‘Saturday Night Live,’

New York

JAN. 11, 1992

With “Nevermind” taking off, the band brought its rough edges to television — with predictable bumps. On “S.N.L.,” with “Nevermind” having just replaced Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous” at the top of the Billboard chart, the band members finished their performance by trashing the stage and kissing one another. “The fact that they were on national TV was a huge deal,” Mr. Pavitt said. To have an alternative act in the mainstream “was like the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

Reading Festival, Reading, England

AUG. 30, 1992

While Nirvana had become the hottest band in the world, Cobain’s increasingly public struggles with heroin addiction had rumors of the group’s demise swirling. In front of 50,000 people, he mockingly took the stage in a wheelchair and hospital gown. “This is our last show,” he said at one point. “Until the next one.” Michael Azerrad, the author of “Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana,” said: “They had something to prove. Everyone thought Kurt was a hopeless drug addict and the band was falling apart. And then they got up and played a truly transcendent show, one of those times when you felt like your feet weren’t touching the ground.”

Cow Palace, San Francisco

APRIL 9, 1993

A benefit for rape survivors in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the concert found Nirvana at the height of its influence and hoping to use that power for good. “The Cow Palace show combined a bunch of things that were really important to Nirvana,” Mr. Azerrad said, including the opening bands, the Breeders and L7, “both led by empowered women who came from the same musical community.” The cause, he added, “touched on both Krist’s Yugoslavian ancestry and Kurt’s outspoken feminism.”

‘MTV Unplugged,’ New York

NOV. 18, 1993

This stripped down performance, which included covers of David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World” and Leadbelly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night,” has helped to cement the band’s legacy as performers of substance, not just style. Lori Goldston, a cellist who played with Nirvana that night, recalled the MTV taping as a “hype fest,” with celebrities in attendance. But it was also seen by Cobain as “an opportunity to branch out,” she said.

Terminal 1, Munich

MARCH 1, 1994

In Nirvana’s final stretch of shows, the mood was more dour, Ms. Warnick recalled. “It’s not that it wasn’t good — it just seemed like the heart had been taken out,” she said of the band’s final American show in Seattle. In Munich, at the last Nirvana show — Cobain canceled the tour afterward, citing throat problems, and killed himself the next month in Seattle — the band opened with an impromptu cover of the Cars’ “My Best Friend’s Girl,” recalled Dale Crover, the drummer for the Melvins, who opened for Nirvana on that final tour in Europe. “We didn’t even stay for that whole show,” Mr. Crover said. “We said to ourselves, ‘We’ll see them tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.’ ”