Kurt Cobain’s ‘MTV Unplugged’ guitar sells for an eye-popping US$6 million
- The 1959 Martin D-18E acoustic-electric guitar was played during Nirvana’s Grammy-award winning performance in 1993
- Kurt Cobain died by suicide at age 27 about six months after taping ‘Unplugged’
Grunge became gold Saturday as the guitar Kurt Cobain played on Nirvana’s 1993 MTV Unplugged performance sold for an eye-popping US$6 million at auction.
The 1959 Martin D-18E that Cobain played in the band’s rare acoustic performance and subsequent live album was sold to Australian Peter Freedman, owner of Røde Microphones, at the Music Icons event run by Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills, California.
Freedman plans to display the guitar in a worldwide exhibition tour held in galleries and art spaces, with all proceeds going to the performing arts.
The bids opened at US$1 million for the sale that ended up breaking several world records.
Cobain used it to play tunes including About a Girl and All Apologies at the November 18, 1993, show in New York that came less than five months before the singer and songwriter died at age 27.
A day earlier at the same auction event, a custom guitar played by Prince at the height of his stardom in the 1980s and 1990s sold for US$563,500, a small sum compared with the Cobain guitar but well over the US$100,000 to US$200,000 it was expected to fetch.
Prince played the blindingly blue guitar with the artist’s “love” symbol on its neck beginning on the 1984 Purple Rain Tour, as well as on the classic albums “Lovesexy” and “Sign O’ The Times”. He used it into the early 1990s.
Archivists going through Prince’s possessions at his Paisley Park home and musical headquarters in Minnesota recently found the guitar that was thought to be lost during the four years since his death from an overdose at age 57.
Also Friday, a macramé belt that Elvis Presley wore about 30 times on stage brought in nearly 10 times its expected price, with a final bid of US$298,000, and an ivory gown worn by Madonna in her 1990 Vogue video sold for US$179,200.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
