I agree with both. I have become more and more annoyed with all the "We never would have thought" comments or the "Can't be, he/she was such a funny person" comments over the last years after someone had commited suicide. In my view and experience, it's not necessarily about people on a pedestal, but about not looking "behind the scenes", and more, not wanting to do that. I understand and I know that this is hard to do, it's hard to pose tough questions for many reasons, one of the reasons might be that you could get tough answers, and not everybody can handle this (neither the person who is asked, nor person who has to deal with the answer). And to be clear: Even if you do this, if you have really deep and also hurtful conversations, ask tough questions and go through tough answers with someone, it doesn't mean that this other one won't harm him- or herself. That is, at last, out of your hands. But at least people wouldn't remain on the surface.
And finally related to this specific story: I do remember the moment in which I heard about Kurt Cobain's suicide very well. I was 20, I had my own TV (yep, not everyone had that back then) and MTV or rather VIVA (sort of the German version of MTV) was on. And at some point during the program they inserted a newsflash at the bottom, I remember it started with "Sad news", followed by "Kurt Cobain is said to have killed himself" and the standard "more as soon as we know". My first reaction was shouting out "No." But it didn't shout "no" because I wouldn't couldn't believe it, but because I just didn't want a world without him at that point. That being said, I wasn't surprised at all about the news, I could relate, but I guess that's where also my own story comes into play. I'm actually working on telling more about that, with the thought in mind that it might help others only to understand only a tiny bit that people think, feel and experience in very different ways and that it is (I think) important to at least be aware of that.