When Kurt Cobain imagined his visceral grunge rock stripped to its bones, he pictured a shrine. “He said, ‘I want candles and Stargazer lilies,’” remembered Alex Coletti, producer of Nirvana’s celebrated MTV Unplugged show. “I said, ‘Like a funeral?’ He said, ‘Yes, exactly.’”
Sure enough, when the album recording of Nirvana’s flower-strewn MTV Unplugged in New York was released in November 1994, 30 years ago this week, Cobain seemed to be singing his own elegy. Seven months after a shotgun suicide that stunned the world, here he was, alive yet powerfully wounded, reaching into the gristle of songs such as “Polly”, “Something in the Way” and “All Apologies” in their most cathartic form – pulling out something raw, bruised and inconsolably honest. The album would reach No 1 on charts around the world, including the UK and US, and sell over 14 million copies, a vivid last testament to Cobain’s Nirvana, and a glint of a folk-rock revolution that would never come to pass.
