Steve Albini Discusses Nirvana’s In Utero

Though he was a known figure in the underground realm, the mainstream rock world learned about Steve Albini when he signed on to produce Nirvana’s In Utero album in 1993.

It was followed by a controversy when the band remixed some tracks, and, in Albini’s view, further tampered with the mastering process. Yet he regarded working with the band as a positive experience overall. 

This Q&A is excerpted from an interview done in the late 1990s, some of which appeared in the 33 1/3 book Nirvana: In Utero.

 

In 1992, rumors were flying you’d be working with working with Nirvana.

I started seeing hints about it in the press; I think it was the New Musical Express. The problem was that I was having to contend with it on a daily basis; it was genuinely affecting my business, this notion that I was going to be doing this Nirvana record. So I sent NME a letter saying, “I have not been contacted by Nirvana, you didn’t contact me before you printed this,” and that created the first of many little micro-controversies about me working on this record. Once it was apparent that I was working on the record, it seemed like I had tried to create some sort of Nixonian denial of it, so that if everything went shitty, I could get out of it without ever having been publicly associated with it.

Who eventually contacted you?

There was some woman that worked at Nirvana’s management company I dealt with to sort out the details. I talked at length with Dave Grohl and two or three times with Kurt [Cobain] just discussing the approach to making the record and talking to them about records  they liked and stuff that I should listen to, to acquaint myself with what they wanted to try to do. 

What made you decide to work with them?

The reason I decided to do it was in speaking to them about it, I got the impression that they were genuine about wanting me to work on it, and that they were genuine about wanting to make a record for themselves. That’s really all that I cared about. I just didn’t want to be in a position where we were trying to satisfy some outside agency. I just want to deal with the band. I didn’t know if they would be allowed to make a record that way, essentially.

What kinds of ideas did they have about what they wanted to do?

The impression that I got from all three of them was that they had done a couple of quick down and dirty sessions at the Laundry Room [in Seattle], and that that reminded them of what they liked about being in a band, rather than the extended sessions from Nevermind. What they said they wanted to do is, do sessions that were like the Laundry Room sessions in spontaneity and in pace, but that had better sound quality. They named a bunch of records that I had worked on that they had liked, specifically the Jesus Lizard, Breeders and Pixies albums. I had finished this PJ Harvey album in the studio [that we’d be using for In Utero], and I gave Kurt a cassette copy to listen to, to see what this studio sounded like. And he said if their record came out sounding like that record, he would be happy. 

Did you hear the demos they worked on in South America in January 1993? 

They sent me a cassette of it. It sounded pretty rough but I preferred it immediately to Nevermind. The Nevermind album seemed very confined in its parameters. The album as a whole seemed to be more carefully chosen; each song had a beginning, middle and an end, and it was all presented in a way that allowed you to hear each chunk. This new material, some of it was kind of sprawling and aimless, and I liked that. But there were still moments that were really powerful and dynamic. It just seemed like they had made a conceptual break in how they wanted to be and how they wanted to behave as a band, and what they wanted their music to sound like.

What were the stand out songs for you?

There’s always one or two songs on any given session that strike you as being the money shot, like, “Wow, this is an amazing song, this is where everything came together, and this is really great.” For me that was probably “Milk It” and “Scentless Apprentice,” the two that struck me as being the biggest step for the band. They seemed like the biggest break with their sort of aggressive pop style that they were developing for themselves, and they seemed the most adventurous sonically — and the most up my alley anyway. 

How did those songs come together in the studio? 

It was very straightforward. They recorded the basic take as a band, and on almost every song, Kurt would add one, sometimes two additional little guitar parts. On both of those songs, there was this sort of funny special effect, echoey guitar on “Scentless Apprentice,” and this sort of meandering guitar on “Milk It. On both of those, there were two vocal takes; one take that was singing the whole song, and one take where Kurt was just singing parts of the song to emphasize them or to get a different sound quality. There’s a really dry, really loud voice that comes zooming up at the end of “Milk It,” a vocal that’s uncomfortably loud. 

