Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and “In Utero” producer Steve Albini

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Steve Albini feel good, jazzy and anxiety about being Conan O’Brien’s Friend. Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and producer Steve Albini discuss the making of Nirvana’s “In Utero” on its 30th Anniversary. For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com.Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone].

Hi, my name is Dave Grohl and I feel I feel good about being Conan's friend. It feels like a qualified good. Yeah, I'm still unsure. Hello, I'm Chris Nova Seller tonight. I feel jazzy about being Conan O'Brien's friend. Yes. See? No pause, no anxiety.

Just joy, sir. My name is Steve Albini, and I feel anxiety about being Conan O'Brien's friend. You can feel that it's palpable. And not uncommon, I'm sure. Hey, welcome to Conan O'Brien, Needs a Friend. Of course, usually there's a lot of nonsensical Bibble Babble at the top of the podcast. Today, there really isn't time for that. This is a very special episode. Recently, I had this very cool opportunity to fly to Chicago and sit down and chat with Nirvana members Dave Grohl and Chris Novicellich, along with producer, audio engineer Steve Albini,

so that we could talk about the making of the classic album In Udaro, which came out 30 years ago in September, 1993. I remember this time very well because I was launching my late night show and the In Udaro music was really the soundtrack to that crazy time in my life. So really cool that my guest today sat with me and we

chatted about this very important record. We covered a lot of ground, including what it was like to deal with the pressures of suddenly being the number one rock band in the world, how they could follow up the unexpected massive success of their album Nevermind and Dave and Chris also shared some memories of their friend and bandmate Nirvana's creative leader Kurt Cobain. So, let's listen in. This is an honor. Thank you very much for gathering here. It's the 30th anniversary of Inudero. And my first question for the three of you was, does it feel like 30 years?

Well, there's the time component, temporal, right? And when I look back, I think there's somebody who's missing here, who's a person that should be here right now, and Kurt Cobain's not here. And so just facing that and looking back at that time, I mean, it was great time to make the record. I had a good time and we were really productive and that was like the glue that kept the band together was just we really like to play together

and we played well together. And we made this. Sorry, I didn't understand that okay this is this is absolute bullshit and all of this is staying in so so Chris not so watch just what the fuck were you talking about just now can't keep his phone okay growl your next what you, what's on you right now? Sorry, I didn't understand that. Yeah. Hey Siri, answer Conan's question.

Hey Siri, why did how kill the crew in 2001? It's oddity. It feels like just yesterday that we recorded, the great of Siri had a really good, perky answer. So yes, you were saying, you were really interrupted by a computer. I should have just had the AI spewed out. Yeah. But so, I mean, we could tell stories about

the record, like how we made it. It was a good time. I mean, we were in this house and granite falls, Minnesota, cannon falls, cannon falls.. I think you I stand Siri. Where does sorry? Isn't granted falls where Rocky and Bullwink are all from? Probably. We'll pursue that club that I'll be in later. And Boris. Yeah. Anyway, I remember I have a very clear memory of this album coming out because I had there's I think a three-day difference between when in utero drops and when I start my late night television show. Oh, wow. The music on the album, because I was such a huge fan,

being such a background music to the terror and the weirdness of me starting a late night show from complete obscurity in 1993. So. That's similar to the Nirvana experience, I would imagine, that at the time we were, when the band became popular in 1991, we were so young. I think I was 21 or 22 and you might have been 25 or something, but we were kids. You were kids. Yeah. And so when you talk about the amount of time that's gone by, to me, it's not even so much about the years,

it's about the experiences that just kind of led one after another, going from three kids that were basically living or touring out of a van to then becoming a huge band. And then in utero becoming the uncomfortable soundtrack to that sort of transition. and then in utero becoming the uncomfortable soundtrack to that sort of transition. By 1992, 1993, we were living in a different world than we were just 16 months before, you know.

I was thinking about it today, and I was thinking the only way that you can understand the making of in utero is to understand where you were at that time. The only way to understand that is to start with, never mind, which had, it's Geffen Records modest expectations by the record label.

They, I think they were gonna be very happy if you sold 250,000 units. They printed 50,000 units of a C-E's. 50,000. 50,000. Thinking, that should do it. And if we have to make more, we will. I talked to someone who was working at Geffen at the time.

They said, when never mind hit, and started to blow up, and then really blow up, at one point they had to stop making and manufacturing all of the other CDs for the other artists on their label and turn them all over to making Nevermind, which sounds like something that just doesn't happen.

It was completely unprecedented. And so that's the good news, but with that comes all kinds of bullshit. Well, you mentioned time, Conan, and so, like, personally, you know, that was 30 years ago, but that time, from when when Nevermind released and then Kurt died, what happened in that span of time feels like it was 10 years. Yeah, it was of so much intense. There was so much intense.

Yeah. I was just thinking like, you know, for me, it took my entire childhood to prepare me for adolescence, right? And then it took my entire adolescence and young adulthood prepare me for being gainfully employed and independent as a person, right? So, like, you have a long runway for the major stages in your life,

and like, Nirvana went from being couch surfers to being the biggest band ever in the world, in a span of about 18 months, something like that, like I can't fathom the kind of whiplash in every part of your life. Like you go from being, from having normal relationships with normal people who see you as another normal person. To every time you walk in a room, everybody's mouth just drops open and you're like the sent, instantly you're the center of attention. And everyone has like expectations and questions

and demands and they wanna attach themselves to you. Like everything changes just from being a normal schmuck to being this like intensely public figure on whom other people have laid incredible expectations. And on whom other people are like literally dependent, their careers are dependent on your behavior and your whims. And so now they feel like they have to marshal that. They have to like participate in how you are as a person

because of their self interest. It's like this uniquely perversely capitalist notion. And suddenly you guys are responsible for an industry. And the thing that occurs to me is that fame, money, success is great news for a lot of artists in the business, a lot of music artists. If you come from the punk world and you are religious adherence to the punk ethos, which you guys were and Kurt was, success is tricky because there's so many artists if they make a lot of money, go out and get a Bentley, you know, Jesus, the Beatles were very comfortable going out and getting a Rolls Royce and painting it.

It was either that or paying 90% taxes. Right. Okay. Well, that's a good point. I hadn't thought of that. And we're gonna do a second one when we get into taxation. But what I wanted to point out was there's a whole culture of yay we made it

and we throw money around. There's almost a shame and a trap that set if you're part of the punk ethos, isn't there? So I want, this is something that I have run into over and over and over again, is people outside the music scene, people who are not band members, not musicians, not part of the culture of punk at all, ascribing to punk's this notion that success is bad

and this notion that if you are successful, you are somehow bad and evil and that it is, that we don't want people to become successful. I have never experienced that genuinely from anybody in anyone in the punk scene that wasn't purely a jealousy, an expression of jealousy. On the whole, Nirvana's fans wanted Nirvana to become successful and self-sustaining and be loved. So I just wanted to clear the air and say, like there was no animosity toward Nirvana and Nirvana.

I'm not in a situation. I'm talking about the band itself. So, you know, before we made the record, never mind, we were pretty much living in squalor, right? So I was living with Kurt in this tiny little apartment and they were just corned arg sticks and cigarettes all over the place. And it was like,

it's pretty fucking disgusting. I would have done anything to have my own apartment, you know, like, and to be able to do that through making music, I know that the transition happened really quickly, but it didn't happen. You didn't just wind up putting million dollars in your mailbox the next day. It went from being like,

the pretty and went up to $15 a day. I was like, oh my God, that means I can get two packs of cigarettes or whatever. And then, you know, went from- Just couldn't possibly get better. Like, young man. I can make it exactly, I'm saying. That's how it feels.

