Tony Hawk Plots Special Celebration with Kurt Cobain’s Skateboard

Celebrity skateboarder Tony Hawk has big plans for what would have been Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s 56th birthday on Monday (Feb. 20).

Hawk recently shared a post on Instagram showing off Cobain’s 1985 skateboard he bought at an auction last year. “It is an original Jeff Phillips model, hand painted by Kurt Cobain in 1985,” the skateboarder explained in the post. “Two icons that had immense influence on their respective fields, both of whom passed away tragically and much too young. I even tracked down the original owner to understand its provenance.”

The beat-up board features a hand-painted Iron Maiden emblem done by the late singer himself. With the help of Birdhouse Vice President Derek Richardson, Hawk explained, “We are hoping to make something good of this acquisition by raising awareness for emotional health, and to help provide resources for those who are struggling mentally.”

What that “something good” is will be revealed on February 20. Hawk closed his post with a line from the Nirvana hit, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” “Our little group has always been, and always will until the end,” he wrote.

See his post below.

In a recent interview with Cobain’s former Nirvana bandmate Krist Novoselic, Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil and record engineer Jack Endino reminisced about the late frontman who passed away on April 5, 1994.

“He was like a windmill and he would just say one thing and he would, like, change his mind on it,” Novoselic said in the conversation.

“All of a sudden, you’re on the cover of all these magazines,” he said of their explosive breakthrough. “We got shot out of a cannon… and he had his own thing he had to deal with through his drug addiction. That’s what tore him down, it was too powerful. It should have never happened.”

(Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)