One of the most famous acoustic guitars in rock history – Kurt Cobain’s Martin D-18E – will soon go on show at the Royal College of Music Museum in London as part of a landmark exhibition exploring Nirvana’s groundbreaking MTV Unplugged performance.
The Kurt Cobain Unplugged exhibition will be the first time that Cobain’s guitar from the show has been seen in the UK.
The guitar is currently in the ownership of Peter Freeman, the Australian founder of RØDE Microphones and owner of the Opal monitor brand, who has loaned the guitar to the museum especially for this show. Freeman paid $6.01 million for the guitar in 2020, his purchase becoming the most expensive guitar ever sold at auction, beating the previous record holder, a Fender Stratocaster used by Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour which fetched almost $4m in June 2019.
Fortunately, for that cash, the guitar also came with a case, which Cobain had decorated with a Poison poster depicting the band’s 1990 album Feel the Darkness.
His Martin D-18E is one of the earliest Martins fitted with electric pickups, being uniquely modified to suit his left-handed playing style and is therefore very much one of a kind and – according to Courtney Love, when speaking to Billboard – the last guitar Cobain ever played.
Nirvana’s legendary MTV Unplugged gig – which arguably put both the show and Nirvana’s mainstream legacy on the map – took place on 18 November 1993. Kurt Cobain was to subsequently commit suicide less than five months later on 5 April, 1994.
Territorial Pissings
Following his death the guitar passed to his daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, who kept it in a secret vault in Seattle, together with the rest of Cobain’s belongings. In 2018, the guitar became the possession of Isaiah Silva, Frances Bean’s ex-husband, as part of their divorce settlement. It was Silva who was subsequently to put the guitar up for auction.
Peter Freedman, the guitar’s current owner says: “When I purchased this guitar, my intention was to have it begin a worldwide tour of exhibitions, to support performing artists. I am delighted that this intent will be premiered at the Royal College of Music, London, with the first exhibition of its kind and will support talented musicians worldwide.”
Come As You Are
Also on show will be what the organisers are calling “another piece of rock history” – Cobain’s olive-green mohair cardigan that he wore during that Unplugged performance. “This marks the first time these two legendary items have been displayed together,” they claim.
And like his guitar, the cardigan is also a one of a kind, featuring a missing button, two cigarette burns and a stain from an unidentified substance in one of the pockets. “It is very much a lived-in garment,” say the exhibition’s organisers.
Plus – in another bizarre twist – just as with Cobain’s Martin guitar, his cardigan is also an auction record breaker. Having been gifted by Courtney Love to Frances Bean’s nanny Jackie Farry, it similarly made history as “ the most expensive sweater ever sold” when it sold at auction in 2019 for $334,000.
Other highlights at the exhibition will include a curated selection of Nirvana memorabilia including a selection of Nirvana gig posters “featuring a 90s punk/grunge aesthetic”, a selection of collectible Nirvana vinyl in original shrink wrap and the “top portion of a Soundboard of another guitar from the same series”.
The exhibition has been curated by rock journalist Alan di Perna and Royal College of Museum Curator Gabriele Rossi Rognoni.
Alan Di Perna says: “I’m delighted to be a part of the Royal College of Music Museum’s first-ever rock music exhibition. MTV’s Nirvana Unplugged in New York was a landmark event – a stand-out performance by a group that changed the course of rock history in the 1990s.”
While Rossi Rognoni comments: “One of the treasures in the collections of the Royal College of Music Museum is the world’s oldest guitar. I am thrilled that this exhibition will build on our extraordinary heritage, connecting it with a monument of today’s music such as Kurt Cobain.
“I look forward to the dialogues, musical encounters and new ideas that this exhibition will spark among our visitors and the top-class musicians that study at the College.’
“That show was supposed to be a disaster"
Meanwhile, speaking to American Way, Nirvana’s Dave Grohl said: “That show was supposed to be a disaster. We hadn’t rehearsed. We weren’t used to playing acoustic. Even the people from MTV thought it was horrible. Then we sat down, the cameras started rolling, and something clicked. It became one of the band’s most memorable performances.”
Tickets for the exhibition cost £5 and bookings for visits between 3 June and 17 August will open on Wednesday, 30 April at 10 am. Sales for visits beyond these dates will be announced at a later time.
For further information and to sign up to emails to be the first to hear updates about the exhibition, head to the RCM website.
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