Inside the Studio: The Untold Story of Nirvana's Nevermind

what does a revolution sound like before it has a name for sixteen days in may 1991 it sounded like feedback and fury bouncing off the walls of a studio in van nuys california you know last week we were talking about the sheer personal chaos of fleetwood mac making rumors this feels different this isn't about love affairs it's about a different kind of raw nerve being exposed in the studio it's pure artistic angst this is nirvana they're at sound city studios with producer butch vigg and they have sixteen days to record their major label debut the album that would become nevermind and this is with dave grohl right he'd only just joined the

band so you have a new lineup a new producer and the pressure of a major label that's a volatile mix immense pressure and the central conflict started on day one the band wanted to capture their abrasive loud live sound but butch vigg he heard pop songs buried under all that noise he wanted to polish it oh that's the classic battle the fear of selling out of a producer cleaning up the sound i can't imagine kurt cobain was thrilled with that idea he was terrified but vigg saw the genius there he later described kurt's process as just cathartic he said kurt didn't always know what he was trying to say but he had this relentless desperate

need to get it out so how do you even begin to capture that how do you record an explosion without muffling it well that's where it gets complicated instead of stripping it down vig went the other way he layered it they ended up using 48 tracks on some songs wait 48 for a three piece punk band that sounds like the absolute opposite of a raw live sound it does doesn't it vig said they had samples loops all sorts of strange processed guitar overdubs but he was obsessed with one thing no matter how much they added the core of the song had to punch you in the gut the raw energy had to survive the process

so it's this strange paradox they're building these incredibly complex productions to make it sound simple and powerful exactly it was a tightrope walk and then to take it over the finish line they brought in a mixer named andy wallace he was the one who found that final perfect balance the sound that was both dangerous and somehow completely accessible that's the lightning in a bottle isn't it that combination of punk fury and like a beatles level melodic sensibility nobody had really heard that before nobody and the band themselves didn't seem to grasp what they'd made dave grohl later said you know at the time michael jackson was huge whitney houston was huge michael bolton was huge

there was no place for us in that they were just this loud angry band from seattle and then on 01/11/1992 nevermind knocked michael jackson's album dangerous out of the number one spot on the billboard chart they didn't just find a place they burned the whole map and drew a new one it really is one of the most definitive moments in music history it just completely shifted the culture and the album's image was just as powerful oh the cover the baby in the pool reaching for the dollar bill on a fish hook that was all kurt he had this idea of a baby born in water which sounds a little abstract how did they even make

that happen the art director robert fisher said the reference photos kurt liked were a little too explicit for a major label release so they had to create it they hired a photographer found a baby a boy named spencer eldon and did the shoot in a swimming pool the dollar bill on the hook was added later it's the perfect metaphor for the whole project really that tension between innocence and the cynical pull of commerce a theme that would you know haunt them it defined everything and it all came from those sixteen days the fights the intensity the struggle to translate the noise in their heads into something the whole world could feel it was the sound

of a generation that didn't know it was waiting for a voice and then suddenly there it was