Kurt Cobain's Smashed Guitar Sells for Nearly $600K

Kurt Cobain's smashed Fender Stratocaster guitar sold at auction for $595,900.

The Nirvana frontman, who died by suicide in 1994 at the age of 27, was known to deliver frenetic performances on stage and in studio, and would often deliberately wreck guitars.

The left-handed guitar, which Cobain used during the making of the iconic "Nevermind" album in the early 1990s, was initially expected to sell for between $60,000 and $80,000 at the Julien's auction at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York over the weekend, according to NBC News.

The guitar has been reassembled but is still unplayable. It was gifted to the late Screaming Trees lead singer Mark Lanegan and includes signatures of Nirvana's three members — Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and Dave Grohl — along with an inscription by Cobain.

Also at the auction, Nirvana's handwritten set list from its debut "Smells Like Teen Spirit" performance in 1991 sold Saturday for $50,800, 12 times the original estimate. Other musical memorabilia sold at the two-day event included guitars played by Bono and Eddie Van Halen and Michael Jackson's "Dangerous" World Tour jacket.

In 2022, the 1969 Fender Mustang electric guitar that Cobain played in the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" music video sold at auction for $4.5 million, Variety reported at the time. 

After Cobain's death, the Fender Mustang guitar remained in the family, but over the past 12 years has been lent out and on display at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, Nirvana's hometown.

In an interview with Guitar World that was initially conducted shortly after the release of "Nevermind," Cobain spoke enthusiastically about the guitar's design.

"I'm left-handed, and it's not very easy to find reasonably priced, high-quality left-handed guitars," he said. "But out of all the guitars in the whole world, the Fender Mustang is my favorite. I've only owned two of them."

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