapers for his drug use, his wife’s shockingly rumored dalliances (while pregnant) and the hugely successful grunge band’s precarious future.
After bassist Krist Novoselic said, “this is too painful,” Cobain finally made it to the mic.
The singer-guitarist-songwriter-demigod used the mic stand to pull himself up, and then sang the opening strains of the theme song of the 1979 4x Oscar-nominated
tearjerker The Rose.
The song and the film are loosely based on the tragic tale of Janis Joplin, the wildly talented singer who died in a rundown hotel at 27 years old of a heroin overdose.
read more at: Setlist.fm
