Seattle's Experience Music Project has just opened a major exhibition celebrating Nirvana. The show, titled "Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses," including original art by Kurt Cobain, video interviews, memorabilia, show fliers, smashed guitars, and other iconic artifacts related to the band and the explosive Seattle music scene of the early 1990s. My friend and longtime MTV music writer Gil Kaufman spent several days in Seattle immersing himself in the exhibit. (While there, he also toured the offices of legendary grunge label Sub Pop and the world headquarters of Pearl Jam, complete with a half-pipe for skateboarding and the "honorary Johnny Ramone baseball lending library.") From MTV:
The concept for the Nevermind album came, as with nearly all of the band's imagery, from Cobain himself, who was inspired by a documentary he watched with drummer Dave Grohl about water births. He mentioned it to (DGC Records art director Robert) Fisher, who found plenty of stock photos of underwater births, most of which were too graphic for label DGC's taste. With the costs too high to obtain a photo Cobain liked of a baby chasing a dollar underwater, Fisher sent a photographer out to recreate the image, settling on a shot of then 3-month-old Spencer Elden, the son of the photographer's friend. Even that innocent image of the cherubic, naked baby paddling underwater spooked DGC, which feared that it might offend some people. According to rock writer Michael Azerrad's 1993 Nirvana bio, "Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana," the label prepped an alternate cover without Elden's penis showing, but shelved it when Cobain said the only compromise he would make to the nudity was to cover it with a sticker that read, "If you're offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile."
"We have a couple iconic pieces here, all related to 'Smells Like Teen Spirit," (says exhibit curator Jacob McMurray). "We have the sweater that Kurt Cobain wore on the 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' video, the guitar that Kurt played on that video and also the MTV Video Music Award for 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' which weirdly enough says, 'Smells Like Team Spirit' on the award, as if the engraver was politely correcting the title for the band.
"Nirvana Exhibit Leads Fans Through Band's Humble Start, Meteoric Rise"
