Tony Hawk Reveals Why He Wishes Kurt Cobain Was Still Alive, And It'll Break Your Heart
If Tony Hawk's moving tribute to Kurt Cobain makes you cry, all apologies.
Over the weekend, Hawk decided to honor the late Nirvana frontman after stumbling upon an old ticket stub from a concert he went to on Oct. 20, 1991.
Posting an image of the stub to his Instagram story, Hawk explained that after he competed in a skateboarding competition in Houston, Texas, he decided to check out an alternative rock band from Seattle called Nirvana — who had just released the hit 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' just two months prior.
'Went straight from S.U.A.S event at Houston skatepark to this concert in 1991,' he wrote. 'It was as transformative as live music can possibly be: We all experienced something rare and powerful that night. The world would never be the same.'
Although many rock fans likely share the same sentiment about the band, which consisted of Cobain, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic at the height of their fame — Hawk's post then takes a very personal turn.
Cobain died by suicide in 1994, leaving his wife, musician and actor Courtney Love, to raise their 20-month-old daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, on her own.
In 2023, Frances Bean Cobain married Tony Hawk's son, Riley Hawk. A year later, the couple welcomed a son, Ronin Walker Cobain Hawk. This means that the skateboarding legend and late grunge icon share a grandson.
'I wish Kurt were here,' Hawk concluded. 'So he could see the incredible woman his daughter has become, meet her devoted, caring husband, and hold our wondrous grandchild.'
I am sobbing at Tony Hawk posting about his grandchild who is also Kurt Cobain's grandchild pic.twitter.com/pa7eseMich
— Sara 'anthem boo endorser' Civian (@SaraCivian) February 24, 2025
When a screenshot of Hawk's post made its way to X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday, fans got pretty emotional.
'Who the fuck is cutting onions?' one X user wrote.
'it's 7 in the morning and this made me sob in public,' echoed another.
'I choose to believe in the multi-verse bc there has to be a timeline where Kurt Cobain and Tony Hawk are hanging out together, being the coolest F*ing grandpas ever. That has to exist. I choose that in a parallel world, it does,' another said.
'American royalty I can get behind,' said a fourth user.
On the 30th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death in April 2024, Frances Bean Cobain posted a tribute to her dad on Instagram in which she admitted that she's been grieving him 'for almost as long as I've been conscious.'
'I wish I could've known my Dad,' Frances Bean Cobain wrote. 'I wish I knew the cadence of his voice, how he liked his coffee or the way it felt to be tucked in after a bedtime story. I always wondered if he would've caught tadpoles with me during the muggy Washington summers, or if he smelled of Camel Lights & strawberry nesquik (his favorites, I've been told).'
Although she never really knew her dad, the 'Come As You Are' singer's daughter said mourning someone her entire life has led her on 'an expedited path to understanding how precious life is.'
She also noted that she also feels a closeness to her father, whom, she's been told, had the same hands as her.
'Kurt wrote me a letter before I was born. The last line of it reads, 'wherever you go or wherever I go, I will always be with you,'' Frances Bean Cobain wrote. 'He kept this promise because he is present in so many ways. Whether it's by hearing a song or through the hands we share, in those moments I get to spend a little time with my dad & he feels transcendent.'
