Steve Albini's "Conditions" For Becoming Nirvana's Producer | Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend

it was you because I know Kurt was very explicit about thinking it doesn't matter, yeah, a big hit, but he thought the production was too slick and that's something he said at the time, he might have changed his mind about it later if I would have lived it. It must have been like 1989 1990 and we were traveling in this van and I think we were listening to South for Rosa and then Kurt was sitting there in the chair and he holds up his finger and makes a decree, he says, this is going to be our trap. sound and that's Surfer Roa the Pixies the pixies suros yeah so that's yours really and then he and then there you go we ended up working with Steve so okay this is you know what I think I think like you Speaking before of feeling uncomfortable with this new world of Nirvana of Fame and stuff like that and I think when things got huge, we all retreated and held on to the things we felt most attached to. for um, if it was weird old cars or moving back to Virginia or whatever it was for Kurt, but always musically I think that, um, if it was Kurt feeling like it doesn't matter, maybe he missed the production, too overproduced. or something like that, um, we had always listened to the records that Steve had made.

I remember when I first moved in with Kurt. I think he only had like four albums. It was like he had a Mark Lanigan record. There was Surfer Rosa, there was the Breeders Pod and the Jesus Lizard Disco and that was just the sound that we felt the most, that we loved and I think we had probably wanted to work with Steve before we didn't care, but we ended up doing it with Butch, who It should be said, but Butch Butch. fig like the

producer

on nevermind uh and and you know what you're mentioning is that in the background the whole time there was this sound that Steve Albini was getting with the Pixies with the Breeders that spoke to you guys and so on My question for you is what is that sound?

Well, it's the snare, it's the drum recording or it's something bigger than that. I think it's the collective sound of all those things, um uh, where no one seems to be in front of the other it's almost like to me it always sounds very centered where it's like the voice doesn't jump ahead of everything else or um or uh the things they're like going up and down it sounds like the sound of a group in a space um and really natural, you know, I mean, I think who was it that talked about the distance on the recording, yeah, but how the distance decreases, yeah, I am, so if you listen to a lot of the sounds with Steve there's a kind of sense of distance in a way that gives the sound more depth, that's what I think and correct me if I'm wrong, but Steve felt like you were what you were going for. and what you were looking for.

Did you want the band to sound like the band? You wanted them to sound like that. That's what they sound like when they're in a room and they're together and something real is happening. You want it. You don't want all that separation. you don't want double tracking, you don't want a lot of mistakes and nonsense, well, there's a, I mean, it seems like it's set up as kind of a compare and contrast between Butch Vig and me. I should point out that Butch Vig's production aesthetic and his similar approach as an engineer were formed in precisely the same way that mine was making budget records for bankrupt bands, uh, in a short period of time, like trying to be the as efficient as possible and not just over time. but with the materials and like you know you're hitting your snare head so hard that we're GNA, we have to buy a new snare head, you know, so let me let me put some gaffer in there or something to save. that we do not divide the drum head, which, like its aesthetics and techniques, are in the same school as mine.

I have great respect for Butch, and I felt a kind of

friend

ly competition with him before he started doing something big. famous records before he made records with bands like Nirvana, he and I were making records with a lot of the same bands like bands Kindred, they made a record with me and another with Butch or like, you know, like he made one more record brilliant. and a decent record and then I would make a kilder record and a deiton record so it was like the same clientele the same group of mates the same circles um and what I remember most about the connection with Nirvana Butch is that when we got there he went to the studio to start work on the inudo album.

Kurt had a cassette of the rough mix that Butch had given him from the Nevermind sessions. It wasn't the finished album that was in the stores, it was the cassette of the tracks that Butch Lo had made without any fancy mixing without any kind of yeah, just these are the tracks and he played them to get familiar with the sound of the studio, played them through the speakers and I thought it sounded fantastic, you know what I do? Do you remember not? I thought it sounded cool and I don't remember, sorry. I don't remember listening to the Nevermind album and thinking it sounded great.

It didn't remind me of any of the records Butch had made. I was familiar with those records that made his reputation and probably made Nirvana want to work with him in the first place, so to be fair, let's just go back to that era, you know, it doesn't matter, they're out. You're the biggest band in the world, you're looking to make your next album. At that moment? Were you a fan? Were you a Nirvana fan? I wasn't very familiar with Nirvana. He had listened as the omnipresent. stuff that everyone that was playing on the radio and in every club and every gig you went to while loading the sound, didn't bother to turn on the PA and balance it, so I had listened to the album many times. sometimes kind of secondhand, right, he wasn't a Nirvana student.

He was familiar with his circle like all the other bands in Seattle that were like, you know, Compadres with Melvin and the mud honey and all those other bands that I like. those bands and I was familiar with the sound, but couldn't admit I was a fan. I became a Nirvana fan through the process of working with them and seeing them in action firsthand because I had never seen them play live if I had ever seen them live. I'm sure I would have become a fan. You know, the amazing thing is, so we made the decision, we would like Steve Albini to produce this record and most people, I think, any other person on the planet in that position would have said, please. please, please, please, and write this letter when you find out that they are interested and this letter is not a please hire me letter, it is a big letter, but it is, I will, but here they are. my terms letter, which is really, which is a hell of a thing, first of all, this sounds a little bit like that ethereum thing, I mean, it's really a uh um, it's a little bit of a rule about what you believe and I'll do this.

If you do it on my terms and if you're willing to do it and then surprisingly you say, I'm not going to take points on this record. I do not want to do that. Saidi, you want to get paid like a plumber, just give it to me. some money upfront, but you thought it was immoral to get points on the record. Yeah, I mean, the way record

producer

s and recording staff were compensated at that particular time was an accounting trick that shifted the cost away from the label and onto the band making the band ultimately responsible for what they paid the producer and it didn't come out of the overall earnings of the record like it would in an independent label deal, for example, it specifically came out of money that Otherwise, it would have gone to the band like literally every dollar they paid me It would mean that it was a dollar that Dave didn't get or Chris didn't get or Kurt didn't get.

I mean, that's how, that's how accounting works in that type of business and I think that's ethically unsustainable. I don't and I admit I think less of people who choose to do things that way. I think it is. I think it's at first glance. absurd like I work on a record for a few days and then for the rest of your life you have to keep paying me like you get me a chip out of every penny you make like you talk to my agent and my manager if I could, if I could convert them to that view