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Nirvana
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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, Find more lyrics at ※ Mojim.com 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
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