Cobain's acid pen revealed

A strange, drug-fuelled letter written by Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain to his wife Courtney Love is being sold at Christie's in New York next month.

A strange, drug-fuelled letter written by Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain to his wife Courtney Love is being sold at Christie's in New York next month.

The note, a rambling description of Cobain's LSD hallucinations, was written in a Sheffield hotel room during the band's 1991 UK tour and faxed to Love by a receptionist. According to the auction house, Cobain told the receptionist that she could keep the original as a souvenir. It is expected to fetch up to $14,000 (£7,530) at an auction of rock memorabilia.

In the letter, Cobain writes: "Out of all the times I've been on acid, I've never been able to hallucinate with such repetitive control. I'm hallucinating at will, over and over again in this English shoebox with pastel curtains and normal little Victorian lamps and drawers. It's all too normal and impossible to explain. I'm not very drunk. It's like controlled bedspins, and I'm the Exorcist.

"My throat is a swollen tumour, Blood sausage, colon. I puke air after coughing. It was morning by the time I fell asleep after talking to you. 200 lbs. I thought of a great idea for our video. Oh forget it."

The letter was written after Nirvana's infamous appearance on Top of the Pops, when the band trashed their instruments in protest at being asked to sing along to a pre-recorded backing track.

"We watched Top of the Pops tonight," Cobain writes. "Fucking brilliant."

Contributor

Paul Arendt

The GuardianTramp

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