Meat Puppets Look Back on Nirvana 'MTV Unplugged' for 20th Anniversary

Perhaps the most memorable music television performance of the last 20 years came in 1994, when Nirvana did the impossible and became more popular with a one-night stint on MTV Unplugged in New York.

With Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic that night were The Meat Puppets, one of Nirvana's favorite bands. The groups were on tour together, so the choice to include the Puppets was natural, even if MTV would have preferred Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam.

"It was just whispers, kind of feeling a little bit like we snuck in there," Curt Kirkwood recently told Billboard about the experience. "But at the same time, they had to be nice to us 'cause it was at the behest of the headliners ... I think they thought they might get Eddie Vedder out there ... the Pearl Jam thing came up. But once again — we'd been outsiders up to that point, so I figured it was just par for the course. We're outsiders. They're outsiders, too. Nirvana was definitely coming from the outside ... But I kind of got a kick out of it, like, 'Oh, they don't want us here? Good.'"

Kirkwood described the surreal opportunity to both watch the show as a fan and then perform later in the set.

"I was in the crowd," he said. "I was just part of the audience up until our part. Then I knew when I was supposed to go on. We had done a live rehearsal there at the stage before. It wasn't a real big place; it's pretty intimate. Everybody there knew why they were there — it wasn't like anybody had to be sold. By the time we got on it was a really good show."

He also talked about the energy that Nirvana brought to their typical electric set — an attribute that drew the Puppets toward the most popular band on Earth.

"They didn't really hold anything back," Kirkwood said. "Dave is an insane drummer and he was a lot of fun to watch. Kurt was just ... you never really knew. They had a set to a degree, and they had some props and stuff, but it was real. It was simple, and yet compelling. You could get involved to the point where you just weren't thinking about it. Which is part of the similarity between them and us — the eyes roll back in the head and it's on."

Not completely familiar with that night in 1994? Check out a few clips below:

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Nirvana