Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [142]
DAVE GROHL “More low end! I want it to sound like the Melvins!” “It has to be heavier, heavier, heavier!” Butch was doing his best to do what Kurt wanted, and it just wasn’t turning out.
BUTCH VIG The mixes were sounding kind of muffly, and Gary Gersh and Silva came by and listened and they were like, “Let’s just get a good mix guy in, and we’ll try and keep the band away from the studio a little bit and let him do his thing.” I was like, “Cool.”
So they sent over a list of all these mix guys. I showed the list to Kurt and at the bottom was Andy Wallace, and it listed Slayer first on his credits. He said, “Call that guy.” If he’d looked further on Andy’s credits, it had Madonna. If Madonna’s name had been first, Andy wouldn’t have gotten the call.
BEN SHEPHERD First time I heard anything off of Nevermind, I thought, Wow, these guys are going for number one. We heard some songs that somebody snuck out of the studio down to our studio. Chris is in the other room mixing “Slaves & Bulldozers.” Matt and Kim are in this room listening to Nevermind. I think it was the song “Come as You Are.” And I stood in the hallway and I could hear my friends listening to my friends and watched my other friend work on a song that me and my friends had put together. So it was really intense.
I stood there watching these two different worlds going on. Then I walked towards Chris, towards the music we were working on, instead of listening to someone else.
GRANT ALDEN We had advance cassettes of both Nevermind and the Soundgarden record, Badmotorfinger, in The Rocket office. It was a good Soundgarden record, but there was something special about that Nirvana record. People would come in and go, “Can I make a copy?,” and it was probably three-to-one, four-to-one they wanted to borrow or copy the Nirvana tape over the Soundgarden tape.
SUSIE TENNANT (DGC Records Northwest promotion representative) Being in Seattle, there were advance copies of Nevermind around. People made copies for other people, and that whole summer and fall, you couldn’t go anywhere in Seattle without hearing it. You’d pull up at a stoplight and hear it from the car next to you. You’d be walking on the street and hear it blaring out of stores.
JONATHAN PONEMAN Bruce and I had gone to the Off Ramp and we ran into Susie Tennant, and she said, “Have you heard the new Nirvana record yet?” So we went into her car and she had a cassette tape and I remember listening to it—I was sitting in the backseat and Bruce and Susie were in the front seat—and it started off with a song that I remember hearing them play live. It was like crescendo after crescendo after crescendo. I mean it was orgasmic—probably more female orgasmic than male orgasmic—and, of course, it was “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Bruce and I just looked at each other and said, “This is going to be huge.”
JEFF GILBERT I actually hold the distinction of being the first person in Seattle to play “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the radio. Three of us got the record. I was working over at KZOK, an AM station. Cathy Faulkner over at KISW got it, and there was somebody else. They said, “Not until noon. We’re gonna be listening.” Well, I just went up to the clock and advanced it five minutes ahead of time, because as the guy on the low end of the dial on AM, I thought, This is how I say “Fuck you” to the rest of ’em. So I played it first.
Something changed in the week or two following: That song never left the radio. It just kept getting more and more requests. Suddenly, it just felt different around town. It’s like, you’re on the very top of the roller coaster and you’re about to go into that big, spinning dive. That anticipation, it was in the air.
CRAIG MONTGOMERY We drove down to L.A. from Seattle to film the “Teen Spirit” video and do some shows. And I remember being in the van, and Kurt was in the back and he played me “Teen Spirit” on the boom box. And he asked me,