According to nme.com late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s smashed Fender Stratocaster guitar has been sold at auction for nearly $600,000. The guitar fetched nearly 10 times its estimated value during a three day auction of rock music memorabilia that was held at the Hard Rock Café in Manhattan over the weekend.
The instrument was heavily damaged while Nirvana was recording their Nevermind album in the early 1990s. The reassembled but still unplayable guitar features signatures of the grunge band’s three members Cobain, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic.
The guitar also included a handwritten inscription by Cobain addressing Mark Lanegan, the lead singer of the band Screaming Trees. Lanegan died in February of last year at the age 57 years old.
Written in a silver marker, the message reads: “Hell-O Mark! Love, your pal Kurt Cobain/Washed up rock star.”
The guitar’s neck plate displays an engraving that reads “Boddah Lives,” which is a reference to Cobain’s childhood imaginary friend. According to Julien’s Auctions, who staged the sale, Cobain gifted the guitar to Lanegan during Nirvana’s Nevermind Tour in 1992.
Cobain was known for smashing a number of guitars throughout his time in the Nirvana. Discussing the lead singer’s approach toward live performances, Kody Frederick of Julien’s Auctions told AFP news agency: “The man was angry, and you could feel that on stage. And you would feel that by the way he would treat his instruments.”
Cobain died by suicide at his home in Seattle on April 1994 at the age of 27 years old.
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