Kurt's Nevermind Guitar Sold May 22nd
FooZealand
473 posts
The Randy Bachman article reminded me I don't think anyone mentioned this?
The guitar formerly owned by Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain that was featured in the music video for the band’s hit song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” sold for $4.5 million (plus fees) on Sunday, after billionaire Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay made the winning bid.
The 1969 left-handed Fender Mustang guitar—with the brand’s Competition Lake Placid blue finish with matching headstock—far surpassed expectations, after being estimated by Julien’s Auctions to sell for between $600,000 and $800,000.
Irsay, whose net worth is $3.5 billion according to Forbes’ estimates—said the guitar is the latest addition to his vast collection of memorabilia related to rock music, American history and pop culture.
A portion of the proceeds were donated by the Cobain family to Kicking the Stigma, the Irsay family’s initiative that raises awareness about mental health and offers grants to Indiana-area nonprofits, Irsay said in a tweet.
The guitar remained in Kurt Cobain’s family after the singer died by suicide in 1994, but it had been lent out for display at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, Nirvana’s hometown, for the past 12 years. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is credited with popularizing Nirvana and bringing the grunge genre as a whole into the mainstream. Last year, Rolling Stone ranked the song fifth on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Bigger Number:
$6 million. That’s how much one of Kurt Cobain’s guitars—a Martin D-18E—sold for in 2020. It is the most expensive guitar ever sold at auction. Cobain played the Martin D-18E during Nirvana’s 1993 MTV Unplugged performance in New York, for which the band won a Grammy in 1995—marking one of the band’s last performances before Cobain’s death.