By Jeff Burlingame Daily World A&E editor It's the blue eyes that nail you. Transfixing, piercing and eerily familiar they're everywhere this week. Watching you while you're shopping. Peeking at you while you flip past them in search of a favorite TV show. Stirring pots of homemade spaghetti sauce on a stove in Montesano. Eighty years of knowledge lie behind those eyes with nary a fact forgotten, save for the name of a just-introduced acquaintance or an insignificant piece of daily minutiae. But not family Leland Cobain remembers everything about them. The excellent artwork of his late wife, Iris, and son, Jim. The suicides of two of his brothers. The precious few visits with great-granddaughter Frances. And nearly everything about grandson Kurt Cobain, the rock 'n' roll legend who shared the same spellbinding blue eyes. Those who travel across the world, phone cross-country or invest 37 cents in a stamp to hear that particular legend and there are many wouldn't have it any other way. "I don't mind talking about it," Leland Cobain says. "I was very proud of Kurt. I answer their letters. When I get a letter, if it's interesting, I'll sit down and answer it right then. I don't put it off. I never get tired of it." Leland Cobain's use of the past tense in reference to his grandson began on April 8, 1994. That's when his wife answered a phone call from Kurt's distraught mother, Wendy O'Connor. It wasn't the news Leland Cobain, his wife, or thousands of others for that matter, wanted to hear. "It was pretty sad," Leland Cobain says. "I didn't believe it. I couldn't believe it was suicide. Still don't." Leland Cobain isn't quick to offer alternatives for his grandson's cause of death but the way the gun rested neatly on Kurt's body makes him wonder if suicide was the real reason. Unlike many who've had a loved one die by their own hand, he isn't in denial, just curious for answers and fueled by books and reports he's read about murder plots and suspicious deaths of people involved in the investigation and a thorough knowledge of his grandson's character. "People always say he was on the dope, but I'll tell you what, when he came to visit us he was never on the dope," Leland Cobain says. "He was as clear-eyed as you and I." There are many in the world whose eyes weren't clear, including Leland and Iris Cobain's, 10 years ago this week when Kurt Cobain was found dead above the garage of his Seattle home. His death certificate lists the cause as suicide by a self-inflicted shotgun wound, the official date: April 5, 1994, three days before his body was discovered by an electrician. In the less than three years Kurt Cobain and his band, Nirvana, were on top of the rock 'n' roll world from shortly after the release of 1991's trend-changing, 14-million selling "Nevermind" to his premature death at 27 he changed the direction of music for all time. A high school dropout from Aberdeen had knocked Garth Brooks and Michael Jackson from the Billboard charts. In "Smells Like Teen Spirit," he'd produced the "Stairway to Heaven" of an angst-riddled generation a song bound to become a classic rock radio staple for decades and generations to follow. He put a stick pin in the Aberdeen dot on the musical map, yet it remains a place many in the city seem reluctant to be. "I'm not sure why there isn't anything anywhere," Leland Cobain says. "Like a sign, I think that'd be a good deal. A lot of these tourists, they'd be going by with their kids, heading to Ocean Shores or Westport and they'd see that sign and say, C'mon, Dad, I want to stop and see that.' " Underneath the North Aberdeen Bridge where Kurt Cobain's tarp once supposedly sprung a leak, a deserted pink rose lies decaying into the muddy banks of the Wishkah River. Likely dropped by a fan as tribute to a fallen hero, the flower is surrounded by empty Budweiser cans, plastic 7-Eleven grocery bags and a pristine "Nevermind" CD, held upright by a drying, well-placed dab of malodorous mud. A rusty water pipe guards entrance to the makeshift shrine and is adorned with a scribbled and faded "COME AS YOU ARE" in weather-weakened white chalk. Hundreds of similar scratchings are under the bridge, many faded, many more fresh. All intended to honor a man 10 years dead that none of the authors knew but all traveled long distances to try to: Kurt, I live in NY. I traveled all the way to see this. I want you to know that for years I've listened to you. I believe you are here for all of us. No one will ever forget your impact on Aberdeen. If only you could have known all this, maybe you would have stayed then I could meet you when I come from France. Kurt Cobain's death inspired generations of lyrics, troubled teens' suicides and wannabe artists minds filled with guilt, failed prosperity and hopeful desire. Yet the effect on Kurt Cobain's hometown was minimal. Ten years later, it still is. The Beatles have Liverpool. Elvis has Memphis. Kurt Cobain has Aberdeen, where there's