I recently got the book "Sing Backwards and Weep" by the late Mark Lanegan, which is one of the better musician's biographies I have read. Lanegan was perhaps best known as the singer for the Screaming Trees and also Queens of the Stoneage [for a time]. As with just about any media I consume these days, whether it is a book, a film, a series, music, or an advertisement - I assume that it is all filled with lies, half truths, propaganda, or has some sort of social/political angle. While approaching Lanegan's book from this perspective, I discovered some information concerning Kurt Cobain that I thought was worth looking into further.
If you've ever seen the film "Kurt and Courtney," the film "Soaked in Bleach," or if you've read any books on the subject of Kurt's death - you are no doubt familiar with Tom Grant, the private investigator hired by Courtney Love to "find Kurt" when he "went missing" around April fool's day, 1994. As the story goes, Kurt was urged/forced into a Southern California based rehab facility for reasons I will not elaborate upon here. He arrived on March 30 and apparently snuck out the very next evening, April 1st. He caught a late plane to Seattle and one of the first people he called when he arrived home was Mark Lanegan. At least, that's according to his book.
“One day in early April of ’94…my phone rang…I let the answering machine pick it up and waited to see if whoever called would leave a message. “Hey man, it’s Kurt. I’m back in town. What are you doing?” Though I loved Kurt, I knew I wasn’t calling him back today…He called twice more over the next couple hours…I never picked up…Late in the afternoon, I got a call from the entertainment lawyer I shared with Kurt, Rosemary Carroll…”Mark, if you know where Kurt is, you need to tell me now…He checked himself out of rehab yesterday, flew back to Seattle today, and now nobody can get in touch with him.”…he’d left rehab and come home the same day he called me….”
Lanegan's book is heartbreaking in it's detail, as he recounts dark "adventures" in the life of a rock-star junkie and his "friends" - among them Layne Staley, Dylan Carlson, and Kurt Cobain. But there was one particular story that just seemed a bit too difficult to believe or ignore.
“The next day someone in the Nirvana camp asked if I would go with Dylan to some Capital Hill dope houses to see if Kurt was hanging out at any of them…Tom Grant picked us up...we went from place to place, buying drugs and looking for Kurt to no avail…Grant drove us to Kurt’s house near lake Washington. We went from room to room calling his name…I went outside to smoke a cigarette and stood at the bottom of a flight of stairs that led to a small room above his garage...I thought about going up and taking a look. Just then Dylan and Grant walked out, ready to leave…A day or 2 later, Rosemary called me…Kurt’s body had been found…A medical examiner judged his death to have taken place the same day we were at the house looking for him.“
Although I have never taken a deep dive into the Cobain death story, I recalled very clearly the part about Dylan Carlson and Tom Grant searching for Kurt in his Lake Washington home in the black of night, rain pouring miserably outside. It stood out distinctly that it was only the 2 of them, and yet Mark Lanegan has placed himself in that room when he retells the story in his book. I had to get to the bottom of this, so I contacted Tom Grant through his website cobaincase.com. Here are some exerpts from the interview I conducted with him recently, which he has given me permission to quote.
Tom Grant Interview DECEMBER, 2022
JG: I read this book by Mark Lanegan, you recall Mark Lanegan?
TG: Yeah. Mmhmm.
JG: Have you read his memoir that he put out?
TG: I haven’t read it but people have emailed me about things that he said..like he said that he was with us at the main house in Washington and that he stood by the greenhouse smoking a cigarette while we were searching the house [laughs]…First of all he was not there at the house. The only time we were with Mark Lanegan was…we picked him up and he drove around with us because he knew some of the spots too that Kurt would hang out at and…we only had him in the car for, I don’t know 2 or 3 hours at the very most DURING THE DAYTIME. We never, I never went to the house during the daytime…The main house, Lake Washington house during the daytime until we heard on the radio that a body was found at the Lake Washington house…When we showed up to the house that Friday Morning, that was the first time I went to the house during the DAYTIME. The other 2 times that Dylan and I had been there were in the middle of the night…both times were late at night in the dark with heavy rain. Both nights, was raining very heavy. ..there’s no way Mark Lanegan could have been standing out by the greenhouse smoking a cigarette it was raining too hard [chuckles] I don’t know he coulda just made it up for some reason…but I think more than likely…when we look back on things that happened decades ago it’s not uncommon for things to creep in, maybe a dream or something that he had about that incident…somehow he worked that dream into reality? Got it confused with what really happened or something.
