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In the summer of 1991, as America celebrated Independence Day, Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan drove the 150 miles from his Chicago hometown to Madison, Wisconsin, to spend the day with his friend Butch Vig. The two men had first met in Madison’s Smart studios the previous summer, when Sub Pop records co-founders Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman asked the producer – who’d made a name for himself on the US underground scene via his work with Touch and Go records artists Killdozer, Die Kreuzen and The Laughing Hyenas – to record two Pumpkins songs (Tristessa and La Dolly Vita) for release on their label in December 1990.
In the studio, Corgan and Vig developed a mutual respect which later blossomed into friendship over the 30 intense working days they devoted to the recording of Smashing Pumpkins’ debut album Gish during the winter of 1990/’91. It was during these sessions that the producer was asked if he’d be interested in working on Nirvana’s second album, and major label debut, the Aberdeen, Washington trio having parted company with Sub Pop since demoing tracks for the record at Smart Studios in April in 1990.
Vig met with the band for pre-production in Los Angeles at the end of April ’91, Geffen having booked four weeks at Sound City studio from May 2 – 28. Before the sessions for what became Nevermind, Kurt Cobain gave Vig just one direction: “I want to sound heavy.”
Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins)
“So the sun’s going down, it’s a beautiful Wisconsin summer night, and Butch is like, ‘Hey, you guys wanna hear the new Nirvana?’ And he brings out a boombox. And at that point, how many people had heard …Teen Spirit? Probably under 10 or 20.”
“When the song kicked in, I said, You ripped off my guitar sound motherfucker! [But] I’m not trying to take credit, Kurt was easily the most talented person in our class… I don’t know know how long …Teen Spirit is – four minutes? – but by the time you get to the end of the four minutes, you’re like, Okay, that’s a classic.
“It was obvious then and it’s obvious now, Nevermind was a once in a generational record.”
“It was obvious then and it’s obvious now, Nevermind was a once in a generational record
Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins
Dave Grohl (Nirvana)
“I thought In Bloom was going to be the ‘smash hit’ off the record, or Lithium. I thought Smells Like Teen Spirit was just another album cut. We recorded it pretty quickly, and I think it was one of Butch Vig’s favourites, and it soon became pretty clear that it would be the special song on the record. But, of course, at that point we didn’t think anything was going to happen with the record.
“I thought Teen Spirit might get on [MTV’s] 120 Minutes and allow us to tour with Sonic Youth, but no one thought it was a hit single because [that] was just unimaginable.”
Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age)
“My band Kyuss was on tour, and I remember seeing the video on MTV at 3 a.m. in a hotel room. I was saying, ‘Man, this is so good, everyone should be into this music but they’re not going to be, it’s not going to get played because it’s too good.’ About a week later I realised how wrong I was …’
Chris Cornell, Soundgarden
“I think one of the biggest reasons why a band like Nirvana appealed to such a broad audience was the fact that you went from seeing a video of a band like Whitesnake, where you have the singer’s model wife doing a striptease act on the hood of a Jaguar, and basically all of these rock bands presenting themselves as having a lifestyle that you will never have. That’s very special. It’s very exclusive.
“And then you see a video with a band like Nirvana, where the band essentially looked like everyone and their friends at high school, and it was proof that anyone can do it: you don’t have to look a particular way. You can just be who you are, make great music, and it will appeal to people.”
Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails)
“I wasn’t the biggest Nirvana fan in the world. I have since realized that part of my negativity toward them was probably jealousy. Even after I realized they were a good band, there was no getting away from them. They were everywhere-on the radio, on MTV, in the papers…”
“When you heard the first notes of the Nirvana record you just knew that it was absolutely going to change something.
Stone Gossard, Pearl Jam
Melissa auf der Maur (Hole, Smashing Pumpkins)
“When I heard Smells Like Teen Spirit in the club where I worked as a ticket girl, it wasn’t the melody only, or the lyrics, it was the whole package. The magic that Butch Vig captured for that band, with that tape machine, and those tube amps, and mics, just had more shine to it. And the song itself captured a zeitgeist moment. Kurt captured our generation in spirit, somehow. Music is a magic potion, and you never know when you will strike the chord of an entire generation, but he did that.
“When I first heard it, it was like, Here we go, generation, here we go! The ’90s have arrived boldly. The new sound was born through that song. And when I got an advanced cassette of the album, I just played it all day at the bar where I worked, and I’d tell people, You don’t understand, life as we know it is going to change. Don’t you see? It’s over. Life is never going to be the same.”
Stone Gossard (Pearl Jam)
“When you heard the first notes of the Nirvana record you just knew, you could just tell, that it was absolutely going to change something. It was so obvious that it was the perfect balance of totally straight rock, blues and punk rock. And sonically it had nothing to do with Mötley Crüe, which was so refreshing: as much as I loved the first Mötley Crüe record, I was ready for something new.’
Additional sources: The LA Times (Reznor), Rick Beato, Scott Lipps (Corgan), Templo of Chris Cornell (Cornell)