little to remember him but a bridge he may or may not have slept under. Underneath the bridge Tarp has sprung a leak And the animals I've trapped Have all become my pets Something in the way Cobain changed the face of rock music by showing the world what growing up as the child of divorce on Grays Harbor had blessed in him: economically-driven anxiety transformed into aggressive guitars; culturally-induced pain morphed into raw-throated screams. Ironic that by writing and singing about the worst his birthplace had to offer, Cobain somehow became the best spokesman for millions. Surprisingly to some and not so to others, his status as icon didn't end with his death. Every anniversary, new release and major Nirvana-related event that passes brings more attention and, ultimately, a new wave of fans looking to rebel against whatever the current musical trend is. Don't like over-produced teen pop music? Not a fan of wearing your baseball cap off to one side and bending your fingers in weird gang-related fashion as tribute to your "Homey Gs"? Believe music should be created by people and not over-processed computer sounds programmed with the punch of a keyboard? Then Nirvana is what you want in your CD player. Kurt Cobain's popularity 10 years after his death is strong evidence that that will never end. Leland Cobain doesn't know Nirvana's music too well. He enjoyed their performance on MTV's "Unplugged" but couldn't relate with much else the band did. "I'm from the '30s and '40s. Glenn Miller. But when I seen Kurt on the MTV with just him and the guitar, I liked that," Cobain says. "Without all those drums beating and noise I could understand him." It was the amplified, distorted, stop-start, slow-fast musical attack that kept Leland Cobain from knowing what the lyrics were to the songs on most of his grandson's studio albums. Though he has at least one copy of every Nirvana album, cassette tapes his medium of choice, he was surprised to know his grandson had written a song about the estranged relationship with Donald Cobain, Leland's son and Kurt's father. As my bones grew/They did hurt They hurt really bad I tried hard to have a father/But instead I had a dad I just want you to know that I don't hate you anymore There is nothing I can say that I haven't thought before Leland Cobain's blue eyes open wider when told of the lyrics to "Serve the Servants." His mouth forms into a smile, lips twisting to the left in a smirk not unlike the ones Kurt Cobain wore in photographs and on music videos. "Oh. I bet I know where he got that. Kurt was there when my wife was sick in a hospital bed. Don called on the phone to talk to Mom and she said to Kurt, Now, you talk to your dad,' " Leland Cobain said. "He did. They were supposed to get together some time after Kurt got back from his last tour" Kurt Cobain had arrived hours earlier at Swedish Hospital in Seattle with a large vase of orchids for his grandmother. The vase is still in a cabinet in his grandfather's living room, alongside photographs of family members, drawings by Kurt and Iris, and a potpourri of other mementos. Included in that is a snapshot of a Florida family, which, on Christmas 2002, flew Leland Cobain to their family home for a three-night stay. "We'd talked on the phone about Kurt and they just wanted to meet me," says Leland, an ex-Marine, asphalt roller driver and fireman. "They were really nice people." There's no hidden significance to the Mickey Mouse watch Leland Cobain wears every day on his right wrist, although one of his best and most telling stories about his grandson begins with a mention of the famous Disney character. "Kurt came over and gave me a drawing he'd done of Mickey Mouse," Leland Cobain remembers. "It was real good so I said, 'You didn't draw that, you traced that.' He was only 6. So I found some orange paper Iris had lying around and gave him some. He sat there and drew a Donald Duck and then drew a Goofy and gave them to me, smiling because he had shown me up." When Kurt Cobain was 9 his parents divorced, leaving him unhappy at home with either parent. He spent his adolescence shuttled between family members and friends. "He even lived with me twice," Leland Cobain says. "Then his dad got a place across the way and he moved in there." As Kurt grew, Leland Cobain remembers a normal teenager, one who'd profess boredom one minute and become intensely involved in an art project the next. From building an ornate dollhouse with Grandpa to carving a chess set out of wood scraps, Kurt Cobain was always active and artistic. He even played some guitar. "We had an old Hawaiian guitar and an old amplifier we let him have when he lived with us," Leland Cobain says. "I have no idea what happened to it but the amplifier, the way Kurt played, probably blew up." Jeff Burlingame is The Daily World's arts and entertainment editor. He and Aberdeen City Councilman Paul Fritts are co-chairmen of a committee to memorialize Kurt Cobain.