The track “Something In The Way,” featured on the acclaimed 1991 album Nevermind , is undoubtedly one of Nirvana . With enigmatic lyrics, melancholic violins, and a funereal atmosphere, the song is both morbid and beautiful, captivating from the very first listen.
It's no coincidence that it was chosen as the soundtrack for the first trailer of the movie The Batman , which is set to premiere on October 1st and stars Robert Pattinson in the lead role of the Dark Knight – the film also promises to take a darker direction than the hero's previous adventures.
Charles R. Cross's 2001 biography of Kurt Cobain Heavier Than Heaven , the author recounts the story that inspired the Nirvana frontman to write "Something In The Way"—a story Kurt often told as a reference to the time he was kicked out of his home and lived under a bridge.
The first time Kurt was officially kicked out of his mother Wendy was during his adolescence. The relationship between mother and son was not good and had become increasingly unbearable, but the last straw was when Wendy found Kurt in his room, about to have sex with a girl, while a second young woman was passed out drunk in the next room.
Years later, Kurt would recount that he came to live under the Young Bridge, located two blocks from Wendy's house in Aberdeen. This would be the experience to which the narrator refers in the opening lines of "Something In The Way": "Under the bridge / The tarp is leaking / And the animals I've corralled / Have become my pets."
Kurt's sister, Kimberly, denies his version of events, as does Krist Novoselic , a bandmate and acquaintance from his school days. "He wandered around there, but it's impossible to live on those muddy banks, with the waves rising and falling. That was his own revisionism," stated Krist. Kimberly reinforced this version of the story, stating: "He never lived under the bridge. It was a meeting point where all the neighborhood boys went to smoke marijuana, but that's all."
Bridge or no bridge, it's a fact that for four months a young Kurt Cobain lived on the streets, sleeping in refrigerator boxes on friends' porches and at Grays Harbor Community Hospital, where he was born. It's undeniable that after being rejected by his own mother and family, Kurt felt as if he himself was "something in between."
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