Long before Nirvana became one of the biggest bands in the world, Kurt Cobain had a considerably less glamorous job on the Washington Coast. He worked right here at the Polynesian Resort in Ocean Shores (now also known as Polynesian Rentals).
Before Nevermind, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and Seattle grunge became an international phenomenon, Cobain spent part of the 1980s working maintenance and janitorial jobs around Grays Harbor. One of those jobs brought him from his hometown of Aberdeen to the Polynesian Resort in Ocean Shores.
It’s a small piece of Kurt Cobain history that happens to be part of the Polynesian’s history, too. And unlike plenty of rock-and-roll legends, there’s good evidence this actually happened.
Yes, Kurt Cobain worked at the Polynesian Resort
Kurt Cobain worked at the Polynesian Resort in Ocean Shores in the mid-1980s, before Nirvana was formed.
Washington’s HistoryLink records that Cobain took a maintenance job at the Polynesian Inn Resort around this period of his life. Other biographical accounts describe him performing maintenance, janitorial work, and sometimes cleaning rooms at the resort.
At the time, he wasn’t the Kurt Cobain the world would eventually know. He was a young musician from Aberdeen trying to pay the bills.
When did Kurt Cobain work at the Polynesian?
Cobain worked at the Polynesian during the mid-1980s, with historical accounts placing the job around 1986. He was about 19 years old.
Cobain had dropped out of Aberdeen High School shortly before graduation in 1985 and spent the following period moving between different living situations and working various jobs. Around late 1986, he moved into an apartment, and his job at the Polynesian helped pay the rent.
He later shared a rental house with Matt Lukin, and also began crossing paths with another young Aberdeen musician, Krist Novoselic.
This was also an important period in Cobain’s development as a musician. He was writing songs, recording early material, exchanging music with other people around the Grays Harbor music scene, and becoming increasingly serious about forming a band.
The guy doing maintenance at an Ocean Shores resort was already working toward something much bigger. Nobody checking into the Polynesian could have known just how much bigger.
What did Kurt Cobain do at the Polynesian?
HistoryLink describes Cobain taking a maintenance job at the Polynesian Inn Resort. Other biographical accounts describe him doing janitorial work, maintenance tasks, and sometimes maid or room-cleaning duties.
In many accounts, it has been recorded that Kurt often took naps in empty guest rooms at the Polynesian.
Kurt was sharing music while working at the Polynesian
This is where the story gets considerably more interesting than simply saying a famous musician once worked here.
According to singer-songwriter Damien Jurado’s recollection, Cobain was already sharing his enthusiasm for underground music while working at the Polynesian.
In the mid-1980s, discovering punk music in a small Washington coastal community wasn’t as simple as opening an app and searching for a playlist. Records and tapes had to physically find their way to you.
Jurado recalled receiving a cassette from a school friend containing bands including Black Flag, Fang, and the Butthole Surfers. His friend told him the cassette came from Kurt, who worked at the hotel. Jurado wanted to meet him.
His friend eventually introduced the two at the Polynesian, and Jurado remembered talking with Cobain and later receiving additional punk compilation tapes from him.
It’s a fascinating little snapshot of Kurt Cobain before Nirvana. Even while working a regular job in Ocean Shores, music was already taking up a lot of space in his life.
What was Kurt Cobain doing musically at the time?
Quite a lot, actually. Cobain had already begun making music before working at the Polynesian.
In 1985, he formed an early band called Fecal Matter with Dale Crover of the Melvins and Greg Hokanson. The project didn’t last, but recordings from the band became important in what happened next.
Cobain eventually passed a demo tape containing his music to Krist Novoselic. Novoselic liked what he heard. HistoryLink traces this period directly into the partnership between Cobain and Novoselic that would eventually become Nirvana.
That means Cobain’s Polynesian job falls into an interesting little window of music history: after he’d already begun seriously experimenting with his own music but before Nirvana existed as the band that would make him famous.
He wasn’t a rock star working undercover as a maintenance man. He was a maintenance man trying to become a musician.
Did Kurt Cobain live in Ocean Shores?
No. In 1986, Kurt was living in Aberdeen and traveling to Ocean Shores for work at the Polynesian. He was also making frequent trips to Olympia, where a growing alternative music scene was exposing him to more bands and musicians.
Those places would all become part of his story. Aberdeen was home. Ocean Shores was work. Olympia increasingly became part of his musical and social world. Eventually, Seattle would become associated with Nirvana and the grunge movement internationally.
But much of the story before Seattle happened farther west.
Did Kurt Cobain meet other musicians while working at the Polynesian?
At least one musician has a direct story about meeting him there.
As mentioned above, singer-songwriter Damien Jurado has recalled meeting Cobain at the Polynesian when Jurado was a young teenager living in Ocean Shores. The two weren’t future rock stars meeting backstage at a concert. Jurado was a kid interested in punk music. Cobain was the guy working at his friend’s dad’s hotel who knew about cool bands.
Jurado remembered Cobain making punk compilation tapes for him and his friends. They continued seeing him periodically for a few months.
So [Jurado’s friend] comes to school one day with a cassette in his hand and it says, Black Flag on side A and on side B it says, other stuff. I said, where did you find this? He said, there’s this guy who my dad hired to work on the janitorial staff. He said he can give me all the music I want. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is great. Here was someone that – who had not only a knowledge of punk rock, but loads of records – obviously enough to make us mixed tapes. So I said I wanted to meet this guy. And he said, well, he’s working today. In fact, I’m going to go pick up another cassette from him today. We went to the hotel. I’m just like fantasizing this kid our age – maybe a little bit older, you know, with a mohawk, leather jacket, you know, like the kind that you see on postcards and movies, you know. And he said, oh, there he is.