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Atlantic
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When Mick Jagger Met the King of Zydeco
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When they walked in, one woman squinted in Jagger's direction, pausing in a moment of possible recognition, before changing her mind and turning away. Chenier was at center stage, thick gold rings lining his fingers as they moved across the black and white keys of his accordion, his name embossed in bold block type on its side. Cleveland stood beside him on the rubboard. Robert St. Julien was set up in the back behind a three-piece drum kit—just a bass drum, a snare, and a single cymbal, cracked from the hole in the center out to the very edge. Jagger took it all in, watching the crowd dance a two-step and thinking, ' Oh God, I'm going to have to dance. How am I going to do this dance that they're all doing? ' he recalled. 'But I managed somehow to fake it.' At intermission, a cluster of fans, speaking in excited bursts of Creole French, started moving toward the stage, holding out papers to be autographed. Landry and Jagger were standing nearby. Jagger braced himself, assuming that some of the fans might descend on him. But the crowd moved quickly past them, pressing toward Clifton and Cleveland Chenier. Before the night was over, Jagger himself had the chance to meet Clifton, but only said a quick hello. 'I just didn't want to hassle him or anything,' he told me. 'And I was just enjoying myself being one of the audience.' The next time Mick Jagger and Richard Landry crossed paths was May 3, 2024: the day after the Rolling Stones performed at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. During their set, the Stones had asked the accordion player Dwayne Dopsie, a son of another zydeco artist, Rockin' Dopsie, to accompany the band on 'Let It Bleed.' A meal was set up at Antoine's, in the French Quarter, by a mutual friend, the musician and producer C. C. Adcock. Adcock had been working on plans for the Clifton Chenier centennial record for months and was well aware of Jagger's affection for zydeco. He waited until the meal was over, when everyone was saying their goodbyes, to mention the project to Jagger. 'And without hesitation,' Landry recalled, 'Mick said, 'I want to sing something.' ' As the final addition to the album lineup, the Stones were the last to choose which of Chenier's songs to record. Looking at the track listing, Jagger noticed that 'Zydeco Sont Pas Salé' hadn't been taken. 'Isn't that, like, the one?' Adcock recalls him saying. 'The one the whole genre is named after? If the Stones are gonna do one, shouldn't we do the one ?' The word zydeco is widely believed to have originated in the French phrase les haricots sont pas salés, which translates to 'The snap beans aren't salty.' Zydeco, according to this theory, is a Creole French pronunciation of les haricots. (The lyrical fragment likely comes from juré, the call-and-response music of Louisiana that predates zydeco; it shows up as early as 1934, on a recording of the singer Wilbur Shaw made in New Iberia, Louisiana.) Many interpretations of the phrase have been offered over the years. The most straightforward is that it's a metaphorical way of saying 'Times are tough.' When money ran short, people couldn't afford the salt meat that was traditionally cooked with snap beans to season them. The Stones' version of 'Zydeco Sont Pas Salé' opens with St. Julien, Chenier's longtime drummer, playing a backbeat with brushes. He's 77 now, no longer the young man Jagger saw in Watts in 1978. 'I quit playing music about 10 years ago, to tell the truth,' he said when we spoke this spring, but you wouldn't know it by how he sounds on the track. Keith Richards's guitar part, guttural and revving, meets St. Julien in the intro and builds steadily. The melody is introduced by the accordionist Steve Riley, of the Mamou Playboys, who told me he'd tried to 'play it like Clifton—you know, free-form, just from feel.' It's strange that it doesn't feel stranger when Jagger breaks into his vocal, sung in Creole French. His imitation of Chenier is at once spot-on yet unmistakably Jagger. From the May 1971 issue: Mick Jagger shoots birds I asked him how he'd honed his French pronunciation. 'I've actually tried to write songs in Cajun French before,' he said. 'But I've never really gotten anywhere.' To get 'Zydeco Sont Pas Salé' right, he became a student of the song. 'You just listen to what's been done before you,' he told me. 'See how they pronounce it, you know? I mean, yeah, of course it's different. And West Indian English is different from what they speak in London. I tried to do a job and I tried to do it in the way it was traditionally done—it would sound a bit silly in perfect French.' Zydeco united musical traditions from around the globe to become a defining sound for one of the most distinct cultures in America. Chenier, the accordionist in the velvet crown, then introduced zydeco to the world, influencing artists across genres. When I asked Jagger why, at age 81, he had decided to make this recording, he said, 'I think the music deserves to be known and the music deserves to be heard.' If the song helps new listeners discover Chenier—to have something like the experience Jagger had when he first dropped the needle on Bon Ton Roulet! —that would be a welcome result. But Jagger stressed that this wasn't the primary reason he'd covered 'Zydeco Sont Pas Salé.' Singing to St. Julien's beat, Jagger the rock star once again becomes Jagger the Clifton Chenier fan. 'My main thing is just that I personally like it. You know what I mean? That's my attraction,' he said. 'I think that I just did this for the love of it, really.'
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Amber Ruffin on her first Pride since coming out as queer: 'I'm all in'
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