Kurt Cobain’s unplugged guitar up for auction

The acoustic guitar Kurt Cobain played for Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged session is expected to fetch about $US1m ($1.54m) at auction.

Kurt Cobain and guitar at the MTV Unplugged session. Picture: Getty Images

The acoustic guitar that Kurt Cobain played for Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged session five months before his death is expected to fetch about $US1m ($1.54m) at auction next month.

Cobain’s cardigan sold for a ­record $US334,000 last year.

Julien’s Auctions said on Monday the 1959 Martin D-18E guitar that Cobain played for the 1993 live taping comes with a battered case, whose storage compartment contains a small suede bag where the musician is said to have stashed the heroin he was addicted to in his final years.

The Nirvana frontman recorded the Unplugged session in ­November 1993. He was found dead, aged 27, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his Seattle home in April 1994.

Julien’s chief executive Darren Julien said the guitar “has earned its rightful place in history as the instrument played by one of rock’s most influential musicians and icons in one of the greatest and most memorable live performances of all time”.

The record for a guitar was set last June when Pink Floyd musician David Gilmour’s black Fender Stratocaster sold for $US3.9m.

Other Cobain items up in the June 19-20 auction will include a Fender Stratocaster guitar he used on Nirvana’s 1994 In Utero tour.

Reuters