--Kurt Cobain, "School"
Richard Lee from the monologue portion of thea product of Mr. Lee's Remington Remette
I suppose in very many ways it is an appropriate punchline to the lengthy saga of the aftermath of the murder of Kurt Cobain that as the story has now gotten out further, in achingly slow fashion, that the credit for the discovery of the true nature of the unfortunate end of the leader of Nirvana is going to a resident of Los Angeles, a former LA cop, no less.
I am writing these comments on the evening of October 13, 1995, a date which marks now a full 18 months since my first broadcast on the Cobain matter on Seattle's public-access television channel 29, on April 13, l994, entitled, "Was Kurt Cobain Murdered?" This was a mere 5 days after the discovery of Cobain's body in the garage of his Seattle home. This first program, which was based on the initial signifigant evidence of violent death by means other than suicide in Cobain's case, has been followed by 78 weeks of ongoing, new, hour-long programs, which are now titled, with deliberate certainty, "Kurt Cobain Was Murdered".
The only coverage in the mainstream Seattle print media, to my knowledge, on any theory of Cobain being the victim of murder was a December 14, 1994 story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, based on a wire service story,that a private detective in Los Angeles, Tom Grant, had been featured on the syndicated Gil Gross radio program, and was forwarding what he claimed to be his theory that Cobain had been the victim of murder.
Local television news programs were eager to report this startling new revelation as they pulled it off the wire, in so doing fully ignoring the fact that I had been very publicly delving into this material for 8 full months, each and every week, on the public-access TV channel that reaches more than 350,000 households in King County (which includes Seattle), virtually all homes that are connected to cable television.
The only times I have spoken with Mr. Tom Grant were on two occasions that he called me a month or so prior to his going on the Gil Gross show in December. To be frank, there was immediately something I didn't like much about Mr. Grant, basically that he seemed to have the policeman's habit of changing details in the description of events he was relating to you within the course of a conversation, and acting as if you weren't too intelligent or concerned about his discrepancies. I also got the extremely strong impression that he knew virtually nothing about nothing, and was additionally difficult to deal with as he conveyed a certain feigned befuddlement, which further consideration of his abilities might convince one was not so feigned after all. My subsequent review of tapes of radio interviews that he has done, and especially of the the Internet postings, leads me to believe that his habit of relating what he knows, or claims to know, in a very irregular way undermines the degree of credibility of what he may genuinely know as the private investigator hired by Courtney Love for an initial period of a few days in April of l994, to make some sort of search for her missing husband Kurt Cobain.
Today a viewer of my television program called me on the phone and said I should run out and get a copy of the November issue of the British rock magazine Vox, which is featuring a lengthy story they've titled, "Was Kurt Murdered?" and "Who Killed Kurt Cobain?"
The Vox story, as you may have guessed, does not mention my work or my television program, and while Mr. Grant is the target of some rather sophomoric skepticism throughout the this story as a "conspiracy theorist in a land where death sells and sells," he is also elevated in very explicit language to the leadership position as an analyst and investigator of the Cobain case, i.e., "IF TOM GRANT'S THEORY (their capital emphasis) were to prove true, he would be at the centre of the biggest story in the rock world..."
Pardon my correcting you so absolutely, Vox (and others who have described the situation in these terms), but Tom Grant is not the originator, nor is he by any standard the best developer, of the "Cobain was murdered" theory or investigation. There can be no mistaking or denying the fact that I have revealed and reported this story each week on my television program, covering much of the material to which Mr. Grant refers rather casually, but in great depth, (up to and including the suspicions about the role of the male nanny), for a term of 8 months, much of the time Mr. Grant himself admits he was receiving money from Courtney Love to perform what he describes as rather inconsequential detective work.
Presumably from the remote location of Los Angeles all of this work that Mr. Grant says that he is doing on the case largely consists of trying to gain publicity for the idea that he developed the theory and the investigation on the Cobain murder. Here in Seattle, I have been diligently broadcasting an hour-long exploration of this case for public examination each and every week, as well as successfully developing new information in the case. I receive no compensation whatever for the television program, so that its ongoing production each week is quite a task indeed. (My present plans are to press forward and complete at least l00 of these programs). I have, of course, been at the significant disadvantage of not having any Courtney Love seed-money to get me started on this investigation. (Ms. Love, by the way, has written to call me "obsessed," saying little else).
My efforts to achieve national recognition for this important story have been difficult, to say the least. If you've read in the British rock press that Mr. Grant's allegations have created a huge stir here in the U.S., believe me, this is not the case. Mr. Grant was the subject of one story in the Star tabloid (entitled, ironically, "Kurt Cobain Was Murdered") which they didn't even promote on their page one, and a story was built on his Gil Gross interview on one of the better "tabloid TV" national programs (American Journal) and even MTV News did a brief spot with news jockey Kurt Loder actually enunciating the essence of the "Kurt Cobain didn't do it" theory, but it is significant for those of you outside the U.S. to know that Grant has gone nowhere since his first splash in forwarding this story with the mainstream American media.
