MTV Unplugged producer Alex Coletti discussed Kurt Cobain wanting Nirvana’s Unplugged performance to look like a funeral in a new Washington Post article. She also recalled him wanting to be seen smiling, since Courtney Love told him he didn’t smile enough.
“Kurt came into the control room and he said to [director] Beth McCarthy and myself, “You know, my wife says I don’t smile enough, so try to get a shot of me smiling.” At the end of the first song, he does this kind of grimace-y smile, which I guess was like, “Here you go.”
She later said, “[Kurt] asked if we could get some stargazer lilies, and I wasn’t really quite sure what kind of flowers those were. He said, “You know, like at a funeral,” and I said, “Oh, yeah, the white ones. Sure, we’ll get them.” Of course, he was not in any way foreshadowing . . . but it did strike me after the fact that that was one of the few things he said to me. We obviously didn’t know at the time what was to come for that show.”
The 25th anniversary of Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance in New York is in just a few weeks. The special was filmed in November 1993, and later released on CD in 1994 following Kurt Cobain’s death.
