Billboard charts and is consistently ranked among the top ten live albums of all time.Ĭobain’s mastery of this guitar along with Nirvana’s flawless acoustic and vocal performance propelled the MTV Unplugged in New York album to multi-platinum certification and it won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in 1996. Cuts from the album, released seven months after Cobain’s death, would go on to become the most celebrated and defining versions of Nirvana’s songs, “All Apologies,” “Come As You Are,” “About A Girl,” and “Dumb,” as well as covers of David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World” and a haunting rendition of Lead Belly’s “Black Girl” renamed “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.” MTV Unplugged in New York debuted at No. Nirvana’s acoustic performance that night produced one of the greatest live albums of all time, MTV Unplugged in New York. Approximately five months before his death, Cobain chose this guitar to paint what Rolling Stone called “his last self-portrait.”
KURT COBAIN UNPLUGGED SERIES
In what would become Nirvana’s most legendary performance, Kurt Cobain played his 1959 Martin D-18E in a live taping for the popular MTV Unplugged series on November 18, 1993. Leading up to their 1993 MTV Unplugged performance, Nirvana was the most popular band in the world, but only two years had passed between the time Nirvana hit the mainstream in 1991 and their iconic MTV Unplugged appearance. With the passage of time and the growth of their legacy, it is easy to forget just how fast and brightly Nirvana’s flame burned. Cobain’s MTV Unplugged performance was a self-disclosure, and his Martin D-18E was at once both instrument and revelation. While at first blush it may seem a peculiar pairing, it should really come as no surprise that Cobain selected a guitar that shared so much of his character for what he intended to be his most intimate and meaningful performance. Cobain saw his art as he saw himself, an outlier, nonconforming, and unassuming. Cobain strove to be authentic, even modest, in a forum previously dominated by the flashy and ostentatious. (Nirvana Hall of Fame Induction 2014)Ī deeply pensive artist, whose disquiet was communicated through his writing and performance, Cobain was particularly ill-at-ease with the celebrity and adulation that came as the result of his music’s commercial success. “It is the highest calling for an artist to capture a moment, to embrace and define their time.”
Much as the Beatles had some 28 years earlier, Nirvana simultaneously changed the musical landscape of Rock ‘N’ Roll and became the voice of their own generation with the 1991 release of their second studio album, Nevermind. With the release of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," popular music was set on a completely different trajectory.
Nirvana and their unique music were unlike anything that had come before them. Kurt Cobain and Nirvana gave voice to the social and political angst of a disaffected cohort rising from the shadow of 1980s orthodoxy. Not since John Lennon and The Beatles had a songwriter and his band so completely personified the musical and cultural zeitgeist of an era. Kurt Cobain's 1959 Martin D-18E, played with Nirvana in their historic "MTV Unplugged" performance. Please visit our digital "flip book" special edition catalogue with all details and photography providing the history of this guitar and case by clicking on the catalogue cover image below: Click To Request A Pre-Sale Condition Report
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