Kurt Cobain, About A Son, More4, 10pm

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Tribute documentaries about dead rock stars usually add up to little more than seen-before concert clips and talking-head interviews with family and friends. The subject is unable to offer­ insights for one obvious and unfortunate reason.

What makes this moving portrait of the reluctant voice of his generation­ so unique is it’s narrated by the man himself. Culled from 25 hours of previously unheard interviews, recorded one year ­before his suicide, Kurt Cobain talks honestly and eloquently­ about his life as a husband, father and icon.

His face does not appear until the final frames and not a single Nirvana song is heard. Not even a sniff of Smells Like Teen Spirit. His words are illustrated by postcard scenes of Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle­, the cities in Washington state where, respectively,  he was born, ­became a star, and killed himself.

Cobain recalls his parents’ divorce, an aunt buying his first guitar, battling suicidal depression from the age of nine, and the excruciating stomach pain he says drove him to heroin. He claims he used the drug only for medication, saying: “I’m a millionaire rock star. I have a very good reason not to do drugs.”

He describes his sound as “heavy metal mixed with the Beatles. I make violent rock songs with lyrics that express anguish and vulnerability”. This heady mix, known as grunge, became the music of a ­generation after Nirvana’s­ Nevermind came out in 1991.

Cobain also reveals the resentment­ his bandmates Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl felt when he demanded a bigger slice of the band’s ­income, and his devotion to wife Courtney Love and their daughter Frances Bean.

But what really shines through is his aversion to life and obsession with death.  The most moving scenes come towards the end, when Cobain admits he has “thought about blowing my head off all my life”, but his wife and daughter help him cope with his dark moods.

Later, Courtney is heard calling out: “Kurt! Don’t forget­ Frances’s bottle when you come upstairs!”

It’s a mundane moment of ­domesticity that hints at the inner peace that could have been waiting for him just around the corner.

The following year, aged 27, Kurt Cobain put a gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

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