I'm saying, in a motel, you know, I'm sharing a room with Kurt or whatever, but it's not someone's floor. And then just small things, and then from September to December of 1991 is when everything really blew up. And I didn't feel conflicted or any guilt or shame in knowing like, oh, I just paid off my mother's house.

Yeah. Or I bought my mother a car. Or now I can afford to buy a new pair of shoes or whatever it was. I didn't. I think the reason why I personally didn't feel so conflicted about everything was because I knew that the band hadn't done anything outside of our true selves to get there. We just did the thing that we did and then it happened. And so that was just my experience after, and then I got to move in with another friend and have a house.

And I remember, it's funny to talk about the Bentley. Remember that fucking weird Yugoslavian car that you bought? Did you own a Ugo? No, what was it? Didn't you buy some car that was like this tiny thing? Oh, the Renault Dalfine. Oh, that's what it gave it to me. Oh, right.

Wait, that was your rock star moment. Is it someone gave you a Renault Dalfine, which I was like a shoe more than a car. I barely fit in it. I got it running pretty good. But yeah, I mean, of course, we didn't go straight to the Bentley's and stuff like that. But I mean, I was very happy to

have finally been able to really support myself as a musician. Now, they're doing the thing that I love to do. There is, and this is what's getting us towards in utero is there is a lot of stuff that comes with being the number one rock band. Suddenly, there's all this tabloid noise in Kurt and Courtney's life, that's creating a lot of drama. And then the other thing that starts to creep in is a dissatisfaction with never mind being too slick. And now what is that, does that come from? Well, Kurt, you have to ask him about that.

Ask Kurt. Okay, and he, we'll see, and we go into our, that we were talking about just like the pressure of being the sudden fame. And then Kurt had had he got more attention because he was out front. Okay, so then he felt more pressure. Okay. But yeah, he started to do heroin and that he loved drugs. And there's a price for that and that complicated things a lot. Remember, Dave and I went to go see him in the rehab.

He was in a rehab and we were like, how are you doing? It was so good to see him and he was doing all right. And he goes, you know that Steve Jones came to visit me and he didn't have to do that. I mean, that was really nice. It's from the sex pistols. Sure.

And we're like, what's he like? Kurt's like, he was wearing Birkenstocks. Talk about a fucking sellout. But now we're asked for the sex pistols is wearing Birkenstocks. Yeah, but he went to the rehab to see, he didn't have to do that. And it was nice that he, that was a nice thing. That was good news.

So you know, just dealing with that stuff, I mean, there's that nonsense, but were you guys, because I know Kurt was very vocal about thinking that never mind, yes, huge hit, but he thought the production was too slick. And that is something that he said at the time, he may have changed his mind about that later on, had he lived. It must have been like 1989 1990 and we were cruising in this van and I think we were listening to surforosa and then

Kurt was sitting there in the chair and he raises his finger and makes a decree because this shall be our snare sound Surforosa the pixies. So, that's made by... You're as truly as that. Yeah, and then he... And then that's the... There you go. That we ended up in working with Steve. So, that's...

Well, this is... You know what I think, I think, as you were talking earlier about feeling uncomfortable with this new world of Nirvana fame and stuff like that. I think that when things did become huge, that we all sort of kind of retreated and sort of clung to the things that we felt most attached to,

whether it was weird old cars or going back to Virginia or whatever it may have been for Kurt, but always musically, I think that whether it was Kurt feeling like, never mind, may have been over to, but always musically, I think that whether it was Kurt feeling like Nevermind may have been over to produce or to overproduced or something. We had always listened to records that Steve had made. I remember when I first moved in with Kurt, I think he only had like four records. It was like, we will hit it. He had a Mark Lannigan record. There was surfer Rosa. There was a breeder's pod, and a Jesus-susored record.

And that was just the sound that we felt most, that we love. And I think we probably wanted to work with Steve before we made Nevermind, but we wound up making it with Butch. Who, it should be said, is a no-slime. Yeah, Butch-Fig as a producer on Nevermind. Yeah.

And, you know, what you're bringing up is that kind of in the background all along, there was this sound that Steve Albini was getting with the pixies, with the breeders that spoke to you guys. And so my question for you guys is, what is that sound? Okay, it's the snare. Is it the recording of the drums or is it something bigger than that? It's the collective sound of all of those things where not one seems to be kind of in front of the other.

To me, it always sounds really centered, where it's like the vocal isn't jumping ahead of everything else or things are like writing up and down. It sounds like the sound of a group in a space and really just natural, you know. I mean, I think who was it that talked about distance in recording? The distance. Well, yeah, but like how Dips distance kind of creates depth. Right. And so if you listen to a lot of the drum sounds with Steve's stuff, there is sort of this

sense of distance in a way that gives the sound more depth. That's what I think. And, and, and, and, and, to be honest, if I'm wrong, but, but Steve, it felt like you're, what you were going for and what you were about was you wanted the band to sound like the band. You wanted them to sound like, this is how they sound when they're in a room and they're together and something real is happening. You don't want all that separation,

you don't want double tracking, you don't want a lot of fall to roll in nonsense. Well, there is, I mean, there seems to be set, setting up as a kind of a compare and contrast between me and Butch Vig. And I should point out that Butch Vig's production aesthetic and his like approach as an engineer was like formed in precisely the same way that mine was doing budget records

for dead broke bands in a short amount of time, like trying to be as efficient as possible with not just with the time, but with the materials. And like, you're hitting your snare drum head so hard, we're going to have to buy a new snare drum head. You know, so like, let me, let me put some gaffer on there or something to keep so that we don't split the snare drum head. That like his aesthetic and his techniques

are very much in the same school as mine. The thing that I remember most about the Nirvana Butch connection is that when we got to the studio to start work on the Inudero album, Kurt had a cassette of the rough mix that Butch had given him of the Nevermind sessions. It wasn't the finished album that was in the stores. It was the cassette of the tracks that Butch had done without any like fanciful mixing with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just like these are the tracks. And he played that to get familiar with the sound of the studio.

He played it through the speakers. And I thought it sounded fucking fantastic. Do you guys know what I'm, do you remember that? No. I thought it sounded fucking great. And I don't remember, forgive me. I don't remember hearing the nevermind album and thinking, this sounds fucking great.

It didn't bring to mind any of the records that Butch had done that I was familiar with that were the records that made his reputation and probably made Nirvana wanna work with him in the first place. So to be fair, to just go back to that time, nevermind is out, they're the biggest band in the world. They're looking to make their follow up album.

At that time, what did you, were you a fan? Were you a fan of Nirvana? I wasn't super familiar with Nirvana. I had heard like the ubiquitous stuff that everyone that was being played on the radio and all the clubs and like every gig you would go to as you were loading in, the sound guy would put never mind on

to crank the PA and balance the PA. So I had heard the album many times, sort of second hand, right? I wasn't a student of Nirvana. If I'd ever seen them play live, I'm certain I would have become a fan. So the decision is made. We would like C. Vell-Beney to produce this record. And most people, I think anyone else on the planet in that position would have said, please, please, please, please, please, please. And you write this letter when you find out that they're interested.

