the cobains

Frances Bean Cobain’s Divorce and the Increasingly Strange Saga of Kurt Cobain’s Unplugged Guitar

The 25-year-old’s ex-husband claims Courtney Love conspired to murder him.
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Frances Bean Cobain and Courtney Love in 2016.By Dominique Charriau/WireImage.

Earlier this month, Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain, finalized a divorce settlement with ex Isaiah Silva. As part of the agreement, Silva gained possession of the 1959 Martin D-18E acoustic guitar the late Nirvana frontman played in the band’s legacy-burnishing 1993 appearance on MTV Unplugged.

The instrument is a genuinely iconic artifact of alterna-rock history. As TMZ reported at the time, Cobain wanted a full break with Silva as soon as possible and hoped it would help settle things for good. The settlement came five months after a judge declared the marriage over. According to reports, Cobain will keep the home the couple purchased together.

Silva, however, does not appear to be letting things go. According to reports, he filed a new suit alleging that Love conspired with Britney Spears’s former manager Sam Lutfi (who has also reportedly managed Love), 13 Reasons Why actor Ross Butler, private investigator and security expert John Nazarian, and musician Michael Schenk to murder him and steal back the guitar.

In documents obtained by both Us Weekly and People, Silva names these people, and others, as the group that engaged in robbery, burglary, sexual battery, kidnapping, attempted murder, criminal threats, false imprisonment, extortion, stalking, and intentional infliction of emotional distress and trespass on the morning of June 3, 2016. Silva and Cobain had already split at the time.

Whether there’s any validity to such shocking claims is now up for the court to decide. Representatives for Love, Butler, and Nazarian did not immediately respond to Vanity Fair’s requests for comment. Lutfi and Schenk could not be reached for comment. Nazarian told TMZ that he was not near Silva’s house at the time of the alleged incident.

As of now, the guitar in question remains with Silva—legally.