Appropriate commentary has been provided frequently in my monologues on the TV program concerning the absence of attention to the Cobain homicide in this, the year of shameless and shameful rampant O.J.-mania. As much as I've focused on the rather sinister nature of the "gatekeeper" function of the tending-toward-monolithic major media here (that's a word, "gatekeeper," which Peter Jennings used to describe the primary function of media news-giants when he visited Seattle about 6 weeks after the Gil Gross wire story) the American media ignoring Tom Grant's claims are not best described in terms of big media conspiracy, snobbery, or any other pejorative. Those of you who have read his files on the Internet have probably noticed that while the whole of the theory is highly interesting (yes, I take a bow), Mr. Grant is not so compelling. His turgid writing style (long-winded though it may be) and what looks a whole lot like a propensity to make claims he can't ever possibly back up (like Courtney Love's attorney ratting her out to him a few days after Cobain's body was found, saying, yep, she probably whacked the poor boy), make for a story which in style, if not in substance, is beneath the standards of what is usually practiced by the tab-TV shows (who, despite their frequently awful exploitation of the O.J. Simpson drama, did actually do some respectable reporting on the Simpson matter, when viewed in the narrow terms of traditional city-news journalism).
For all of my efforts, I have been greeted by a complete blackout of all coverage by mainstream media (a phenomenon which I have frequently described as being the result of sinister forces, an analysis I do not, of course, disown here), and I must say that for what should be all of my good standing here in Seattle as a responsible journalist acting in the public interest, the ignoring of my work (and the brief attention given here to Grant) can only be described in terms of a scandal in itself. What would be the bluntest way of stating this, just so no one misunderstands my general theory on how this all could have happened? How's this--the gaggle of reporters who were at the scene of Cobain's body's discovery on the morning of April 8, l994 saw some mighty strange things as witnesses to a shotgun suicide, like no blood at the scene of the crime, and said nothing. As for expecting the truth from the local coppers, just you nevermind that. Once again I find myself referring to the famous Polanski film for an apt explanation that you may be able to understand. "It's Chinatown, Jake." Yes, and Seattle too.
A few pieces of inky coverage have helped to punctuate the vast stretch of time when I began on this project, visiting the Cobain home site on that most infamous day. A rather amusing exception to the blackout was an article in the international punk music magazine Maximumrocknroll last summer (actually post-dated as the October, 1994 issue), which was the first journal with a regular publication schedule (meaning other than "fanzines") to do a Kurt Was Murdered story, which was written by Seattlite John Nero based on an interview he did with me, which he subsequently published at great length last summer in his fanzine publication Lumber. The very first fanzine mag to get a "Was Kurt Cobain Murdered?" story out, based on my work, was the Seattle 'zine Feminist Baseball the publisher of which is a guy who actually refused to accept any phone call from me subsequent to this publication--I guess the oft-cited "Seattle rock community" has its ways of applying a little pressure, putting a bit of stick about.
The indifferent role of the British rock press has been hard to understand
in all of this--I had held out hope for a long time that their interest
was always soon to be expressed.
The rock mags and papers in England have always been hungry for any scrap
of news on Cobain and Nirvana (and still very much are), so I could not
conceive of their failure to contact me as anything but deliberate.
Apparently, it's "Chinatown" over there too, in terms of the rock press
knowing that the way to get by in the nasty and mean world of corporate
rock is to suck up to the living and power-wielding players in the Nirvana
drama and let Kurt's ghost (especially as it functions through my
television program), fend for itself. One exception to this blackout on my
work by the British was the treatment I received in the January 28, 1995
color-slick mag Kerrang!, which did a cover story called "Grunge
Ain't Dead:Kurt-Was It Murder? Shocking Seattle Report!" Though the
Kerrang story did focus on Tom Grant as the star of the wire story,
it also had a short but impressively accurate sidebar article titled, "A
Conspiracy!...So Says a Weekly Seattle TV Show Called 'Kurt Cobain Was
Murdered'!". While Kerrang! may have a very limited circulation in
the U.S., this is not the case in England, and so my perception that I was
being ignored by the Brits was confirmed, as no inquiries from the happy
breed followed. What's the matter, I have been forced to wonder--does no
one watch Rumpole over there?
In April, I posed for a photograph in
the park next to Cobain's house for a photographer for NME at the
commemoration on April 8, and did an interview with one of their stringer
reporters, to whom I provided a copy and a lengthy written explanation of
the semi-famous "death threat" letter I received from Seattle Police
Department personnel, in which she expressed strong interest. Once again,
no follow-up occurred, and NME didn't even run a piece on the
commemoration event.