Death of a Ladies’ Man

Review

Locked in a recording studio by a violent psychotic

Listening to your woman make love to another man in the next room

How Leonard Cohen’s Doo-Wop Nightmare was Born

I’m no Canada apologist. I once moved there for a spell, inspired by my latest crack-up — Vancouver, more exactly, where I lived with my toothless, jobless lover in the vacated studio apartment of a newly canceled member of the record industry. I made no friends, spent my days walking around. At one point, I attempted to sublet a different apartment from a woman whose only furniture was an exercise ball and who invited me to a “cuddle party,” which is exactly as it sounds. “It’s really all about consent,” she said in a baby voice. Oh, brother. When Leonard Cohen died, I was halfway through my sentence there. I liked his music well enough, but a self-styled Canadian poet was a hard pill for me to swallow. Get real: It’s a world of truck drivers. That’s Canada, only they’re too ashamed to admit it, much less embrace it. Know what I mean? A friend sent me a song from the album Death of a Ladies’ Man some years later, when I was back in America and living like a dog. I’d lost my …

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Giants in the Earth

Krist Novoselic speaks

Bass player for Nirvana, Flipper, and 3rd Secret lives in Naselle, cuts the grass at the local cemetery

Keeps weird animals in his backyard, turns local creamery into a recording studio.

By David Samuels

There was once a boy who fell to earth. He was delicate and small, his hair was blond, his face was smudged, and he was born nowhere — but he had an unusual talent for writing songs that remind listeners of the Beatles, with lyrics that were a strange combination of puns and jokes and pure misery. He sang like he was in pain, which was real and came from his stomach, and which he tried to dull with everything from heroin to hot tea. He played the game of being hip and wasted like the pro that he became, but at the same time there was a part of him that stayed pure and reached for something that only he could touch. Also, he loved turtles. He had a big turtle tank in his cramped apartment, which stank like turtle water. He built the turtle tank himself. The story of Kurt Cobain’s mythic life and death is well known by now, thanks to biographies by Michael Azerrad and Charles Cross; there is no point in rehashing it, except to offer some context for what follows. The place where Kurt …

Death of a Ladies’ Man

Critic's Corner

Giants in the Earth