“MTV Unplugged in New York”: How Nirvana Recorded an Acoustic Concert

On November 1, 1994, DGC Records released "MTV Unplugged in New York," Nirvana's first live album. The concert itself had been recorded earlier, on November 18, 1993, at Sony Music Studios in New York's Hell's Kitchen, and the album came out almost seven months after Kurt Cobain's death in April 1994.

The filming was directed by Beth McCarthy-Miller, and the MTV broadcast aired on December 16, 1993. The band played all 14 songs in one take, unlike many other participants in the program. Nirvana deliberately broke the acoustic show's format: Cobain ran his guitar through an amplifier and effects pedals, and producer Alex Coletti placed a dummy in front of the amplifier to hide it from the cameras.

The Set and the Guests

The set was built on less-known material and covers rather than hits. They performed David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World," The Vaselines' "Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam," and three Meat Puppets songs, which Chris and Curt Kirkwood performed together with Nirvana. The only then-current hit by the band in the program was "Come as You Are." Guitarist Pat Smear and cellist Lori Goldston joined the lineup. The concert ended with "Where Did You Sleep Last Night," arranged after Lead Belly's 1944 recording; Cobain did not come out for an encore, believing that song could not be surpassed.

Cobain asked for the stage to be decorated with lilies, black candles and a crystal chandelier. When the producer asked whether he meant a funeral, the musician replied: "Exactly. Like a funeral." Rehearsals were difficult, and MTV management disliked that the program had few well-known songs and that Meat Puppets had been invited as guests rather than, for example, Eddie Vedder or Tori Amos.

Release and Recognition

Initially, the material was to be released as part of a double live album, "Verse Chorus Verse," but a week after the announcement the project was canceled: the compilation turned out to be too emotionally heavy for Chris Novoselic and Dave Grohl. In the end, only the Unplugged recording was released, and the recording's producer, Scott Litt, returned to work on the album.

The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 310,500 copies sold in its first week, the best result of the band's career. By March 1995, it had sold 6.8 million copies and surpassed "In Utero"; in 2020 it was certified eight-times platinum in the United States, and in 1996 it brought Nirvana the band's only Grammy. In 2007, the recording was released on DVD along with two songs that had not made the TV broadcast.

Image: P.B. Rage from USA CC BY-SA 2.0 · License

Translation editor: Ловушкин А.