A guitar once played and smashed by Kurt Cobain is now up for auction, and it holds significant Portland ties. The cherry red, left-handed Memphis Stratocaster, which Cobain famously destroyed, is being auctioned off by Janel “Hell” Jarosz, vocalist and guitarist of Trailer Queen and former owner of the now-closed Portland record store The Ooze.
Listed through Hake’s Auctions on November 20, the guitar’s starting price of $20,000 has already surged past $70,000, with multiple bids rolling in. Along with the guitar, the auction includes two double-exposure chromogenic prints by photographer Johny Baltimore, which capture Cobain playing and smashing the instrument.
The guitar was originally gifted to Jarosz by Chris Brady, the owner of Extracto Coffee Roaster and bassist-vocalist for the defunct bands Pond and Audio Learning Center. Brady received the guitar at an anti-war concert Nirvana played at Evergreen State College in 1991, where Cobain smashed the instrument in a display of frustration. Brady recounted how he wrestled the guitar away from several other fans after Cobain discarded it, and he later gifted it to Jarosz for her 25th birthday.
In a promotional video for the auction, Brady explained that the concert had been interrupted when an unknown person pulled the fire alarm, splitting Nirvana’s set into two short segments. During the show, Cobain famously smashed the guitar with a hammer before tossing it to the audience. At the time, Nirvana had not yet reached worldwide fame, and the show was attended by fewer than 500 people, each paying a $4 cover charge.
Jarosz also shared in the video that Cobain debuted the Nevermind track “Endless, Nameless” using her guitar. Later, she used it to win a contest held by Geffen Records, which led to a trip to Seattle where she met Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl.
Now, Jarosz is parting with this iconic piece of music history in order to secure her future. “It just seems like the right time,” she explained. “I’ve had it for long enough, I’m not getting any younger, and I’d like to have a little retirement plan.”
Other Nirvana-related items are also up for grabs at Hake’s, including Cobain’s high school yearbook, signed records, and original promotional art by the late Seattle artist Mark Bendix for Nirvana’s legendary April 17, 1991, concert with Fits of Depression and Bikini Kill, where Nirvana first played “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” A less valuable but locally significant item is a poster for Nirvana’s February 9, 1990, show at Portland’s Pine Street Theatre, which featured Nirvana supporting their debut album Bleach alongside Screaming Trees, Tad, and RawheadRex.
Cobain’s guitars have fetched world-record prices at auctions before. In 2022, his 1969 Fender Competition Mustang, used in the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video, sold for $4.55 million. His MTV Unplugged Martin D-18E acoustic guitar also broke records when it was sold for over $6 million in 2020.
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