Unplugged

Released August 25, 1992 via Reprise. Recorded January 16, 1992 at Bray Studios in Windsor, England, in a single afternoon before a small audience for the MTV Unplugged series. This copy is the remastered double LP on 180g black vinyl.

This is the moment a guitar hero traded the wall of Marshall stacks for a wooden stool and an acoustic guitar, and walked out of the 1993 Grammy ceremony with six awards, including Album of the Year and Best Rock Song for "Layla." Unplugged went on to sell 26 million copies worldwide and rewrote what mainstream blues-rock could sound like.

"Layla" arrives stripped to a porch-blues shuffle. "Tears in Heaven," written with Will Jennings, sits at the emotional center of the set. The blues reach back to the source: Robert Johnson's "Malted Milk," Jesse Fuller's "San Francisco Bay Blues," Bo Diddley's "Before You Accuse Me," and Jimmy Cox's "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out," the song Bessie Smith made her own. For an album built on acoustic guitar attack, fingerpicking detail and audience presence, the 180g pressing is the native medium.