Dame Helen Mirren says “it’s so sad” Kurt Cobain died young because he never got to see satellite navigation
Kurt Cobain‘s untimely death in 1994 at the tender age of 27 was sad for so many reasons. Chiefly because we never got to hear more music from one of rock’s most creative minds, but also because he never got to see satellite navigation – at least according to Dame Helen Mirren.
The actor – who won an Academy Award and a BAFTA for playing Queen Elizabeth II in 2006’s The Queen – makes the comment during an interview with the New World podcast. She marvels at recently turning 79, saying she never expected to reach such an age.
READ MORE: “When you guys played Whiplash, Kurt went insane”: Kirk Hammett recalls the time Kurt Cobain was in the mosh pit for a Metallica show
Mirren calls herself “lucky” to be a septuagenarian, given how many people die young, which brings her to her bizarre point regarding Cobain. “I always say it’s so sad that Kurt Cobain died when he did because he never saw GPS,” she says (via The Independent), “as it’s the most wonderful thing to watch my little blue spot walking down the street. I just find it completely magical and unbelievable.”
Mirren then stays on the topic of technical advancement, saying she’s grateful for having grown up in a “world without technology”. “Because from this point on, the human world will only know technology unless there’s some unbelievably catastrophic event and only a few people left on the planet,” she continues.
“And everything, everything has been destroyed from this point on. For the rest of humanity, however long humanity survives, it will be a world of technology. And I’m so grateful that I was of a generation that knew the world before technology. And you know we will die out eventually.”
According to Aerospace.org, GPS technology first appeared in a cellphone in 1999 – five years after Cobain’s death – when Benefon launched the GPS-equipped phone Benefon Esc!. GPS tech was, however, in the works for decades before this, with the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) developing Transit, the world’s first global satellite navigation system, in 1958. Innovation continued, and then-US President Ronald Reagan authorised GPS use by civilian commercial airlines in 1983 to improve navigation and air travel safety.
Cobain died by suicide at the age of 27 in April 1994. One of the singer, guitarist and songwriter’s instruments, a Martin D-18E acoustic he used on a 1994 MTV Unplugged special, holds the record for the most expensive guitar ever sold at auction. It was bought for an eye-watering $6,010,000 in 2020.
This summer, guitar collector Jim Irsay, who bought the Fender Mustang which Cobain played in Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit video for $4.5 million, said the acoustic’s $6 mil price tag was “nonsensical”. He said of his Mustang, “[It was] Kurt’s main guitar, and the electric guitar that survived the stage and survived many a jump – versus a one-night show. I felt [the electric guitar] was worth more.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
