The show was directed byBeth McCarthy-Miller and aired on the cable television networkMTV on December 16, 1993. In a break withMTV Unplugged tradition, Nirvana used some electric amplification and effects, and played mainly lesser-known material and covers, with performances of songs by theVaselines,David Bowie,Lead Belly andMeat Puppets. They were joined by the rhythm guitaristPat Smear and the cellistLori Goldston, alongside Meat Puppets membersCris andCurt Kirkwood for some songs.
MTV Unplugged began airing onMTV in 1989, with artists performing their hits on acoustic instruments in intimate settings.[2] Nirvana had been in negotiations to appear for some time; Nirvana frontmanKurt Cobain finally accepted while touring with theMeat Puppets.[3] Nirvana wanted to do something different from a typicalMTV Unplugged performance; according to drummerDave Grohl, "We'd seen the otherUnpluggeds and didn't like many of them, because most bands would treat them like rock shows—play their hits like it wasMadison Square Garden, except with acoustic guitars."[4]
The group looked atMark Lanegan's 1990 albumThe Winding Sheet, which Cobain had performed on, for inspiration. Among the ideas the band members came up with included coveringDavid Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World" and inviting members of the Meat Puppets to join them on stage.[5] Still, the prospect of an entirely acoustic show reportedly made Cobain nervous.[3]
Nirvana rehearsed for two days, at SST Rehearsal Facility, inWeehawken, New Jersey.[6] The rehearsals were tense and difficult, with the band running into problems performing various songs. During the sessions, Cobain disagreed with MTV about the performance. ProducerAlex Coletti recalled that the network was unhappy with the lack of hit Nirvana songs, and with the choice of the Meat Puppets as guests, saying: "They wanted to hear the 'right' names –Eddie Vedder orTori Amos or God knows who."[7]
The day before filming, Cobain refused to play, but he appeared at the studio the following afternoon. Cobain was suffering fromdrug withdrawal and nervousness at the time; one observer said, "There was no joking, no smiles, no fun coming from him ... everyone was more than a little worried about his performance."[3]
Cobain's mohair cardigan worn for the performance[8]
Nirvana taped their performance on November 18, 1993, at Sony Studios in New York City. Cobain suggested the stage be decorated withstargazer lilies, black candles, and a crystalchandelier. Coletti asked, "You mean like a funeral?" Cobain replied, "Exactly. Like a funeral."[9]
Nirvana was joined by guitaristPat Smear and cellistLori Goldston, who had been touring with them. Despite the show's acoustic premise, Cobain insisted on running his acoustic guitar through hisamplifier andeffects pedals. Coletti built a fake box in front of the amplifier to disguise it as amonitor wedge. Coletti said, "It was Kurt's security blanket. He was used to hearing this guitar through hisFender. He wanted those effects. You can hear it on 'The Man Who Sold the World'. It's an acoustic guitar, but he's obviously going through an amp."[7]
Unlike many artists who appeared on the show, Nirvana filmed the entire performance of 14 songs in a single take.[10] It included one song from their debutBleach (1989), four from their second albumNevermind (1991), three from the recently releasedIn Utero, and six covers.[9] AsIn Utero's "All Apologies" had not yet been released as a single, the only contemporary hit the band performed was theNevermind single "Come as You Are".[11][10]
Cris andCurt Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets joined to perform three of their songs with Nirvana. "Kurt purposely wanted the Meat Puppets songs to be a struggle for him vocally," remarked Coletti. "So instead of finding a key he could sing them in comfortably, he chose to strain."[12]
The set ended with a performance of the traditional "Where Did You Sleep Last Night", following the arrangement ofblues musicianLead Belly, whom Cobain described before the song as "his favorite performer ever". Mark Lanegan had covered this song previously onThe Winding Sheet (1990) with Cobain on guitar. After the band finished, Cobain argued with the show's producers, who wanted an encore. Cobain refused because he felt he could not top the performance of that song.[13]
The Nirvana episode ofMTV Unplugged was broadcast in December 1993.[14] It was 45 minutes long and omitted the songs "Something in the Way" and "Oh Me".[citation needed] AfterCobain died in April 1994, MTV aired the episode repeatedly.[15] To meet demand for new Nirvana material and to counterbootlegging, in August 1994, DGC announced a double album,Verse Chorus Verse, comprising live performances including the entireMTV Unplugged performance. However, the task of compiling the album was too emotionally difficult for Novoselic and Grohl, so the project was cancelled a week after the announcement;[16] the group opted to release just theUnplugged performance.[17]Scott Litt, who produced the performance, returned to produce the record.[7]
The performance was released on DVD on November 20, 2007.[18] The DVD release featured the entire taping, in5.1 DTS surround sound, including the two songs ("Something in the Way" and "Oh Me") excluded from the broadcast version. Bonus features consisted of the original broadcast version of the performance, a 1999 MTV special titledBare Witness: Nirvana Unplugged featuring the recollections of MTV producers and audience members, and five full-band songs taped during the pre-show rehearsal: "Come as You Are", "Polly", "Plateau", "Pennyroyal Tea", and "The Man Who Sold the World".[19]
MTV Unplugged in New York was released on November 1, 1994. It debuted at number one on theBillboard 200 and sold 310,500 copies, the highest first-week sales of Nirvana's career.[16] By March 1995, the album had outsoldIn Utero with 6.8 million copies sold.[27]
