Kristen Pfaff

Kristen Pfaff (born May 26, 1967 in New York , † June 16, 1994 in Seattle ) was an American musician. She was best known as the bassist for the Grungeband Hole .

biography

Kristen Pfaff grew up in Buffalo , New York, USA . There she attended the Buffalo Academy of the Sacred Heart , a high school run by the Catholic Church . After a short stay in Europe , she went to Boston College to study piano for a short time before moving to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis , where she also graduated.

During her studies she taught herself to play bass guitar by herself. Together with friends, the singer and guitarist Joachim Breuer and drummer Matt Entsminger , she founded the band Janitor Joe . In 1993 the album Big Metal Birds was released and a tour of the USA followed. However, there should be no major success.

During the tour of California she was discovered by Eric Erlandson and Courtney Love von Hole , who were looking for a successor to Lesley Hardy on bass. After a moment to think about it, Pfaff accepted and moved from Minneapolis to Seattle . There she was still involved in the recording of the band's second album, Live Through This , in 1993 . The record was released in April 1994 just days after the death of Courtney Love's husband, Kurt Cobain . This first album by the band on a major label achieved platinum status.

After moving to Seattle, Pfaff was exposed to drugs and quickly became addicted to heroin . In the winter of 1993 she went on a drug rehab and appeared to be clean again. Because of her close friendship with Cobain, she was hit hard by his death. She decided to quit the band and go back to Minneapolis, and in the early summer of 1994 she toured again with her old band, Janitor Joe.

After Pfaff returned to Seattle to liquidate her apartment, she was found dead in the bathtub on the morning of June 16, 1994 by a friend who was supposed to take her to Minneapolis. There were syringes and other drug paraphernalia next to the bathtub, and it turned out that Pfaff had died of a heroin overdose.

Kristen Pfaff was buried in the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo. A radio station from Minneapolis donated a US $ 1,000 prize, which was awarded annually until 2001 and named after her.

Headstone of Kristen Pfaff in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York

Circumstances of her death

Analogous to Cobain's death in the same year, there are also several theories about Pfaff's death in this case. In addition to the result of the police investigation that her death was a self-inflicted overdose, fans of Pfaff and Cobain are suspecting that Cobain's widow Courtney Love had something to do with her death, directly or indirectly.

Pfaff's mother stated in a 2003 interview with Ian Halperin and Max Wallace on the occasion of their book Love and Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain that she did not believe in the official version of the overdose.

See also

• Club 27

Web links

• Kristen Pfaff Memorial Scholarship ( Memento from June 25, 2007 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19940617&slug=1916121
2. ↑ http://www.cee.umn.edu/radiok/AM/Kristen.html ( Memento from June 17, 2002 in the Internet Archive )
3. ↑ http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19940712&slug=1920005
4. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated November 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.