Lost Stories

In 2004, I was working as a radio journalist in London on a BBC segment commemorating the 10th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death.

I was excited when I got the chance to interview Slash and Duff McKagen. Appetite was (and still is) one of my all-time favorite albums and I was curious what they thought of Nirvana. After all, GnR were the kings of hair metal, a genre Nirvana had destroyed when they released Nevermind.

To my surprise, they were both big fans of Nirvana and were saddened by Kurt’s death. Near the end of the interview, Slash prodded Duff to tell his Kurt story. I was shocked when he revealed that he was one of the last people who had seen Kurt alive.

Fast-forward to 2017 and I’m no longer a London-based radio journalist, but a motion graphics designer living in Brooklyn. I had this crazy idea to animate some of my old interviews and I came across the interview. I dusted off my minidisc player, popped in the disc and prayed it still worked.

Duff’s conversation with Kurt, mere hours before his death, was as real and tragic as I remembered. So I worked with my friend James Smith to bring to life this ode to bygone days and missed opportunities.