Steve Albini Allegedly Supports Murder Theory

Krist asking him to remaster the original doesn't mean he was and is close to the band after the original recordings.

Steve Albini "Three days into the session, Dave called John Silva and said that he'd just been hitting the snare drums for three days and that I'd just been moving the microphone around that whole time. At one point, John Silva said, "Well, you know, it's like we said..." -and then Dave totally cut him off. It's like he was about to spill the beans on whatever Plan B was".

http://www.livenirvana.com/documents/mojoinutero.html

Albini: "Then Krist called me and said, 'Y'know, it just doesn't sound as good as it did in Minnesota.' And I reiterated that I felt like we'd gotten the full monty, I felt like we'd gotten everything we could out of the master that we could when we were in Minnesota. And that I was still of the opinion that we shouldn't tamper with it."

The band, however, was becoming increasingly glum about the Pachyderm recordings. They were determined to remix two songs - All Apologies and Heart-Shaped Box. And if Albini didn't think he could improve upon his own recordings, he would clearly take a dim view of anyone else trying. Especially if one of those people happened to be, say, Andy Wallace. In the end, he acceded to the wishes of the band, and gave them his blessing to "tinker around" with his recording. Krist Novoselic now says he feels the band simply didn't have enough time to reflect properly on what they had recorded at Pachyderm.

"That was the thing with Steve, it felt like once the record was done it was completely done. That's when the record label kinda stepped in and said, 'Hey…!' We had a confrontation about the situation. Maybe I shoulda spoke up at the time. I think it's a great sounding record. It's a highly artistic record. I don't know who else could have produced it except Albini.

"But," he laughs, "you know why we had to remix Heart-Shaped Box? You should hear the original version of that song, the guitar solo has this effect on it, it just sabotages the whole song. Steve and Kurt were colluding! I would go to Kurt, Why are you sabotaging this beautiful song by putting this hideous abortion in the centre of it? He'd be like, 'Well, I think it sounds cool.' I don't even remember what their arguments were. Some statement against commercial radio or something, the popular mainstream aesthetic… I dunno! I guess I finally, got my way. Scott Litt was an opportunity to change things.".

By the time Nirvana had repaired to Seattle's Bad Animals studio with R.E.M. producer Scott Litt in early May, the reverberations caused by Greg Kot's article were seismic. Newsweek ran a full-page story on Geffen's alleged infringement of Nirvana's artistic control, backing the essence of the Kot piece. Geffen issued a press release quoting Kurt as saying "There has been no pressure from our record label to change the tracks we did with Albini. We have 100 per cent control of our music. The band felt the vocals were not loud enough on a few of the tracks. We want to change that." Nirvana wrote a letter in response to the Newsweek article, criticising writer Jeff Giles on the grounds that he "ridiculed our relationship with our label based on totally erroneous information." The letter was subsequently reprinted as a full-page advertisement in Billboard. In the Geffen press release, meanwhile, company president Ed Rosenblatt stated: "As I have assured the members of Nirvana and their management all along, we will release whatever record the band delivers to us."

Which, in the end, they did. The version of In Utero that finally went into the shops on September 14, 1993 was exactly what Nirvana delivered to Geffen, exactly what the band wanted people to hear. The album was as recorded in Minnesota with Steve Albini, save for the two remixed tracks - both of which were released as singles - and a remastering session at which, in the assessment of Bob Weston, the band hoped to "change the overall sound of the album. The stereo doesn't sound as wide. The guitar has been flattened out a bit. On the original mixes the guitar would just leap out.

"But," adds Weston, "even with the changes that were made it's a great record. The songs are great and the recording is great and the performances are great. And besides, it's their record. If they wanted to remix a few songs and do a lot in the mastering, that's their prerogative. All that matters when you make a record is that the band is happy with the final result."

SENTIMENTS WITH WHICH ALBINI concurs absolutely, although he feels the final mastering was "overbearing. For my own personal satisfaction, because I worked on that record and felt close to it, I felt like it sounded better before any tinkering was done. When they sent me a copy I put it on and instantly I was disappointed in the mastering." Yet it was as much the media brouhaha over the mooted remix of the album which soured his relations with the band during a period when both parties should have been basking in the glow of a good job well done. In interviews around the release of In Utero, Kurt Cobain stated that the *beep* had all been Albini's fault, that he had no reason to be so paranoid. But as Kurt himself once sang: "Just because you're paranoid/Don't mean they're not after you..."

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