The latest episode of former TV talk show host Conan O' Brien's popular Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend podcast features former Nirvana duo Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, plus renowned recording engineer Steve Albini, discussing the making of In Utero, Nirvana's third and final studio album.
The Seattle band recorded In Utero at Pachyderm Recording Studio, a residential studio in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, in February '93.
“If you’ve ever been in Minneapolis in February, it’s like an ice planet, I swear to God,” Dave Grohl once told this writer. “During the day it was fifteen degrees below zero. At night it went down to twenty-five, thirty degrees below zero. It was fucking freezing: the coldest I’ve ever been in my entire life. So, we were in total isolation and locked indoors because if you stepped outside you’d die. But it was a beautiful place, and an unusual place to record.”
In conversation with Conan O'Brien, Grohl, Novoselic and Albini reveal that there wasn't a huge amount of entertainment options at Pachyderm during their stay at the facility, and that, in order to amuse themselves, the band and their producer made prank telephone calls to a selection of their fellow rock stars - including Kiss bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons and Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder.
"I pretended to be Kurt calling Gene Simmons," Albini confesses. "Gene Simmons had called their management because there was a Kiss tribute album being put together, and Nirvana - the biggest band in the world - were friends with the Melvins, and Melvins did a Kiss cover, and he assumed that Nirvana would want to do a Kiss cover. Gene Simmons can not fathom that anyone on earth is not a massive Kiss fan."
As it happens, Nirvana had already recorded a Kiss cover, Do You Love Me, for Hard to Believe: A Kiss Covers Compilation, which emerged in 1990 on C/Z Records.
"Oh God, that was a disaster," recalls Krist Novoselic, who admits to be a teenage Kiss fan. "We were drunk."
"So the word comes down that Gene Simmons is desperate to get Nirvana on this album," Albini continues. "And Kurt is like, I don't want to talk to fucking Gene Simmons, and I said, I'll do it! So I called him back, and I pretended to be Kurt, and I parried the whole thing away by saying that I wasn't making all the decisions because I had a reliability problem. And Kurt is sitting right next to me, listening to me doing an impression of him. [In Kurt Cobain voice] 'Do you know The Wipers? I really love The Wipers'. And Gene Simmons comes back with, 'I don't know The Wipers. I know the Melvins. I love the Melvins!'"
On another occasion, Albini called up Eddie Vedder, pretending to be producer Tony Visconti, telling Pearl Jam's frontman that he'd recently been played a record by the band, and that he wanted to get Vedder in the studio "with a real band, guys who can really play."
"I thought he handled it pretty deftly," Albini adds. "I think he acquitted himself well, talking on the phone to Tony Visconti, record producer, who wanted to fire his band."
"Oh, please put these out," says Conan O'Brien. "I'll take care of the legal end of it!"
Listen to the full podcast below:
For Louder's own in-depth long-read feature on the making of In Utero, featuring insights from Grohl, Novoselic and Albini, go here.
