Krist was great because he was really easygoing, funny, and he rolled with whatever was happening. There was definitely some tension between them. But I could understand Kurt’s frustration because Chad wasn’t quite getting the arrangement down the way Kurt heard it in his head. It was frustrating for Chad because Kurt obviously was not a good drummer. Even on the first song “Sappy,” at one point Kurt got up and said, “No, you should play something like this,” and he tried to show Chad how he wanted the part to go. Chad was cool on the drums, although he seemed to be having some issues right off the bat with Kurt, who wasn’t particularly pleased with his drum parts. Sometimes a light switch would go off in his head and he would go sit in the corner and wouldn’t say anything for a couple hours.
Those sides of his personality flipped back and forth the whole time I was working with him. Kurt was outgoing, funny, and very witty, but he could also get extremely moody. We loaded in on a Monday and started setting up, and by late afternoon we started tracking. They had been playing shows through the Midwest and probably hadn’t had a hot shower for a week. Chad Channing was on drums, and he, Kurt, and bassist Krist Novoselic showed up in the Sub Pop van. We were ostensibly making an album for Sub Pop. I told Jonathan I’d love to work with them and they showed up about three or four months later at the door of, Smart Studios. They wanted to get much more ambitious with how they approached song structure and melody. There was a real sophistication in the writing and, as it turned out, that’s where Kurt Cobain and Nirvana were headed. The way the melody was juxtaposed over the chord progression sounded brilliant. A lot of the sounds were cool and the record had a great vibe, but I thought the songs were pretty one-dimensional - except for “About a Girl.” To me, that sounded like a Lennon/McCartney composition.
He sent me their first album Bleach so I could check out Nirvana, and to be honest, I was sort of unimpressed. I thought that was a pretentious statement for him to make - but in a way, it turned out to be true. They could be as big as the Beatles,” he said. Then one day, Jonathan Poneman, the co-founder of Sub Pop, called me and asked me if I would produce a record for Nirvana. They’re amazing!” And I’d say, “Yeah, OK, maybe,” Not really expecting it to happen.
While I worked with them, the guys in Tad were saying, “Oh, you’ve gotta work with Nirvana. One of them was Tad’s Eight Way Santa, which the label was quite happy with. My relationship with Sub Pop Records started when I produced a couple albums for them. UNITED KINGDOM – JANUARY 01: Photo of Butch Vig (Photo by Hayley Madden/Redferns) Here, in his own words, he recalls working on one of the most successful alternative rock releases of all time.
However, now that enough time has passed, Vig is looking back at the past with renewed fondness.
#BUTCH VIG GARBAGE DRUMMER PLUS#
24.įor years, Vig downplayed talking about the album he had his own music to promote, alter all, plus it was just too painful to talk much about Nevermind and the late Kurt Cobain. In fact, long after Garbage were already successful, Vig was still being asked regularly about his career in the ‘90s as a record producer and his most successful project, Nirvana’s Nevermind, which turns 25 on Sept. But Garbage represents Vig’s second successful music industry in the venture. Over the past 23 years, drummer and producer Butch Vig has established his band Garbage, who just released their critically heralded sixth album, Strange Little Birds, as elder statespersons of alternative rock. GERMANY – NOVEMBER 12: Photo of Krist NOVOSELIC and Kurt COBAIN and Dave GROHL and NIRVANA L-R: Dave Grohl, Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, posed, group shot (Photo by Paul Bergen/Redferns)
0 kommentar(er)
