Kurt Cobain's Smells Like Teen Spirit guitar to go up for auction

12 April 2022, 11:33 | Updated: 12 April 2022, 11:41

The guitar used in the iconic Nirvana video is expected to fetch between $600,000 to $800,000.

Kurt Cobain's guitar from Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit video is up for auction.

The late frontman's left-handed 1969 Fender Mustang in Lake Placid Blue is set to go under the hammer as part of Julien’s Auctions’ three-day Music Icons sale, which takes place between 20th - 22nd May at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York.

The instrument is expected to fetch between $600,000 - $800,000 (approx £461k - 615k) at auction and online bids will also be welcome.

Visit Julien's Auctions for more information.

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit (Official Music Video)

READ MORE: How a deodorant made Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit the biggest song of the 90s

The auction's CEO Julian commented: “[It is] one of the most culturally significant and historically important guitars not only of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana’s legacy but in all of rock music history.

“Rarely do personally owned items from Kurt Cobain with this incredible and unprecedented provenance of his life and career become available for public sale.”

The guitar is part of a number of items belonging to the late rocker, who tragically took his own life in April 1994.

They include the 1965 sky blue Dodge Dart that Cobain and his widow Courtney Love owned, complete with its original license plates, which has an estimation of $400,000 - $600,000.

The car stayed in the family, with the Hole frontwoman's sister buying the automobile from her following Kurt's death.

Other items up for grabs include Kurt's drawing of Michael Jackson and tour and airline passes.

In 2020, Kurt's acoustic guitar from Nirvana's iconic 1993 MTV Unplugged in New York performance sold for a record-breaking $6 million at auction, making a Guinness World Record for most expensive guitar sale.

Meanwhile, the cardigan owned by Cobain, which he wore during the band's iconic gig, was also sold at auction in 2019 for $334,000.

READ MORE: Kurt Cobain - Everything you need to know about the Nirvana legend

Released on 10 September 1991 as the lead single and opening track from the band's Nevermind album, Smells Like Teen Spirit was a defiant call to arms, which put grunge on the map and catapulted Nirvana into the mainstream.

Along with the angst-ridden track came an iconic video which saw Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic perform amongst a throng of head-banging high-school teens.

Despite its gritty depiction of rebellious a high-school rally, Smells Like Teen Spirit wasn't shot in a place of education. In fact, it was filmed on a soundstage on Stage 6 at GMT Studios in Culver City, California.

The video was set up to look like a high school gymnasium - with Bayer taking inspiration from Jonathan Kaplan's 1979 film Over the Edge and The Ramones' film Rock 'n' Roll High School.

Although there may have been real high-school students on set, a lot of the extras may have been young adults who were merely pretending as a casting call flyer advertised for "18 to 25 years old and adapt a high-school persona" such as "preppy, punk, nerd [and] jock".