 It was a learning experience for both the band and producer, each working for a major label for the first time. "I got the band to do some things I think they didn't necessarily want to do," says Vig. "The first recording [at Smart] was very very simple and had very few overdubs. Now I got to work more on the production, and got them to do more vocal overdubs, and more guitar overdubs, and basically tried to make the record a lot more fuller sounding. They sounded so amazing live, to me, that in order to get that kind of sound on record you had to use more production work in the studio; doubling guitars, using multiple mics on things and splitting them left and right, just trying to make it sound larger than life. 'Cause that's how they sounded when they played live.
"The songs were basically in really in good shape, but I did do more arranging with them," Vig continues. "'Teen Spirit' was longer and the little ad-libs after the chorus were actually at the end of the song. I suggested putting those in at the end of each chorus as a bridge into the next verse. And I remember Kurt sitting down with the acoustic and he had a couple variations of the melody and the verse he was singing and we picked the one that was best. But most of the songs were fairly finished. I don't know whether they played them live a lot, but I know that they did practice a lot. It wasn't like, 'What are you playing here?' They knew. Chris had figured out his bass lines, and the drum patterns for the most part were worked out, and Kurt had a pretty good idea of what he wanted to do. But he had a couple lines in some songs that he was still working on." Unlike the band's previous recordings, songs for the new album were frequently compiled from a number of different takes. "Kurt would do vocal takes and I'd try to get him to do three or four," Vig explains. "I liked to go through and pick the best bits. That's typically how I like to work with a vocalist. And on some of the songs he did sing some different lines. Sometimes he'd do a take and then come in and listen to it and go, 'I don't like that verse, I'm going to use this one instead.' Kurt would sing so amazing. That's one reason he would blow his voice out, he was singing hard. He would sing the verse a certain way and usually come to the chorus and if he was singing really hard he would totally blow his voice out every time. "Then after we cut stuff, we would go back," Vig continues. "I had Chris re-do some of the bass tracks 'cause I wanted them to be really locked with the drums. And every now and then work on the parts a little bit, see if we could come up with something better. And the same with Kurt. We kept the live guitar, and went back and overdubbed more guitar, and experimented with tones and different mics and amps and guitars. Kurt in particular did not really want to do that. But I somehow was able to push him farther than he wanted. I think he really wanted to kind of stay with the punk aesthetic, that everything is one take and that's all. But also, he knew if he didn't have a good performance, and he wanted it to be good." |