While there are plenty of episodes in the ‘MTV Unplugged’ series—from acts as varied as Kiss and Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys, and Rod Stewart—one of the most famous is undoubtedly Nirvana’s 1994 edition, which was filmed in New York only a few months before frontman Kurt Cobain’s death.
Spread out among their own stripped-back songs, Nirvana incorporated a couple of covers into their set, as well, most famously playing Leadbelly’s arrangement of the traditional song ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night’ and David Bowie’s song ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ from his 1970 album of the same name.
With Cobain taking the lead guitar part in the latter, he plays the song’s iconic riff throughout without issue (despite using an acoustic guitar so drenched in overdrive and reverb that it sounds almost indistinguishable from a fuzzy electric instrument, pushing the “Unplugged” concept to its absolute limit). However, he fumbles the first few notes of the solo that closes out their rendition. While the mistake is noticeable—and surprisingly sloppy, considering the three-note solo should have been easier to play than the riff he nailed consistently throughout the song—it doesn’t derail the momentum of the performance in any meaningful way.
And although their Bowie cover has become one of the most famous and favoured performances from their short but explosive career, not everybody was completely blown away by it.
When asked by the NME in 2011 whether he took any inspiration from Nirvana’s cover for his own version of the song as part of the David Bowie/Mark Ronson tribute band Cybernauts, Joe Elliott replied, “I didn’t take much from Kurt’s version because God bless him, he’s not very good at lead guitar – he misses a few notes”.
First working with guitarist Phil Collen in the glam rock group Def Leppard and later on in the Cybernauts, Elliot knew that his longtime guitarist wouldn’t be likely to make the same mistakes on the song that Kurt Cobain did, adding that “Phil was never going to let that happen”.
Bowie didn’t seem to mind about the missing or fumbled notes in Cobain’s solo but did take exception with the younger fans who didn’t realise that he had, in fact, written the song two decades earlier.
After performing ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ live in the years following Nirvana’s famous cover, Bowie recalled encountering “kids that come up afterwards and say, ‘It’s cool you’re doing a Nirvana song’. And I think, ‘Fuck you, you little tosser!’”
About The Author
