Topline
A guitar previously owned by Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain that was featured within the music video for the band’s hit tune “Smells Like Teen Spirit” offered for $4.5 million on Sunday, after billionaire Indianapolis Colts proprietor Jim Irsay made the successful bid.
The blue 1969 Mustang Fender guitar utilized by rock icon Kurt Cobain within the 1991 Nirvana music video … [+]
Key Information
The 1969 left-handed Fender Mustang guitar—with the model’s Competitors Lake Placid blue end with matching headstock—far surpassed expectations, after being estimated by Julien’s Auctions to promote for between $600,000 and $800,000.
Cobain performed the guitar in Nirvana’s wildly standard 1991 video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which reveals a highschool pep rally that develops right into a chaotic mosh pit, serving to drive the band’s album Nevermind to go gold inside weeks of the video’s launch.
A portion of the proceeds had been donated by the Cobain household to Kicking the Stigma, the Irsay household’s initiative that raises consciousness about psychological well being and gives grants to Indiana-area nonprofits, Irsay said in a tweet.
Massive Quantity
$6 million. That’s how a lot certainly one of Kurt Cobain’s guitars—a Martin D-18E—offered for in 2020. It’s the costliest guitar ever offered at public sale. Cobain performed the Martin D-18E throughout Nirvana’s 1993 MTV Unplugged efficiency in New York, for which the band won a Grammy in 1995—marking one of many band’s final performances earlier than Cobain’s demise.
Key Background
The guitar remained in Kurt Cobain’s household after the singer died by suicide in 1994, but it surely had been lent out for show on the Museum of Pop Tradition in Seattle, Nirvana’s hometown, for the previous 12 years. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is credited with popularizing Nirvana and bringing the grunge style as a complete into the mainstream. Final yr, Rolling Stone ranked the tune fifth on its listing of the five hundred Biggest Songs of All Time.
Additional Studying
Kurt Cobain’s Guitar From Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ Music Video Up For Public sale (Forbes)