And this letter is not a please hire me letter. It's a great letter. But it is, it is a, I'll do it, but here are my conditions. Well, letter, which is really, which is, I'm first of all, this is a type of a furium. Yeah, yeah, this is a kind of a furium thing. Yeah, yeah. It is, I mean, it really is a, it's a bit of a screed about what you believe. And I will do this if you do it on my terms and if you're willing to do it. And then you shockingly say, I'm not taking points on this record. I don't want to do that.

You said, I want to be paid like a plumber. Just give me some money up front, but you thought it was immoral to get points in the record. Yeah, I mean, the way that record producers and recording people are compensated in at that time in particular, was a trick of accounting that shifted the cost away from the label and toward the band, made the band

ultimately responsible for whatever the producer got paid. And it didn't come out of the general proceeds of the record, the way it would in an independent labels contract, for example. It came specifically out of the money that would otherwise have gone to the band. Like literally every dollar I would be paid would mean that was a dollar that Dave didn't get or Kristen get or Kurt didn't get. I mean, that's just the way the accounting works and those kinds of deals. And I think that's ethically untenable. I admit that I think less of people who opt to do things that way. I think it's on its face, it's absurd. I work on a record for a few days and then for the rest of your fucking life, you have to keep paying. You give me a chip off of every nickel that you earn.

I like it. I talk to my agent and my manager if you would. Speaking about this letter, very specifically, the letter is sort of acquired a notoriety of its own because it was included in some of the reissue materials. And it was sort of, for the first time, the general public got to read this correspondence, right? What happened was that I had had several phone conversations with Kurt

about the prospect of me working on a record. And we talked all of this stuff through. Like, so some of the things in there that sound kind of flippant or sound like I'm being kind of brusk, that's based on a conversational awareness between me and Kurt. Were you guys united that, yep, Steve is the guy and were united, were you united in this new direction, stripped down leaner to do in utero? Was that like you felt like all three of you were united in that idea? Yeah. I think it's funny.

We were in between, I guess it might have been 1992 and we went down to Brazil. We had that week off in Brazil. We were playing this festival called the Hollywood Rock Festival in Rio and São Paulo. So there are two shows. One, we can and Rio, one is part, and then we had a whole week off in between and we had nothing to do. So we found this studio that I think belonged to the record company. Like hey, there's this nice old beef board in here. If you're not doing anything. So we set up our gear and just started

fucking around maybe for two or three days and I think maybe Kurt had some riffs and some things here and there. A lot of it was just jamming, but it was great because it was just the three of us in this room with nothing but time to fuck around. And no one to tell us what to do or how to do it. And I think that that was kind of the beginning of the vibe of coming to record with Steve. Like there was it was a really a free room. There was Barrett's basement with his laundry room. Yeah, in my house and my basement. Yeah. And there was a lot of washer and dryer there. And we set up and we just we did these like improvisation songs.

Again, I think that a lot of this was meant as some sort of return to us feeling like we still own ourselves or we own, we're still the same people, we're still the same band and we're not to be changed by all the other crazy bullshit and we felt most comfortable doing it like that. It's funny, I, having been in the food fighters now for so long, when I think about being in Irvana, it was just when we got in a room to play music, it was so fucking simple. There was all of that other complication just disappeared. Literally, like, put my drums in the back of my car, go to Chris's house, then go to

the basement, and put it in there and start playing, even though people consider us to be this giant band, we still functioned as we always had when it came to making music. So I think the Brazil stuff is really, that's where I started to get a vibe or a feel of what was gonna happen when we went to record with Steve. Those were considered like demos, you know.

The magic was the three of you guys working together and not being really interfered with that much. And so you have this weird trip to South America working together and not being really interfered with that much. And so you have this weird trip to South America where accidentally you get to reconnect with that. Which is pretty amazing. And then you think, okay, we think we know the guy who can do this. And that takes us to the studio where you record this, which is 50 miles south of Minneapolis.

Yeah, I had been there a couple of times already. But also, you know, I have a question. This studio is called Packarderm Studio. It was amazing. The house was beautiful. It was like a Frank Lloyd Wright looking thing. I have an indoor swimming pool.

Me neither. It's a Brady Bunch house. It's like the Brady Bunch house. But Frank, kind of Frank Lloyd Wright. Am I crazy? Or was this place owned by some kid that inherited a bunch of money from his rich family? Because his rich family was the family that invented that smoked brown plastic desk organizer. Yes.

The story you're relaying is 100% true. No one could make that up. I thought Steve made it up until it to me So I want to set the picture for people because one of you. I don't know who it was described it as a gulag meaning you go I think it was you was reading Solzhenits and like he's walking through the gulag and he can hear the snow crunch beneath his boots Yeah beneath his boots and he, beneath his boots. And it's like, you know, an ancient Soviet detention center, but a lot of it makes sense. Was it an indoor swimming pool? It was an indoor swimming pool. It was nice.

Which a lot of gulags had to be fair. The nicer gulags had it. But Steve, it's almost like you were offering them a sensory deprivation tank, saying, well, come to this middle of nowhere. You were booked because you're huge stars. Number one band in the world. You're booked as the Simon Richie group. There was a general concern about Kurt having a relapse.

So they didn't want him to be in an urban setting. That had another layer of concern, which is that... I shouldn't even tell them that Nirvana is coming to their studio because even if only one person tells one person that one person is going to tell for sure one person and that one person is for sure going to tell 100 people and before you know it there's going to be a fucking news truck and a bunch of teenagers outside this studio no matter where it is right and we got away with it

for kind of a long time like it was like, think the end of the first week, some local kid showed up at the front door because he saw Kurt at the supermarket or something. Yeah. But we got away with it. Like the studio didn't know that Nirvana was coming to record at their studio. I booked it under my name. I had done a bunch of sessions there, like I said, And I told him, yeah, it's the Simon Richie group. It's a country in Western outfit. And a lot of things were sort of tactical. Like Kurt didn't have to be handled with, like, with mittens. Like it wasn't like he was like on the verge of relapse every second. It was just anyone that's in recovery, they're an addict, right? To the point of you're in this very remote location,

and at the end of your letter, you say, PS, if a record takes more than a week to make somebody's fucking up. So your ethos was, I wanna get this band in a room and let them play. And I will place the mics, I will do it. I will do my job, but I wanna really capture this band live.

And that experience of seeing Nirvana show up and play for you live. So how did you feel when you first saw them play? What I wanted was for them to go into a studio and behave normally. You don't have to just sit there in a room by yourself playing to a click track. You get to play with your band around you like always. We don't have to replace everything with a microscope and tweezers. You can just play like a band. Behave normally, have the normal experience that is the thing that got you animated about

music and about the first place. You guys had had some downtime and the impression I get from everything I've read and everyone I've talked to is that you came into the Inuitaro experience ready to go with a real sense of purpose and playing really fucking well. Does that feel right to accurate description? I think so. The first song we did was serve the servants and then we had met Steve and he set up, and then I remember Steve just standing by

that big stutter tape machine, and he hits record, and he's got his arms crossed, he's watching us, and we knocked the song out in one take. We're like, oh, that was the keeper. Literally, the first thing recorded in the session is the first song on the album as recorded. What's amazing is a lot of songs were done in a take or two takes, but there's a thing that like so far none of the train spotters have mentioned this, so I don't know if it's

generally known, but the the song there's like a quiet bit of the song and then it kicks in to full Monty and we had done a soundcheck of the instruments before they did the take, but the full-monte was Kurt kicked on an overdrive pedal, which he hadn't used in the soundcheck. So when the first loud bit comes in, the guitars were pinning on the tape machine, like he was about 60B hotter than proper for the session, right? So I immediately grabbed those channels and ratcheted them back. So the first beat of the loud part, the tape machine is slightly over-driving and those channels are in the red and it's, you know, bad engineering on my part. But, you know, by the second or the third beat, it was back to normal. But there is this moment, there's this slightly, like you're exploitive. Yeah, you caught it.

