This is a Call

by Paul Brannigan

  ‘It was really raw,’ says Grohl, ‘but the songs were so bizarre that I was excited because I didn’t know what kind of album we were going to make.’

  Kurt Cobain, though, knew exactly what kind of album Nirvana were going to make. Or perhaps more accurately, he knew exactly what kind of album his band weren’t going to make. From the moment that Nevermind started selling, but, significantly, not before that point, Cobain would tell anyone who’d listen that he hated the sound of the album, that it was too polished and clean; Nirvana’s next album, he promised, would be rawer, more primitive and more punk rock.

  ‘I don’t listen to records like [Nevermind] at home,’ he told English journalist Jon Savage airily, on the eve of his band’s July 1993 Roseland Ballroom concert. ‘I can’t listen to that record. I like a lot of the songs. I really like playing some of them live. In a commercial sense I think it’s a really good record, I have to admit that, but that’s in a Cheap Trick sort of a way. But for my listening pleasure, you know, it’s too slick.’

  Even as Nirvana were demoing new material with Barrett Jones, Jack Endino and Craig Montgomery, Kurt Cobain had a fixed idea of the producer he wanted to helm Nirvana’s third album sessions. And that choice, in itself, would be a punk rock statement.

  The liner notes Steve Albini penned for Big Black’s posthumous live album Pigpile may have referred specifically to that band’s modus operandi but they’re as good a guide as any to the basic principles which have informed Albini’s life’s work, from his days as a fanzine writer in Evanston through to his career as a musician and producer. ‘Treat everyone with as much respect as he deserves (and no more),’ Albini wrote in 1992. ‘Avoid people who appeal to our vanity or ambition (they’ll always have an angle). Operate as much as possible apart from the “music scene”. Take no shit from anyone in the process.’

  As both a music critic and musician, Albini’s name was synonymous with uncompromised integrity, brutally straight talking and harsh, unconventional and fiercely intelligent rock music. That reputation carried through to his work as a producer, to the extent that Albini actually refuses to accept the term ‘producer’ in connection with his studio work with bands: he sees his role as being that of a sound engineer, and focuses upon rendering the sound of a band playing live in the studio to tape – always to tape – unfiltered and untreated. Whether Albini actually likes a band’s music is irrelevant – ‘It’s not my place to be the arbiter of culture and say, “No, you do not deserve to make a record,”’ he told me in 2002. ‘If I feel like a band’s motives are genuine, then the question of whether I like their music artistically becomes immaterial’ – and he has no interest in offering guidance on arrangements, lyrics or song choices. Bands seeking a motivational hype man capable of sprinkling magic dust on half-formed ideas would be advised to look elsewhere for a studio collaborator, but with his reasonably priced rates (as late as 2002, when his CV included work on albums by industry heavyweights such as Page & Plant, Cheap Trick and PJ Harvey, Albini’s base rate for working with independent label bands was just $300 per day) and his refusal to adhere to the industry standard practice of taking percentage points on album sales, Albini’s professional services remain well within the reach of most working bands.

  In 1992, when Kurt Cobain was asked by Melody Maker to nominate ten records that changed his life, he listed The Breeders’ Pod and Pixies’ Surfer Rosa as his number one and two choices; Steve Albini had produced both records. Albini had also recorded the first four albums by Cobain favourites The Jesus Lizard, the unhinged, unnerving Chicago-based quartet formed from the ashes of Scratch Acid; in their terrifying squall Cobain heard a purity of expression that he’d been seeking since his earliest experiments with sound recording at his aunt Mari Earl’s house. The singer became convinced that only Albini could coax out the demons within his own head. He knew too that Albini possessed the strength of character to stonewall record company interference in the project, however unpalatable the results might prove to be. And yet, typical of Cobain’s passive-aggressive approach to communication, the singer didn’t approach Albini to invite him to work with Nirvana until the producer had been moved to write a letter to a British music weekly denying that he’d asked to work upon the record. When Cobain finally plucked up the courage to call, Albini asked for a little time to consider his answer. The producer wasn’t playing mind-games: his reticence stemmed from the fact that he was possibly the only music industry professional in America who hadn’t yet heard Nevermind, so he felt it only polite that he should familiarise himself with the band before committing to the project.

