The battle to make Nirvana’s ‘unlistenable’ final album

In 1992, a year after Nirvana had topped the US Billboard chart with Nevermind, the pressure was on to deliver another commercial hit.

Their second album was selling an estimated 300,00 copies a week, had been nominated for a Grammy and spawned an inescapably popular single (in Smells Like Teen Spirit), and the band’s three members – Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl – had become major celebrities. The trio had been transformed from Seattle mouthpieces of the underdog to the favourite band of, in Cobain’s own words, “jocks, racists and homophobes” – and he was devastated.

In a 1993 interview, he tore the album apart: “I never listen to Nevermind. I haven’t listened to it since we put it out… I can’t stand that kind of production and I don’t listen to bands that do have that kind of production, no matter how good their songs are”.

He predicted that the band’s record label, Geffen, would “want another Nevermind, but I’d rather die than do that”. That same year, Nirvana released In Utero – which turns 30 this week – the darkest and most emotionally blistering of their three albums, and just five months later, Cobain was dead from suicide.

Originally intending to called the album I Hate Myself and Want to Die, Cobain was aware from the offset that the big record bosses would be unhappy with the direction the record was taking: it was messier, louder, grungier than its predecessor.

He insisted that his first choice of title was nothing to do with his mental state, of being a “pissy, complaining, freaked-out schizophrenic who wants to kill himself all the time,” but an inside joke he and his fans would both understand.

It was only when Novoselic, frightened of similar backlash (and legal trouble) faced by Judas Priest three years earlier when two fans shot themselves, apparently influenced by their cover of Better by You, Better than Me, urged Cobain to rethink it. Up against the backup option of Verse, Chorus, Verse, Cobain eventually decided on In Utero – taken from one of Courtney Love’s poems – which was widely inferred to reference his recent fresh start in life as a father.

The band enlisted the services of notoriously exacting producer Steve Albini, who had produced two of Cobain’s favourite albums, Pixies’ Surfer Rosa and The Breeders’ Pod. Albini wasn’t an easy soul to get on board, though, as he loathed commercialism and preen, and had previously dismissed Nirvana as “R.E.M. with a fuzzbox” and an “unremarkable version of the Seattle sound”.

It was pity that eventually persuaded him to help out, as he believed that, although hugely famous, Nirvana were not unlike smaller bands he produced for; at the mercy of their record company and moulded by fans’ expectations. And despite the promise of yet more commercial success, Albini refused to take a cut of their royalties, calling it “ethically indefensible” and instead charging a flat production fee of $100,000 dollars.

They headed deep into rural Minnesota to the secluded Pachyderm Studios under strict instruction from Albini to record the album within two weeks. If it took any longer, he said, “somebody’s f—-g up”. Luckily, it didn’t, with its guttural sound far removed from Nevermind’s preen and polish, largely down to Albini’s technique of capturing the natural atmosphere of a room by placing several microphones around the space, as well as limited practices or re-records.

Their jubilation was short-lived, as it soon became clear that Geffen was unhappy with the record’s direction amid reports that executives had labelled it “unlistenable” and “not up to par”. “The grown-ups don’t like it,” Cobain complained to Michael Azerrad, during interviews. Albini told The Chicago Tribune’s Greg Kot that the band “were ecstatic about the record, but every person they work for tells them it’s terrible”.

Anxious about the negative press, the label pushed Nirvana to take a full-page reaction out in Billboard magazine that insisted they retained full creative control, but the seeds of distrust had been sown. R.E.M. producer Scott Litt was roped in to smooth out the sound on certain songs ready for radio play, leaving Albini furious.

Further problems arose when major US stockists (including Wal-Mart and Kmart) refused to stock the album because of its themes and aesthetic, forcing the band to change Rape Me’s title to Waif Me (in certain areas) and soften the imagery on the back cover.