It's like, you know, or a couch guy just like telling your guy, hey, turn that down or he, you know, but in a conventional setting, just the fact that we went over on that first beat, just the fact that it was the first run through, just the fact that there was this potential scar would be enough to say, all right, well, let's do it again.

That was nice for a first take, let's try it again. But everybody heard it on playback, and I mentioned it. I said, there's an overload here on this first beat because I wasn't prepared for the overdrive and got it back, got it in line. And everybody heard it on a playback and was like, yeah, that's fine. And so that's on the record now,

which is the sort of thing that that when you're working in budget conditions and sort of grubby studio sessions, that shit happens all the time and you just live with it. But for a band of their stature and of their resources to be able to see, let's go ahead and use the first take just because it sounds fine, we're not that picky. I think that was a remarkable display. Nevermind, I think was two months, maybe to make,

and then utero is... Nevermind was like 12 days, or 14 days of that. Was it 14 days? I thought it was... It was really quick. The recording of it, yeah. The recording of it, but then it's... I went in the mix and stuff, yeah.

The mixing and everything, that. I mean, I think soup to nuts in utero is two and a half weeks. Oh, three weeks. If we had been a little bit more efficient, we could have been out the door in 12 days. But I think that we were done in 14 for sure. Yeah, here's the thing. So, because we were looking for that kind of performance, and we were looking for that kind of recording, and most of the takes were maybe one or two takes or something, we

were done with the drums, and I think the basic tracks in what, three days or three or four days. Three or four days, so that left me with a good week of sitting around doing fucking nothing in that house, like the shining, watching those David Attenborough video tapes, like things like that. Wait, why are you watching David Attenborough? Because it wasn't your video. Because it wasn't your video. And it wasn't your video.

And this is before streaming. This is a different time. Oh, I would do the fireplace. I would start fires, remember? And I would do the fireplace. Very primordial activity is a man tending the fires. Very shining. It was very shining.

Yeah, okay, you mentioned it so I can bring it up. You say tending fires. There was also some pyromaniac happening during the making of in utero. and I don't know if this was This was something that you guys picked up guys would play with lighter fluid. Yeah, let's talk about that Cleaning solvent there's a cleaning solvent that was used in the studio to clean the tape heads and clean clean equipment stuff It's a very pure alcohol that burns off so you can like you can put it on your hand and set your hand on fire. Like, oh, look, I'm a human torch, fuck a lot.

That's fine. And so- And so- I brought some in. We're gonna all douse ourselves with it. And you get bored with setting regular things on fire and then you start setting other people on fire. What kind of things are you setting on fire?

Did you- My ass. We did ass. I think you let a cigar off of my ass while that was on fire. How long has your ass on fire for? What's the amount of time? Long enough for a crash to light a cigar. So that's something that's at least 10 seconds. For someone to take a picture. Yeah, okay. Do you ever smell anything cooking? Just our hot tracks. No, I think that, yeah, I mean, we're on the middle of nowhere with nothing to do.

No, things, you light things on fire. There were also prank phone calls. Oh, because Steve had this realistic, like, remember Radio Shock? And it was a microphone, like like you can stick on a phone the microphone part of a phone or they received it received it in that recorder you still have it I might not you have some of these recordings you can record off the phone like on a cassette right yeah okay I've done some research and like mixing you should have gotten rid of these tapes. You guys pranked Gene Simmons.

Yeah. I believe it one of Kiss fame. That was my favorite one. Who deserves pranking by the way. My favorite one. He deserves a pranking. I don't know if you remember spoken to Gene Simmons. He says yes. I have. I love the melvans. That was my favorite. He says what? I love the melvans. He does. He does. He sounds just like Jackie I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. He does. He does. He does.

He does. He does. He does. He does. He does. He does. He does. He does. He does.

He does. He does. He does. He does. He does. He does. He does. He does. He does. He does. He does. He does. be Kurt calling Gene Simmons.

Gene Simmons had reached out to Kurt. Gene Simmons had called their management because there was a kiss tribute album being put together and Nirvana, the biggest band in the world, were friends with the Melvins and the Melvins that a kiss cover and he assumed that Nirvana would want to do a kiss cover to be on it. Gene Simmons cannot fathom that anyone on Earth

is not a massive kiss fan. Right. I'm gonna say this a healthy ego. And Jean, if you're listening, this is a good thing to have. When I was like 12 years old to like maybe 14, I was a huge in a kiss. Yeah. Yeah. And Jean was my favorite. Yeah. And Nirvana had recorded a kiss on us. Oh God, I was a disaster. What did you record? We were drunk. Do you love me?

Uh-huh. We were drunk. Okay. Well, So drinks are needed to record a kiss song sometimes. So the word comes down that Gene Simmons is desperate to get Nirvana on this album and Kurt is like, I don't want to talk to fucking Gene Simmons and I said, I'll do it. So I called him, I called them, called him back and I pretended to be Kurt and I parried the whole thing away by saying that I wasn't making all the decisions because I had a reliability problem. So you're talking directly to Jean? Yeah, as Kurt. And Jean thinks he's talking to Kurt. Yeah, and Kurt is sitting right next to me, listening to me, doing impression of him.

You do a really good Kurt. Can we hear just a second if you talk into Jean's? I could see Kurt Giggling. Do you know, do you know the wipers? That's okay. I really love the wipers. Do you know the wipers? And then Jean Simmons comes back with, I don't know the wipers. I don't know the wiper. I don't know the wiper.

I don't know the wiper. I don't know the wiper. You call, I love this one. You call Evan Dando. No, even better. Evan Dando, there was someone in Evan Dando's tour party who was a friend of Nirvana and had the phone number for the studio

and called from a hotel in Australia, a direct call from a hotel in Australia, probably the most expensive fucking phone call that you could make. Right. Right. Builds to the room. So Evan Dando's like, footing the bill for the most expensive direct call on earth.

And what we did was we somehow we convinced that guy found Evan and convinced him that Madonna's personal assistant had found, had tracked him down at the hotel in Australia and wanted to talk to him. That's it. That's the whole that's the whole context. So Evan, you know, thinks he's on hold waiting for Madonna. Right. And every few minutes I would get back on the phone and say she asked me to place the call. She's still busy. Can you can you wait a little bit longer? And I had some absurd accent that I thought Madonna's assistant would have. And now Madonna has. And then he's just like, yeah, of course,

yeah, sure. I'll wait. Yeah, of course. And so literal silence for minutes on end on this. And then the sound of him exasperatedly, like telling everyone around him, like, I'm on hold for Madonna. You know? And he's paying for the whole thing. Sure. Because it was actually the call actually started. It's a $700,000 prank phone call. Yeah.