– Damien Jurado (NPR.org)
He’s over there. And he points at him. I’m looking around for this person like I think it’s in my mind. Where is he? Like ’cause all I see was this scrawny kid with like long blonde hair and a denim jacket. You’d think, like, he’d be a Metallica fan ’cause we were more punk rock looking than he was, you know? And I said, that guy? He said, yeah. We just walked up to him and I said my name is Damien. Can you make me a mix tape? He’s, like, yeah, sure, I can make you a mix tape. So for the next three or four months – constant, like once a week we’re getting mixed tapes, like, a lot of them.
How long did Kurt Cobain work at the Polynesian?
The exact dates of Cobain’s employment aren’t as clearly documented as the fact that he worked there.
Damien Jurado recalled seeing Cobain around the Polynesian for roughly three months before Cobain was fired and eventually moved on.
“He was very shy. He didn’t really talk that much when we hung out. I never even bothered, like, learning really his name. We smoked in a hotel room. We talked a lot about bands. And then eventually, my friend comes to school and says he got fired from the job, and he’s no longer working there. And I remember just feeling like, oh my God, you got to be kidding me, you know.”
– Damien Jurado via NPR.org
Other historical accounts place his employment at the resort during 1986. Rather than assigning him an exact start and end date that isn’t firmly established, it’s more accurate to say Cobain worked at the Polynesian during this period of his late teens.
Was Nirvana already a band?
Not yet—not in the form the world would eventually know.
Cobain and Krist Novoselic were becoming connected musically around this period, but Nirvana’s familiar story was still ahead of them. Cobain had already recorded music and played in earlier projects. His Fecal Matter demo helped convince Novoselic to start playing music with him.
By 1987, Cobain and Novoselic were performing together with drummer Aaron Burckhard.
The band went through multiple names and drummers before settling into what became Nirvana. Their debut album, Bleach, arrived in 1989. Nevermind followed in 1991.
Suddenly, the former Polynesian maintenance worker was one of the most recognizable musicians on the planet. That’s quite a career change.
Kurt Cobain’s connection to Grays Harbor
The Polynesian story also makes more sense when you look at the geography.
Kurt Cobain wasn’t someone from Seattle who randomly picked up a temporary job at an Ocean Shores hotel. He was from Grays Harbor. Cobain was born in Aberdeen in 1967 and grew up in Aberdeen and nearby Montesano. Ocean Shores sits on the coast west of Aberdeen, making the Polynesian a reasonable place for a person from the area to find work.
Today, Aberdeen’s connection to Cobain is considerably more visible.
Fans travel there to see places associated with his early life, including Kurt Cobain Memorial Park near the Wishkah River.
Ocean Shores is a quieter part of that history. There isn’t a huge Nirvana museum hiding inside the Polynesian. There is simply a real connection between the property and the years before anyone knew what Nirvana would become.
Did working at the Polynesian inspire any Nirvana songs?
There isn’t reliable evidence that a specific Nirvana song was written about working at the Polynesian Resort. And that’s where it’s important not to turn an interesting fact into a better-sounding legend.
Cobain’s life in Aberdeen, relationships, jobs, financial struggles, artistic interests, and experiences in the Pacific Northwest all influenced the person and songwriter he became.
But saying a particular song is secretly about cleaning rooms in Ocean Shores would require evidence we don’t have.
The documented story is already interesting enough. Kurt Cobain worked here. That’s not something most vacation rentals get to put in their property history.
Can you stay at the Polynesian Resort today?
Yes, although the Polynesian works differently today than it did when Kurt Cobain was an employee.
The former traditional resort has transitioned into individually owned vacation condos, with Polynesian Rentals managing vacation stays in units throughout the property. That means the building is still here, but today’s accommodations aren’t identical hotel rooms.
Each condo has its own design, amenities, personality, and name. And yes, we’ve had a little fun with the Nirvana connection (more on that below). We couldn’t exactly have this piece of property history and do nothing with it.
Before Nirvana, there was the Polynesian
It’s easy to look back at someone as famous as Kurt Cobain and imagine that becoming a rock star was inevitable. It wasn’t.
In 1986, Nirvana’s breakthrough was still years away. Cobain was a young guy from Aberdeen making music, trading punk tapes, trying to figure out what came next, and working a regular job on the Washington Coast to help pay the rent.
That regular job just happened to be here.
Today, you can stay at the same Ocean Shores property where Kurt Cobain once showed up for work long before the rest of the world knew his name. We can’t promise your stay will result in one of the most influential rock bands of all time. But we’ve certainly had worse employee alumni.
Stay in a unit named after Nirvana
The Polynesian’s Kurt Cobain connection even shows up in the names of some of our condos today.
- Unit 102 is Come As You Oar, a play on one of Nirvana’s biggest hits, “Come As You Are”
- Unit 115 is Shells Like Teen Spirit, a beachy play on Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
- Unit 201 is Pennyroyal Sea, inspired by “Pennyroyal Tea.”
- Unit 210 is Something in the Wave, a play on “Something in the Way” from the album Nevermind.
- Unit 308 is Stay A-Wave, a play on another hit from Nevermind, “Stay Away”
- Unit 312 is Surfvana, putting an Ocean Shores spin on the band’s name
- Unit 318 is Heart-Shaped Docks, a play on their hit “Heart-Shaped Box”
- Unit 319 is Surf Cobain, named for the Polynesian’s most famous former employee.
It’s a small way we’ve worked the property’s history into the Polynesian Rentals today—and probably the only time we can say our condo puns have legitimate historical context.
Book Your Next Vacation
Browse our entire selection of rentals today and find the perfect match for your vacation!
