However, all the tensions were swept away when Nirvana hit the MTV stage for real on November 18, 1993, filming a performance that would be broadcast a month later, on December 16. “Therefore, everyone was more than a little concerned about the performance.” “There was no joking, no smiles, no fun coming from him,” MTV production manager Jeff Mason recalled in Charles R Cross’ biography, Heavier Than Heaven. MTV was concerned about the lack of hit songs Nirvana proposed to play in their set, while Cobain – who was wracked with nerves and suffering from a recurring stomach complaint – appeared less than enamored during two days of tense, pre-show rehearsals at New York’s Sony Music Studios. Nirvana finally acquiesced when MTV agreed to them bringing their In Utero touring partners, Arizona alt-rockers The Meat Puppets, along to appear as their special guests. However, the band began to warm to the idea when they recalled that one of their favorite albums – Screaming Trees’ frontman Mark Lanegan’s debut solo album, The Winding Sheet – made a virtue of a similarly intimate approach. Kurt Cobain and his team also had reservations over how well their visceral rock’n’roll would translate in such a stripped-back, low-watt setting. “Most bands would treat them like rock shows – play their hits like it was Madison Square Garden – except with acoustic guitars!” “We’d seen other Unplugged shows and didn’t like many of them,” drummer Dave Grohl later told Rolling Stone.
Initially, the Seattle grungestars were in two minds over whether they should even accept their invitation to appear on MTV Unplugged, not least because they felt the program’s format simply wasn’t for them. “We’d seen other Unplugged shows and didn’t like them” While this lofty praise is wholly justified, the story of Nirvana’s esteemed MTV Unplugged performance is that of a band snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Despite the shaky rehearsals, Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged wound up being one of the band’s most legendary concerts, one that still had a major association with their legacy today.The statistics speak for themselves, and the album has continued to receive accolades ever since its initial release, on November 1, 1994, with The Atlantic’s retrospective critique even referring to it as “one of the greatest live albums ever” in 2013. Cobain even refused to perform the day before the show, but arrived on time and ready to play as the audience began to filter in.
The rehearsals are a smattering of hit or miss moments, and nobody seemed sure as to whether the show would work out or not. Ironically, Cobain nails the guitar solo, which he actually ends up flubbing slightly during the live show. For ‘The Man Who Sold the World’, Cobain fumbles his entry when a guitar chord from Pat Smear messes him up. He had to be controlled and measured, with all eyes firmly on him in case any wrong note or mistake might squeak out.Īs the band run through ‘Polly’, Grohl finds it difficult to hit his harmonies, no doubt becoming somewhat thrown by the gentleness he had to bring to his vocals. Normally, when Cobain was faced with this kind of irritation, he could take it out by cranking his amp, screaming his vocals, and destroying his equipment. Cobain was going through withdrawal that morning.” “The rehearsals were tense,” journalist David Browne recalls, “MTV brass weren’t thrilled when the promised guests turned out to be the Meat Puppets and not, say, anyone from Pearl Jam.
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