  ‘I knew Nirvana existed, but I wouldn’t have considered myself a fan,’ he told me in 2010. ‘I wasn’t a big fan of a lot of the Seattle stuff. I thought Mudhoney had a good single, and I liked the band Tad: Tad Doyle was an interesting character and I thought that band’s approach was a little bit more thuggish and interesting. But not many of the Sub Pop bands appealed to me that much. But after working with Nirvana for a while I developed an appreciation of them that I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have developed on the outside.’

  The key players at Geffen were determined to give Nirvana time and space to work at a leisurely pace upon their third album. To facilitate this (and to exploit the band’s newly engorged fan-base) the label released the rarities, radio sessions and demos collection Incesticide in December 1992. But Albini had his own firm opinions as to how the next Nirvana record might be made. He insisted that if the band should decide to work with him, they should record as they had done pre-Nevermind, quickly, efficiently and without external distractions; he proposed a working schedule of just two weeks to make the record. Furthermore, he suggested that Nirvana should pay the $24,000 fee for the recording session themselves rather than relying on record-label funds; this, he argued, would ultimately give the band greater independence over the process. In addition, Albini drafted a contract between himself, the record label and the band, asking that all parties acknowledge that whatever record Nirvana should make with him would be released without interference, and without further adornment. Tellingly, no one from Geffen was prepared to sign this contract.

  ‘Our A&R man at the time, Gary Gersh, was freaking out,’ Grohl told Phil Sutcliffe in 1993. ‘I said, “Gary, man, don’t be so afraid, the record will turn out great!” He said, “Oh, I’m not afraid, go ahead, bring me back the best you can do.” It was like, “Go and have your fun, then we’ll get another producer and make the real album.”’

  On 12 February 1993 Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic flew from Seattle to Minneapolis – St Paul International Airport, where 23-year-old Brent Sigmeth was waiting to drive them to Pachyderm Recording Studio, a residential recording studio located in the tiny town of Cannon Falls, Minnesota. Drummer Dave Grohl flew in from Washington DC the following day. Nirvana had been booked into the studio under the name The Simon Ritchie Bluegrass Ensemble – a little punk-rock in-joke, as John Simon Ritchie was Sid Vicious’s real name – but the arrival at Pachyderm on 11 August of a truck laden with flight cases stencilled with the words ‘Nirvana, Seattle’ rather gave the game away.

  The choice of studio was Steve Albini’s. Albini had recorded The Wedding Present’s Seamonsters album at Pachyderm in 1991, and had returned to the facility to make PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me in December 1992; he liked the studio’s live room, liked working its vintage Neve 8068 recording console – previously housed in Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland Studio – and liked the fact that Cannon Falls was in the middle of fucking nowhere, providing zero distractions to visiting musicians. Gold Mountain approved: their priority was to keep Cobain away from anywhere with a drugs subculture, to prevent predatory heroin dealers latching on to their artist. Located in a 50-acre private forest, overlooking a spring-fed trout stream, Pachyderm was ideal. The isolated studio didn’t get a whole lot of passing trade at the best of times, much less in the depths of a harsh Minnesota winter.

  When Nirvana arrived, Albini asked P
achyderm’s chef Carter Nicole Launt, who was dating engineer (and Shellac bassist) Bob Weston, to make dinner. While the food was being prepared he put an unusual proposition to the band.

  ‘We’d never met Albini before and, of course, he’s a legend so we were all a little nervous and in awe of this guy who’d made some amazing records that we’d worn out on our turntables,’ says Grohl. ‘He had this reputation of being a dastardly asshole, the biggest cynical prick, but he was nothing but nice. But right off the bat he said, “OK, I do this with every band. If you beat me at a game of pool, I’ll make your album for free. If I beat you, you pay me double.” We were paying him $100,000 to make that record. Anyone who’s got the stones to gamble something that large must be an amazing pool player so everyone said, “No.” Plus he had his own stick, so we didn’t want to fuck around with that.’

