BOOKS
THERE is a touching moment towards the end of Kathleen Hanna’s Rebel Girl, when her band Bikini Kill is persuaded by The Raincoats to reunite and play with them in New York in 2017. Ana da Silva tells Hanna that The Raincoats got back together because of Kurt Cobain. Hanna suggests she thank Tobi Vail of Bikini Kill, because it was Vail who turned Cobain on to the Raincoats. “So, in a roundabout way,” Hanna writes, “Tobi was responsible for the Raincoats reunion, and they were responsible for ours.”
That’s not the only mention of Cobain in Hanna’s story. He appears first as a friend, later as a warning symbol of the corrupting power of success. There’s an innocent charm to the early tales. Here is Kurt listening to The Vaselines on repeat, studying songs “like they were medical journals and he was a doctor”. Now we are smoking pot while his pet turtle scuttles across the floor. Here is Kurt spraying “God is Gay” on the wall of a pro-life ‘Pregnancy Help’ building. And now, during a wrecking spree in Cobain’s room, Hanna writes “Kurt smells like teen spirit” on the wall.