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Sure, some of those making the trek to the park beside the house where Kurt Cobain died a decade ago Monday were there to gawk or get their faces on TV. But there were also a great number of people who were genuinely there to grieve the loss of a songwriter who left his mark.
"I don't think suicide or the death of somebody like Kurt is something you ever get over," says Charles R. Cross, Seattle-based author of what's considered the definitive Cobain biography, Heavier Than Heaven.
"There isn't a set time of grieving when somebody is lost the way he was."
Odd then that Cobain's grandfather, 80-year-old Leland Cobain, was treating Monday as just another day, claiming he was "over it pretty well, now."
Then again, maybe that's because Leland doesn't think Kurt took his own life.
"I think he was murdered, yeah," says the elder Cobain during an interview with the Sun.
Leland's charges are also contained in a new book titled Love & Death, which was published -- ghoulishly, some might say -- on this 10th anniversary, and which alleges the frontman for Nirvana was murdered.
While authors Ian Halperin and Canadian Max Wallace don't come out and explicitly level the charge, it's obvious the answer they have for their previous book, Who Killed Kurt Cobain?, is his widow Courtney Love.
Leland isn't so committal.
"I have no idea who done it, but I think the cops in Seattle really goofed up," he says.
"I can't understand how he could have that much dope in him and still lift a shotgun. And I can't understand how come his jaws weren't all broke up and everything from the concussion when it went off and why (the gun) was still on his chest -- it should have jumped clear off his chest."
Those are some of the questions conspiracy theorists -- in print, on various websites and in the Nick Broomfield documentary film Kurt & Courtney -- have raised since Cobain's body was found, with the shotgun on his chest on the floor of the greenhouse at the Seattle mansion he shared with Love and his daughter Frances Bean.
But Leland is also skeptical based on Kurt's demeanour the last time he saw his grandson.
"He was fine," he says, noting this last contact was at the singer's Lake Washington Blvd. home.
"He was getting ready for the (last) tour, and truthfully, I never did see him -- or I never did know he was -- on dope.
"I was told it was just publicity -- that's what his mother kept telling me, 'It's publicity, it's publicity, he's not on dope.'
"I believed her because every time I'd seen him he was fine.
"And every time he'd come back from tour, regardless of the (time of) day or night it was, he'd come to the house to see grandma (Leland's wife Iris, whom has since passed on but was quite close to Kurt)."
That in itself should set up signals for those buying into Leland and others' charges of murder.
Many witnessed Cobain's excessive heroin use -- a drug he initially tried in order to alleviate an almost crippling stomach disorder -- which resulted in a number of reported incidents of overdose on his part.
He'd also spent time in detox trying to kick the habit. His final stint was at a clinic in Marina Del Ray, Calif., which he climbed a wall to escape from and flew back to Seattle. He would be found dead several days later by an electrician making a routine stop at Cobain's Seattle address.
That's why a great many people who were quite close to him, or even those who he had a casual working relationship with, weren't surprised when suicide was ruled the cause of death.
"I wasn't surprised but I was pretty upset because, if you'd had any contact with him, you could have seen that things were going wrong," says Seattle producer Jack Endino, who worked on Nirvana's first album Bleach and then again when the band was demoing In Utero in October of '92.
"The whole vibe had become very strange and kind of alarming and negative around the band.
"All you have to do is look at the Heart Shaped Box video, just watch it and it looks like a guy that's about to do something drastic. Just look in his eyes in the video and he doesn't look good at all.
"And years later you hear that song that got released (You Know You're Right, released on the self-titled greatest hits album released in 2002), and it sounds like somebody at the end of their rope."
But still people, ignoring Kurt's drug abuse and his other reported suicide attempts, persist in claiming that it was Love who put Cobain's neck in that noose.
Again, Leland isn't so committal, although he doesn't entirely dismiss the idea.
"She might have," he says.
"They had a (pre-)nuptial agreement and if they divorced, which Kurt was getting ready to do, she would have got only what she had when they got married."
The fact Cobain had said he was going to divorce Love is something theorists point to in their claim she had a hand in his death.
"The thing that's got to be said is that Cobain was so (messed) up on drugs at that point that he was divorcing everything in his life," says Cross.
"He was going to divorce Courtney, he was going to break up Nirvana, he was going to fire his management -- he was going to do all of those things at certain given points.
"And he was also going to kill himself."
