In the beginning, Usenet groups like alt.conspiracy fanned the flaming. Phone lines crackled with tales of intrigue and paranoia, leading to visions of wild-haired insomniacs typing feverishly in the wee hours, convinced they've discovered the inside track, the long-buried truth: plots and corporate overlords, murder most foul and treachery from the highest quarter. With the click of a mouse, the tap of an enter key, the world can access your labyrinthine speculations and even join in.
Now, the World Wide Web provides the perfect breeding ground for such sites, sprouting breathless tales of machinations like pallid mushrooms multiplying in the dank soil beneath a moss-covered log. No doubt Oliver Stone already knows all about this phenomenon, but with millions of new users logging on in the last few years, spreading trash willy-nilly across the lanes of the so-called Superhighway is making for some mighty messy thoroughfares.
One such cluttered roadway is found in the musings of a private investigator named Tom Grant, who presents mountains of "evidence" claiming that (cue foreboding music, please) Kurt Cobain was murdered. It's a tangled web indeed, this convoluted yarn of police negligence, stonewalling from music industry lawyers, bad behavior from Cobain's widow, Courtney Love and much, much, more.
Naturally, in the style of any good hard-boiled page-turner, all fingers point to the evil woman. Grant claims that Cobain's suicide note was really an I'm-leaving-my-wife-and-the-music-business-forever missive. He says Courtney stood to gain more by Cobain's death than by the divorce Grant speculates was imminent. He whispers of missing credit cards, dramatic discussions of murder-for-hire, tight-lipped cops and cloak-and-dagger shenanigans. Like any decent movie-of-the-week, he leavens it with just enough faintly plausible logic to make for trashy good thrills.
And now, the April issue of High Times magazine has seen fit to be the first national print magazine to provide a forum for Grant's tale of intrigue, blood and insinuation. The cover sports the woeful face of Kurt Cobain, eyes and shirt tinted a fetching green to match the type emblazoned to the side: "Who Killed Kurt?" Inside, a story penned by San Francisco writer Tim Kenneally and High Times music editor Steve Bloom promises that readers will be "shocked" by what people who believe Cobain's death was foul play have to say.
A parade of questionable characters are trotted out, but frankly, the reporting isn't there when it comes to balanced journalism. In an interview about the piece, Bloom himself admitted that "We didn't do an investigation here," when asked why crucial players accused of complicity in this "murder" aren't quoted. "The story is basically uncovering the Kurt Cobain conspiracy underground," he said, somewhat defensively.
Online, Grant posts the following plaintive/vicious missive: "Courtney has something I don't ... immediate access to the media. She's cultivated a host of friendly reporters willing to slant their stories in return for an interview with a controversial figure who obtained celebrity status primarily through the death of her husband." Bitter much, Tom? Guess he had to run right out and get a few of his own friendly reporters. That'll show her.
"We are expecting a response from Courtney Love's lawyers," says Bloom, who admits that his only attempt to interview Love for the High Times piece was regarding a peripheral element to the story (no response was forthcoming). "Other magazines don't want to touch this," he adds. "This story isn't about getting credit, it's about getting the Seattle police to reopen the investigation."
Hmmm. But according to another Web site devoted to the "who killed Kurt" question, Grant admits that a conversation with a Sgt. Cameron of the Seattle Police Department ended with the officer showing Grant the door, remarking, "Nothing you've said convinces me that this is anything but a suicide."
Still, all this breathless speculation does prove one thing convincingly: Some people will do anything to latch onto the spotlight. But it doesn't mean anyone has to look.