  ‘I’m not a particularly good pool player,’ shrugs Albini, ‘but I can make a fair game, and I feel that that’s a perfectly reasonable proposition; double-or-nothing on a fair game. But I think they were a little more risk averse than I was.’

  Work on Nirvana’s third album began on Valentine’s Day 1993. The band set up their own equipment, Albini positioned his microphones and recording of the basic tracks began immediately. True to Albini’s purist methodology, almost every song was recorded in one or two takes. Dave Grohl relished the challenge.

  ‘When you record with Steve,’ he says, ‘he turns on the machine, hits the red button and says, “OK, go.” You play the song, and then when it’s over he hits stop and says, “What’s next?”

  ‘When we talked to him before recording he made a point about, “Are your songs prepared? Are you going to come into the studio and fuck around for two weeks? Are you going to write in the studio?” We said, “No, no, no.” We set up and recorded.’

  ‘I was pretty impressed when the three of them all got set up and started playing these songs,’ says Brent Sigmeth, now Pachyderm’s in-house producer, but then a rookie studio assistant. ‘It was really fast and really raw and really cool. It kinda seemed like I was going to witness something really unique, and that’s how it turned out.’

  ‘The sessions went really smoothly,’ says Albini. ‘None of it was difficult. They’d sent me their demos from Brazil and they were pretty skeletal – there were really only a couple of proper songs there – so I was a little bit surprised that when they got to Minnesota it seemed like things had fleshed out quite a bit. I thought they were all excellent musicians, particularly Dave, who is an absolute monster of a drummer. I know Dave is highly regarded as a drummer, but I still think he’s underrated as a drummer.’

  ‘When Dave arrived and set up his drums and started playing in that room, Bob Weston and I kinda looked at each other and said, “Oh my God, we gotta get out of here or we’ll have hearing damage,”’ says Sigmeth. ‘We literally walked out of the room and went, “Wow, okay, he plays loud.” I was just trying to stay out of the picture, but I was really enjoying it.’

  ‘We knew that Albini didn’t wanna deal with some big-time rock band or have to coddle some half-assed musicians,’ Krist Novoselic told Keith Cameron in 2001. ‘So, we knew how to rock! We’d been rockin’ for years, we had our licks down. I remember Albini standing there by the tape machine with his arms folded, bobbing his head, and we would just pop ’em out one after the other. “Well, that sounded good. Let’s do this song.”’

  Grohl finished his drum tracks for the album in just three days. He then sat around with nothing to do but watch TV for days on end. One afternoon, bored senseless, the drummer poured some of the studio’s tape-head-cleaning alcohol on his baseball cap, set it alight and walked into the lounge where Albini was sleeping, screaming that his head was on fire. Albini opened his eyes, looked at the drummer’s blazing head, sighed and promptly fell back asleep. Grohl’s singed baseball cap took pride of place in Pachyderm for the next decade.

  ‘Dave probably felt quite cooped up,’ says Brent Sigmeth with some understatement. ‘He’s kind of a hyper dude. He wanted to go ice fishing and he wanted to go snowmobiling, but time went so fast that I couldn’t pull it off for him. He ended up watching Steve Martin’s Planes, Trains & Automobiles more times than is healthy.’

  After just one week at Pachyderm, a total of 17 songs had been recorded. Among these, though not earmarked for inclusion on the album, was a new version of ‘Marigold’ aka ‘Color Pictures of a Marigold’ from Dave Grohl’s Pocketwatch tape.

  As the second week of recording in Minnesota began, an unexpected visitor arrived at Pachyderm: Courtney Love had decided to pay Cobain a surprise visit. Love’s presence rather upset the harmonious vibe of the process; Grohl actually retreated to his room for the remainder of the session after one particularly heated argument with her. Brent Sigmeth freely admits that Love ‘terrified’ him, while Steve Albini later called her a ‘psycho hose beast’. These days he is a tad more circumspect.

  ‘I don’t like spending any energy thinking about or talking about Courtney Love, but when she turned up things did slow down,’ the producer told me in 2010. ‘I don’t know if the band said anything to her, but I never took anything she said seriously. I don’t know if she tried to have an influence on the sessions, but she certainly didn’t on me.’

