R.E.M singer Michael Stipe has said he tried to interest Kurt Cobain in a collaborative project in order to prevent the Nirvana frontman from taking his own life.
Stipe says that he went to Cobain with an idea for an album as he feared his friend was on the road to doing something stupid. The pair became friends in the early 90s.
In a new interview with Interview magazine (via Contact Music), Stipe said, “I knew him and his daughter… R.E.M. worked on two records in Seattle and [guitarist] Peter Buck lived next door to Kurt and [wife] Courtney [Love]. So we all knew each other.”
“I reached out to him with that project as an attempt to prevent what was going to happen. I was doing that to try to save his life.
“I sent him a plane ticket and a driver, and he tacked the plane ticket to the wall in the bedroom and the driver sat outside the house for 10 hours. Kurt wouldn’t come out and wouldn’t answer the phone.”
Stipe added that he could do little else to help Cobain, due to his addiction to heroin, saying, “I’m not great with heroin addicts… I’m not great with that level of substance abuse.”
