"I thought he was one of the more beautiful quiet people. I always sensed this really intense sense of fantasy around him, through his music and a really intense sense of atmosphere."
-Kirk Curtwood
"He is really a very angry person," says Sub Pop's Bruce Pavitt, "so he makes dramatic gestures that piss people off." But Cobain is also sensitive, and sensitive people are often the angriest. "That ambiguity, that's the whole thing," says Butch Vig. "What the kids are attracted to in the music is that he's not necessarily a spokesman for a generation, but all that's in the music - the passion and [the fact that] he doesn't necessarily know what he wants, but he's pissed. It's all these things working at different levels at once. I don't exactly know what 'Teen Spirit' means, but you know it means something, and it's intense as hell."
"Cobain agrees the message isn't necessarily in the words. "Most of the music is really personal as far as the emotion and the experiences that I've had in my life," he says, dragging on a cigarette, "but most of the themes in the songs aren't that personal. They're more just stories from TV or books or movies or friends. But definitely the emotion and feeling is from me. Most of the concentration of my singing is from my upper abdomen, that's where I scream, that's where I feel, that's where everything comes out of me - right here," he continues, touching a point just below his breastbone. It just happens to be exactly where his stomach pain is centered."
- Michael Azerrad
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