Nevermind, It's An Interview - Part 2

Welcome back to Nevermind It's An Interview. With Nirvana's line up now set.
Kurt, Krist and Dave began rehearsing. - ST THOMAS

"We'd been, um, practicing in this really weird practice space. This man
built a studio in this like barn in his backyard, but it wasn't
a barn, it was this thing that had a studio in it, and then upstairs his
brother lived up there, and he was in this really bad like Howard
Johnson's lounge band. Everything is carpeted with this like brown
shag carpet, and he even had stage lights in there and he had a
massive PA that he just did not know how to use, and he'd turn it on,
and 'SHHHHHHHHH' there's just this huge hiss, and we were practicing a
lot and we were writing a lot of material. We'd write them, they were
great for like 2 weeks, 'Oh my God, this is the best song ever' and we'd
forget them, and so then we decided 'OK, well we'll start putting them on
cassette' so we started recording them onto these boom box things,
and we'd lose the cassettes y'know, so I mean we wrote so much material, that
we just like, forgot about and every once in a while we'll just like,
pull one out and turn it around." - DAVE

While the band was writing and rehearsing, the major labels started
taking interest. - ST THOMAS

"They were wining and dining us, and there were some labels that we were
impressed by them, but uh, we thought uh DGC would be the best for us."

Was one of the main reasons because of Sonic Youth? - ST THOMAS

"Yeah, we knew Sonic Youth were happy on there, and we've always loved and
respected Sonic Youth, so and there's like all these rumors, that we got like
a million dollars, or 700, it was actually, even in Spin Magazine it was
printed that, that we got $750, 000, and we didn't even get a quarter of
that. What we did was instead of going for the big dough we went for the
strong contract."

Which enables you like more freedom and - ST THOMAS

"More freedom, uh, more percentage points on the record, and there's a lot of
clauses in there that are in our favor. Now if our record would've
bombed, we woulda kicked ourselves in the butt and said 'Maaan, we
should've took the cash!', but were not in it for the money, we were in
it for y'know, let's put out a record and let's do this thing right"
- KRIST

snippet of Lithium

"I really don't know what the definition of selling out is anymore, I
guess I really don't care. We haven't compromised, our record label
let's us do anything we want we think on the same level, there's nothing
that we've done, that could be considered a sell out at all, at least
not in my eyes. A lot of people were calling us sell out, they forget
that y'know, the Ramones, and the Sex Pistols were on major labels, so
was the Clash, and they all, all those bands were trying to become big
stars they didn't even deny it. Crap, the Ramones even had a movie out
after them, y'know, to help support them." - KURT

"Y'know I think that if you make money and you start voting Republican
because you'll get tax breaks, and they're the party of the rich, I mean
- that's sold out." - KRIST

In early 1991 Nirvana entered the studio with producer Butch Vig. - ST
THOMAS

"Yeah, we worked with him in the spring time, when we, when we did that
demo, that I mentioned earlier. He was just easy to work with laid back,
and um, really attentive to what's going on. He works hard, but he
doesn't work the band hard." - KRIST

"It was about time that the band recorded something, finally, it had
been so long." - DAVE

"It was called Sound City, and the board and the room were really old,
the board was from the early 70's" - KURT

"All the dinosaurs have recorded there, uh, Fleetwood Mac, uh, Cheap
Trick" - KRIST

"There's nothing more disgusting, than the late 80's or early 90's slick
sound, y'know, you just can't escape it, no matter how retro and old you
try to be, or what kind of old equipment you use, you still can't help
but sound new." - KURT

"We got a warm sound outta that place" - KRIST

"It'd been two years since Bleach, it'd been awhile, since the band
had gone in and recorded a full LP, so it was more of like, 'wow, ok,
we're in the studio, let's just get this done! Let's just do it!'" - DAVE

"We made the record we wanted to make, we didn't have any, we didn't
wanna make the number one record, we didn't want to make some big hit
record, it's, y'know that's, it woulda been the same record if it was on
Sub Pop." - KRIST

Live version of Drain You

That's Drain You recorded live. Kurt and Dave talk about writing songs - ST
THOMAS

"It's usually done on an acoustic guitar sitting around in my underwear, just
picking out riffs, pieces of songs." - KURT

"Maybe Kurt'll come in with a melody, a guitar riff, and um, show it to
us." - DAVE

"We go to practice and then we play the song over, and over and over again."
- KURT

"We just jam! There's no real formula." - DAVE

"Krist and Dave have a big part in deciding on how long a song should
be, and how many parts it should have, so, I don't like to be considered
as the whole song writer, but I do come up with the basis of it. I come
up with the singing style during practice and then I write the lyrics usually
minutes before we record." - KURT

(Referring to Something In The Way)

