In 1993, Nirvana recorded a live version of David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World” for their MTV Unplugged session. This cover gained significant attention in the U.S. and was praised for its production. The stripped-back rendition involved Kurt Cobain feeding his acoustic guitar through a fuzz box.
Compared with Bowie’s original, Nirvana’s cover displayed greater raw vulnerability. Stripped back as it was, there was a certain fragility in Cobain’s performance. In a sense, that was the feeling of the entire MTV Unplugged concert. It became forever associated with Cobain’s suicide several months later.
For David Bowie, Cobain’s version took on a life of its own. In a way, it’s possible to consider them like two completely different songs. In a 1996 interview on Dutch television, Bowie was asked about several cover versions of “The Man Who Sold the World”. His recollection of Nirvana’s cover touched on its tragic legacy.
“It’s a very sad rendition, of course,” Bowie began, “Because it is so tied up with [Kurt Cobain’s] own life and death. So it takes on all these different shades for me.”
David Bowie Relates His Original State of Mind When Writing ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ To Kurt Cobain Years Later
David Bowie continued, discussing his process for writing “The Man Who Sold the World”. It was released in 1970 on the album of the same name, and the lyrics are purposefully vague and directionless. Bowie described the writing experience in later years as being “a part of myself that I was looking for.”
In 1996, however, he said, “I also remember, fairly clear, my state of mind when I was actually writing it, which was, I guess, as near to a mystical state that a 19-year-old can get into.” At that time, he said, he was briefly getting into Buddhism. But when Cobain recorded it, Bowie’s original mysticism fell away.
“It really had two mystical states,” he explained. “The time I wrote it and recorded it, and the time when he recorded it, and the things that led up to his end thereafter that. So, I guess it still retains, for me, a sense of the mystical.”
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