Michael Collins, Roy Keane, Teddy McCarthy and now you can add the name of Kurt Cobain to the list of famous sons of Cork.
A bit of digging by the always entertaining Rare Irish Stuff Facebook page has thrown up a nugget of info about the Nirvana lead singer we had never heard before, a nugget that means we can claim him as one of our own.
They carry a quote from an interview that Cobain did with Guitar World magazine back in July 1993. In it, Cobain explains that a bit of digging into his family name led him to think he was from Cork if you went back far enough.
COBAIN: I never really knew about my ancestors until this year, when I learned that the name Cobain was Irish. My parents had never bothered to find that stuff out. I found out by looking through phone books throughout America for names that were similar to mine. I couldn’t find any Cobains at all, so I started calling Coburns. I found this one lady in San Francisco who had been researching our family history for years.
GW: So it was Coburn?
COBAIN: Actually it was Cobain, but the Coburns screwed it up when they came over. They came from County Cork, which is a really weird coincidence, because when we toured Ireland, we played in Cork and the entire day I walked around in a daze. I’d never felt more spiritual in my life. It was the weirdest feeling and I have a friend who was with me who could testify to this I was almost in tears the whole day. Since that tour, which was about two years ago, I’ve had a sense that I was from Ireland.
You can check out the full interview here.
So there you go. Another Leeside legend then.
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