There is, if we’re honest, a little too much lethargy on display here, but as a rule, the sparseness of the performances works in Cobain’s favour. When he moans about shivering the whole night through, this murderous folk tune becomes a heroin lament. He also twists the song in his own image. A television studio isn’t exactly a country porch, but the intimacy of the performance reveals Cobain’s folk roots, before burying them in torment. Patti Smith recently noted that she could hear echoes of Roscoe Holcombe in Cobain’s voice, and not just because of Holcombe’s version of this song (in its country guise as “In The Pines”).
If it was ever obvious, the magic of The Meat Puppets and The Vaselines is now a secret known only to a few, but the frayed cover of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” is among the most powerful performances of Nirvana’s career. But the perversity was precisely targeted: offered a commercial platform, Cobain decided to spread the love, providing The Vaselines with a pension plan, giving David Bowie an appreciative nod (“The Man Who Sold The World”: another joke about selling out), and sharing the stage for three songs with his old heroes The Meat Puppets. There was no “…Teen Spirit”, and precious little from Nevermind. To the nervous MTV executives who now hail it as a classic, Nirvana’s performance was perverse. Cobain may be mourning his own misery, but he’s also paying homage to his influences, and moving on musically. But Kurt’s death, and the appropriation by lesser talents of the grunge formula, throw new light on it. “I even asked David Geffen personally if he would buy it for me, but he wouldn’t do it.” It is, by any standards, a peculiar jam for a punk to find himself in.Īt the time, the funereal pace of Unplugged, and its sense of restraint, seemed at odds with Nirvana’s recorded output. Before introducing “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”, he relates the story of how a guy has been trying to hawk Leadbelly’s guitar for $500,000. You can see the peculiarity of his position in a throwaway remark at the Unplugged show.
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If Cobain didn’t exactly cultivate his hurt, he knew how to make use of it. At their best, before Cobain’s attempts to anaesthetise himself took their toll, Nirvana were an act of catharsis. Sure enough, Cobain was gone within five months.īut then, morbidity was hardly a novelty for Cobain. On the next track – a weary busk through The Vaselines’ warped Sunday School spiritual, “Jesus Don’t Want Me For A Sunbeam” – the singer can be heard moaning: “Don’t expect me to die for thee”. As early as the second song – a naked version of “Come As You Are” – Cobain is singing “No, I don’t have a gun”.
The set, with candles and stargazer lilies, looks dressed for a wake at a well-appointed funeral home. Fourteen years into the sainthood of Kurt Cobain, it’s hard to watch Nirvana on MTV’s Unplugged without the benefit of grim hindsight.
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