For people who knew Kurt Cobain, there were often two sides to him after Nevermind was released. Sure, he may have been happy to be on a major label and make songs that might actually have a shot at radio play, but there was also a cynical side to him who thought that his own band was getting a bit too overhyped by the media. Although Cobain had a massive change of heart when it came to how his masterpiece was mixed, Butch Vig remembered that getting ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ down wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, either.
Even if you took out all of the bells and whistles, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ would probably still be considered one of the greatest songs of all time. Ignoring the comparisons to Boston’s ‘More Than a Feeling’, Cobain made the ultimate statement on feeling disenfranchised, almost like he hit on the sound of adolescent angst with just four chords.
Before Vig had even started recording with them, he was knocked out by ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, saying that he was pacing around the room trying to contain his excitement. If the band’s new song was going to make the record, Cobain was determined to do the entire thing in one pass.
After all, Nirvana were still holding onto their punk rock ethos, and putting too many overdubs on the record made them no different than the Loverboys of the world, who made glossy productions. Once it came time for Cobain to kick off the song, everything kept falling apart when the band came crashing in.
Despite his determination to get it right, Vig remembered Cobain having to admit defeat and overdub the intro of the piece, recalling to Rolling Stone, “That really pissed him off. He wanted to play the song live all the way through.” Granted, the track actually sounds perfect when you have that clean guitar right at the beginning.
Think about hearing ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ for the first time. Listening to those guitars, things seem pretty tame at first, but as soon as it’s offset by Dave Grohl’s drum fill, it takes on a whole new life, almost like the band turns up the volume for you without you ever having to adjust the sound on your speakers.
Of all the nonsense lyrics that Cobain was known for, he was also particularly proud of getting a lot of this lyric sheet down on paper, with bassist Krist Novoselic remembering being told by Cobain to focus on what the words mean. Then again, Vig had another challenge when Cobain would try to mix himself lower in the mix.
He may have had one of the greatest screams in rock and roll, but Vig said that Cobain intentionally wanted himself to be lower in the mix, saying, “[He] kept trying to bury his voice. I kept arguing, ‘You can’t do that. Your vocal performance is as intense as the drums, bass and guitar.’”
Given where Nirvana would go from there, maybe Cobain was just preparing for the inevitable. This was a song that was bound to take over the world, so his trying to avoid any overdubs or vocal enhancements might have been his way of sounding closer to the punk rock school of authenticity.