Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

punk and New Wave, came as those indie rockers
who realized they could never look like Bowie
started selling millions of records—which did much
to bolster their “Hey, maybe I could be Bowie after
all” confidence. Dinosaur Jr. did a faithful cover of
“Quicksand” off Hunky Dory, turning his fans on to
an album that they might have never found. Most
famously, in the winter of 1994, completely
unsolicited, Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain reminded anyone
who needed reminding in the wake of another
disappointing Bowie album that Bowie was foremost
a songwriting genius. During the band’s taping of the
MTV series Unplugged in New York City,
surrounded by orchids and candles, Cobain sang
“The Man Who Sold the World.” He read the lyrics
from a piece of paper on a stand but that didn’t
diminish the feeling that this was some kind of
valediction. Dressed in a pale green cardigan,
surrounded by his band with cello accompaniment,
Cobain demonstrated the versatility of the then
twenty-five-year-old song. Bowie praised it as a
good “straightforward” version and after Cobain’s
death, he added it to his live set list.
“I was at a Bowie concert in 1995,” says Moby
today of Bowie’s tour the following year alongside
Nine Inch Nails. “The only older songs he played
were ‘Scary Monsters’ and ‘The Man Who Sold the
World.’ He was playing ‘The Man Who Sold the
World’ and the kid next to me said to his friend,
‘Wow, this is cool. He’s playing a Nirvana song.’ It
was all I could do not to throttle him.”