Remember the good old days when MTV was actually about music? Even as they started veering away from videos, there was still cool stuff like the “MTV Unplugged” sessions. It was a grand idea to have a big name band sitting in a studio with a handful of very lucky people surrounding them as they played their biggest hits and told stories about the songs.
Nirvana did one of them in 1993 performing a 14-song set that include a Meat Puppets (“Lake of Fire”), David Bowie (“The Man Who Sold the World”) and Leadbelly (“Where Did You Sleep Last Night”) covers. The show spawned a live album release and a lot of money posthumously for Kurt Cobain. Well, not for him exactly.
The green sweater Cobain wore went up for auction in October, 2019 and raked in $334,000; the most expensive sweater ever sold at auction. Did I mention it was dirty too? The letter of authenticity that accompanied the sweater was sure to point that out.
His custom built Fender Mustang guitar that he used on Nirvana’s “In Utero” tour fetched $340,000.
Now, the guitar that Cobain used for the “MTV Unplugged” session has been auctioned and grabbed a total that blows the previous two items right out of the water.
That guitar, a 1959 Martin D-18E acoustic was expected to go for around one or two million. NOPE! Try just over $6 million, shattering the previous record set by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. Gilmour’s black Stratocaster sold for $3.95 million in 2019.
That’s not the only record broken by the sale of this guitar. New world records have been made for Most Expensive Guitar, Most Expensive Acoustic Guitar, Most Expensive Memorabilia and Most Expensive Nirvana Memorabilia.
In case you are wondering who has such cash, it was a businessman from Australia.
And what about how the guitar wound up at auction in the first place? Well, when it came to the sweater and that previously mentioned guitar, Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, is responsible for that. But this guitar was not in her possession. Originally, Cobain’s daughter, Frances Bean, owned it but she apparently lost it in the divorce from her husband, Isaiah Silva. In fact, Frances Bean and Courtney tried to get it back but were denied. So was it Silva who auctioned it? And what on earth is he going to do with that $6 million??