Ironically, it's Cross' book that is now being used by Wallace and Halperin to further their theory, pointing to what they believe are several discrepancies in Heavier Than Heaven, while at the same time
insinuating Cross wrote the book in order to refute the murder charges against Love. They claim Cross was "not necessarily a friend of Courtney's, but they had known each other for years and got along well."
Says Cross: "I'm not friends with Courtney, I know her ... but I'm not sending Christmas cards to Courtney Love." The writer vocally refuses to read Love & Death and is openly annoyed when told his book plays an important role.
"I guess what I would say on the record is that Courtney didn't read my book in advance, didn't like a lot of what was in it, was pissed when it came out and because I don't call her a murderer these morons suggest somehow I'm part of the conspiracy or an apologist for her."
Nor, Cross says, is he an apologist for Cobain, which is what he considers most of the people with conspiracy theories are.
He partially blames Cobain's embracing of his own victimhood through life, as well as his successful marketing of it, but mainly Cross blames "morons" who won't let Cobain's last act stand for what it was.
"I think that's part of why his suicide has been difficult for some people to swallow, because Kurt was so successful at marketing himself as a victim of success ... that sadly, unfortunately, I think his suicide made people want to look at him as a victim of some crime that wasn't committed," he says.
"To do that I think takes away even his final degree of dignity.
"He chose to take his own life, every single bit of evidence points to that, and that, like it or not, was his choice.
"We can judge that or say that cost a lot of pain on the part of a lot of people, but to deny it, to create him as a victim of his own passing ... that takes away his humanity."
Feb. 20, 1967: Kurt Donald Cobain is born at Grays Harbour Community Hospital in Aberdeen, Wash., to waitress Wendy, 19, and Donald, 21, an auto mechanic. The family lives in nearby Hoquiam; moves to Aberdeen in 1969.
February 1976: Kurt's parents divorce one week after his ninth birthday. Kurt withdraws, moves in with his dad. By Grade 8, Kurt starts smoking marijuana and taking LSD.
February 1981: An uncle gives Kurt his first electric guitar.
1982-84: Kurt moves 10 times and lives with 10 different families.
1984, age 17: Meets Krist Novoselic in high school; the two start jamming. Kurt drops out of school.
March 1987: Kurt and Krist's unnamed band plays their first gig.
October 1989-May 1990: The band -- now Nirvana -- tours Europe in a van.
Jan. 12, 1990: Kurt meets Courtney Love at a Portland nightclub.
November 1990: In Olympia, Wash. Kurt first injects heroin.
Jan. 11, 1992: Nevermind hits No. 1 on Billboard album charts, knocking out Michael Jackson's Dangerous. The same day, Nirvana makes their first appearance on Saturday Night Live. The next morning, Cobain experiences his first near-death overdose after injecting heroin; Courtney resuscitates him.
Feb. 24, 1992: Kurt and Courtney marry in Hawaii.
August 1992: Vanity Fair reports Courtney used heroin during her pregnancy. On Aug. 18, Frances Bean Cobain, the couple's only child, is born. L.A. County takes custody of the baby based on the magazine report.
June 4, 1993: Courtney calls police, saying Kurt is threatening suicide. Cops confiscate three guns, detain Kurt for several hours.
Feb. 5, 1994: Nirvana embarks on European tour.
March 6, 1994: In Rome, Kurt takes about 50 Valium-like pills with a bottle of champagne and is rushed unconscious to the hospital.
March 31, 1994: Kurt checks into a California treatment centre, escaping two days later by climbing over a wall.
April 8, 1994: Kurt Cobain, age 27, is found dead in a room behind his Seattle home. Coroner's conclusion: Death by self-inflicted gunshot wound.
IN UTERO
Released: Sept. 21, 1993
The last of the three Nirvana studio albums.
And a record that seemed to be Kurt Cobain's attempt at returning to his punk rock roots.
The first tip-off is the producer chosen to helm the follow-up to the slicked-up Nevermind, Steve Albini, a man synonymous with lo-fi, noisy indie rock, whose band Big Black Cobain was a huge fan of.
The second clue is the angry song titles, which includes Dumb, tourette's, Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle, Pennyroyal Tea and the controversial Rape Me, which Cobain threatened to debut live at the MTV Video Music Awards.
The final proof is in the music itself, which is heavy, dark, angry and, at times, very, very ugly.
It's also quite superb.
Not as instantaneously likable as Nevermind but still full of music that sticks with you, such as the beautiful Dumb, the brutal Radio Friendly Unit Shifter and Heart-Shaped Box, which is a bit of both.
The worst part about In Utero is that we'll never know where they would have gone from here.