JG: He said “we went from room to room calling his name”
TG: [laughing out loud] No! He was never in that house that was ONLY Dylan and I inside that house.
Just based on what you’ve told me that he said, the fact that he said he “searched the house with us”[laughs] that alone…if somebody’s gonna say something like that whether they are doing it deliberately or because their memory is off, that just tells me right there you…don’t take anything else he says as accurate or true…Courtney tells the truth once in a while. But she’s a pathological liar. So anything she says you have to assume it may or it may not be true. Just like anything that Mark Lanegan is writing now. Based on what you said that he said that I know for a FACT not to be true…then you have to read everything he says as, “well maybe that’s true maybe that’s not true.”
JG: And then he said a day or 2 later Rosemary Carroll called him and said Kurt’s body was found and that a medical examiner judged his death to have taken place the same day we were at the house looking for him.
TG: [laughing[ Yeah, he’s got the time-line way off even.
JG: What about the medical examiner comment?
TG: They claim he died on Tuesday and the time we went in the house and were searching rooms was Thursday night. Well, Wednesday night and Thursday night.
JG: You said he died on Sunday, right?
TG: I believe he did, yeah…that’s total speculation on my part, I don’t have any evidence that I could present in a court of law…it’s based on my experience in my conversations with Courtney, some of the things that she said some of the things that she did. Like having the story planted Saturday night that she had overdosed and was in the hospital. That was a total lie, and she didn’t try to pretend to me that it was true. She told me that she had a friend plant that in the press…and as I pieced everything together…that, and then what happened on Thursday night when she thought we were gonna discover the body…it seemed to me like she was trying to set this up…she wanted this to look like it was a suicide pact between her and Kurt, but of course she was gonna survive and he died. But it would make her look all heroic and romantic throughout the whole thing.
[Tom Grant's website cobaincase.com has lots of valuable information available for free regarding the Cobain case - you can also buy the "Cobain Case Study Manual" directly from the site]
JG: So Mark talking about, referencing what the medical examiner judged…I assume you’ve seen the medical examiner’s report? I don’t remember if that’s in your Case Study Manual…
TG: Yeah, I know everything that’s in the medical examiner’s report. Yeah, we know on the death certificate he claimed that it was determined to be a suicide on Saturday Morning. Less than 24 hours after the body was found…long before any test results were back regarding the heroin or morphine levels found in his blood system…It was the police that made the comment, I believe in one of their reports they believe he died some time on Tuesday, give or take 24 hours. Tuesday the 5th…
[Gus Van Sant's "Last Days" was "dedicated to the suicide of Kurt Cobain," according to film critic Roger Ebert. It seems to depict the false story Courtney Love fed to police regarding a supposed final sighting of Cobain the day he died, where he allegedly looked reflective/forlorn by a lake close to the home where his body was found...]
Part of that also came from the fact that reports were coming out in the newspapers and magazines and on television and stuff that the neighbor had seen Kurt down at the lake by himself kind of pondering like he was sad and uh…I asked Courtney, “what neighbor found him down there? I’d like to talk to the person that saw him down at the lake.” And she said “oh I don’t know, the police told me about that Tom you’d have to ask them. So I asked the police about it and they told me Courtney told them about it! [laughing] As hard as I tried I could find no-one that actually saw him there down by the lake…I believe he was killed in the greenhouse by the way, in case you hear that come up. They also say there was no blood at the scene - that came from Richard Lee who’s a total nutcase…He likes to claim that he was the first one who said Kurt Cobain was murdered…it’s just that he had a little public access television show up in Seattle so he was able to use that to say it publicly…it took me 8 months of intense investigation to come to a final conclusion.
JG: Have you read Hank Harrison’s book “Love Kills?”
TG: Oh yeah, Hank and I have a long history together. He began emailing me almost immediately and calling me at my office. And then one day he showed up at my office. I talked to him almost as much as I talked to Courtney.
JG: Why does he bash you? Why does he try to paint you as some sort of far right racist bigot?