  Despite the disruption caused by Love’s visit, Nirvana wrapped the recording of their new album one day ahead of schedule. Wine and cigars were dispensed to all present, and a mood of contented accomplishment prevailed. Against all odds, Nirvana had pulled together a collection of songs every bit as powerful and passionate as Nevermind: regardless of how well the album sold – and Albini boldly predicted, ‘I don’t think that all the pussies and wimps who liked the last album will ever like this one’ – the trio were convinced they had created their masterpiece.

  ‘I love that record,’ said Grohl. ‘I like it more than Nevermind because there was nothing in between the band and the tape. Nothing at all. We weren’t nervous to make it, we had a collection of songs that we thought were challenging and interesting and powerful and beautiful. That album is about as pure as an album can be.’

  The band left Pachyderm in high spirits. They would soon be brought crashing down to earth. Just two weeks after leaving Cannon Falls, Kurt Cobain phoned Steve Albini to tell him that his A&R man Gary Gersh hated the record.

  ‘When we turned that record in to the record company, the first listen they called back and said, “Are you guys fucking kidding me? Is this a joke?”’ recalled Grohl. ‘We’re like, “No, that’s our record.”They’re like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, this isn’t your next record. That’s a joke.” We basically said, “We are Nirvana. That is our new record.”’

  This bullishness on Nirvana’s part didn’t last. Some weeks later, Steve Albini received a second phone call from Kurt Cobain. This time Cobain was rather more sheepish.

  ‘He said they were starting to believe that they were unhappy with the record and they wanted to remix some stuff,’ Albini recalls. ‘And I said, “Okay, well, I’ll give it a listen and if I feel I can do any better or if I feel like there’s specific stuff I can change then I’ll be happy to give it a shot.” And so I listened to the master again at home in Chicago and I really felt pretty strongly that I couldn’t improve on what we’d done. And after doing that, I called Kurt back and said, “Well, what exactly did you want to do, like how many songs and what did you want to do?” And he said, “Well, basically everything.” And at that point I knew that there was something going on other than them actually being dissatisfied. Like somebody had put a bug in their ear about something. Kurt might have been in a vulnerable state at that point – I don’t know if his drug use kicked back in or if he started to fear for his pension or whatever, I have no idea what happened – but as soon as he said that I realised that there was something up and that it didn’t have anything to do with whether or not they were actually satisfied with the record.’

  On 19 April the Chicago Tribune ran an article
by writer Greg Kot titled ‘Record Label Finds Little Bliss in Nirvana’s Latest’. In Kot’s story Albini baldly stated that Geffen hated the record he had made with the band: ‘I have no faith this record will be released,’ he said. Kot backed up Albini’s comments by quoting unnamed sources at Geffen who claimed the album was ‘unreleasable’. The article was seized upon by media outlets across the world, including Newsweek, Billboard and Rolling Stone, with every story drawing attention to what was perceived as corporate interference in Nirvana’s art. Such was the furore surrounding the album that on 11 May Geffen felt compelled to issue a press release refuting the now commonly held belief that they were going to bury the record.

  By this point R.E.M. producer Scott Litt was already remixing two songs from the album – prospective singles ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ and ‘All Apologies’ – at Heart’s Bad Animals Studios in Seattle.

  ‘Up to the point where we finished the mixes on that record I had a pretty good time working with Nirvana,’ says Albini, ‘and it remains a pretty good memory for me. After that – once the management company and record label started turning the heat up on the band and they started dropping shit into the press – it got really ugly.

  ‘I have to admit, though, I was surprised at how devious their record company people were, doing really bizarre shit, like planting lies about me in the press. I didn’t expect them to be that petty. In my view the whole thing was being done just as a way to manipulate the band. It wasn’t that they were genuinely dissatisfied with the record, the record stands on its own merits, but it was made in a way away from their comfort. It was kinda seen as a dangerous thing if a band was allowed to make a record on their own terms like that. And so the record label people tried to scuttle that effort however they could, because they were afraid that a record made unconventionally might be successful and then they would have to allow that into their paradigm.