A smashed guitar from the late grunge rocker Kurt
Cobain has been sold to an unidentified private collector
for $100,000.
Helen Hall, a broker in England, says it's the second-highest
known price for an item of Cobain memorabilia. The
seller was punk rocker Sluggo of The
Grannies and Hullabaloo.
The sale was confirmed Tuesday by Jacob
McMurray, senior curator at the Experience Music Project
in Seattle, where the taped-up Fender Mustang guitar in sunburst
finish was displayed for a time.
"It's a really cool-looking guitar because it's smashed and
held together with duct tape and Kurt Cobain wrote on it,"
McMurray said.
Sluggo said he traded a working guitar for the
smashed one during the first U.S. tour of Cobain's
band, Nirvana.
McMurray said Nirvana, living
hand-to-mouth, was on a tour in New Jersey when
Cobain smashed the guitar on stage and went
looking for one to play at his next gig.
The swap was made while Cobain was staying at
the apartment of Sluggo, who goes only by that
name, and Sluggo's girlfriend,
McMurray said.
He said he hoped the buyer would allow the instrument to return
to Seattle for a Cobain exhibit he is preparing
for 2010.
"There's not a huge amount of broken Nirvana guitars out
there," McMurray said, adding that most
amount to "little slivers and fragments."
A news release from Hall said the highest price paid for a piece
of Cobain memorabilia was $131,000 at a 2006
auction for his Mosrite Gospel Mark IV guitar.
Thanks for the report to News.Yahoo.com.