Cobain pain for Guitar Hero 5

Kurt Cobain’s widow has taken great exception to the use of her dead husband’s likeness in Guitar Hero 5 and is threatening to get medievally legal on the game’s publishers, Activision. Oh dear...

Courtney Love, for it is she, is herself something of a rock icon and is not generally known for her shy and retiring demeanour or her fear of naming spades when she sees ‘em. She’s apparently been involved in the integration of Cobain into GH5 too, only approving his final inclusion as a playable character after lengthy of negotiations.

Thing is, a few liberties seem to have been taken with Cobain’s avatar – at least from Love’s point of view. Once he’s unlocked in-game players can use him to perform any of GH5’s 85 songs, not just Nirvana’s contributions. As a result Love has Tweeted furiously:

“For the record, this Guitar Hero s*** is breach of contract on a bully’s part and there will be a proper addressing of this and a retraction.”

“We are going to sue the s*** out of Activision.”

Well, fair enough, right? Quite apart from the unsanctioned extra use of Cobain’s likeness, the thought of having him sing along to Duran Duran’s ‘Hungry like a Wolf’ or Vampire Weekend’s annoyingly cheerful ‘A-Punk’ is just wrong (or funny!). Perhaps not as wrong as Johnny Cash fronting ‘Play that Funky Music White Boy’, though.

Anyway, Guitar hero 5 is out now for Xbox 360, PS3, PS2 and Wii. All things considered you’d better enjoy Cobain’s appearance while you can.