TG: His first phone call to me he said, “you and I aughta get together and write a book.” And I said “Hank…you’re her father. Whether she was guilty of this or not, it’s not your job to write a book accusing your own daughter of murder! Your job is to be her father! My job is a private investigator - I don’t hate her, I don’t dislike her - I think she’s mentally ill. It’s my job to see this through and to help the public determine, and the legal system determine whether Kurt was murdered or if it was suicide. And if it was murder, to find out who it was! And I believe your daughter was involved in it. I would never associate myself with you…and write a book along those lines!” And I even told him on that very first phone call, I said “Hank - you have no credibility with me. The fact that you wanna write a book with me about this, accusing your daughter of murder - you have no credibility with me!”
JG: So you think that’s why he started bashing you publicly?
TG: Oh yeah. I mean, he didn’t bash me right away. It was probably a year or so of him trying to get me to go along with…he called me one time in the middle of the night about, I dunno 2:00 in the morning or something and…woke me up and said “Tom! Tom! She sent her goons to attack me!” And he’s all like, he’s out of breath and you can hear these dogs barking in the background and everything…Hank is such a liar, he’s a pathological liar…In the film Kurt and Courtney, he says he’s a sociopath just like his daughter….when you know that someone says that they are a sociopath, why would you listen to anything they say? No matter what, no matter who they are? He had no more ability to obtain information than you or I or anyone nosing around in Seattle trying to gather information….
JG: I’d like your response to a quote from Lanegan’s book. He seems to suggest this was in early 1994: “Late one night, I got a phone call from Kurt. He was obviously so fucked up I couldn’t understand 3 quarters of what he was saying and it scared me…The only thing I really understood was he wanted me to come over and come over right away…[John] Hicks and I hopped in a cab and took the 15 minute ride to Kurt’s lakefront estate…Lying flat on the floor, facedown, was Kurt. He looked like he might be dead…after an hour or so of us yelling, banging, knocking, and screaming his name, Kurt slowly began to come to life…The next morning, he said all he could remember was that he’d done a shot of heroin, nothing out of the ordinary. “
TG: I haven’t heard that before and I have no way of knowing whether it’s true or not…I do believe Kurt has accidentally overdosed before. Not in Italy, not the Rome incident - I believe that was where Courtney popped a bunch of Rohypnol into a Champaign bottle and OD’d him and he ended up in the hospital. I think that was an attempt on his life. And I have tape recorded conversations with Courtney where she actually says…”Kurt said it was not a suicide attempt but it obviously was.“ So right there, we have, as if Kurt was alive - we have Kurt saying the Rome incident was not a suicide attempt. Now Courtney didn’t know that she was being recorded…and that slipped out.
JG: How does Courtney get away with all of this? Is she really that smart, cunning, and/or powerful?
TG: First off, she didn’t have to be smart to get away with this. She didn’t have to be smart to plan it and get away with it, it didn’t take a lot of intelligence. She is a fairly intelligent person - you know she’s very well read. ..most people that read a lot end up pretty intelligent. It’s like her father. Hank is pretty intelligent but he’s a sociopath. Courtney is intelligent but she’s a psychopath and a sociopath…the fact that she had all the connections that she had, the fact that she was a celebrity and…made only because she was married to Kurt Cobain and he was such a big celebrity…And she did have an album coming out. So she was set up….she was surrounded with a circle of people who had a lot of money who were invested in her future career.
[Hole's "Live Through This" was released the same month Kurt died. Coincidence? The title and cover almost seem to scream "I got rid of my husband, now I get all his fame and fortune!"]
JG: But wouldn’t those invested in her career be concerned with their own reputations being tainted by implications that Courtney might have been involved with something like this?
TG: I’m not saying those people knew that she was gonna have Kurt killed.
JG: But even after the fact, wouldn’t they wanna distance themselves from her?
TG: No, they’d wanna support her because if they were to say “yeah, I think she had something to do with this, like Rosemary [Carroll] did off the record, if they were to do that - then they lose all the money they would have made, that they did make, off of the albums she put out.
JG: And did you know that Rosemary Carroll also represented Mark Lanegan?
