A few hair metal bands came through in an attempt to be taken seriously, as though the lust of teenage girls was not serious enough. Between 19, guests of the show included middlebrow alternative acts like Elvis Costello and R.E.M., legacy artists like Eric Clapton and Paul Simon, and contemporary pop stars like Mariah Carey. (The name alone-“Unplugged”-conjured an imagined utopia where music was nothing more than the spontaneous expression of people in a room.) You’d come in, strip down, show your fans the heart bleeding under the armor. MTV had started hosting “Unplugged” in 1989 as a way to package famous artists in comparatively approachable contexts. “Kurt,” she said, “they think you are Jesus Christ.” Afterward, Cobain reportedly complained to Unplugged programmer Amy Finnerty that the audience must not have liked it because they were so quiet. For musicians whose sound was so essentially electric, the idea of playing acoustic-or, as it came to pass, in a subdued, semi-amplified state-wasn’t just like going on stage naked, but amputated. “We play so hard that we can’t tune our guitars fast enough.” As few as 24 hours before Unplugged, he was considering having Dave Grohl sit out because he thought Grohl’s drumming would overpower the rest of the band. “We’re just musically and rhythmically retarded,” he’d told Guitar World in the wake of 1991’s Nevermind. “This is from our first record,” he mutters before “About a Girl.” “Most people don’t own it.” Never mind the five million people who had bought the one that came next.Ĭobain was reportedly miserable before the taping, worried the band didn’t have the grace to pull off something so subtle. A month or so after Unplugged was taped, he bought a black Lexus, but was so mortified by it-and mocked so thoroughly by his friends-that he returned it within a day. Of course, that was the point of Unplugged, and, in a way, of Nirvana: Even after Cobain got famous, he tried, often painfully, to seem normal.
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