And then it's $1,000,000. And then it's $1,000,000. Eddie Vetter, I think, was there a prank called Eddie Vetter at some point? Yeah, and I don't remember why that one. That was me as well. I don't remember why we did that one. Because there was no, you guys weren't like fighting

You're feuding. No, no, no, no So I do remember getting him on the phone and telling him I pretended to be Tony Visconti Ricker producing By the way, you're supposed to be the adult in the room. I remember that you know The guy that's supposed to be you're in charge and you're lighting you're lighting artists on fire you and And and and prank calling so I'm producing David Dolly or something I can't remember what it was. I can't remember the context, but I was like yeah

I'm here with the black crow's or something. I had some bullshit band that I claimed that I was with and then I and they were playing me your record and I I want to get you in the studio with a real band guys who can really play your record tonight. I want to get you in the studio with a real band, guys who can really play. That's pretty good. Did he get mad? Or no, well, you have these. You're going to get to put these out at the top. Yeah. I don't, I genuinely don't remember the banter, but I do remember. I think I thought he handled it pretty deftly. I think he acquitted himself well, like talking on the phone to Tony Visconti, record producer, who wanted to fire his band. Do you, uh... You say at one point you say, he goes, where, where are you?

I'm in Manitoba. I didn't say, you said, do you know where that is? And there's this long pause he goes, no. Oh, please put these out. You'll get the releases. I'll take care of the legal end of it. Just please release these.

One of the nice things about the studio, it says residential. Like you're there the whole time. You can, you know, get up and have breakfast. There's nowhere to go, right? You can take a long walk, I think, in the woods. Yeah, there's a great place. I mean, we also, I don't know if we've really established that this was in February. Yeah, the dead of winter.

In the dead of winter. In the middle of fucking nowhere. 20-foot icicles off the eaves of all the buildings. So even just a walk from the house to the studio, which is what, a hundred yards, if that, you risk prospect. So there's really no getting out and doing anything. You're all just kind of really contained in this beautiful house. It was great. But there's no little town to

go to. I mean, there is, there's like, if you want to drive a few miles, you can get into the little town of Canon Falls. But there's like a bar and like an antique shop and like a gas station. That's it. I have really fun memories of making that record, to be honest. Like, I really had fun. Yeah. And I think that we, it sounded so good as we were doing it. Just within the room as we were playing and then we would listen to playback.

And I mean, you have to imagine, like, here's this guy who's made these albums that sound, we just always wanted to sound like Nirvana making a Steve Albeany record. And it was a dream come true. And as a drummer, I mean, you know, to get that Steve Albeany drum sound, it's like, it was, it was a joy. It was really.

And what is it? Can I just ask, without getting overly technical, but what is, how do you get that drum sound? Because I remember reading Hammer the Gods years and years and years ago and they described how Jimmy Page had ideas about, I'm going to get a sound from John Bonham's drum by moving the, and I remember it was a revelation to me that by moving the microphone, you could get a different sound because I don't know shit. Let me just, let me just cut you off and bum you out by saying that everything that has ever been written about studio techniques and studio lore and all of the fables of things that have

happened in the studio on famous records. Every single thing in the popular culture that people have heard about happening in the studio did not happen. It's all bullshit. There are a very, very, very small number of the story, studio stories, like, oh, they smeared cocaine on the tape, you know, all this, it's all bullshit. It does, you know, it's all just completely like fabulous stuff that people write because they, they want to ascribe some sort of magic to the process. There's no magic to it.

Well, this is heartbreaking. What about Jimmy Page really being the guy who played all those cool leads for the who in the early 60s? For example. Is that a lie? I mean, that's probably true. Jimmy Page, I heard.

Okay, so not everything's bullshit. Okay, is there a Santa? But things like, you know, like, like I think Dave can confirm that he set up a normal drum kit in a normal room and I put normal microphones all around it and then I didn't fuck with him. Right. Like, you know, it's about not getting in the way.

And the, like, I suppose one thing that's kind of notable is the ambient sound in that room. That room is really nice, was a really nice acoustic sound and I'm fond of using the ambient sound in a room if the room is really nice, was a really nice acoustic sound, and I'm fond of using the ambient sound in a room if the room is nice. The room we're sitting in right now is a lovely sounding room, and the sound of my voice that going off the walls is much better than my actual voice, right?

Yeah, I talked to you outside, it was awful. But he uses like vintage German microphones that are sweet, and they have their own kind of sound personality. Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned Jimmy Page because I actually interviewed Robert Plant and Jimmy Page after they made the record with you. So Robert Plant and Jimmy Page made a record with Albini and what, 1998 or something, 99 or something without. No, like, it was, wasn't that far after yours?

Because it was like, wasn't? Yeah, like, I was on everybody's shit list after I did your record, and then I did a bush record and the page and plant record, and that was it. So they called me to interview them for this, some magazine. Yeah. And I, you were the connection. They're like, well, you should interview these guys, because you love Lads Upland, and you've made a record with Steve Albini.

And so I was terrified. I don't know if I'd ever met them before and never interviewed anyone before. And so we sat down and uh, taping cameras rolling and stuff. And I knew that at some point I was, we were going to talk about you. Okay. I listened to the record. We talked about the record, but we were going to, and I asked why they chose you. And I remember Jimmy Page saying that he felt very connected to a familiar with your recordings because it was somehow similar to what he was trying to achieve when making Led Zeppelin records,

same sort of ambience and stuff like that. And we started talking about microphones, talking about placement, and equipment and shit like that. And then Robert Pant stops us and he goes, excuse me, it's getting a bit technical, isn't it? And I'm like, fuck you, dude. I was actually dreading this anecdote because you've never told me this anecdote. I never told you that. And my presumption was the reason you never told me this anecdote was because they were mean to me and that you didn't want to hurt my feelings.

No, no, no, no, no, they loved you. You're too sensitive. People always say that about you. I know. The, um, let's get to it because you said you're on some people's shit list after in you to row. You guys make this, you have this experience, you have this great experience, you make this album, it goes off to Geffen and then you find out, I think it was in Kurtz words,

the Grunups don't like it. They don't, it's too raw, they're worried about it. It's not what, they're worried it's not radio friendly. When did you start to hear about that? I remember hearing that the initial reaction was, you're fucking joking. You're kidding, right? Like, I think that was maybe one of the record companies' first reactions. Because I think, you know, when you make a record like nevermind, of course, most of the people, the record companies' first reactions. Because I think, you know, when you make a record like nevermind, of course, most of the people the record companies won't follow up.

That's going to either. We do the same thing. We do the same thing. We're supposed to mix, nevermind. And we, the recording went a little over and butch wanted some time to just rest his ears and just get away from it for a few days. And then we went to Devonshire, remember? And then we started mixing it. And then just wasn't,

the label wasn't happy. And then we stopped mixing the record. And we all went home. And then we brought Andy Wallace in. And that was just one of those compromises. And labels just like, you know, so then we worked with Andy Wallace mixed, never mind. And so then like, well, I like the record, but we have this, I talked to Kurt about it, we'd have these conversations. Dave would like, oh, well, you know, we are a big band and we do have a solvigation and we live in a fabulous houses, right? And so maybe we just compromise like what is like the big, what's going to be the radio song? See Kurt wrote a song called Radio Friendly Unit

Shifter, which is totally cynical, right? And so like, all right. And then we knew we were big REM fans. They were recording automatic for the people in Seattle, and that was the studio X at the time. That was the best studio in Seattle, so I would go down there and hang out, and listen to the make this record,

and listen to their mixes at the end of the night, or their recordings, and then that's how I got to know Scott Lid. And then some, I don't remember the details, but then it was like, well, hot, Scott lit could mix a song or two. And that's it. That's like the song from I. So to me, it feels a little bit like there's this, again, this thing I was trying to get to earlier with this push me pull you feel of, we want to stay true to what we set out to do and we have this certain sound, but we are the number one band in the world, and we are competitive, and we wanna get some radio play.