TG: I didn’t know that, that doesn’t surprise me. ..so he’s claiming that she represented him, and I have no knowledge one way or the other about that.
JG: On page 172 of Lanegan’s book he says: “The next day someone in the Nirvana camp asked if I would go with Dylan to some Capital Hill dope houses to see if Kurt was hanging out at any of them…” Who is this individual from the “Nirvana camp” he is referring to?
TG: Well that would be me. Because that’s what we did with Mark Lanegan. You see that’s where, you can tell again he’s gotten things confused in his mind over the years or…he’s just making stuff up which…when you said the part “someone from the Nirvana camp?” That tells me he doesn’t remember who I was, other than I was working for Courtney. Because that can ONLY be a reference to me. Because I’m the one who took him and Dylan to the drug dealer’s house to buy some heroin to see if Kurt was there. I actually even gave them the money to buy the heroin...
JG: On page 173, Lanegan tells a story about his interaction with Hole bass player Kristen Pfaff. This seems to have occurred April 10th of 1994: “Later, at the private wake at Kurt and Courtney’s house…I turned to leave. Just as I was going out …Hole bass player Kristen Pfaff was coming in…Her gaze had been an unmistakable come-on…A couple weeks later…”It’s Kristen, from Hole…I totally want to date you…we’re in Minneapolis, but I’ll be back the 2nd week of June.” A couple weeks later...Courtney called and left a bullet to the heart message: Kristen had OD’d and died in a bathtub the first night she was back in Seattle.”
TG: One thing we know is that she wanted to get away from Courtney. I know that for a fact because I know her family pretty well.
JG: I wanted to ask you about the recently declassified FBI files. 10 pages of letters?
TG: That was a big nothing. Absolute nothing. All that was is people sending letters to the FBI saying “I want Kurt Cobain’s case re-opened!” They did that at the same time that they released paperwork for a whole bunch of other cases. There was nothing in there that indicated that they did any independent investigation. Whatsoever…If it’s somebody in the public eye especially, or it could be just a family that keeps hounding the FBI saying “the police didn’t do a good job. I know my husband didn’t commit suicide. I want this investigated these are corrupt police officers.”… I don’t think they ever cared. I don’t think the FBI has ever had any interest in…here’s what it would take for the FBI to get involved. It would take say, a 60 Minutes interview. ..the thing is, what most people don’t realize - I mean they love to hear about every crazy thing that Courtney Love is doing in her life. That will get more hits on a YouTube video for example, than if I were to put, you know read off "the list" in a YouTube video with a few graphics here and there.
["The List" page Tom is referring to can be accessed for free on cobaincase.com]
That’s too tedious, and unfortunately the law is that way. The law is tedious. And the general public doesn’t realize what it takes to get a case filed in court. Or to get the FBI interested in a case. And it’s actually the mainstream media that really has to hone in on something like this, for example, if they honed in on all those issues that I laid out on “the list” - which I don’t expect them ever to do. They may, who knows?
ABC was gonna get me involved in an 8 hour mini-series. Can you imagine 1 hour a week on the Cobain case? I turned them down. I would have been paid a lot of money to do that. I turned them down because of the way that they were going to film it, and the fact that they weren’t going to let me on the set while filming it. I didn’t wanna take a chance I didn’t wanna give them all this information - yeah, I might make a quick buck or 2, but in the end they could actually ruin every bit of work that I have ever done by making their own stupid conclusions playing it safe. Playing it smooth so that they're not sued by Courtney’s attorneys and all that stuff. ..These people, they go to their attorneys and they say “should we do this or shouldn’t we?” The attorneys don’t care one way or another they’re getting paid so much per hour. All they care about is protecting their client and they’ll look it over and say “why take a chance? She could sue you and it could tie you up in court for years”…So long as the Seattle police department refuses to admit they made a mistake, nobody can do anything about it.
JG: Do you think that ABC was motivated to invalidate your research when they approached you about doing the series?
TG: No, I don’t think they set out to do that…it wasn’t just going to be about the murder theory or the suicide theory. It was going to be about Kurt Cobain’s life and death.
JG: But if they approached the story honestly and without bias, wouldn’t it just come out as obvious that Cobain was murdered? I mean, the evidence is so compelling.
