At the very least, he hadn’t clawed his way out of Aberdeen, Washington to let Nirvana become Mr. The day before Nirvana filmed their set, the show’s guest was Duran Duran.Īs with all creative endeavors, Cobain seemed eager to strip the charade of its artifice and do something he perceived to be real. A few hair metal bands came through in an attempt to be taken seriously, as though the lust of teenage girls was not serious enough. Between 19, guests of the show included middlebrow alternative acts like Elvis Costello and R.E.M., legacy artists like Eric Clapton and Paul Simon, and contemporary pop stars like Mariah Carey. (The name alone-“Unplugged”-conjured an imagined utopia where music was nothing more than the spontaneous expression of people in a room.) You’d come in, strip down, show your fans the heart bleeding under the armor. MTV had started hosting “Unplugged” in 1989 as a way to package famous artists in comparatively approachable contexts. “Kurt,” she said, “they think you are Jesus Christ.” Afterward, Cobain reportedly complained to Unplugged programmer Amy Finnerty that the audience must not have liked it because they were so quiet. For musicians whose sound was so essentially electric, the idea of playing acoustic-or, as it came to pass, in a subdued, semi-amplified state-wasn’t just like going on stage naked, but amputated. “We play so hard that we can’t tune our guitars fast enough.” As few as 24 hours before Unplugged, he was considering having Dave Grohl sit out because he thought Grohl’s drumming would overpower the rest of the band. “We’re just musically and rhythmically retarded,” he’d told Guitar World in the wake of 1991’s Nevermind. “This is from our first record,” he mutters before “About a Girl.” “Most people don’t own it.” Never mind the five million people who had bought the one that came next.Ĭobain was reportedly miserable before the taping, worried the band didn’t have the grace to pull off something so subtle. A month or so after Unplugged was taped, he bought a black Lexus, but was so mortified by it-and mocked so thoroughly by his friends-that he returned it within a day. The set list for Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York comprises 14 songs:Ĭheck out the pics from the Unplugged set below.Of course, that was the point of Unplugged, and, in a way, of Nirvana: Even after Cobain got famous, he tried, often painfully, to seem normal.
Times review of the 2007 DVD release called it deserving “a place on the rock TV history shelf alongside the informal, sit-down section of Elvis Presley’s epic comeback special in 1968.” The guitar that Cobain played in the performance sold for an eye-popping $6 million, setting a new record. It’s ranked on most best live albums lists and the L.A.
Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York has achieved its own kind of lore, with most magazine reviews giving it 5 out of 5 stars, or a rating of (at least) 9 out of 10. At the Grammy’s in 1996, the album won for Best Alternative Music Performance, Nirvana’s only Grammy win. 1 on the US Billboard 200 and was certified eight times platinum. The first Nirvana release after the death of Cobain, it debuted at No. 16 of the same year, and nearly seven months after Kurt Cobain died by suicide on April 5 of 1994. 18 of 1993, about 11 months from when it aired on MTV Dec. It dropped slightly less than a year after it was taped on Nov.
November 1, 1994, MTV Unplugged in New York, featuring the historic Nirvana set, was released in stores.