"They were really nervous about doing Unplugged, because they were really leaving themselves wide open." "It was the first time in a long while I'd seen them all so nervous about doing something," the band's tour manager, Alex MacLeod, told Guitar World in 1995. "Amy, can you sit in the front when we play? You and Janet and everyone I know?" he reportedly said at the dress rehearsal. It was unlike the band to be nervous, but Cobain was so unnerved by the taping that he asked only people he knew to line the front row, and he didn't want his wife Courtney Love or their daughter in the studio. It became one of the band's most memorable performances." Then we sat down and the cameras started rolling and something clicked. Even the people from MTV thought it was horrible. We did a few rehearsals and they were terrible. "That show was supposed to be a disaster," remembered Grohl in an interview. Still, the band didn't have high expectations for the Unplugged recording. Their landmark album Nevermind had generated a string of unforgettable hits, they were headlining festivals, and In Utero was getting rave reviews. "I wish Kurt or someone in the band or management clued us into, 'We put thought into this, this works this way, trust us.' Instead it was just, 'This is what we're doing.' Not being familiar with some of the covers, some of the people here became very tense about, 'We've got to get them to do more hits.'"īy the time MTV Unplugged in New York was recorded, Nirvana was at the height of fame. "We got a setlist out of the band, and other than Come As You Are, there were no real Nirvana hits," producer Alex Coletti remembered. In all, they ended up playing one song from their debut album Bleach, four songs from 1991's Nevermind, three tracks from In Utero, and six covers.
They mostly performed covers - songs by the Vaselines, David Bowie, Lead Belly, and Meat Puppets - as well as acoustic renditions of tracks from the band's third album In Utero, which had just been released. Much to the chagrin of the MTV producers, the band refused to play most of their biggest hits - although many of the songs on the album went on to become hits in their own right. I think that's what made it so special it wasn't just acoustic versions of Nevermind." "I think Kurt wanted to bring it down to just the lowest, most dirge-like, Leonard Cohen level, which was really fun. There was no way we were going to try to pull off Smells Like Teen Spirit with f-king acoustic guitars. They didn't do anything to change the songs they just basically plugged in acoustic guitars instead of electric ones. "We'd seen a lot of other bands do Unplugged tapings, and what they'd done was basically rock out the songs as if they were playing electric instruments. In an interview, Dave Grohl said they always knew they were capable of creating an unplugged album it was just a matter of doing it right - and that meant doing things differently. They wanted it to be different from other MTV Unplugged albums
#NIRVANA UNPLUGGED DATE FULL#
To mark the anniversary, we've gathered fascinating facts about that day - from the hits they didn't play to the funereal decor to drummer Dave Grohl's trouble with toning it down.Īt the bottom of the post you'll also find a video of the full performance, which is just as arresting today as it was a quarter century ago.
MTV Unplugged in New York was recorded 25 years ago this week. Neither did they know that MTV Unplugged in New York would mark their final full-length recording, because the band's lead singer Kurt Cobain would die by suicide just a few short months later. When they set out to record a live session at the MTV studios in New York, iconic Seattle grunge band Nirvana had no idea the recording would become one of rock music's most famous live albums.
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