Mick Hutson/Redferns
The white hospital gown that Kurt Cobain famously wore during Nirvana‘s 1992 headlining set at the U.K.’s Reading Festival is going up for auction.
Cobain had worn the gown as a way to address the rumors surrounding his health and drug use. At the beginning of the show, he was rolled on stage in a wheelchair, and pretended to collapse after croaking out a few lines from the Bette Midler song “The Rose.”
When he got back up, he and the rest of Nirvana then delivered an instantly legendary performance that’s been regarded as one of the band’s best concerts.
Until now, the gown had been in possession of a fan who received it from Courtney Love. As the fan explains in a letter accompanying the gown, they had been attending a vigil for Kurt Cobain in Seattle a few days after his death in April 1994. Love showed up with a bag of Cobain’s clothing and started passing items out.
“She then cried on my shoulder for a while,” the fan writes. “I tried to say something reassuring about his love for her and she pushed me away, insisting that he only loved [daughter] Frances [Bean]…The entire incident was sad. And weird. And it blew my teenage mind.”
The auction is open now via RRAuction.com, and will run until March 14. The initial bid is set at $5000, and the gown is expected to fetch more than $50,000.
In related news, another legendary Nirvana concert is being released on vinyl. Live at the Paramount, which was recorded on Halloween 1991 at Seattle’s Paramount Theatre, will be available on wax for the first time on April 12.
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