Portland Musician to Auction Rare Kurt Cobain-Smashed Guitar

Extracto Coffee Roasters owner Chris Brady gifted Janel “Hell” Jarosz a guitar Cobain played in a 1991 anti-war Nirvana show in Olympia for her 25th birthday.

Kurt Cobain smashing his guitar during a Nirvana show at Evergreen State College. (Johny Baltimore, courtesy of Hake's Auctions)
By Andrew Jankowski

A guitar played and smashed by Kurt Cobain is up for auction. Before you say “oh well, whatever, nevermind,” know the guitar’s history holds considerable Portland connections.

Janel “Hell” Jarosz, Trailer Queen vocalist-guitar player and former owner of shuttered Portland record shop The Ooze, listed the cherry red, left-handed Memphis Stratocaster through Hake’s Auctions on Nov. 20. As of press time, nearly a dozen bids have bumped the Japanese-made guitar’s asking price from its $20,000 base to north of $70,000. Included in that price tag are two double-exposure chromogenic prints by photographer Johny Baltimore of Cobain playing and smashing the guitar.

Krist Novoselic and Kurt Cobain onstage during a 1991 Nirvana set at Evergreen State College. (Johny Baltimore, courtesy of Hake's Auctions)

Chris Brady, owner of Extracto Coffee Roaster and vocalist-bassist of defunct bands Pond and Audio Learning Center, gifted Jarosz the guitar for her 25th birthday that same year. In a promotional video for the auction, Brady said he wrestled the discarded guitar away from eight other fans who thrashed each other for a chance to get it at an anti-war concert Nirvana played at the Evergreen State College in 1991, nearly a year to the day after their seminal album Nevermind dethroned Michael Jackson from the top of the charts. Jarosz added that Cobain debuted the Nevermind song “Endless, Nameless” using her guitar.

In the video, Brady said an unknown guest pulled the ESC library’s fire alarm, breaking Nirvana’s scheduled performance into two 10-to-15-minute sets protesting the Gulf War. Cobain is said to have smashed the guitar with a hammer before discarding it for Brady and other fans to scrap over. The show was attended by fewer than 500 people paying a $4 cover charge, according to Hake’s press release. Janel shares in the video that she later used the guitar to win a Nevermind display contest. Geffen Records sent Jarosz to Seattle, where she got to meet Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl.

Jarosz parts now with her beloved heirloom to secure her future.

“It just seems like the right time,” she said. “I’ve had it for long enough, I’m not getting any younger, and I’d like to have a little retirement plan.”

Detail on Janel Jarosz's guitar, played and damaged by Kurt Cobain in 1991. (Courtesy of Hake's Auctions)

Other grunge relics on Hake’s auction block include Cobain’s high school yearbook, signed records, and a rare piece of original promotional art by late Seattle artist Mark Bendix for Nirvana’s fabled April 17, 1991, concert with Fits of Depression and Bikini Kill, where Nirvana first played their most famous song, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Slightly less valuable, but more locally significant, is a poster promoting Nirvana’s Feb. 9, 1990, show at Portland’s Pine Street Theatre with Screaming Trees, Tad and RawheadRex while promoting Nirvana’s debut album, Bleach.

Cobain’s other guitars have set world-record-breaking prices at auctions. In 2022, his 1969 Fender Competition Mustang from the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video sold for $4.55 million, while his MTV Unplugged Martin D-18E acoustic guitar sold for more than $6 million in 2020.

Footage from Nirvana’s ESC show can be seen in the 2015 documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, and on YouTube.

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