But like for heart-shaped box, remember Steve, like that solo, I didn't like the way that solo was, and the way it was so, it was too intense. Really snarly, yeah. It was really snarly, and I'm like, well, you know, this song is a really pretty song, and it's in a sad song in some ways. And this, I think I use the term like, this sounds like you're just through this abortion

on the floor. That's what I said. Like also, there's this abortion on the floor. This is terrible. And then, you know, and then we just talked, we would discuss it, you know, and then one thing lived to another. And I don't know if we've got. So you got the different solo, I believe.

As someone who wasn't in Nirvana and didn't have these internal band Conversations with them like my Assessment of it was that they were managing their internal tensions and there it's normal after you finish a record to have some doubts about it And they like you know, you know wander like should we do another take of this? Should, you know, should we try this? I think Kurt added some backing vocals to a song that had otherwise, was otherwise finished. Like the public perception is that the record label insisted that they change things and Nirvana gave in on some stuff.

Well, they were leading on us. And there, you know, that was my point on it at all. My read on it was that Nirvana had decided that they were going to resolve these things on their own. And the record label was carping to the rest of the, you know, and the management and everybody with, they were carping about it. But Nirvana was going to fucking handle it. It wasn't up to them. Right. And what I said then, and what I've been saying ever since is the record that made it into the stores is the record that Nirvana wanted everyone to hear well you know the funny thing is that after in you to row it became kind of a predictable move for other bands that were in similar situations and unknown band goes into the studio unknown underground sort of like rock band goes into the studio. into the studio, unknown underground sort of like rock band goes into the studio, gets a record deal, goes into the studio, they're put into the studio with a producer, they make an album that's produced and it does really well and then they feel kind of weird about

it because maybe it didn't sound the way they wanted it to sound, maybe it got to popular whatever it was. And then they go into it, make their second record, they're like, well, now this is what we really sound like. So Weezer did it with their album, Pinkerton, which is a fucking amazing record. The first Weezer record has a bunch of hits, they become really popular. Then they go in to make their second record, Pinkerton. And that album, it's kind of like they're in utero. Yeah. Another band like Bush, you know, Bush is a band that gets really popular and has this produced record.

Then they decide, no, wait, fuck that. Now that we're big, we get to do the thing that we really want to do. So we're going to go in and make an album that's raw and the way it sounds. So I don't know if it was something that was happening before the end. I'm sure it happened a million times before in Newteroo, but for people that came from the place that we came from being in the garage and being in the garage and being in the van and being in the clubs and stuff like that, I think maybe if a band felt uncomfortable with their, me it rise to fame, that's the knee-jerk reaction

is to go in and make an album where they're like, no, no, wait, this is what we sound like. I have to say, I remember when I first heard the first track was Serve the Servants, and it is such a shot across the bow bow from the Nevermind experience, which I love Nevermind. And then I heard this, and even today, it feels a little bit like you're taking a brillo pad and you're scrubbing the patina off of something of the song is teenager. And it says, paid off well, now I'm bored and old. Yeah. So he's saying he goes, now I'm bald and old.

Then I shot him a dirty look. Really? He changed the lyrics. Yeah. What a guy. That's what friends are for. That was nice of him, though, to change. Yeah.

Really nice to change. It was really nice. It was really nice. It's really nice. It was really nice. One of the features of the record now, the range of the songs is so, for the difference between, say, sort of the service and in all apologies, or heart-shaped box and, you know, radio-friendly unit, you know,

it's just, it's just, I. It's just how about the milk it? It's just downright menacing. And that's when you get the full-on Kurt Cobain just the way he does the vocals. It's just terrifying. It's really spooky. But then there's all that stuff that's so sweet, too. Yeah, it is.

Yeah. And even on the songs that have big dynamic like harsh bits when he was recording the vocals He always had that little toy that little broken acoustic guitar and he was strumming along So like a lot of the songs in the verses. They'll be this like sort of funky sounding acoustic guitar Which was kind of a comfort thing for him. What was the gets was it just a, it was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down.

It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down.

It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down.

It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken down. It was really a broken junk. He was more comfortable singing if he was strumming along on this guitar So you hear this acoustic guitar under the vocals and a lot of these songs in the verses and it's not like he did a session Where he did the acoustic guitar over it up He was just strumming the acoustic guitar while he was singing as a as a comfort thing for himself and it stayed on the record because it didn't sound bad It sounded fine, right and it was a casual and loose and informal thing, but it made him more comfortable. And so when I think of his aesthetic, I don't think of this harsh, gnarly, violent thing. And when you listen, like, when you think about the way people describe that record at the time, it's like, oh, it's this cathartic menacing, terror, you know, a terroristic kind of a thing. It could be. And you listen to it. Yeah, and there are big, you know, angry, powerful moments on it.

But it's like, a lot of it, I think, is really sweet. I remember when you came here in 2013, we did that alternate version of it, and we're playing through this stuff and we listened to it. Like we played the masters for the, like the first thing we did was play the masters of the original session, and both of us were like, man, this sounds really great. Like you, you know, you're listening to it now with the 25 or 30 years of aesthetic that we've been exposed to since then. What was the fucking big deal?

Like, well, what were people so hot about? It just sounds like a really good record. Well, I mean, to be fair, I got to point out the reviews when the album came out, universally, almost without exception, I got to point out the reviews when the album came out, universally, almost without exception, were glowing. I mean, people really, the critics, whatever that means to you guys at the time, thought it was fabulous work.

Bad reviews thing. I wouldn't know. Never bump in the road. I hear an echo. Yes, they do. Those fabled electrical audio acoustics is what you're hearing. Yeah. No, but it was appreciated when it came out.

And of course, one of the difficulties is that once Kurt died, everybody had to go back and parse through in utero and read lyrics like their tea leaves leading you somewhere. And that feels like a recipe for incredible bullshit in misunderstanding. You can do it with sound garden lyrics too. Yeah, it's strange. When we were making the record,

we did all of the instrumental tracks first. I don't know if Kurt sang any of the songs live. It was all just the three of us doing the instrumental tracks first, live in a room without really having ever heard what Kurt was going to sing or even how he was going to sing it like his his melodies and patterns that most of these things I just listen to them as instrumental. So it was always exciting like a mystery knowing, he's in there singing this track today and wondering what it was going to sound like when he was finished. One of Kurt's amazing abilities was not just that he was a great lyricist, but he had a really specific kind of signature melodic turn of phrase. So he always braided really two simple lines together, I think, in a way that was almost unpredictable.

And he would go from like maybe a gentle voice to a scream or maybe a minor key to a major, but he would do it in this way that was like really beautifully patterned, which I always thought was really cool and really simple. Ultimately, most everything that he did, I thought was simple,. And really simple, ultimately, at most everything that he did, I thought was simple, but really smart. Anyway, so you would hear these things as they came back and you would hear, for the first time, his melodic idea,

but also the lyric. And every time I would hear it for the first time, I think, that's just odd, that's unusual. It's a weird, what a strange thing to say. What does that mean? But is the drummer, of course, I'm like, shit, did I slow down in the chorus? Now fuck, my kick drum's too, but you know, it's, I still to this day, if I listen to that record, I'll find things or I'll feel things that I didn't necessarily feel 25 years

ago. Not just in light of everything that had happened, but of course that, you know, everything that did happen can, you know, kind of screw the lens a little bit or distort maybe what it felt like before and what it feels like now. I think it's a slippery slope. It's easy to look back at that stuff.

