R.E.M. star Michael Stipe has revealed he offered Kurt Cobain a collaborative project in a desperate effort to prevent the Nirvana frontman from committing suicide.
The two alternative rockers became friends in the early 1990s and Stipe admits he feared Cobain would do something stupid in the months leading up to his 1994 death - so he reached out with an album idea.
He tells the new issue of Interview magazine, "I knew him and his daughter... R.E.M. worked on two records in Seattle and (guitarist) Peter Buck lived next door to Kurt and (wife) Courtney (Love). So we all knew each other.
"I reached out to him with that project as an attempt to prevent what was going to happen. I was doing that to try to save his life.
"I sent him a plane ticket and a driver, and he tacked the plane ticket to the wall in the bedroom and the driver sat outside the house for 10 hours. Kurt wouldn't come out and wouldn't answer the phone."
Stipe insists there was little else he could do - because Cobain was a heroin addict: "I'm not great with heroin addicts... I'm not great with that level of substance abuse."