Cobain

''Kurt Cobain never wanted to be the spokesman for a generation,'' writes Anthony DeCurtis in the introduction to this pictures-and-text remembrance of the Nirvana lead singer, who died last April. And indeed, what's most striking about Cobain is that, for a gifted musician idolized by millions, Cobain was exceedingly successful at radiating no star charisma whatsoever; most of the pictures in this book could be mistaken for those of any slacker-off-the-street. Still, the interviews with Cobain reveal a mind uncommonly sensitive to the ironies of rock stardom, and suggest a shrewd maturity that never came to fruition. B+