The album received positive reviews from critics.[28] Tom Hibbert ofQ said that as an acoustic ensemble, Nirvana sounded "most moving, possessed of a ragged glory".[25]Rolling Stone writer Barbara O'Dair found the record "stirring and occasionally brilliant" with "spare and gorgeous spots everywhere", highlighting the band's chemistry on "All Apologies" and Cobain's unaccompanied performance of "Pennyroyal Tea".[26] Ben Thompson fromMojo felt that unlike most "unplugged" releases, the format's "colourless, generic aspect" and not seeing the actual performance benefits Nirvana's record because of how intense it seems in light of Cobain's death.[29][clarification needed] InEntertainment Weekly,David Browne felt unsettled listening to it: "Beyond inducing a sense of loss for Cobain himself,Unplugged elicits a feeling of musical loss, too: the delicacy and intimacy of these acoustic rearrangements hint at where Nirvana (or at least Cobain, who was said to be frustrated with the limitations of the band) could have gone."[21]
MTV Unplugged in New York was voted the fourth-best album of the year inPazz & Jop, an annual poll of prominent American critics published byThe Village Voice.[30]Robert Christgau, the poll's supervisor, also ranked the album fourth in his own year-end list,[31] deeming it a testament to Cobain's depth of feeling, "sincerity" as a vocalist, and distinction from other sensitivealternative rock types such asEddie Vedder andLou Barlow: "The vocal performance he evokes isJohn Lennon's onJohn Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. And he did it in one take."[20]
In a retrospective review forAllMusic, senior editorStephen Thomas Erlewine saidMTV Unplugged in New York was "fearlessly confessional", as it found Nirvana and Cobain "on the verge of discovering a new sound and style".[32] Jason Mendelsohn fromPopMatters believed its intimatefolk rock quality was radical from Nirvana and Cobain, "as crass of a business move as it was" by their record label.[36] InThe Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), journalist Charles M. Young called it Nirvana's "second masterpiece" afterNevermind, and claimed that Cobain could have "revolutionized folk music the same way he had rock" because of his striking voice; he said his songs worked equally well with "a loud band bashing away behind you" or "with just an acoustic guitar".[35] Maeve McDermott ofUSA Today called it "an album of transcendent folk rock that glimpsed what could've been the band's next post-grunge era, had frontman Kurt Cobain survived long enough to see its musical leanings through."[37]
The Guardian wrote thatMTV Unplugged in New York had become "inextricably linked" to Cobain's death a few months after its recording, citing the funereal set design and the sense that Nirvana was "on the verge of a new musical direction, beyond their grunge roots".[38] It named an image from the performance an "era-defining photograph".[38] In 2007, theBBC Two seriesSeven Ages of Rock called Nirvana's performance of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" a surrealrequiem for Cobain.[39] A 2013 article by critic Andrew Wallace Chamings inThe Atlantic described it as one of the greatest live performances of all time:[40]
For the final line, "I would shiver the whole night through," Cobain jumps up an octave, forcing him to strain so far he screams and cracks. He hits the word "shiver" so hard that the band stops, as if a fight broke out at a sitcom wedding. Next he howls the word "whole" and then does something very strange in the brief silence that follows, something that's hard to describe: he opens his piercingly blue eyes so suddenly it feels like someone or something else is looking out under the bleached lank fringe, with a strange clarity.
In 2012,Rolling Stone placedMTV Unplugged in New York number 313 on its list of"The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".[41] The 2020 edition of the list placed it at number 279.[42]Rolling Stone also named it the 95th best album of the 1990s.[43] In 2012,Rolling Stone readers voted it the 8th-best live album.[44]NME namedMTV Unplugged in New York the greatest live album in 2011,[45] andKerrang listed it among the 11 best live albums of all time.[46][when?] In 2014,Guitar World ranked namedMTV Unplugged in New York one of the "50 iconic albums that defined 1994",[47] and in 2019 named it one of the best live albums.[48] In 2020,the Telegraph named it the 13th-greatest live albums of all time,[49] and 2020,Planet Rock named it one of the 100 greatest live albums. It was also included in the book1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[50] Reviewing the DVD release in 2007, theLos Angeles Times wrote that it "deserves a place on the rock TV history shelf alongside the informal, sit-down section ofElvis Presley's epic comeback special in 1968".[18]
Cobain's Martin D-18E guitar used for the performance
In June 2016, the 1959Martin D-18E guitar used by Cobain at theUnplugged concert was legally transferred by Cobain's daughter,Frances Bean Cobain, as a gift to her husband, Isaiah Silva, the frontman of rock bandthe Eeries. After their divorce, Frances and Cobain's widow,Courtney Love, tried to retrieve it. Love called the guitar a "treasured heirloom" and said it was “not [Silva's] to take".[51] In 2018, during their divorce settlement proceedings, the court rejected Silva's request forspousal support, ownership of their house, and reimbursement of his legal fees but awarded him the guitar.[52] In 2020, it was sold atJulien's Auctions for US$6 million to Peter Freedman ofRøde Microphones, making it the most expensive guitar ever sold at auction.[53]
* Sales figures based on certification alone. ^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. ‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.
^Christgau, Robert (February 28, 1995)."Pazz & Jop 1994: Dean's List".The Village Voice. New York.Archived from the original on March 25, 2014. RetrievedAugust 17, 2015.
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