Let’s talk about some other songs: “Dumb.”

I remember really liking the sound of that song as a contrast to the more aggressive ones. I remember thinking it sounded really good, in that it sounded lighter, but it didn’t sound conventional; it was sort of a crude light sound that suited the band. 

 

VIDEO: Nirvana performs “Dumb” at the 1992 Reading Festival

“Rape Me.”

That one had an effect at the end where the vocal just sort of overwhelms the band and it just becomes this really uncomfortable presence. I remember listening to the finished mastered version and feeling like that impact, that effect, had somehow been softened. I don’t know if that was the mastering engineer’s idea, or if that was the band’s idea. 

“Marigold” [by Dave Grohl].

I remember Kurt saying, “Dave, you’ve got a couple of songs you need to do, don’t you?” Dave played the guitar and did the singing. I seem to remember that [engineer] Bob Weston did a majority of the recording for the songs that Dave Grohl was doing. He and Dave thought it might be better if those things were sort of a separate project from the album. 

I’ve wondered why Dave didn’t do more in Nirvana, like the occasional lead vocal. 

I think he contributed greatly to that band. The way it’s perceived is that Kurt was the auteur, and that everybody else played along. That didn’t really represent what I saw. I think Dave had an enormous contribution to the record on all fronts; he just wasn’t the lead vocalist. I think that his aesthetics and the music that he liked and the music that he made influenced Kurt pretty tremendously. 

I don’t think that Kurt was the auteur in that band. I think that Kurt was the principal songwriter and he was the lead vocalist, but the other two guys in that band had far more to do with the ultimate sound and direction of that band than anyone has given them credit for. 

How did you like them as people?

Dave and Kurt and Krist [Novoselic] had a very overtly goofy take on things. I really liked and enjoyed their company. Kurt was more withdrawn initially, but I think that’s only to be expected because he didn’t know me; he didn’t have any reason to trust me or whatever. I didn’t try to get on any sort of intimate level with him, out of respect for the pressure he must feel under every day, having people try to get close to him all the time. I figured I’d allow him as much distance as he wanted. It was obvious that what was going on in his head was as important to him as what was going on between him and other people. 

In Michael Azerrad’s Come As You Are, you say you felt sorry for Nirvana.

I felt sorry for what they had to contend with. They were thrust into a world — or they thrust themselves into a world — where everyone was lying to them constantly, where they were being treated like rock stars, and they really just wanted to be guys in a rock band. Where they were being presented with ludicrous options as though they were perfectly normal, some of which they would then take because they had lost their bearing about what was or wasn’t reasonable. They were being preyed on by certain parasitic elements in the media, people that had an angle on them and wanted to try to take advantage of it. They were being pressured by all the parasites that lived off of them to deliver the goods to make money. Kurt had personal problems that I can’t even fathom. So I genuinely sympathized with their position. 

At least the record company people stayed away from the sessions. 

They may have spoken to the band outside of my presence, but I wasn’t privy to those conversations. We taped a phone call between Dave Grohl and John Silva [one of Nirvana’s managers] and Dave said that three days into the sessions he was still doing sound check on the snare drum, and he didn’t know if it was supposed to be going this slow or if this was a special case or what, but it sure is taking a long time. At one point, just to sort of tweak Silva, he said, “You don’t have Butch Vig or Andy Wallace’s phone number, do you?” Silva goes, “Yeah, it’s right here, hold on just a second,” as though he were reaching for the “Plan B” file. He started in on something like, “Well you know, it’s like we were saying…,” and then Dave cut him off and was like, “No, no, no! It’s a joke! Things are going great!” And I would have given a nut to let Silva finish that sentence. 

The sessions went pretty quickly.

We had booked two weeks. The basic recording and all of the vocals were probably done in the first seven days. Then there were a few little filigree bits done and Dave got to work on his songs and stuff. Mixing went very quickly as well. I think we got two or three songs mixed every day. 

