Nirvana's surviving members shared a rare public reunion at Sunday night's MTV Video Music Awards, accepting the ceremony's Video Vanguard lifetime achievement award more than three decades after the band's breakthrough changed rock music.

Bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl took the stage together, joined by longtime touring guitarist Pat Smear, after being introduced by Public Enemy's Chuck D following a video montage of the band's most iconic clips, including "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "In Bloom" and "Heart-Shaped Box."

Novoselic Speaks, Grohl Stays Silent

Grohl, who has become one of rock's most recognizable frontmen in his own right as the leader of Foo Fighters, let Novoselic handle the speech entirely. According to Consequence's account of the ceremony, Novoselic used the moment to center the tribute squarely on the band's late frontman.

"KURT WAS ONE OF ONE ... NIRVANA CONTINUES TO RESONATE SO DEEPLY BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE STILL HUNGRY FOR AUTHENTICITY"

"The ideas for those videos all grew out of the vision of one of the greatest artists of all time, Kurt Cobain," Novoselic told the crowd, according to NME. "None of us could've imagined that our band, our sound or our aesthetic would mean so much to so many people, but ultimately the music had a life of its own. It charted its own course... Kurt would have loved that legacy. Thank you all so much."

Smear, notably, lit a cigarette onstage during the acceptance — a moment several outlets flagged as an old-school rock gesture that immediately went viral on social media, a sharp contrast with the otherwise solemn tone of the tribute.

A Legacy Still Growing

Nirvana's three studio albums sold tens of millions of copies worldwide and are widely credited with pushing grunge and alternative rock into the mainstream in the early 1990s, before Cobain's death in 1994 cut the band's run short. The Video Vanguard Award, MTV's highest honor for a music video's cultural impact, has previously gone to artists including Michael Jackson, Madonna and Beyoncé — with Madonna herself opening this year's ceremony ahead of Nirvana's tribute.

Sunday's honor adds to a string of recent recognitions for the band, including a 2014 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, and cements Nirvana's video catalog as a defining visual archive of the era, more than three decades after it was made.