Dave Grohl has gone through more than enough musical miracles for any other musician’s lifetime. Although Grohl would have been more than happy playing in bands like Scream for the rest of his life, his ascent to the top of the music world with Nirvana changed rock and roll overnight, with everyone graduating to flannels from hairspray once Grohl’s signature snare drum led in ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. Although Grohl would have a long road awaiting him with Foo Fighters after Kurt Cobain’s passing, his proudest achievement arrived before he became a Foo.
Coming out of the early 1990s, Nirvana was not equipped to deal with the fame thrust upon them at such an early age. Since Grohl had just joined the band, seeing the Seattle trio go from a humble indie band to one of the biggest bands in the world overnight shook him up, which led him to withdraw any time the band did any interviews.
Rather than go into the studio to recapture the same magic over again, Cobain wanted the band to come up with songs much more raw than their blockbuster album. Thinking that the mixes of Nevermind sounded too slick, Cobain enlisted Steve Albini to produce the next record, which drew a line in the sand between the pop and the rock sides of Nirvana’s sound.
Almost like the evil cousin of Nevermind, In Utero was the album closer to what Nirvana sounded like live, with Cobain thinking they had finally captured what he wanted the band to sound like. While the hooks were prevalent on songs like ‘Heart Shaped Box’ and ‘Rape Me’, other tracks like ‘Scentless Apprentice’ and ‘Very Ape’ got their hooks from just how caustic they were, with Cobain screaming at the top of his vocal range.
Although the band worked at a relentless pace with Alibini at the helm, Grohl still thought that the album was one of the best performances he had ever worked on. Regardless of the power of the songs, though, Grohl credits the sound of the record down to Albini’s production, often favouring the live performance rather than adding overdubs that distract from the song.
When speaking in the documentary Sonic Highways, Grohl thought that the work Albini did on his drum sound was the finest that he had ever done, saying, “Recording with Steve was a huge deal. That’s one of my life’s greatest gifts. I got to record with Steve Albini and hear his drum sound on my drums”.
Even though Nirvana had made their definitive statement in the post-Nevermind world, their existence would be short-lived after Cobain’s tragic suicide a few months after the record was released. Although Grohl has remained proud of the album, the memories of that time have been somewhat tainted.
While Grohl can look back at the record’s sonics and appreciate what Albini did for them, he found it hard to return to the album after Cobain’s passing, bringing up a lot of raw wounds from what those days were like. Nothing can take away from the brutal honesty of In Utero, but sometimes, writing this close to the bone is too much to revisit.
