It’s hard to turn a blind eye when something is that perfect! Butch Vig couldn’t do that either at the Nirvana rehearsal when he first heard ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.’ Kurt Cobain and Nirvana’s then-new drummer, Dave Grohl, played the track to Vig, and it was at that moment he realized as a producer that the guys were creating magic that would travel for generations.
“The first day I walked into rehearsal with Nirvana out in the valley,” Vig began sharing the back story at the Howard Stern Show. “Kurt had sent me a cassette a week before it. ‘Butch, here’s our new drummer, Dave Grohl. He’s the best drummer in the world.’ Then they started playing songs, and because it was recorded on a Boombox, it was instantly just massive distortion. But I could tell even though it sounded horrible how tight it sounded.”
He continued, “Then I walked into the rehearsal room, and Dave jumped up this goofy guy, ‘Hi, I’m Dave Butch; it’s nice to meet you.’ I think he weighed like 135 pounds or something, and then he ran back on the kit, and I said, ‘Well, run through a song, you guys.’ They played a song, ‘Teen Spirit.’ It just crushed me how good he was and how good they sounded.”
“I started pacing around the room,” Butch remembered. “I usually take notes like little arrangement things or whatever; I was taking it all in. They finished the song, and Kurt was like, ‘What do you think, Butch?’ I went, ‘Play it again.’ Then I took more notes down, but it was incredible.”
The song ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ ultimately became a cult classic that spread over time and a track that most of us have heard of somehow. However, Butch had the once-in-a-lifetime chance to experience the initial version by being their producer on the track and the ‘Nevermind’ album. Who wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall during those rehearsals?
