SEATTLE FANS MOURN DEATH OF ROCK STAR COBAIN 

    SEATTLE (Reuter) - The Seattle music world Friday mourned the death of Kurt Cobain, the grunge rock superstar who helped make the city a mecca for fans of alternative music. 
    Under a drizzly gray sky, grieving fans gathered at Cobain's stone-and-shingle home overlooking Lake Washington to pay homage to the rocker, who was found dead in an apartment over the garage of an apparently self-inflicted shotgun wound. 
    ``In the '60s this happened to Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison. This is our generation's turn," said Brion Martin, 23, a rock guitarist and art student who drove to the house after hearing news of Cobain's death. 
    The house, on a winding boulevard in a fashionable part of the city, was cordoned off by yellow plastic tape, with a police guard posted at the end of the driveway. 
    Seattle already was home to a lively and vibrant rock music subculture when Cobain and his band Nirvana exploded onto the scene after moving from the nearby coastal city of Aberdeen. 
    The huge 1991 success of Nirvana's album ``Nevermind" helped cement Seattle's reputation as an incubator for new rock music, said Charles Cross, editor of the local alternative newspaper The Rocket. 
    But he noted that while Nirvana and Seattle rockers Pearl Jam are the best known of the city's music groups, dozens of contemporary music bands continue to toil every weekend in about 10 major clubs, where record label scouts constantly search for fresh talent. 
    ``The Seattle music scene is not just going to die because Kurt Cobain has," he said. 
    Martin, the guitarist, reflected the feelings of many fans when he said Cobain, whose anguished lyrics told a story of anger and depression, was unable to handle fame and success. 
    Until Nirvana came along, the city's best-known musical export was Jimi Hendrix, the Seattle-born rock guitarist who died of a drug overdose at age 27 in 1970. 

Transmitted:  94-04-08 18:54:00 EDT