"That song really wasn't even written until a week before we went into
the studio. And uh, I knew I wanted cello on it, but after all the music
was recorded for it, we'd kinda forgotten about putting a cello on it,
and we had one more day in the studio, and we decided 'Oh, geez, we
should try to hire a cellist' y'know, and put something in, and we were
at a party, and we were asking some of our friends if they had any
friends who play cello, and it just so happened that one of our best
friends in LA, plays cello, so we took him into the studio on the last day
and said 'here, play something', and he came up with something right
away, it just fell like dominoes, it was really easy." - KURT

snippet of Something In The Way

(Referring to Come As You Are)

"The lines in the song are really contradictory, y'know, one after another,
they're kind of a rebuttal, to each line, and they're just kinda confusing I
guess. It's just about people, and uh, what they're expected to act like."
-KURT

snippet of Come As You Are

(Referring to Polly)

"Just because I say 'I' in a song doesn't necessarily mean it's me. A
lot of people have a problem with that. It's just the way I write
usually, take on someone else's personality or character. I'd rather
just use someone else's example, because I dunno, my life is kinda
boring, and so y'know, I just take stories from things I've read, and
off the television, and in stories I've heard, maybe even some friends."
- KURT

snippet of Polly

(Referring to In Bloom)

"Obviously I don't like rednecks, I don't like macho men. You know I
don't like abusive people, and I guess that's what that song is about it's an
attack on them." - KURT

snippet of In Bloom

(Referring to Smells Like Teen Spirit)

"This friend of mine and I were goofing around in my house one night, and we
were kinda drunk, and we were writing graffiti all over the walls of my
house, and she wrote 'Kurt smells like teen spirit'. And earlier on, we were
kinda having this discussion on revolution, and teen revolution and stuff
like that, and I took that as a compliment, I thought that she was saying
that I was a person who, who could inspire. I just thought that was a nice
little title. And it turns out she just meant that I smelt like the
deodorant. I didn't even know that deodorant existed,
until after the song was written." - KURT

"My father said this to me 'I know why you guys've sold so many
records.the video shows a buncha kids trashing a gymnasium!' and I mean
that sorta works. Like uh, 'Nirvana! Spokesmen of the lost generation!
They're telling you to go out and destroy your local gymnasium!' I don't
really, I don't see it that way, I mean, like, I don't want to hold a
responsibility of being a spokesman for anything! You know I can barely hold
my own! I guess it's flattering, and I guess it's great that it acts like
sorta, gives people a feeling of sorta like breaking out, and telling
um, anyone and anything just to fuck off!" - DAVE

snippet of Smells Like Teen Spirit

Live version of On A Plain

That's On A Plain recorded live. Kurt talks about the artwork on Nevermind. -
ST THOMAS

"One day, Dave and I were sitting around watching a documentary on
babies being born underwater .and um, I thought that was a really neat
image, so we thought, 'Let's put that on the album cover', and then when
we got back a picture of a baby underwater, we thought, I thought it
would look nice for a fish with a dollar bill on it and so, the
image was born." - KURT

snippet of Stay Away

(Referring to photograph on the back of the Nevermind album cover)

"It's just a rubber monkey, that I've had for years, and I took that
picture. It was in a Bohemian photography stage y'know, taking a bunch
of weird, arty pictures, and that's one of them" - KURT

"It's a collage that I made many years ago. I, I got these pictures of
beef, from a supermarket poster, and cut them out, and made a mountain
of beef and then put Dante's people being thrown into hell climbing all
over it, and um, that's pretty much, yeah, there's also, if you look
real close, there's a picture of Kiss, in the back standing on a slab
of beef" - KURT

"Since It's Halloween, We thought we'd play the secret song" - KRIST live
from the stage

"13 minutes, and 51 seconds after the beginning of track 12, the band put
a secret song on the Nevermind CD. This mystery song didn't make the
first pressing though. Dave explains" - ST THOMAS

"When we got our first CD, and popped it in, we listened to it, 'Oh,
Oh! Let's check to see if that track is there!', and it wasn't there.
The reason for it, I think the original reason was because, Something
In The Way is sorta like your slower, whatever song it's the last song
on the record, most likely to be listened to by like someone who would
have a carousel CD player, and so okay, why not like 'screw up their
little carousel deal!' I was talking to a friend who works in a
record store, and he said uh, a person came in with the CD, and said
'Y'know, this thing's screwed up. After the last song, there's like,
this 10 minutes of dead space, then this total noise song' He wanted
his money back! And the person at that store said, 'Well, I think
maybe it was like a joke of the band .y'know, put it on after,' and
he goes 'Well I don't think it's very funny y'know!', and he wanted his
money back! It was just like" - DAVE

snippet of Endless Nameless

In a moment we'll find out what's next for Nirvana, when Nevermind It's An
Interview continues. - ST THOMAS