Kurt Cobain’s sweater and a lock of his hair are going up for auction

When I was 14 years old, I went to a suburban thrift shop and bought a drab, baggy, old cardigan sweater that I often wore over a white men’s T-shirt with my ripped and holey jeans. This was my adoring tribute to the outfit Kurt Cobain wore when Nirvana recorded its album, “MTV Unplugged in New York” in front of a small, live audience in 1993.

And now Cobain’s famous sweater, described as “a blend of acrylic, mohair and Lycra with five-button closure (one button absent), with two exterior pockets, a burn hole and discoloration near left pocket and discoloration on right pocket” is going up for auction, along with a 10-inch lock of his blond hair.

“The story on the hair is that it’s from an artist named Dame Darcy. Courtney hired her to make a doll for their daughter and gave her some of Kurt’s hair,” said Seattle writer and rock biographer Charles R. Cross, who has written several books about Kurt Cobain.

Known for his love and hate relationship with fame, I wondered how Cobain would feel knowing a chunk of his hair was about to be auctioned off at a starting price of $4,000.

“Kurt Cobain wrote … ‘Look through my things. Figure me out.’ You know, he might like the idea that he is treated like John Lennon is, Cross said. “The same auction is going to have one of John Lennon’s guitars. But at the same time it is kind of weird.”

It is weird. What is it in human nature that inspires us to want to own something that belonged to a dead person we’ve never met? Cross says it has something to with idolization, but it’s also historical. To him, owning a wrinkly page of old, handwritten Bob Dylan lyrics is as exciting as owning the original Declaration of Independence.

“I know a guy who owns a pair of John Lennon’s glasses,” he said “I don’t know that I would bid a lot for them. But I can say that walking in his house and seeing the little round metal glasses, just moves you in a way that you simply have a hard time even imagining until you actually hold those in your hand.”

So who ends up with this stuff anyway? Will Kurt Cobain’s biggest fan get his sweater?

“It increasingly is going into the hands of venture capitalists. Most of Kurt Cobain’s guitars, including a lot of those that are on display in EMP right now, are actually owned by super-duper rich people who are buying this stuff as an investment. My guess is that both of these things are going to sell for upwards of several hundred thousand dollars.”

The auction house predicts the sweater will go for $60,000 and the hair for about $9,000.

Most rock memorabilia collectors keep these one-of-a-kind items behind glass, either on display or in a dark basement so they won’t be damaged. But is that really celebrating the item?

“Well, of course, the big joke was the ‘Seinfeld’ episode where Elaine’s boss at the J. Peterman Company had bought a cake from JFK and then Elaine saw it in the refrigerator and ate it. If you wore the Kurt Cobain sweater, it already was pretty ratty. Almost no one I know who owns a Jimi Hendrix guitar ever plays it. These things are definitely under glass because of their value. To some degree that makes the collecting of them kind of a fetishization. But at the same point, if you had a van Gogh, would you really truly want it on your wall, such that it could fade in the sun? It’s a delicate thing. If I had the sweater, I would definitely put it under glass.”

But Cross thinks, ideally, all of these items should be on display in a museum for everyone to see.

“Kurt did not treat any of his clothing as if it were some kind of valued thing,” Cross said. “I mean, his clothes were ripped and tattered. He never probably spent more than $5 on a single piece of clothes that he owned. I think I would say that if you truly are a Kurt Cobain fan, rather than buy the sweater and spend a couple hundred thousand dollars and put it in a glass case, the way to really honor that fashion choice is to go to Goodwill, buy a $3 ratty sweater and wear it as a fashion statement. In some ways, by doing that, you are doing Kurt more of an honor than buying his actual [personal] effects.”

Sigh. If only I could still fit into those ripped, holey jeans I wore when I was 14.