Kurt Cobain: The Last Session

Hours before Nirvana was scheduled to perform at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City on July 23, 1993, photographer Frohman did a cover shoot with the band for the London Observer. This title is an assemblage of the entire session (which only lasted a half hour) and includes a full transcript of the accompanying interview that Kurt Cobain (1967–94) gave to music journalist Jon Savage (England's Dreaming; Teenage). Cobain had overdosed on heroin shortly before the shoot, and fittingly, Frohman's solo images of him portray a tired, prematurely aging addict who wouldn't remove his sunglasses that day. Yet Cobain was still strikingly beautiful despite his condition, and Frohman captures this element as well, leading to a strong and surprisingly varied session. Savage's interview transcript is a worthwhile inclusion—it's one of the final interviews that Cobain gave before his suicide. It's also a record of his clearly hollow and misleading optimism, including the implication that drugs were no longer a major problem for him.