TG: The thing is, I’ve already had experiences where I was ambushed by network television and by radio stations and everybody else, magazines and all that. Where I’ve sat and I’ve given a really good interview. Even the film Kurt and Courtney - the way Nick Broomfield twisted that around. I was really surprised most people who saw Kurt and Courtney that contacted me, that it convinced them that Kurt was murdered. And I’m thinking “I don’t know how!”[laughs] he did such a lousy job on it, I don’t know why anybody would believe that after that film. It’s funny how the mind of the general public works.
I’ve said from the beginning that she will never sue anybody - she could’ve had me arrested for recording those phone conversations. But she knows that if she ever filed a lawsuit, then we’d be able to depose her and we’d be able to get the truth out of her about a lot of stuff. And her attorneys would never let that happen because they know her as well as she knows herself.
JG: Then why would ABC be afraid of legal action?
TG: Because that’s just MY word. I’ve said that to everybody. When I’m talking to their producers - they may believe me 100%, but they’re not attorneys for ABC…So they send it up to their legal division, they have a big meeting, the attorney would say “well you could do it this way or you could do it that way - just don’t say you believe he was murdered” because everybody knows if you say it, then the finger points right back to Courtney. Automatically.
JG: So it’s a fear of retribution from Courtney that that can’t happen?
TG: Exactly…There’s no way you’re gonna be able to go and tell people that Kurt Cobain was murdered without following up with, well who do you think did it? Or who had a motive for it?
JG: Who do YOU think pulled the trigger?
TG: Well…that’s speculation…I’ve mentioned several persons of interest. I think it was either…I think Cali [Michael DeWitt] was involved, in one way or another. He was probably in the room. I think Rene Navarrette is a person of interest. I think Carey Kerwin [?] is a person of interest. I don’t think Dylan had anything to do with it.
JG: Even though he didn’t wanna check the greenhouse?
TG: I think Dylan might have checked the greenhouse when I sent him up there alone and it took him so long to come back. And I think he might’ve seen Kurt’s body in there and was in so much shock he didn’t know what to do. He knew that Kurt was his source of heroin. Because a heroin addict that’s ALL they think about is their next fix…and so immediately Dylan is thinking “uh oh! Now my only source is gonna be Courtney. So I better do whatever Courtney tells me to do”
JG: Lanegan credits Courtney Love for saving his life and paying for his rehab into the M.A.P. facility. Based on what you know about Courtney and Lanegan - do you think her motives for doing that were truly benevolent, or do you think there may have been an alterior motive there?
TG: There’s always an alterior motive for everything that Courtney does. I never even heard that she did that. It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s true because I think Courtney needs a team of people around her…that will help support her in the fact that Kurt was suicidal, although Mark Lanegan, I can tell you for a fact told me that Kurt was not suicidal just like Dylan did. What he’s saying now may be totally different, or what he said in that book because I know he died…Courtney may have started telling him, “I want you to say this I want you to say that, I want you to plant this story in the press, say this in your book” whatever…
JG: On page 38 of Lanegan’s book he tells this story about a call he got from Nirvana’s bass player early in their career. Here’s the quote: “Are you still looking for a bass player? I can’t stand playing with Kurt anymore. I’m sick of everything always having to be his way.” Do you think Lanegan may have had any reason to make a story like that up?
TG: I don’t know. Stuff like that happens. That could have been 1 bad day that Krist Noveselic had. First of all, it could be a total lie, coulda been something that Lanegan totally made up…Nirvana WAS breaking up [in 1994], that’s a fact. I have, I never displayed this to the public or anything, but a copy of a letter from Nirvana’s Gold Mountain Records, discussing the fact that they’re breaking up. So we know for a fact that Nirvana was in the process of breaking up. I believe that Courtney had more to do with that than anybody else because…she just started driving a wedge between Kurt and any of the other performers. As far as Dave and Krist - Courtney hated them. She couldn’t stand them…these are things she told me.
END INTERVIEW
There are a few other related items of interest in Lanegan's book I wanted to address, but have decided to save it for another blog, rather than getting into a long winded digression here.
Support Tom Grant's work by going to cobaincase.com. Read all of the information he has, and order the Cobain Case Study Manual. You can also arrange for a phone consultation through the same site.
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