Kurt Cobain at the legendary MTV unplugged performance of Nirvana
Photo: Hulton Archives, Frank Micelotta Archives. All rights reserved.
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Those who listened closely at the time may not have been so surprised. His voice betrayed so frighteningly clearly what he always denied in interviews – that he was a junkie. The whiny, raw – it made “About A Girl” and “Polly” and “Something In The Way” feel even more fragile, not to mention the heartbreaking covers.
Even if he wanted to sound indifferent, like on “Dumb”, you had to cry. Oh yes, the band. Played nicely in the background. As important as Novoselic and Grohl were to Cobain (though Courtney Love doesn’t want to admit it), they were just extras tonight. It was Cobain’s show – touching, ironic, sad. With my last strength, with so much strength. The man who owned the world.
Kurt Cobain as a traditionalist
Here you hear for the last time what Cobain could and wanted. A songwriter who finished early, who incorporated everything and expelled it again with a strict will to style, articulated inevitably. The selection of Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold The World”, Leadbelly’s “Where Did You Sleep Tonight” and “Lake Of Fire” by the Meat Puppets is, of course, programmatic and limits Cobain’s reference system. For long passages the band doesn’t sound like Nirvana as we know them from MTV. On MTV of all places.
More on Nirvana
The concert identifies Kurt Cobain as a historian and traditionalist who only refers to the incomprehensible turning point in his own history with “Come As You Are”, “On A Plain” and “Polly”. “All Apologies”, the last song of “In Utero”, is also here at the end. “What else should I say?”
(AW)
An article from the RS archive
More highlights
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