And there's a thing that people don't give Kurt credit for enough, which is that a lot of people think of his Lyrical sensibility as just being a journal of his feelings, right? He was an artist and he was incorporating stuff from you know other things other influences Bands in records that he admired stuff that he'd read like literature There's a line in one of the songs, I think it's most babies smell like butter. Is that you know what I'm talking about?

Yeah. And I was like, what a weird observation. Did you like smell a baby? Like he just had a kid, right? And I found out that that was a near direct quote from a book that he'd read about a guy who had this sort of sensory experience of the world that was abnormal.

And you know, it's a premise. Yeah, it's a premise of track on Inutero. Yeah. And then like he's from Seattle and Francis Farmer is a tragic figure, a local person to the Seattle area, like a lot of lore involved in, there had been recently come to light, a lot of the sort of manipulative stuff that had been done to her during her career

to try to manage her career. Like you can see that there are parallels there where there, you know, like he may have been feeling pressures from outside people trying to manage. His artistic expression for their benefit and seeing a parallel between his life and Francis Farmer's life and then using hers a figure. It's such a great title for a song. Yeah, and that image of leaving a blanket of ash, burn all the assholes and leave a blanket of ash on the ground. But, and also it felt like a little bit of a reaction to, I've read somewhere once,

I think that there was so many, just one name songs that Kurt was really interested in like going the other way. So what Francis Farmer will have her revenge, the ghost of Francis, we'll have her revenge on Seattle, just as this or at the radio-friendly, you know, shipping unit. These were attempts to say, I'm reacting to this cute moment we're in where everything is just one man. And he was aware of that as a trope, and he was playing any played with it. He had there was a one song he wanted to call gallons of rubbing alcohol roll through the strip. We had that jam. Yeah, we did that. And he didn't want to be like, be dated or be put in like some kind of box or something. So he also was just

cryptic, not allowed people to just invite people in to make their own interpretation of it. Then if you look at his other forms of expression, like Steve said, like Kurt was an artist and he was, he was a great painter. He was a sculptor. He would do comic books and he's more than happy to walk you through every panel about a comic he did. Right. And, and they were always just tragic figures, the people, and they were, or just weird, like, riding spirit, apparition, kind of, everything was just kind of strange and dark and weird. But, and then still, but very well done,

you know, beautiful, very, you know, it's done, done very well. So, like, that was when he was expressing himself musically, is that, you know, in uterus, that's all over in uterus. You know, I can go anywhere in the world, anywhere, and see someone walking down the street in a Nirvana t-shirt. And I was, I mean, we're here in Chicago. We were walking last night to go get a bite to eat, saw someone in a Nirvana t-shirt, but I mean, I could be in, you know, I could be on Guam and just see someone really walk by and a Nirvana t-shirt. And what always strikes me about these moments is that there's this massive projection that happens, which is Nirvana, legend,

Kurt, it all gets prismed out and it gets so huge. And then I talked to you guys and he's your friend that you knew, in a minute, you guys were very close. And it's all become so much bigger. There are people out there that have opinions, strong opinions about who he was and what he meant and what you guys meant. And it must just seem surreal to you at times. Like, no, no, no, that was our friend. There was three of us. We were in this, we were in a van

together. And it has now become this eye-match projection on the world. When my kids sometime will ask me, say, my daughter Harper and I were driving in the car, not long ago, six months ago, and in Irv Irvana song came on and we don't listen to Nirvana at home this Nirvana song comes on she's singing along to the words and thinking wow That's weird. I've never heard her listen to an Irvana song. How does she know an Irvana song? And she says um sit dad how old were you when you made this song? So God I think it was like 22. Maybe she goes, Oh, how old was Kurt? I said, I guess he was maybe like 23, 24. She goes, what was he like?

And I say, well, he was, he was really nice. He's kind of shy, sometimes quiet, but he was cool, but she says, well, he was shy. Was he shy around people that he knew or people that he didn't know? And I said, well, kind of a little bit of both. And she said, that's so strange, that someone who feels shy like that, they could write these songs and sing them for everyone to hear and then stand on stage in front of a hundred thousand people and play them. I thought that was so cool, because I think she wasn't looking so much at that other thing.

She was looking at the person, right? And, you know, after Nirvana was over, that curtain got sort of like sort of pulled away. So it changed the way I thought about every other mythological rock star that I'd ever followed in my entire life. And it really made me realize, oh shit, they were an actual human being. We talked like they're playing cards or something like that, but they're just people. Can somebody help me with this pronunciation of this term apotheosis? Yeah, that's right.

That's it. Okay. Is that that soap that you get at apotheosis? You need soap to treat it. Okay, yeah. Is that that soap that you get at the pothiosis? That you need soap to treat it, and a special medicate is so. Sounds like the name of a boutique that I cannot afford a single pothiosis. I take a sky-rizzy for that, I don't know if that's,

and that's what it is. So like basically the pothiosis. What's this whole idea that something, well, okay, so I had just, this is just my own personal connection to a very public thing for you guys, but there was a, some, back when they were a big deal, MTV awards kind of situation, and because I was brand new on the scene, you know, here's this new guy, we're sending him to the,

he's going to be sitting in like the second or third row, and you guys got up and spoke, because it was very shortly after Kurt had died, and the two of you went up on up and spoke, because it was very shortly after Kurt had died, and the two of you went up on stage and spoke, and I remember just having this powerful feeling of they lost their friend, you could just feel how wrong personal it all was in that moment. People that are in bands are the fraternity

that you feel like the companionship of the people that you're intimate, creative with, day to day basis, is a really incredibly strong bond, and it's also, you know those people intimately. We have the, this box that we did, and John Silva did a really good job with that. He's a music fan, first and foremost,

and if you, I'm not gonna be selling my Nirvana coffin or whatever, but it has like a live performances. There's this thing is packed. I'm curious. It's packed with like, all what's in here. And backstage passes and John Silva and Sylva artist management, they put, they put it all together and tons of other tracks that didn't make it onto in utero or. There's a bunch of live stuff on here.

So I'm wondering if it has the demos that we did in Brazil, but there's like live in Rome, live in Los Angeles, live in Seattle, and they're board tapes. And then they're we use technology to kind of clean them up. You can make a multi-track now from a stereo. Did you guys have favorite live performances that just comes alive? You know, at this point Pat Sm Smirr had joined the band. Yes. Right. He was a huge...

Like, from the release of the album, he was touring with the band. Yes. It was big because we had made the album and Kurt had talked about, you know, at one point there was a second guitarist in Nirvana before I joined the band. And he wanted to get another guitarist at this point. He goes down to Los Angeles, he comes back, he says, I found our second guitar player. I said, really, who's that? It's the Pat Smier from the germs.

And if anybody knows the germs, they were very early on the punk rock band Los Angeles, perhaps the most dangerous. And so I just thought, like, oh my God, I can't believe that fucking guy's still alive because he was in the germs. And also in a site a sad sign note is Darby Crash. Yeah. He committed suicide. Yeah, the singer of the germs. Anyway, so Pat

comes up and I'm just expecting this big disgusting fat junkie and he's the most wonderful, energetic, brilliant, beautiful, well put together. He really breath breathe this whole new life into the band. The great thing too is there's a great anecdote that defines his contribution to the band in addition to being a great musician. And there was a story of you guys playing a show and then there's a not a nice review about the show. And it says, you know, the show was off

and someone's reading the review. Oh, I heard we're getting pissed. The opening night of the tour, then you to the tour, was at the Arizona State Fair. And it's the first night. And so, you know, it takes a couple shows to get rolling. And so it was Edna Gunderson from USA Today. She's the lead.

