Butch Vig on Nevermind

What was it with Kurt and cellos? There's one on "Something in the Way," and he used them later on tour and on In Utero.
There is a melancholy to it. He loved that sound. Dee Plakas from L7 — her husband played cello on that track ["Something"]. The hardest thing was getting it in tune with the guitar, because Kurt recorded the song with that five-string nightmare he had. It was never tuned to anything — it was like between notes — but that was what Kurt wanted to use.

We struggled to record bass and drums and guitar live on that song. Then Kurt came into the control room. He was really frustrated. He sat on the couch and started playing the song, mumbling the words. I could barely hear him. But there was an intensity to it. I shut the doors to the control room and told the assistant engineer to turn off the telephone. We put a vocal mike on Kurt and a condenser mike on the guitar. He lay on the couch and did the song. I knew right away that I wanted to end the album with it. Instead of ending the album with an adrenaline high, it leaves you thinking. It leaves a stillness in the air. There aren't many outtakes from the album: "Old Age," "Sappy," also known as "Verse Chorus Verse," and something called "Song in D."

I wanted Kurt to finish the words to that one. It was like "On a Plain" or "About a Girl," this jangly arpeggio thing in the key of D. I thought I could turn it into another single. At the end, Kurt said he didn't want to finish it because it was too much like R.E.M. For "Sappy," he had some lyrics, but he wanted to change it. The band tried to record it on numerous occasions. It was one of those songs Kurt heard in his head, but they never got it right. But he kept taking a stab at it.

Did it bum you out when, after Nevermind became a hit, Kurt repudiated the production, saying it was too arena rock?
Yeah, it did. I know the band loved it when it was done. But I expected that to happen. When you're hanging out with your punk friends, and all of a sudden you go Number One, you can't go, "God, I love that album, I'm glad it's sold 20 million copies." It was hard for him to embrace it.

He was so complicated anyway. There are moments when I think about what that record did to him. Maybe if he hadn't had that success, he'd still be around. It's hard to know. He was miserable a lot of times, but what I found when we were recording was that he found escape in music. If he hadn't had that, he might not have lived as long as he did.

Can you see any cracks in Nevermind today, anything you would have done differently, regardless of subsequent events?
There are a couple of lines that he sang in "Teen Spirit" that are out of tune. I wanted him to go back and redo them, and he didn't want to do it. I can still hear them. But that's all right. It was more about the feel than making it perfect.

[From Issue 877 — September 13, 2001]