Almost 13 years after he took a shotgun to his own life, his second attempt at suicide being a deadly success, popular music welcomed another mythical figure into the dead rockstar Hall Of Fame. Another depressed, drug-addicted life had been terminated, another false dawn for a generation of disillusioned youth looking for a hero to make sense of their pointless lives. And yet it all seemed to make sense.

Cobain, at 27 statistically the most popular age for rock star suicides (Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix), had nowhere left to turn. He had taken his metier to its logical conclusion; he had to burn out, not fade away.

Historically, Nirvana were the most important rock band of their generation, singlehandedly reinventing punk rock for mass consumption and at a stroke neutralising the pomposity of 1980s stadium rock. They terrified record companies by becoming so huge so quickly and ushered in a new wave of bands and fans that had had it with Corporate Rock. Music could again be made for itself. It was as if Cobain had seen the future of music and the future was not good. Something had to be done.

If he were around today Cobain would see much good. He would look at the current crop of emo pretenders most ostensibly influenced by him, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance and the like, and probably have a chuckle. He would log on to his MySpace site and know that much has been achieved.

Trying to imagine Cobain at 40 is in many ways futile because the very things that made him who he was were the things that killed him. Happiness for him was impossible, only achievable if you turned off your head to the things that you saw. It was a deal that he was unwilling to make; the price of life had to be a betrayal. It is the main reason his legacy is held so dear, by so many, today. It is also why Cobain last year overtook Elvis as the world's highest earning dead rock star, generating over 40m through Courtney Love's part sale of his back catalogue.

But what if Cobain had lived, gone to rehab and got happy? Would he now be giving advice to Britney? Would he be receiving lifetime achievement awards like Oasis? Would he have turned his hand to film, maybe producing for screen Patrick Suskind's Perfume, a novel he eulogised in the opening track on Nirvana's final album In Utero? Would he have told his record company where to go and, like Radiohead, taken his own route, via the internet? Perhaps he would have mellowed and expanded on the MTV Unplugged album, maybe to work with Rick Rubin on an American Recordings series.

But really, none of this matters because without rock 'n' roll suicides there would be no rock 'n' roll, just commodities. Untimely, gruesome death is the one thing that gives meaning to pop music. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Ian Curtis, Phil Lynott, Jeff Buckley, Nick Drake and Elliot Smith paid the admission price for everyone else. Kurt had to do it.

No regrets.