A name that will live in the name. And she gave us a mediocre review. Like, why didn't she go like three or four shows into the tour, then she would have caught us. And that's what you get on this box set. You get the band is. At full. That's a big time.

But what happens is this review comes out. And the story I heard is that the review comes out and everyone on the bus is like, God damn it. Why did USA Today write this about us and Pat said, oh, come on, we sucked. And everybody laughed. Meaning just sort of, taking the piss out of the whole thing.

Come on, we were off, we're, you know. Well, also I love that who do you call to take over the technical side of things in a guitar band? The fucking guy from the drums. Yeah, I can't think of a band that is a closer parallel to the kind of uneasy feeling that you got from the weirdest moments of Nirvana than the drums.

Like their whole thing had that same sort of familiar but slightly sleazy and slightly uncomfortable quality. And it was a sonic thing, like the sound of Pat Smierre's guitar, it sounded a little sour and a little creepy, and it seemed like it was a natural, as soon as I heard about it, I thought, oh yeah, that's a natural. It was great.

So when we came out to do these shows, I mean, there were bigger shows. And I mean, really, it was our first arena tour. You know, when... Did you like playing the arena? It felt strange at first. I think I mean I Tours the end of 1991 we did an arena tour opening up for the Red Hot Chili Peppers and You know, I was always afraid that that what we did that energy wouldn't translate in a bigger room

Yeah, you know because we used to playing places this big and put us in the corner there and the place explodes and it's amazing To try to you know move that yeah to a bigger room be hard. So It felt weird all of a sudden there was like caterers. Yeah And then the catering fired him because they made the wrong mac and cheese Because they had really good food. I thought it was really good and current like corn dogs and macaroni and cheese and our baloney sandwiches. So they were making actual macaroni with actual cheese. And he never had that before.

And that was the last fucking straw. You know, so it was just like, you know, was one of those things like, uh, and then well, we did a show. We had a show. It was a 90 minute show, we had a stage set up, we would do our acoustic breakdown part. Yeah, it was like, we did the same show every night. It was like $20 tickets, tickets were like 20 bucks

because you could sell CDs and make money, and then we had like working family prices. But then also the best part was, we're like, okay, we're in arena band now. Cool. The opening band is going to be the boredoms from Japan. Or the opening band is going to be fucking the butthole surfers. So you've got all these kids that like just bought their Nirvana t-shirt and they come to the rock show to see their favorite band. And they've got like Bobcat gold tweet is the MCs. And then fuck it in the butthole surfers like what the fuck is going on?

Bobcat Goldsweight become the opener for on a you guys were real fans. Well, you were fans Kurt had meat bob that record and then we just so happened to be was like in 1990 and we were in like Michigan or Wisconsin a college radio station and bobcat was there and we said, hey, we know he didn't know who we were. We'd nobody knew who we were like, hey, we know he didn't know who we were. We know we knew who we were.

Like, hey, you're on police academy. Like, and he tells us, he goes, yeah, I met them and I said, good luck with your little band. As we said goodbye. And then we just, yeah, I don't know, we just got. He was sort of on our side, like as a comedian sure he was like kind of a cynical subversive fucking weirdo. Yeah, yeah, and so we liked him. He got a battery view. Rex Reed gave him a battery view And he goes he was my favorite judge on the gong show

Well, how do we sum this up? It's been 30 years and it must feel good that this work stands the test of time. It does feel good. We'll come back in the 50 year anniversary and see what kind of what we have to offer. And it's great that people are interested in that we have the opportunity to do this and to like add, there's vinyl and there's live shows so you can, you won't be tracked or have a cookie put on your consciousness and you can just put the tone arm down on a piece of vinyl and listen to Nirvana Live in Rome or Los Angeles or Seattle and you can be, it'll, it can capture imagination. You're invited to come, to come inside that world and experience that show. So, you know, I'm just happy to, to have the opportunity.

And you said that there's no, you don't play Nirvana at home. No, I mean, it's just going to be an exception, do you think? No, I mean, the cool thing about being a musician for a long time, making a bunch of records is that you eventually start measuring your life not in like increments of time or whatever. It's like albums that you've made. So if you ask me about a particular record, a screen record or a Fufaiders record or whatever,

I'll immediately know what year it was made. And I remember almost everything about where I was and who I was at that time. So when I think like 30 years ago, what the fuck and what's that even mean 30 years? But if you say 1993, everything comes back. And then when you listen to it, to me, it's almost like these,

they're sort of like sonic snapshots, like in a photo album or something. So when I hear the music, it brings back a lot of personal vivid memories of just stupid shit. Like I remember that jacket that I had, that stupid hat I bought in North Carolina or the sock full of mashed potatoes

that fucking Steve put in my suitcase. And that other whole, I felt bad when I got ripped off. I know I was so sad. But things like that, but then also, you know, again, I refer to my children a lot because they're discovering music in the same way that, well, differently than we did then,

but emotionally in the same way that we did at the age. And to see their reaction to this music now is really fucking cool. Actually, we did this one, we did this charity benefit thing once, that art of a leasing thing that we did a long time ago. And we got asked to play this thing in Los Angeles, but we couldn't make it. And then the person who was putting on the show said, well, why don't you just play acoustic? I'm like, fuck, I don't want to do that. So I thought, you know what, maybe I'll call Chris and Pat and see if

maybe Joan Jettel come up and we can do some drama songs or maybe someone else's there, whatever. So we were thinking about people to sing and then I don't know who brought it up, but some, maybe it was you that said does Violet want to sing a song or maybe it was Pat, my daughter Violet and um. I saw this. Do you see it? I think there was, yeah, there was footage of it.

Yeah. And so I was like, well, I'll ask her. And I said, hey, Vi, she's an incredible singer. I'm like, and she really likes Nirvana. At the time, I think she was maybe 14, probably 14, 14 year old girl. I said, you want to sing Nirvana song? She's like, yeah, absolutely. And I said, which one of all of them, not just this record, of all of them.

And she picks a heart-shaped box. And my first reaction was, what have I done to my kid to fuck them up so bad? That this is the song they want to sing. But seriously, I was very proud. And what I realized is kids these days, there's this window in between the ages of like maybe 10 or 13 or 11 and 14 or something like that, where almost every kid goes through a nirvana phase.

And it's for a reason. And I think it has less to do with the sound. I think it has more to do with what it means. Because I think it means the same thing today to those kids as it did when we released it. So that to me is the coolest thing and selling a lot of T-shirts. Yeah. Gentlemen, it has been an honor. Seriously, you're great artists and you also have a lot of integrity and you've stood

the test of time and so getting to hang out with people like you It was a big deal to me, and I really appreciate it. So Steve Chris Dave. Thank you very much for doing this and I was really looking forward to this one and you did not disappoint. Thanks, man. Thank you very much I'm happy to be your friend. Well, I got you there. Yeah, you're so well. Less than the anxiety considerably. I feel jazzy. Still? Yeah.

Effervescent, you look effervescent. Konen O'Brien needs a friend, with Konen O'Brien, Sonom of Sessian, and Matt Goryling. Produced by me, Matt Goryling, executive produced by Adam Sachs, Nick Liao, and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson, and Cody Fisher at Ear Coco, and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Your Wolf.

Themesong by the White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples, engineering by Eduardo Perez, additional production support by Mars Melnick, talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, and Britt Khan. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts and you might find your review read on

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