I expected it to be like most of the other records I had done, where we finish it, and it’s released, and everybody is happy. I’m still unclear who started the pissing match with me and the record label, but my first inkling of it was when I got a phone call from a journalist in Chicago named Greg Kot who said that he’d just been speaking with Gary Gersh at Geffen [Nirvana’s label, DGC, was a subsidiary of Geffen], and that Gersh had told him that this Nirvana record that I had made was unreleaseable and that it all was going to have to be redone, and what was my comment. I don’t remember specifically what I told him, but I know I would have told him that Gary Gersh could go fuck himself. 

Then news of that tiff went out like wildfire. It seemed like everyone that I crossed paths with was aware of that argument and had an opinion on it, and all from a position of ignorance. From a certain perspective, I feel like I was speaking from a position of ignorance, because I wasn’t there when the band was having their discussions with the record label. I don’t know what was discussed; I don’t know what they ultimately agreed to or what they ultimately acquiesced to. All I know is what my interaction with them was, which was we made a record and everybody was happy with it. A few weeks later, I hear that it’s unreleasable and it’s all got to be redone. 

Kurt called and asked me about doing some remixes: “We’re happy with most of it, we’re not happy with some of it. Do you want to remix it?” I said, “All right, what songs are you talking about remixing?” Kurt named a few specifics, then he said, “But really, we’d like to redo it all.” 

 

VIDEO: Steve Albini talks In Utero with Conan O’Brien 

Did he say why?

Subtleties, like Krist didn’t think his bass guitar was well defined enough, and there were certain songs where he didn’t think the vocals came out enough. It was all subtleties, it wasn’t anything specific. I think Kurt was trying to articulate his position, which was that he felt uncomfortable that people who were responsible for selling his record were uncomfortable with it. He wanted to make himself confident. He wanted to make a record that he could slam down on the table and say, “Listen, I know this is good, and I know your concerns about it are meaningless, so go with it.” That’s what he wanted. I don’t think that he felt that he had that yet. I think that he wanted to redo stuff in hopes of getting there. 

My problem was that I feared a slippery slope. If we went back into the studio to remix some of that stuff, we would have ended up remixing all of it. It would have ended up into another situation like Nevermind, where it would have eventually been taken out of their hands. So I told him that I appreciated that he came to me about doing the remixes first, but I didn’t want to take advantage of this crisis of confidence. I didn’t want to say, “Oh great, I get more work out of this.” 

What I did was, I had a copy of the master and I put it on here at my studio in Chicago and I listened intently to it. I called Kurt back and I said, “Listen, if you guys want to remix some of this stuff, you have my blessing. I just don’t think I can do any better. The subtleties that you’re talking about, you can’t change some of these things without fundamentally changing the presentation of the music.” From a business standpoint, that was probably a bad idea because I could have squeezed more money out of them. From a personal standpoint I think that may have not set well with the band, that I wasn’t willing to just say, “Yeah, I’ll do it all again.” But I know it was the right thing to say. 

I had a copy of that record before it was mastered. I saw that record at every stage of production. I listened to that record as it was when they were thrilled with it, and I agreed with them that it was a great record. I knew that if it was manipulated beyond that point, some of that greatness was going to evaporate. And I just didn’t want to be a party to it. I don’t want to paint Kurt with the drug crazed loner brush that everybody is so quick to paint him with, but I did get the feeling when I was talking to him that he wasn’t the clear-eyed, super attentive, super productive Kurt that he was during the studio session. I got the impression that getting back into his routine hadn’t been good for him. 

But the record that people have in their homes is the record that Nirvana wanted them to have. I can take that, that doesn’t bother me at all. My memories of that record are good ones. To this day I consider David Grohl and Krist Novoselic friends. Their situation was not enviable to me, but they made a great record. I was thrilled to be a part of it. By the time it was over I was happy, I was proud, I was fond of those people, I had a lot of respect for them. There were things that had ameliorated that elation or that have changed my remembrance slightly, but they’re slight changes. 

I would hate it if the end perception of my talking about this was that I had hard feelings about the way that Nirvana treated me, because that’s not the case at all. Years later when I think about it, what am I thinking about? All good thoughts.